The next day

Day 2, we woke up bright and early because we were all super jet-lagged, and didn't have much choice waking up early or not. The Chinese have different concepts of privacy than we do in the US. For example, the bathroom was sectioned off from the rest of our hotel room... by glass. Alex and I adapted it so we could modestly take shits:

Right off the bat we started doing all the things the nurse practitioner told us not to do, buying food and drinks from the street vendor and going out without sunscreen. Armed with a big bag of what translated out as "grease sticks" and "grease balls," we boarded a fishing boat we chartered for a couple hundred yuan so we could see the very end of the Yangtze river. Here's the boat in the harbor!

And here's everyone on the boat:

There's loads of industrial stuff going on around Pudong, even right where all the fishing is going on. Most of the industrial stuff seemed to be based around big piles of gravel.

After a long boat ride, during which I got kinda sunburnt, we boarded the island which marks the end of the Yangtze as it flows into the East China Sea. On the way up, I slipped on the dock and scratched up my leg on a bunch of barnacles, and it started bleeding like no tomorrow. Here's where we went:

Well, we got off and started hanging our river flags, and right off the bat some guy came storming down the docks telling us we weren't allowed to be here and we had to get off the island. That was going to be a problem because the fishing boat wasn't going to come back for another hour and had just gotten out of shouting distance. But Ping managed to sweet talk our way out of leaving as soon as possible, and we hung out and made some friends with the folks who didn't want us on the island. They let us use their bathroom, and they even ended up cleaning out and sterilizing my barnacle-scratches. One of the guys spent about five minutes talking very enthusiastically about something that Ariel deduced to be fish. Mississippi Bluesman Alex Wand managed to get out "I don't speak any English," in broken Chinese, at which the fish enthusiast just laughed, and went on for another five minutes. The flags that we did manage to get up were beautiful though:

Here's what they looked like fluttering in the wind:

Well, the next post will be more about day 2. Shanghai deserves it's own post.