Shanghai Municipality 上海市
Ancient Chinese art is extraordinary. I went to a few museums in Shanghai 上海市 and there were a (a trillion) artifacts I found noteworthy.
This is called "Beautiful and Fragrant Flowers" by Jin Junming 金俊明 dated 1660.
Cursive script by Zhu Yunming 祝允明 dated 1494.
Shells were the original form of currency used by Han Chinese. The character bei 贝 means both shell and valuable.
A totally awesome banknote.
I was really excited to see this. It is the shoulder blade of an ox. About 3,000 years ago during the Shang Dynasty 商, Chinese mystics would write down a prediction then press a hot metal rod against it and observe which way it cracked. The crack would indicate if the prediction will be true or false. Sometimes they would use a turtle shell instead. The curious thing about this is that they would record and analyze which predictions came true using a rational, science-based approach. These are called Oracle Bones 甲骨 and in this example, they were praying for a bountiful harvest.
Another interesting aspect of Chinese history is that the written language was never seen to develop or evolve. It seems to have just sprung up out of nowhere about 1,000 BC.
This is significant to share because obviously, maps are awesome. Also, I'd like to stress what is China. I've referred to Han Chinese a few times to differentiate a person who is Chinese by nationality and Han by culture. The white area on the map above indicates the location of traditional Han Chinese. The areas that are colored or marked (specifically Yunnan, where I spent my first trip) are not Han Chinese. They wear different clothes, eat different kinds of food, and, in general, have different cultural practices altogether. This is the same in Xinjiang province in the northwest. Those individuals may have a People's Republic of China passport but are not Han Chinese by tradition. If you need any further clarification, consider the US state of Hawaii. Imperialism is the practice by which a country increases its power by gaining control over other areas of the world. More often than not, this practice is not founded on consent and, if not achieved by force, it is often achieved through deceptive promises of wealth or warfare and economic manipulation.
And like the first trip, a photograph at the end of my journey. Six weeks, 10,000km+ and many new friends led me back to Qingdao.
This wasn't the honeymoon-esque, euphoric trip my SW China trip was a year prior. This one was a bit more difficult. I spent Christmas alone. I spent many, many hours watching the world go by from the window of a train, thinking and smoking cigarettes with strangers. I saw signs of cultures fading and powerful establishments tighten their relentless grip of control.
I also met wonderful, kind, beautiful people. I saw devotion stand tall in the face of oppression. In every area of China, people helped me and were kind to me. I witnessed a dichotomy of humans, one expressing warmth and friendliness with kind smiles. The other, a faceless representation of insensitive human ignorance, hiding in plain sight in the form of endless smog.