Confucius Temple

My handy guidebook says that Shanghai’s Confucius Temple is in the southwest quarter of Old Town. It was restored and reopened in 1999. But the most important detail is that the ground are tranquil and seldom crowded...

Well they weren’t kidding. In the most overpopulated country in the world, Querston and I were two of only 15 maybe 20 tourists at the Confucius Temple (hence the above photo). 

The Temple is beautiful, but again, Querston and I were aliens in a world we’d seen from afar but really knew nothing about. We were great at taking pictures, but as you’ll see in the captions, we weren’t really sure what we were looking at. 

The gardens were very quiet and peaceful, but we wish that there would have been more placards to give us some of the history. Sadly, my guidebook only offers about a paragraph for each general site, so it was no help either. 

That has been a bit of the theme on this trip, but we are learning from it. No more strollers on outings, taking pictures is good, now let’s see about learning some history at the temples. The saga continues...

Click here to see the pictures from our Chinese lunch and Confucius Temple.

Chinese Lunch

Oh gosh, how to describe our traditional Shanganese lunch... Querston’s Mandarin teacher was gracious enough to take us for lunch. Querston and I knew that we were very likely to be in trouble, but I had no idea just how hard it would be. 

The food here is simply nothing like I’ve ever eaten. Anyone who knows me well, knows that I’m a picky eater, but it wasn’t even so much of a taste thing as it was a preparation issue. 

We started off with what I like to call clammy chicken. It was set down on the table cut into pieces with the head cut off, but still on the plate. The waitresses, undoubtedly seeing the distress in our faces, quickly removed the head, giggling a bit to one another as they did it. 

Side note: I was pretty sure they were laughing at us the entire time, but Yvonne assured us that they weren’t. 

The chicken still had it’s blood, bones and skin, which wasn’t so much the issue as was the cold, uncooked sort of texture and taste the chicken had. We determined it must not have been cooked in an oven, rather steamed or something. It didn’t go down very easy, two bites tops.

Next was the soup round. It was a crab tofu soup and was the most edible thing besides the vegetable that we ordered. It was hot and good, but there were some small bones or scales or something that I was constantly picking out of my mouth.

Steamed dumplings were next. Thankfully, I got a pass on these as they were pork, which I don’t eat. Querston suffered through one, but it wasn’t to her delight, I’m sure. Asparagus was next and it was good. Although they gave us the bottom part instead of the top, comparatively, it was what we ate the most of.

Lastly came our actual meals that we’d ordered. Querston got sweet and sour pork and I wanted the same thing with chicken, but no go, so I got it with fish. Let me back up and qualify how the Chinese serve your fish. First they brought the fish out to our table in a big bucket. I wasn’t quite ready for it, so my reaction probably didn’t match decorum. Then it’s chock full of bones. Although it didn’t taste bad, I’m just not accustomed enough to eating around the bones. Three bites, that’s it, can’t take the bones.

My strategy was to simply talk throughout the meal to avoid eating too much and looking rude for not doing so. Querston suffered more than I did, I’m positive of that. All in all, the food actually didn’t taste too bad, it was just prepared very differently.

Click here to see pictures from lunch as well as Confucius Temple.

Haungpu River

Why do I ever forget to save? I’m writing this blog again because I forgot to!

So Querston, Omar, Sly and me went down to the Bund today and walked around and we went on a cruise down the Haungpu River. We had a huge boat and it gave us the opportunity to see both sides of the city. Shanghai is split by the river into the Puxi side and the Pudong side. Since Querston lives on the Puxi side, it was nice to see the Pudong side. 

I took a ton of pictures and we even met another group of people from Indiana. This makes our second in four days. So I have officially met more Hoosiers in China than in London. 

Sly seemed to love the boat and I’m pretty sure that we went all the way to the mouth of the Yangtze River. Again, the tour guide aspect isn’t that great with my little Berlitz book that I bought, but it gets me by!

Click here to look at the photos!

Yu Yuan Park

So, Querston and I decided that we would go to Yu Yuan Garden. Everyone suggested seeing it and we thought it would be fun to see the flowers. We decided we could bring Sly because it was outdoors, so if he got upset, it wouldn’t really matter since we weren’t inside...

Our first mistake was deciding not to bring the Baby Bjorn. We decided instead to tote around Sly in his stroller. Well, it would be an understatement to say that China isn’t exactly stroller-friendly. We spent more time in the park determining how exactly we’d get through crevices and down walkways than we did actually learning anything about the park. 

So mostly, we’re pretty sure we missed the historically significant things, but we did take some cool photos! Click here to check them out!

China

Oh to actually understand what day it is?!? I think I’m actually writing this on May 25, but I can’t actually tell with the time difference here... It’s 5 a.m. and jet lag has me sleepy really early and this morning, up really early as well. It gave me a chance to see why it’s dark here in China at 7 p.m. in May! It’s 5 a.m. and it has been light for over 30 minutes!!! You’d need to be up and going at like 7 a.m. to get the maximum impact of the day. Just a muse, don’t think I could handle that. Thank God for 9 p.m. sunsets in London.

Ok, so having safely landed and entered Shanghai, I have entered an alternative universe where the driving is INSANE, the people are wonderful and the food has been American (is it bad that I’ve had Papa John’s on three different continents now?)

Seriously, I have never in so many near-miss car crashes as I have here in Shanghai! We have almost hit cabs, other vans, people on mopeds, people on bikes, we’ve even nearly maimed a few pedestrians, although it didn’t seem to phase them. I almost got hit by a cab while standing out in front of Querston’s apartments. And no I wasn’t in the middle of the street, I was in the entranceway! 

So far I’ve seen the Pearl TV Tower, but I didn’t take pictures as we were simply driving by it and I’ve seen the people. It isn’t quite the mass of people I was expecting, but there are a ton of people here for sure.

Today we are going to the Yu Yuan Garden and I am so excited. The guidebook said it would be fun and Rick suggested it too, so hopefully I will love it. Of course I will post pics as well.

I also went to the fabric market here in Puxi where Q lives. I got three suits made, a linen skirt and five dress shirts for 1540 RNB. That shakes out to $198.45. I’m hoping that they will all fit and not fall apart and that I like them, but if I really get all that for under $200, well I’m a happy camper. Going back on Monday to check out the results.

Also plan to go on a river cruise and see the Bund and hopefully the museum with the replica of Shanghai that Linda mentioned. Also plan to go for drinks at the tallest hotel in the world, Grand Hyatt. Will write all about it later!

Best Day

Today was the best day ever. My computer said that it was 75 degrees, which was incredible considering that if I was in the states, it would have been 45 degrees. I was able to sleep in and had nothing on my agenda.

So I applied for a few jobs and sent a couple of emails. After that, I got dressed in a wrap dress and heels. Then, I decided to go on our balcony and read. So yep, I got dressed to go on our balcony, but it was what I wanted to do and I didn’t have to explain it to anyone.

I got my music out, made a glass of iced tea and kicked up my feet. After about 90 minutes, I got bored and went over to see Drew and Jocelyn. Took a walk through the neighborhood and was simply smiling the entire time. No reason, just wearing sandals and relaxing in London, can’t really complain about life when it’s like that. 

After going back to reading Good in Bed for another hour or two, Audrey called to invite me to a drink in Covent Garden. As much as I wanted to go, I’m scaling back the booze money, or spending money on anything, so I skipped. 

I moved inside as it was getting dark. Almost at the end of my book and it was really fun to still be reading and not be bothered. Athena called and invited me for pie. Since I was almost done with the book and technically pie is a necessity, not a luxury, I conceded. I put on the dress and heels I was wearing earlier and caught the bus to Oxford Circus. We walked, talked and got Ben & Jerry’s. Mmmm, chocolate chip cookie dough and fudge brownie!!! Plus catching up with Athena was great.

After about an hour relaxing and being amused in Picadilly Circus, we headed home. Back here now, showered and ready for bed. Relaxed and ready to greet the day tomorrow. Here’s hoping I can get some equally wonderful sleep!

Dehumidifier? Are you kidding me?

We have a mold problem in our house. So the inept housing agency which is Pathmeads Property Management sent over “extractor fans” to rid us of our mold problem. What they didn’t tell us was that they would be sending industrial strength dehumidifiers... 

If you can even imagine, this thing was one of TWO they thought we should have in our two bedroom, 600 sq. ft. apartment. Are you joking? There was even a separate voltage converter for the thing that was about as big as a paint can! 

The guy told us that we’d need to move it from room to room about every two weeks. And since it was so heavy, he’d come back to do it...every two weeks. Sure that sounds like fun! I’ll just stay home from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. every two weeks so you can wheel around our dehumidifier.

Just another day with our property management, whom I’m sure would have been sued blind if they were working in the US. Makes me miss home...