We watched the most amazing streetscape while we ate. Across from the Hotel is totally different to anything I have ever seen. The buildings are derelict, partly demolished and covered in rubble, yet people live there! The road is a constant stream of people, motor bikes, scooters, bikes and wheelbarrows!
Our first visit today was to the Shanghai Museum. It was fascinating, but 1 hour was not enough to see it all. The porcelain exhibition was gorgeous!
We then went to the banks of the river to view across to the Bund. The Bund itself was closed as they are preparing the area for Expo. The river itself was awful! So dirty and uninviting. We did get our first experience at street sellers though! Jason was harassed by a guy selling watches - he was very intimidating.
We did buy some ornaments from another seller though!
Lunch was at a nearby restaurant, where Jason had his first taste of Chinese Beer! No wine in sight though! Beer is called pi jiu (pee jo) a word I am sure Jason will get good at!
From there we headed to the Jade Buddha Temple – it was beautiful! Fascinating to see some of the religious ceremonies. There were people there praying with incense sticks and many areas were covered in red ribbons – each with a wish or prayer written on them that had been placed during the recent moon festival (Oct 1).
While we were there we tasted traditional Buddha Tea. Each tea we tried had traditional medicinal uses, many of us bought some to bring home! The whole process was very interesting and I have discovered a like of green tea! Lucky as it is served at every meal!
Next we visited a pearl shop where we were shown the removal of pearls from an oyster and the way to tell real pearls from fake (when a real pearl is scratched it produces pearl powder and no mark is left on the pearl – fake ones scratch and produce no powder.
The jewellery was beautiful and many of us could not resist a purchase or two!!
As we still had some time before dinner Amy took us for a walk to a local market where they sold mainly meat and seafood. The smell was quite overpowering and the meat out in the open air with no refrigeration put most of us off! Some of the group bought nuts, bananas and the ever important bottled water!!!
Dinner was ok – but involved our first squat toilet experience! It was survivable and not as bad as I thought it would be!
Our evening was spent at the theatre watching a Chinese Acrobatics show. Wow! The stand outs for me were a young boy balancing on chairs (I think he ended up with five or six stacked up on each other with him balancing on one hand at the top!) I nearly forgot to breathe! The other was a cage where a motorbike was doing loop the loops and driving around in. Then a second, and a third, the a forth and finally FIVE bikes were whizzing around this little cage! Can’t believe they didn’t crash!
We were all exhausted when we got back to the hotel – but I still needed to get some washing done! So Fiona and I went to the laundry and had a catch up while we put a load through the machine together!
1 comment:
thanks for these updates Jo....keep 'em coming. loving experiencing China through your words and photos xo
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