Shanghai...The Solar Eclipse

The night we arrived in Shanghai we were treated to an awesome lightning show. I took the image above from the balcony of my hotel suite the eve of the Total Solar Eclipse, with a grim weather forecast for eclipse day my thought was if I wasn't going to be imaging the eclipse, I might as well get some lightning shots.

Didn't get much sleep, up at 4:00 am organizing my equipment, then at t-90 minutes and counting to the eclipse I ventured out to find a spot I would be viewing it from. The tour organizers had paid extra for us to have a place on the hotel terrace to view the event, but after I walked along the China Sea beach that morning, I knew this was the place for me, ended up being a great decision.


Met all kinds of people from different countries, was filmed by a Beijing TV crew and saw lots of ghost like Junk ships on the China Sea , they seemed to disappear then reappear from behind pockets of mist and smog, very creepy cool , and the people,

People in awe,

Amazed people,

Cheering people.

Just before the eclipse started the clouds broke a little, enough so that we were able to view a partial eclipse, everybody cheered.






Our tour guide was kind enough to let me use his phone, I regularly called updates of the event into the CNN live crew. A CNN producer read my blog about me getting my first passport just to go see the eclipse in China. She emailed me and asked if I wanted to do an interview as well as do regular call ins to update CNN of the progress of the eclipse in Shanghai, I said sure, who wouldn't,very cool.




Saw it get dark,

Darker,

Darkest......... all within a matter of minutes. So let me sum this up for you. I am in Shanghai on the China Sea beach, watching ghostly Junks float by, with people all around me watching my every move, on the phone with a producer from CNN giving her live updates on the Solar Eclipse I was viewing and imaging, oh and earlier was filmed by a Beijing TV crew for their nightly news... I remember thinking at the time that even my dreams don't get this good.

Just after totality it started to rain and some friends from my tour group helped me carry my equipment to the hotel, it was over , at least for us in Shanghai, an experience I will never forget and even to this day can't believe I was actually a part of.

The next day we visited the Old Shanghai Astronomical Observatory.




Our last major event on the tour was a visit to the 88th floor, the observation deck of the Jin Mao Tower, what a view of Shanghai,









All good things must come to an end but the memories and experiences I have gathered will never fade away, I took more then 1200 images and 6 hours of video to make sure they don't. Taking this trip to China was so not like me, being a claustrophobic fear of flying introvert, just goes to show you that fears can be conquered....... with the want and a lot of willpower.

I even learned a few words in Chinese, one phrase I remember is "Xie xie" pronounced "Sheh sheh" in English, means "Thank you", I use it when ever I buy Chinese food now, whenever I use the phrase the surprised look I get from the person behind the counter, and then they started talking back to me in Chinese, then I explained I don't know any other words, they look confused, I explain about my trip, they smile and I really got to stop doing that, but it is fun.

I look back on this adventure with fond memories, the kindness of the Chinese people, their vast and rich history, seeing the great Wall for the first time from a plane, touching and smelling the clay that the Terra-Cotta army was made from, all something one doesn't soon forget.


I'll leave you with a video I took from the observation floor of the Jin Mao Tower. Note that at 1:20 into the video I cut in a Mission Impossible III scene, in the bottom of the four tower images I took above, the tall round building and the slanted roof building next to it are involved.