Visited the China MinTai museum

which is about the historical relations of Fujian and Taiwan.

From 15-19th century during the Qing and Ming dynasty, there was a huge migration of Han Chinese to Taiwan island. Most of the migrants were from Quanzhou and Zhangzhou.

ZhengChengGong also called Koxinga, defeated the Dutch in Taiwan in the 16th century.

Quanzhou home cooked food by WuYin’s mum

WuYin and Elly sent me to the new Quanzhou train station

for the 12.11pm train towards Fuzhou. Got to Fuzhou train station

at around 1.10pm. Fuzhou Chang Le airport is around 50km away from the city and there are airport shuttles which depart from Appolo Hotel. Appolo hotel is pretty close to the southern bus station so took bus K1 (1Yuan) towards the south bus station and got on the 2.20pm express shuttle (20Yuan~USD$3) towards FuZhou ChangeLe airport.

On way to the airport passing by some apartments buildings, even in Fuzhou you can see China housing boom.

Arrived at the airport after at 3.10pm after a 50 minutes bus ride.

Got on the 4.45pm flight on ChunQiu airline (400 Yuan~USD$55) towards Shanghai.

Goodbye Fuzhou

ChunQiu airline is a low cost airline and sometimes the airline will offer Fuzhou-Shanghai seats up for sale for only 99 Yuan.

Landed at Shanghai HongQiao airport at 6.30pm.

HongQiao airport is located at the western part of town, so took the subway line 2 then 4 towards Pudong area. I booked the Secret Garden hostel for a night since I am afraid that rooms will be fully booked for the Shanghai world expo. It cost 80Yuan~USD$12 for an eight person dorm room, the price was jacked up from 40 Yuan because of the world expo. Got to the hostel at around 8.30pm.
I was supposed to meet up with Jason here, however he wasn’t able to enter China because he misread the term of Chinese transit visa and was sent back.

Shanghai is a pretty big city with around 20 million people. Shanghai was just a fishing village 150 years ago until it was parceled by foreign countries to be an International Settlement area. China lost the opium war and was forced to sign the treaty of Nanking which opened up Shanghai. Because the city was situated at the gateway to Yangtzi river, it became an ideal trading port and was built on the trade of opium, silk and tea. The city was also a place for vice, gangs and cheap labour then. After 1927, the Kuomintang cooperated with foreign police and gangs, the poor was exploited until the communist came. The communist rehabilitated hundread of thousands of opium addicts and eliminated child labor.

Night view of Pudong.

Peal Tower, DongFangMingZhu

View of the bund across HuangPu river