After eating at that handmade noodle shop again, I headed out to a different part of the city. I got off on the wrong stop and saw the main shopping area. Right away, lots of people start asking if I’d like to buy something. I followed this one guy to his “shop,” which is behind an unmarked door filled with all counterfeit merchandise (bags, watches, wallets). I did see a fake of the iPod Shuffle (2nd Gen) that I was interested in, but I already bought a player. They wanted me to haggle for the price, but I really didn’t want it and really wanted to get out of the shop. They got a little angry when I didn’t buy it.
I had to get out of this shopping area, so I took the subway to where the Shanghai Museum is, where I first intended to go. Here, two friendly Chinese girls started talking to me. They say they’re visiting the city from another part of China and are on their way to a Tea Ceremony and asked if I’d like to join. I said OK, since I didn’t have a strict schedule and would be nice to talk to some people, since I was all alone. I learned a little about a tea ceremony and tried some Chinese teas. They kept saying how this is what the Chinese Emperors did, and this special tea carried on horseback for three months to get here. I had a feeling this was a scam I thought I read about. I wasn’t sure until the next day I got asked to do the same thing. I got scammed out of $17 paying for the expensive tea, which is a lot for Chinese standards, pretty much what I spend here total for a day.
I ended up visiting the Urban Planning Museum. The highlight here was a massive scale model of the entire city. It shows how the city will look in a few years. They also have a 360 degree flythrough room, and some other scale models of a new deep water container port being built on an island in the ocean. Afterwards, it was back to the same noodle shop for the 4th time in two days for dinner. The place has large servings for $1, fast service, tastes good, and pictures on the walls, so you just point.