My nearterm plan

I visited the Shanghai Musuem yesterday with a friend Dan (New Zealand) from the hostel. The museum was great. It was basically a "artifacts from the history of China" museum and was not necessarily about Shanghai.

There was a room full of jade artifacts and a currency history hall and also a bunch of memorabilia from all the different cultures of people who live in China. This room really caught my eye. There was clothing in there that looked so different from eachother. You would have thought that they all came from different countries, but I was impressed they were all Chinese.

After visiting the museum, I think I would rather like to see more of non-metropolis China, so what I'm planning at this point is to spend a couple days in Beijing and then head to Kunming and the rest of southwest China as soon as possible, in case I feel like exploring some serious backwoods areas out there.

I *might* look into going north of Beijing as well when I get up there. It would be cool to go meet and talk to Koreans who live in China.

But first, I have to get to Beijing. I bought a train ticket today for tomorrow morning. It's a 9 hour ride of sightseeing during the day. I tried to get the plush seat for $70 but they didn't have any left, so I went with the seat below that for $45. We'll see how that goes. I'll let you know.