Good Morning from China
I woke up at my usual 5:30 am. I guess the dark shades on the windows still don't allow me to sleep in, or perhaps I am on my travel adventure schedule and I know there are new things outside to explore and so I want to waste no time and to get going?
So I am here in the hotel room updating and checking Emails while CJ gets ready for work. I must say,it is a bit odd for me to be here in his world. I almost feel a bit like I am spying on him? To see what he goes through and does on a work trip is a new thing for me. I'm usually at home and just imagining what he does or where he is at and now I am right in the middle of it. It is very nice,don't get me wrong..just different.
We are listening a bit to the Republic convention back in MPLS. I was planning to stay in and listen to this new Sarah lady's speech, but I feel like I have a noose around my neck. I want to get out and explore, see what is going on down that busy street I can see out my window in the distance.
I am overlooking the city from the 15th floor and have already enjoyed watching the sunrise over the city scape. It is so weird to see all the little old low ramshackled buildings and then right next door some big high rise,fancy apartments and/or hotels. I have already watched as people began moving about very early this morning on foot, bikes, 3 wheeled carts, loaded down motorcycles, buses,cars, taxis...and I know where I am headed first. That street in the distance is getting busier and busier by the minute. I feel like I am wasting precious time...I must go see what is going on down there,and so, I am going to have to shut this TV off and hope Kalen will send me the blog video and I can watch it later tonight or tomorrow, or perhaps it will be on the news later tonight as well? Sorry!
More adventure stories later tonight I hope
I had a very interesting day here in Shanghai. I did not end up leaving the room till 9am for breakfast in the hotel cafe. WOW what a spread they had. Sitr fry lomain dishes you could make with your choice of veggies, hot cereals, dim sum, omlets made to order, waffles and pancakes, sausage and bacon strips, fruit bar, salad bar, pastry counter.....I ended up have congee with peanuts and I put my fresh pineapple and honey dew in it. Some dim sum treats, an omlet with the works pineapple juice and a banana. I too tried a small bowl of shanghai noodles with veggies. It was all very good. As I was going back to my room I stopped to look out the lobby window over the other part of the city that I can't see from my room. Sarah was just entering the stage at the Rep Convention and so I sat in the lobby and watched her speech. I finally left the hotel at 11am.
There is alot of construction going on all over this city, so I could not go directly to that street but I think I found an even better one. I walked down this market street that was very busy. First I passed a school where kids stand out in the entrance of the school and I think greet the other kids or possibly they are waiting for some other important people-teachers, principals? Then I saw some beautiful and very colorful fruit markets with melons, apples, peaches and some very big clusters of grapes with fruit the size of my thumb or bigger. WOW! As I looked above the busy street where people were coming and going on bikes, by foot, motorcycle, 3 wheeled carts, there was laundry hanging in just about every window. I walked past a tea shop where the man called me in and very enthusiastically showed me all his different tea leaves, oolong, green, black, jasmine balls...I told him my sister in law worked for a tea company that buys lots of their leaves from China.
At the next corner there were a bunch of ducks hanging on a rack right out in the fresh air and under no refrigeration... HUM...always makes me a bit leary and questioning ?? how they eat and don't get sick? That was just the first of many meats I saw sitting out in the 80 degree weather with no refrigeration.
When I got to the end of that block I turned to go right and it was one fresh fish and meat market after the other,each with chicken feet, necks,intestines of either a pig or cow, fresh baskets of eel, fish in buckets, slabs of meat cut and stacked and as I got further down that street chickens sitting in cages waiting to be purchased and then their throats slit and skinned right before my eyes. It was so weird to see 2 ducks happily sipping water from a foil pie tin one minute and then the next thing they are picked up and killed, skinned or defeathered right then and there, put in a plastic bag and handed to the happy customer who heads for home with a very fresh meal.
I don't even know if I ever walked down that other street I was intent on going to, as I had quite an eyeful on this gold mine of a road. I continued on through town and toward the TV tower to the river and Bund area. I walked down music row as there was one instrument shop after another selling guitars, zithers, pianos, etc...Next, I came upon the garment district and each shop was full of either bolts of lace, a very large variety of lace collars, piles of lace edging... One store I saw had all buttons, another fasteners of all types,yet another with spools of ribbon, another with bolts of fabric...
Down one alley way I passed, an older women was walking on her stairmaster out in the courtyard, and yet another alley some men were very focused on the card game they were playing. I continued down to the River where construction fences were up everywhere. So I had to walk 1/2 way down the boardwalk just to get across the road and to an open stairway leading to the boardwalk.
I walked only a short distance when 2 young adults stopped me and started to talk. The girl asked where I was from and if I was in the Olympics. I said no, because they don't have Grandmas in the games that I know of anyway. HAHA. They were 2 art students from Beijing who were here showing their art in the Art 4 U Gallery over by the Peace Hotel. We talked a bit on the boardwalk and then they invited me over to see their works. It was very interesting to see some famous people's work "Lonshaoshi" or so they said they were famous? How would I know, I am not an art connisueer(sp?)and especially of Chinese artists. What I did see was very nice though and they gave me some very interesting information about the different chinese drawings and what they each represented. I learned alot. Of course then they wanted me to buy something. I knew that was coming.:-)
The two kids english names were Tom and "Helen Keller". Yea Right. You can imagine I had a laugh and some jokes about that. I said "Come on you have to tell me your Chinese names because no one will ever believe me if I tell them I met 2 kids in China with those names".:-? haha Their Chinese names were Yang Peng and he was 23yrs old and hers was Hong Mai which means plum blossom and she is 22yrs. I also met their friend Jack who did lovely animal paintings I guess, but his were all just bought by another man from the US. Tom liked to do landscapes of the 4 seasons and Helen did lovely paintings of bamboo and plum blossoms of course. I am a bamboo fan and so I got one of hers and also a blossom one that will go well in our red accented Japanese house. I surely could not buy from her and not Tom so I bought an old oil painting he did of the Hutong area of Beijing. CJ and I took a ricksaw ride around there when visiting in 2004 and so it was a nice reminder of that and I too liked the muted colors he used for it. They signed my works and Tom also did a calligraphy writing with all our names on it Karla CJ Kalen and Graham and happines, love and all good things in life. I had lots of fun joking with them and taking photos. They walked me back to the Bund area and when I was stepping up the last step to further my exploration, I was stopped by a very assertive man who wanted to talk English with a foreigner.
So I stood there at the top of the steps and chatted with Paganini or Mr P. He was an english professor at a local college who has been practicing his english for 35 years. He was 50 years old, not married but with a girlfirend that works too much at her salon and likes to spend money on fancy watches, makeup and clothes. He plays violin, loves music and to sing karoke. He too helps coach different sports at his college and used to be a long distant swimmer when he was a young kid.
We were joined by another man Valencia who was a very good listener as he did not speak English as well. We too had various passersby that would stop and ease drop for awhile and then move on. We got plenty of stares as well, from lots of chinese visiting from other provinces. M. P said alot of them have not seen alot of white people and to see one talking so freely with other chinese was very unsual for them. So we were kind of a side show on the boardwalk I guess you might say. Surprised?:-)After about an hour or so my back started to hurt so we sat down on the concrete bench. He kept asking me if I wanted to go have a drink or a bite to eat, but I knew better and did not want to get stuck buying food for all 3 of us and I too was fine right there where I could people watch, chat and enjoy the beautiful day all at the same time.
As we sat and chatted everyone and their brother came buy to try and sell me something or get a few coins from me. One young boy kept trying to get me to buy strap on roller blade wheels for my heels. I said,"Does your grandmother wear those things?" and he said "No". I then told him, "Then I don't want to either, as I would probably fall and crack my head open".He just smiled and walked away.
Then Nina a lovely young lady originally from Libertyville, IL came by. She was Mr. P's foreigner of the day, yesterday I guess. She was on vacation from Grenada, Spain where she is teaching English. She is 1/2 Indian and 1/2 Fillipino and majored in English. I told her if she ever wanted to teach English and Spanish that Honduras would be a good place for her to go:-)We swapped Emails and so who knows?
So after about 2 hours of chatting my butt is now stiff and so the 3 of us take a walk down to the end of the walkway and bid Mr P farewell. Then as Valencia and I walked back in the dusk the lights across the river in Pudong started illuminating all the buildings. I took a few more pics and then said I needed to be on my way home as well. Of course he walked me all the way home, even when I told him it wasn't necessary, though I was glad he did in the end as I really wandered the streets on the way down there and did not realize I had zig zagged so far. I knew when he just kept walking,I was definetly the ticket for paying off his dinner so I ended up giving him only a portion of what he requested.
Back to the hotel cleaned up a bit and then had dinner of mango chicken curry and a salad. It was very good. Back up to my room and wrote this blog and then rewrote it again when I found my time ran out and it wasn't saving what I had just written. UGH! So I have now written this two times. CJ just got home, it is 12:30am and I too am off to bed.
More tommorrow...when I hope I get to see more of the city. I would really like to get to the other side of the River in the Pudong area to see the skyline of the city from that viewpoint
Karla and CJ
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