day7 Yu Yuan Garden and Buddhist temple

There is a lot more history in Beijing and Xian then in Shanghai. In the old city there was the Yu Yuan garden. The garden was just amazing, absolutely beautiful. I pictured the archecture to look more like that everywhere in China. One really cool thing was that with all of the coy fish there was one turtle. Then, we went to a Buddhist temple. The temple was really cool. They had a fish that was one hundred fifty eight years old. Everything there was so peaceful, like nothing that I’ve ever seen before. It might have been really peaceful because we weren’t allowed to talk, so everyone was quiet for the first time in the whole trip. The building also looked very comfortable because after all of this sightseeing I think this was the first time there was carpet, plus they also had pillows for when the people kneeled. There was a little bit of history in the temple because there was this statue that a man found, it was too heavy for him to bring on a boat with him, and the other statues, so the locals convinced him to keep it in Shanghai. We also saw them in the middle of a ceremony. It was really interesting to see, but I had no idea what was going on. Then, Brandon, Ty, and I went to go see that one hundred fifty eighth year old fish. It was a lot bigger than the rest of the coy. So, he kind of stood out. Some of our class fed the fish, and after a while Mason, Brandon, and Scott just stuck their hands in the water to feel the suction on their hands. The next big thing we did was go to a market. Culturally through haggling I learned that the people will do whatever it takes to get money and they aren’t afraid to cheap you out and make you pay extra for something that isn’t worth it. Some examples of this is on the first day in Wanfujing street Claudia didn’t know she could haggle for something, so she didn’t and ended up paying way too much, and Scott got a polo that the guy told him not to tell the boss about because obviously he under paid. I mean in the US we don’t haggle, so how are we supposed to know that they start with an inflated price. That is why haggling tends to be in more third world countries because they need the inflated price to make the money, unlike the US where we tend to be doing good, so we don’t need to make a quick buck.