China, day 6 (July 4, 2006)
… I swear, I am going to finish these. The "Current Location" is the location the journal is about, not where I actually am (home). All of the pictures are up: Trip to China 2006 gallery (thanks to Jon for the gallery space).
In the morning we walked to the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall. The government has all of the building planned out up to 2020 and has a giant model of what it will look like as well as written descriptions of the plans (in English and Chinese, of course). It was pretty hot (33°C+) that day, so we had a drink in the cafe at the top of the building before heading out.
Next, we went to the complusatory tourist destination of Shanghai, Yuyuan. It is just a nice garden with a lot of buildings to walk around in, a bit like the Summer Palace in Beijing. There is not much to say about it.
There is a [supposedly] famous tea house just outside of Yuyuan where we went for tea. They serve snacks along with the tea, and neither of us was hungry enough for a full lunch. My father asked what they recommended, so we, of course, got the most expensive item on the menu. Oh, well. It was good.
The rituals related to serving tea in China are interesting. They wash everything, inside and out, with boiling water, and then again with the first batch tea because it is tasteless. The boiling water is poured through two separate kettles. I believe the first had the tea leaves and then the second is used to pour into the cups in order to minimize the amount of tea leaves that get into the tea cups. A whole lot more work than getting a tea bag and pouring some boiling water over it.
After having our tea, we walked around in the area outside Yuyuan for a little while. There are a lot of shops, so, naturally, we shopped.
Then we took at taxi to the Jing'an Temple, which is an actively used Buddhist temple. While we were there, there was a ceremony going on. We were not the only tourists watching. I believe there were even some other westerners.
From Jing'an Temple, we walked around a bit. We saw such sights as the world's safest scaffolding:
Uh, not really, but it seemed to work fine. We walked to a porcelain shop that my father had found the last time he was in Shanghai. It had a lot of fancy, expensive porcelain bowls, vases, etc. The girl who was working there did not speak much English. My father talked with her a little and then told her that we would return later. We went off to a cafe for a little food and drink, and, more importantly, some air conditioning. After sitting around for a while we decided to head back. When we got there, there was another man there who spoke very good English. Appearently, the girl had not only taken us on our word that we would return, but also called in a friend to act as a translator. Well, it worked, since my father did buy something.
About then we decided it was time to head back to the hotel because we had arranged to meet a friend of my father's for dinner. We started looking for a taxi, but we could not find any. It was rush hour, so they were all taken. We started walking towards our hotel, keeping an eye out for taxis. We finally found a taxi after walking all the way back to Jing'an Temple.
We then went to dinner with Char Ming, who my father had met in the porcelain shop the last time he was in China. We had a nice dinner at a Shanghai-style restaurant. I had escargo for the first time; it was very good.
Then we headed back to the hotel and went to sleep.
To be continued…