When you study or travel abroad, one of the things I must recommend everybody to do is to take a random day and stroll the city or place of travel. It can give you one of the best and most clear views and feels for the place you are at. In terms of culture and everyday life, it’s the best thing to do. I loved taking my random days to just jump on the Shanghai metro and pick the random stops that I had not heard of before. Shanghai is about two to three times the size of NYC, which allows them to offer plenty of diversified areas. My favorite places on my random trips consisted of the People’s Park, The 2010 expo sites, the Yu garden, and xin hui street(which later become a regular journey for me!).
They have WIFI booths! we need these!
Each of these places offer plenty of great architectural structures to admire, great and diverse restaurants and shops, as well as a different feel of traffic and economic classes which can altogether give anyone a sense of how different we can be, as well as how similar we can act. I believe it is important to not only look for the differences but to also embrace our similarities as people of the world.
All these places, although are great tourist places, have plenty of surroundings where only locals tend to hang around and mingle with their everyday lives. So instead of just picking the most wanted sites for tourism, always remember to explore the surround areas, which are the places that make it the cultural center it is.
