It was here in the nanshi that local Chinese crowded outside the western concession area. Remnants of life in the late nineteenth century can still be found here. But they're falling fast beneath the bulldozers of modern real estate development.
We began the day at the famous Yuyuan Gardens and bazaar, where a private garden begun in the late 1500s remains preserved in the heart of this bustling modern city.
Students walked through one of the world's best preserved examples of ancient Chinese gardening and contemplated how its construction for a retired minister, Pan En, nurtured a much different experience and relationship with one's surroundings than the modern financial structures presently flanking the Huang Pu river. The emphasis in the Yuyan garden is not on grand spectacle, but on private, subtly measured discovery of one's environment that finds balance with the urban and natural worlds. This is a spatial aesthetic and mode of being that is constantly under threat in the rapidly developing city of the 21st century.
We continued our walk, stopping to visit two of the city's oldest places of worship, the Chenxiang ge Buddhist temple and the Qingzhen Mosque, where students discussed the basic beliefs and iconography of Buddhism and the uncertain, evolving role of regualted faith and religion in China.
The group ended the day eating their first niurou mian (Beef Noodle) and hundun soup (Wonton soup) at a couple of dives on a local street. No one had any idea they could get a bucket of noodles for under $2! We finished by picking through the city's famous Dongtai antiques market. One man's garbage is another woman's treasure...like a beat up, plastic, laughing Buddha, for instance.
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