ABOARD THE VIKING YI DUN -- I began my sea day in a beginner tai chi class on the pool deck. Beads of sweat ran down my neck and my legs burned as I held a squatted pose with my feet pointed outward.
I later tried traditional jam painting. With an instructor checking over my shoulder, I drew thick lines with the jam and then transformed them into bamboo shoots by scraping a blank keycard over the jam to make them look wider and add contrast. I then drew on stems and adorned them with leaves. I liked how the foliage turned out.
Later, I watched an elaborate tea ceremony and sipped the warm tea from tiny cups as a musician peacefully plucked the strings of a Chinese instrument called the guqin and I lost myself in thought.
In my first three days onboard the Viking Yi Dun in China, I found no shortage of activities offering me a sample of this country.
For a sea day activity, the Viking Yi Dun offered a tile painting workshop. Photo Credit: Andrea Zelinski
I am cruising for 10 days on Viking's inaugural ocean cruise in China for Western travelers. This is a new product for Viking and is offered in cooperation with China Merchants Group, a partner of Viking's, which carries Chinese cruisers on this ship most of the time. Chinese crew members have been working on their English in anticipation of our arrival.
The Yi Dun will call in several ports where it has exclusive access, including the provinces of Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong. But we haven't gotten there yet. So far, we docked in downtown Shanghai for two nights across from the most dazzling skyline I have ever seen, then departed this morning to arrive in Zhoushan tomorrow.
I've eaten several Chinese dishes on the ship since I arrived, including Chinese crepes with rolled crispy fritters for breakfast in the World Café, fried rice and beef with honey pepper sauce from the room service menu, and a coconut-milk dessert served in a glass with diced watermelon, cantaloupe, several types of beans and sago, which looks like clear, squishy beads.
There are plenty of American dishes on board, too, like salmon, steak and burgers, but the Chinese-influenced options add variety to the traditional cruise ship fare.
A station serving sweet coconut milk with several accompaniments, such as melon and beans. Photo Credit: Andrea Zelinski
I haven't spent all of my time on the ship. A Viking excursion took me to an acrobatic circus show worth every minute of the hour-long drive through Shanghai traffic. Like the skyline, the show featured an impressive array of colors and lights. High-quality projections transformed a wall into a waterfall and the circular in-the-round stage into a pool of lily pads.
The acrobats put on exceptional performances using items like hoops or silks suspended from the high ceiling. Others were more about high-stakes agility like doing flips while jumping on a seesaw. The most breathtaking (or alarming, I'm not sure which) was watching multiple motorcycle riders drive inside a large metal globe, zooming sideways, upside-down and every which way without crashing into each other. At one point, seven motorcyclists were driving in that globe.
From the energetic vibes in Shanghai to the calm, artful culture at sea, I'm getting quite a taste of China so far. There are seven more days to see what else is in store.