Day 10 - A Buddhist Temple

The 2 main religions in China are Taoism and Buddhism. It's estimated that between 50% to 80% of Chinese people are Buddhist and that about 30% are Taoist. Many people consider themselves both.

This temple, the Jing'an Temple is in the middle of the city and is an amazing sight. The gold lions standing on a pole outside are the first indication you get of the temple's magnificence.

As you enter, the normal smells of smog and car exhaust is replaced by the fragrance of incense burning, the noise of the traffic is left behind and you can wander the buildings, taking in their splendour.

Our hotel room overlooks a school. You can see their playground in this picture. As you can see there's no grass, but there is a running track and basketball courts. On the left side you can see 6 sets of parallel bars which are used for gymnastics. No wonder the Chinese do so well at gymnastics at the Olympics!

This was our last full day in China. See you all on Monday!

Mr LeBreton

Day 9 - Tea, Trees and Towers

The Yuyuan Gardens are a big traditional Chinese garden in the middle of the old part of Shanghai. All the buildings in this area are the traditional style, it feels like you've walked into a Kung Fu movie!

We saw a man preparing tea leaves. It's different to the stuff that comes in teabags at home, it's green tea that is basically just the fresh leaves that have been worked in a bowl for a while.

This is what the leaves look like to start with:

This is the leaves being prepared:

They then put the leaves into a drink bottle add boiling water and sip it all day.

The Yuyaun Gardens are beautiful and took us a few hours to find our way through.

Water helps to create a feeling of peace and tranqility.

Chinese Gardens are created to create lots of different areas and views. It's very hard to keep you sense of direction as there are hidden paths and areas everywhere.

It was very uplifting and peaceful place, right in the middle of a huge city.

We then went to the second highest buiding in Shanghai, the Jin Mao Tower and went up to the observation Deck on the 88th floor. That's 341 metres above the ground! Two things are obvious from up there. Shanghai is very big and very smoggy.

Day 8 - Shanghai Zoo

Posing for the camera!

Shanghai Zoo is very pretty, there's lots of open grass areas and plenty of animals to see including the famous Pandas!

I always like looking at the monkeys, it reminds me of being at school!

After looking at all the animals we finished with a ride on a wild dragon rollercoaster!

Day 7 - Shopping

The markets in Shanghai are crazy! They are huge and the whole time you're being hassled by people to buy things. When you do see something you like you have to bargain with the shop-keeper. Usually you pay less than half the first price they asked!

We went to The Bund in the evening which is the riverside area in the centre of town. It's beautiful watching all the lights come on the skyscrapers. Some of the buildings are used as massive advertising signs at night, like giant movie screens.

Day 6 - Shanghai Rock Masters, continued

Me climbing much better on the second climb.

Minah and Tahlia perform tricks with the climbing wall and the skyscrapers in the background.

Minah and Tahlia with the winner of the Men's Lead competition Tomas Tauporn from Germany. Tomas and an Indonesian climber who came second in speed gave their flowers to the girls.


The sun was back out his morning so the competition was able to continue. I climbed much better today and finished 7th on this climb, and 10th overall! I was really happy with this result, up against some of the best climbers in the world. Now I can relax and enjoy the rest of our trip.

Carlie competed in the final event, the Classic Speed and climbed much better than she has so far. So we both finished happy. The finals of the Classic Speed was spectacular with a huge audience, TV cameras, spotlights, loud music and of course in China there must be huge fireworks!

Some Men's Speed Climbing action. The climber on the right is Abu Dzar from Indonseia, he came second and gave Tahlia his flowers.

Day 5 - The Shanghai Rock Masters

Today was my first day of competition. We are climbing on a 15 metre high wall which is in a park in the Financial District of Shanghai called Pudong. It's surrounded by massive skyscrapers some so high they spent a lot of the weekend in the clouds! The climb this morning was very hard, much harder than competitions in Australia, I didn't climb very well and I was disappointed to be in 14th place at the end.

The second climb was scheduled for the eventing but it started to rain so they have postponed it until tomorrow. They held the World Record Format Speed Climbing instead. In this format the climb is exactly the same wherever you go in the world. The world record was broken just last week by a Chinese climber who climbed the 15 metres in 7.3 seconds! Carlie climbed in the Speed. We don't have a wall like this in Australia yet so she had never tried it before. All of the other climbers train on this climb all the time.

One of the world's greatest climbers, Patxi Usbiago from Spain, cruised through the climb.
As I'm typing this the TV in the hotel is on the sports channel and the speed competition is on! Carlie's on Chinese TV!

Day 4 - Some photos at last!

Me with some Indonsesian climbers. The climber on my left was 2nd in the X Games, the one on my right came 4th!

I've managed to upload a few photos of our trip so far. Tomorrow is the Shanghai Rock Masters competition where I'll be climbing.

Freestyle Motocross at the X Games. These guys were also Australians.

Chinese food is making Minah stronger!

Inline blading on the half-pipe at the X Games.