ShanghaiTrip200612

Shanghai Trip December 2006 - January 2007

A Brief Note About Time

Shanghai is 13 hours ahead of Virginia, as is Beijing. Last trip, I tried to do everything in Virginia time since I thought I'd left out some days. So most of my entries spanned days in Virginia. This time I'm just going to use local time and indicate the locality.

A Brief Note about Pictures

We brought 2 cameras this time, and learned something about the settings. The pictures were a little slow in being posted due to the horrendously poor upload speed from our internet connections in China. Once I got home, it took just minutes to upload the half of the pictures I hadn't finished. The first half had taken literally days.

This time, there are thumbnails, and the pictures are a manageable size. While in China, I wrote a couple of scripts to resize, rotate if needed, and make thumbnails. This was done with Adobe Photoshop scripted with AppleScript and JavaScript. That's another story, and yes, yes, I know about ImageMagick, etc. Because our cameras weren't set to the same time, I threw together a python script later to sort things by their timestamps (Buttercup's pictures' timestamps were time-adjusted).

Now, I'm going through them, making little subpages as I go, organizing things and sorting them out where the timestamp thing isn't quite right. Be patient as I'm still jetlagged, have a mountain of mail needing my attention, and have a lot of work to do for this many pictures. But there are already some present. Clicking on the thumbnails will either take you to a larger version of the picture, or to a subpage of more related pictures. Your browser should show you what link the thumbnail takes you to. If not, it's time for a better browser.

Enjoy!

2006-12-28 Virginia Time

Stayed up all night getting last minute things (mostly computer stuff) ready.

Left home for Dulles Airport at about 5:30am (Thanks, Mike!), and stood in line for 45 minutes waiting to check my luggage. There were several large and very confused groups in line, including one family with 6 young kids moving a mountain of baggage to South Korea for 4 months to be missionaries.

The flight to Chicago was uneventful, and the layover in Chicago brief.

Heading onto the plane for Shanghai, we had to pass several US Customs agents, who questioned some of us, including me. I was asked where I was going, why, what Buttercup and I do, and how much money I was bringing. Apparently, the wrong answer was anything over $10,000. Since I didn't bring anything like that much, I was passed along. But, evidently, some people did get denied, and we sat on the runway for another hour while Customs agents searched for the checked bags of the people they detained. Did that ever make the news, I wonder? I'm curious to know what got them denied.

The flight itself was 14 hours long. I seem to remember the flight to Beijing being somewhere in the 8-10 hour range, so this was just brutal in comparison.

I managed to have an empty seat next to me on both flights, but there were plenty of screaming babies and young kids running around to make up for it.

The flight path went up over Canada, through the arctic, passing not that far from the North Pole, then South over Siberia, Mongolia, and Northern China.

2006-12-29 Shanghai Time

On arriving at Pu Dong airport in Shanghai at 3:30pm (Shanghai time), I stood in line for 2 and a half hours waiting to go through customs. It seems like a lot of flights arrived at about the same time, and this may be a busier airport than Beijing was. Also leave it to me to pick the line containing all the people with paperwork difficulties holding up the line. By the time I got to the front, there were a couple of individuals and one family all filling out paperwork for the umpteenth time.

Buttercup was waiting for me outside the baggage claim/customs area, and we took a bus and a cab to the hotel. That took an hour in traffic. Shanghai is a big city with lots of interesting buildings lit up colorfully in the dark.

Oh yes, there is a TV on the bus showing commercials. My favorite commercial was for a maxi-pad. What made this one special? Well in the US, such commercials usually feature pouring liquid on the product to show how much it can absorb. This commercial? An animated storm cloud! Now, THAT's a claim! Category 5 hurricane in your pants? No problem!

We got to the hotel around 7:30pm local time, and went up to unpack and unwind. This is the same hotel chain we stayed in while in Beijing - the Home Inn.

The one in Beijing was a bit nicer, though. We have an internet connection which is very slow. On the plus side, whatever RPI was doing to bounce all my email seems to have been removed. I suspect they picked a holiday to deploy a new and severely aggressive spam filter. In any event, it classified just about every email as spam and told the sender that it didn't deliver the messages. Nice to see they are still maintaining the same "high" quality level of staff competency they had when I went there.

The other thing different about this hotel over the one in Beijing was the bed. To call it "hard" wouldn't do it justice. It brought to mind a statement that appeared on one of the Klingon language tapes to the effect that Klingon hotels are starting to cater to alien visitors with all kinds of amenities. The quote was something like how your room will almost certainly contain a bed, though it is likely to be made of the same material as the floor. Deja vu!

We went out after a while in search of dinner. On the way, we passed something new to me. The way you can identify beggars in Shanghai is the way they keep tapping their heads to the ground. Not banging, exactly, but there's contact.

We had dinner at a nice place.

Afterwards, we came back to the hotel to see an angry drunk being evicted from the hotel restaurant. Sound insulation is not a hallmark of this place, so we heard him screaming all the way from the 6th floor when we got back to our room.

2006-12-30 Shanghai Time

Since my last trip, I'd forgotten about the staring at foreigners. This time, it was mostly older people while we were walking towards the subway. Actually, Buttercup gets stares too - guys checking her out. The staring is less pronounced in the touristy areas since there are more foreigners there. People still wanted to take pictures of or with me, and a couple wanted to practice their English.

We took the subway to People's Square, which is a big tourist attraction. Coming out of the subway, I saw a fellow demonstrating the new gimmick to sell to tourists. It's a sort of toy. Think rubber tomato. But the rubber is very thin and springy, like those toy snot monsters or whatever they sell to gross out kids. Anyway, you take the tomato and throw it hard aginst something, like a stair step (this fellow was coincidentally sitting on the stairs). It makes a flat splat, then reforms itself into a round tomato. Kind of cute.

The big things on our list to see were Nanjing Road, the Shanghai Museum, the Bund, which is an architectural display, and Yuyuan Garden.

We had breakfast in a little shop off Nanjing Road that served pork buns and wonton soup. This is quite a tasty and cheap breakfast, by the way. And need I keep repeating that Chinese food is *WAY* better here than at home?

After breakfast, we continued to check out Nanjing Road and the neigborhoods around it.

We walked around a bit by the Yangtze River, too.

At one point, we got chased by a little beggar boy. He got so enthusiastic about it that he was losing coins out of his begging bowl, and his mother had to yell at him that he was losing money instead of making money. He also nearly ran into traffic. Desperation isn't funny.

Later, we passed a restaurant named "Comely Buffet". Your guess is as good as mine!

There were many 星巴克 (Xīngbākè == Starbucks) in Shanghai. And apparently, there was a lawsuite settled in Starbucks favor that punished a Chinese company calling itself Xīngbākè, but having no affiliation.

We were looking at every news stand for a magazine on radio, particularly amatuer radio. This was in response to a request from Radio Mike. Sorry, Mike. It looks like radio is state controlled here, so there is no such beast as amatuer radio at all. I do know that radio transmitting equipment isn't allowed to be imported, and that should been enough clue on the subject.

We stopped into a book store to look, too. Again, nothing on radio. We did find a Chinese-English dictionary of computer terms. However, the entries I checked with Buttercup were bogus. Oh well. At first, I was psyched because it had an entry for "wedgie", something for which I've been seeking a translation. However, this dictionary claimed it was a "hacker language". It also believes "hacker" can be spelled "whacker", which is something ENTIRELY different. This disappointing entry for "wedgie" prompted me to explain to Buttercup what a wedgie is, and she assures me that people don't do that here. Now THAT's culture shock! I can hardly think of anyone I know in the US who hasn't either done it to someone else, had it done to them, or both!

Noticed something here I haven't seen anywhere else: motorcycles with sleeves. There are leather coverings over the handlebars that would cover the rider's hands. Whether this is to protect them from the cold (they look like the sleeves of a leather jacket) or to protect the hands from crashes or laying the bike down, I don't know. I'm betting it's for the cold. Also, some have what I'd call a pannier - trunk space - that looks like a rice cooker. That may sound ridiculous to think there would be a rice cooker there, but this is China and many 2-wheeled vehicles are cargo or special purpose vehicles, so I don't think that was such a stupid possibility to allow for.

Walking around, particularly in the shopping district, we saw plenty of places to get snack food.

Among other things, there was what I could call a candy store. It had candy, dried fruit, and... dried fish! I guess it's more of a snack food store than a candy store, but it looked like the sort of bulk-candy store you might see in a mall in the US. The Chinese don't have as severe a sweet tooth as we do in the US. Instead of the hardcore chocolate covered sugar we have, they lean more towards salty things. Some of the dried fruit, and I imagine the dried fish are salty enough that we wouldn't consider them candy. I guess no stretch of the American imagination would include fish as candy anyhow.

We did try a fried waterchestnut sort of thing. It looked like a corndog on a stick, only crispier. It was very tasty.

It's crowded enough there that it's tough to take a picture without someone getting in your way, even when you're really close together with a camera obviously pointed!

One of the things that really caught our attention in the shopping district was a restaurant which served mainly dumplings. The line for the take-out part was over 2 blocks long! My first thought was that maybe it was Russian food, but I suppose that joke will be lost on people born after the Berlin Wall came down. The line to get into the sit-down part upstairs wasn't quite so long, but was still formidable. We decided to pass for lunch, but did go back for dinner, and the wait was completely worth it. The food there was great!

Besides shopping, prior to dinner, we went to see Yuyuan Gardens (豫园 - Yùyuán). This is an elaborate garden with stone sculptures, ponds and bridges, and of course, gardens. It was made in the mid-1500s, and is very beautiful.

There were a lot of tour groups of Westerners there. Mainly, I heard Spanish-speaking and French-Speaking tours. English speakers seem for the most part to either go without a tour group or have one friend along who speaks Chinese. The French speakers were the ones most likely to be ignoring the signs that tell you not to climb on the sculptures and to have their kids running around spitting in the ponds. The Spanish speaking group were the ones most likely to be reaching past the Do Not Touch signs and ripping flowers and small branches off the flowering trees. I didn't see much vandalism from English speakers while in China. Our national offense is mainly to utterly disregard signs that show no cell phone use is allowed.

Then it was back to the shopping district.

Dinner at the restaurant with the really long line.

After dinner, we went back to the Yangtze to look around and look into taking a boat cruise. There didn't seem to be many people enthused for boat cruises, they were expensive, and we were beat, so we bagged the idea. While I was sitting and Buttercup looking into cruises, I saw some sparkly things in the sky. These turned out to be people flying kites at night. The sparklies were bits of foil or metallized plastic tied to the kite tails. In the lights of the city, they looked like a stream of golden sparks, like from fireworks. Very pretty, but also hard to photograph for a camera klutz like me.

Eventually, we took a ferry across the Yangtze to see some of the newer buildings. I was pretty out of it by that point, and nearly fell asleep. On the other side, we had to ask directions to the fun stuff and went to ask people at a bus depot. Buttercup was talking to a bus driver while I stood on the bus stairs. What do you know? I felt the guy behind me groping my pocket. Fortunately, I was wearing a light jacket with pockets that zipped up and the sippers installed in an irritating way. I turned and gave the guy the evil eye and he quickly put his hand on the railing. When he saw me still staring at him, he turned and hurried away. So hurray for irritating pocket zippers! I mentioned this to Buttercup as I pointed out the thief walking away and looking back over his shoulder. She told me that Nanjing Road (though we were across the river from it at this point) was known for its pickpockets. So there's a piece of traverler's wisdom for you. Guard your pockets! And one of those zip-up money belts isn't a bad idea...

After that, I was so beat that we headed towards the subway, stopping to take pictures of the space needle type building that was lit up so brightly. A taxi from the subway took us to the hotel and blissful sleep on our bed o' stone.

2006-12-31 Shanghai Time

The day started out overcast, though it did brighten up towards afternoon. We got a late start anyway, with pain causing us to lie in bed in spite of its uninviting inflexibility.

We took a taxi to see Old Shanghai, an old neighborhood with craft shops, street vendors, and older architecture, like you might see in an old movie. There were also bronze statues (of recent manufacture) of famous writers. We looked around until the urge for breakfast bit us.

A couple of persistent beggars later, we went to a little noodle shop and had egg rolls, vegetable soup, and wonton soup. Flashbacks to "Never Eat Anything Bigger Than Your Head". My God! For less than 50 cents US, you can get a bowl of soup big enough to drown in. And good, too! Even something as innocuous and ubiquitous as wonton soup will never be the same for me back home.

We then took a taxi (in deference to my blisters and other ailments-of-the-elderly) to a street known for its shopping.

No sooner did we get out of the taxi than we were passed by a guy with the most awe-inspiring and reality-defying comb-over I've ever seen. Comb-over just doesn't cover it. This was a spiral starting on one side, going completely around, over the front like an extra uni-brow, and back over the side where it started. So think bald with a dark stripe around the head at forehead level. Face it, Mr., you're BALD! Baldness is far more dignified than that degree of denial. I didn't get a picture since not only did it happen so fast, but I suspect confronting this guy with evidence that he might have thinning hair would have started a brawl.

A bit further down the street, I saw what appeared to be a sign for a shooting range! I missed my chance to go shooting in Beijing, so I didn't want to pass up a chance here. We went to the 7th floor of the building, and there was indeed a shooting range.

They had some neat stuff on display in the lobby. The main attractions were a belt-fed machine gun with a finned barrel. I want to say Hotchkiss, but I think the fins were too fine. It also had a round muzzle brake. Research project for later... They also had what appeared to be some kind of dual recoilless rifle set up complete with metal gunners' shield. I'm really curious what that one was.

Anyway, they had pictures of guns on the wall for you to choose from. I chose the Colt Python. What they actually brought was a revolver in 7.62mm with rounds that appeared to be as long as the entire cylinder. The bullets were seated way down from the mouth, so I expect they were gallery rounds. They had ear protection, but no eye protection, and honestly, none was needed. The rounds had so little oomph that there was nothing spit back from the cylinder gap. The gun itself was very odd, being single-action only, and having to have the cylinder rotated and locked up by hand. The "assistant" comes in with you and does everything from loading to cocking, rotating, and locking things up. Then he hands it to you to aim and shoot. He also performs the sweeping with the muzzle and other sorts of unsafe handling. Good thing they had him in there to show me, an NRA certified pistol instructor how to use it! In addition, they run the target out to 20 meters, which is a bit more than I typically practice at. I kept all but one shot on the black at that distance, given that I had no feedback at all about point of aim, I don't feel too bad about it. At least they were all center of mass hits. Overall, I'd say the range experience wasn't anything to compare to what we have at home, but guns are regulated very strongly here, so it's about all one can get, and probably a thrill to someone with no other shooting opportunities. And, now I get to say I shot in China. Yay! I even got to keep my target!

Further down the street, we stopped at a store that sold cookies, candy, cake, chickens, and other things that begin with C. And I guess things that don't start with C, too. We bought a small bag of cookies of various nutty types and continued, Buttercup stopping to shop here and there, me stopping at benches to rest my aching everything.

At one point, a Mr. Softee truck drove by! I don't know if it's the same Mr. Softee I remember from when I was a kid, but it was spelled the same way, was children-themed in the decorations, and definitely sold soft-serve ice cream. For those of you who don't know, when I was little, Mr. Softee would drive around to residential neighborhoods in summer, and past apartment buildings if you lived in a part of the world that had apartment buildings. And what made it special was that it sold soft-serve rather than just factory-made rock-hard popsicles. But what was REALLY special was the advertising. It had a big sculpture on top of a head that was an ice cream cone, complete with the soft-serve swirl. And the recording that played so you'd know the truck was there wasn't just music. It had a goofy voice that proclaimed, "I'm Mr. Softee. The one with the SWIRL on my head!" Even as a little kid, I found that utterly ridiculous, and so that was my favorite. And, of course, the ice cream was good, too.

Note: I later found out that Mr. Softee *DOES* operate in Hong Kong! Mister Softee on Wikipedia Perhaps the mainland has franchises now, too? Or could it be a knock-off?

After more shopping, we came to a restaurant with another crowd at the door. Figuring it must be good, we went in, and had coconut beef, and fried taro. It was quite tasty. Buttercup asked if they had a Western bathroom. They said yes, but it was a lie.

We decided to see the Shanghai Museum, which was pretty cool, so we took the subway. On the way, one of the people trying to sell us something walked alongside, but instead of just saying "watch-bag-dvd-mp3", which is the mantra of the street hustler here, she also added "many-many-cheap-cheap". I found that highly amusing, and had to keep pointing things out to Buttercup that were many-many-cheap-cheap.

On the way, we ended up on the wrong side of a street in which you take the tunnel that's used for the subway, but which has an outlet on both sides of the street. By the way, outside the subway are some snack stands. Snacks here range from boiled corn on the cob through hot dogs to what seem like some kind of glazed little fruits on a stick, to... wait for it... *squid* on a stick. Well not like an entire squid, but chunks and discernible tentacles, for sure.

This is a good time for a word about personal space. There isn't any. In the US, you might get crammed into an elevator or subway car, and there's no personal space. But pushing and shoving still isn't all that polite. Here, it's the norm. The entire subway system is a mosh pit. I find this unpleasant. And Shanghai is a lot more crowded than Beijing was.

On the steps of the Museum, someone was flying a kite that looked like a squid. When I pointed out that I thought it was cool, some lady ran up and tried to sell us one. 不要! (Bù Yào! - I don't want it!)

The exhibits inside were overall pretty cool. The ones I thought coolest were the bronze sculpture, the ceramics, the exhibit on the history of money, and the furniture exhibit was cool too. The painting and calligraphy didn't do much for me, calligraphy most so, since I can't read it. There was an exhibit of jade, too. This was more about history than complexity, and there is more elaborate stuff sold in the gift shop. But it wasn't just about artistry.

If you are a numismatist (coin collector for those of you without dictionaries), you really do have to see the money exhibit. While it's mainly about Chinese money (coins and paper money), there are also private collections (or at least they were private once) of coins from other places, including the Middle East, Greece and Rome, even including some that go back to biblical cities. Very impressive. They also had some short movies about the history of coins and money, including how they were made. Very cool.

And for 我的同学 (wŏ de tóngxué - my classmates), it covered the history of how a couple of strings of 贝 (bèi - cowrie shells) made up a 朋 (péng - money - Americans can think of it like wampum - assuming they still teach what that is in school). And here's a neat cultural note: 20 朋 could be exchanged for a slave, but 50 朋 were needed to buy a horse.

And another nice feature of the museum was the exhibition of Western bathroom fixtures. You could even use them yourself!

After the museum, it was starting to get dark, we weren't hungry yet, and even Buttercup was feeling a little footsore. So, we wanted to take a taxi to a district that had a lot of bars and restaurants to cater to foreigners, much like the district I described on the Beijing trip. Since this is New Year's Eve, and it was rush hour, there were no cabs free and we settled for the subway. BIG MISTAKE! New York City just can't compare for aggressive crowds. To get onto the train, people are willing to tackle you, and one guy in front of us did fall down, though at least people helped him back up. But regardless of how many people are already on the train, everyone on the platform thinks they can get on too. There was no room to breathe. I ended up against a metal bar at kidney level betwen some seats and the aisle in front of the door. We were jammed in so much that it was affecting the train's acceleration and brakes. With the jerky ride, I had the weight of an entire crowd squashing me into that bar, with only a kidney to take the load. At our stop, there wasn't even time to turn around, and I just squeezed backwards towards the door until I squirted out. I have no idea how Buttercup got out, since she was further in the car than I was. Once out on the street, we saw a lot of Westerners as you'd expect from a place that was put there to appeal to us. I think this area was larger than the one in Beijing, though. We passed a security guard with a pistol-grip shotgun, which may have been what the ones in Beijing were carrying, though they were too far away for me to be certain. A little further on, we were accosted by a baggar woman was knew one English word: Money! She followed us, yelling, "Money! Money!" Buttercup tried to brush her off. She followed us half a block tugging at our sleeves. We broke into a run, blisters and all. I guess she didn't want it quite that badly.

When we passed the whole district, we did manage to catch a cab to a central commercial district to try to find a new lanyard for my iPod, as one of the earphones seems to have had its connection die, and now I only get sound in one ear. This proved to be a mistake, as not only did the thing cost twice as much as in the states (didn't buy it), but it is impossible to get a cab out of there at that hour on New Year's Eve. We looked around for a place to eat, and Buttercup found one that was kind of famous. We had to wait to get in as we didn't have reservations. We looked at the menu while we waited, and it was full of seafood, which I don't favor so much, and lots of really scary stuff that Westerners don't consider food. Think various stomachs, tongues, intestines, feet, etc. etc. But there was some stuff that suited me, too. After a while, we were given a table (near the kitchen), and our very surly waittress literally threw our napkins on the table, and attempted to slam down 2 glasses of hot tea. She burned her hand for her trouble, and we felt she earned it. In addition some creepy dude dressed pretty casually walked up and down, staring at me. I stared back. He made fun of the way I used chopsticks to eat our first dish - cubed chicken and walnuts (very good!) I wrote in my little notebook about how snotty our waittress was, and he came over to try to look at what I wrote. I hid it from him and put it in my pocket. Then I spent a while trying to get a good picture of him and the snotty waittress. Evidently, he was the owner or manager or something, thought I was a food critic or reviewer, and chewed out the waittress. They were nicer to us after that. Helpful food tip - If you are being treated poorly in a fancy restaurant, pose as a critic!

After dinner, we were both wiped out, and lucked into a taxi. Back to the hotel, and after a much needed nap, got in a little web site work.

2007-01-01 Shanghai Time

Happy New Year!

What a racket last night! It sounded like people were lighting off firecrackers and noisy stuff all night. This morning, someone evidently had a case of firecrackers left over and set it off outside the hotel. We have to check out before noon or pay extra. Buttercup will head off to get train tickets to our next destination which isn't far.

Apparently, it isn't decided yet, either! Buttercup is off to the train station to see what we can get tickets to. She says that 1/1-1/3 are a national holiday, and people have the urge to shop like they do on Black Friday in the US. This makes it a good time to blow town for somewhere else. I'm trying to learn how to script Photoshop from AppleScript to reduce the load of processing all these pictures.

Hurray! After quite a lot of brutal trial and error, ignoring non-working sample scripts and lousy manuals, I managed to produce an AppleScript and a JavaScript for it to call (since I couldn't manage to get AppleScript to perform image rotation) which rotate and size images in a batch. At some point, I'll make these scripts public for anyone who runs PhotoShop on a Mac and has a serious masochistic streak, plus a lot of pictures to process for a web site.

Not like I've had time to actually put the images up yet...

Breakfast was leftovers from the fancy restaurant plus a chicken bun which Buttercup brought back from her trip to the train station.

This was mostly down time to rest and pack before traveling. Plus a little web site work. We had lunch at the hotel restaurant, which turned out to be better than the hotel restaurant at the same hotel chain in Beijing. We had pork with peppers and crispy fish. Most yummy. Some of the other customers had ordered something that came in bowls big enough to bathe a child in. Never eat anything bigger than your head!

Then it was off to the train station for the train to 蘇州 ( Sūzhōu ). Suzhou isn't far from Shanghai, so the trip was maybe 45 minutes to an hour. Our tickets didn't entitle us to seats, but apparently, some people buy tickets and don't show up or miss the train. Or maybe they upgrade from seats to bunks. Who knows? We both ended up with seats that someone else bought. Had we not, we would have been standing the whole way. Ouch (for me, anyway - it hurts me more to stand around than to walk, for some reason).

Suzhou is famed for its silk, and so it's also a major shopping destination for young women out to look their best. It's known for its good looking women. I will confirm that reputation.

When we got into the station, it was raining, and we ended up waiting in line at the taxi stand for almost as long as the train ride. And during this time in line, everyone is the center of attention for beggars and hustlers. What a treat. You can say 不要 (Bù yào - don't want) to a hustler, but what do you say to a beggar? I told one 没有 (Méi yŏu - don't have) trying to mean I didn't have any money for him. He actually accepted that and walked over to someone else.

Suzhou has even worse traffic than Shanghai, and some places are very crowded. The roads outside the train station would make you think the Apocalypse had come and had brought Godzilla as an appetizer. Cars, bikes, trikes, scooters, motor trikes, and people everywhere on both sides of the road, all the time. People thought nothing of stepping between a bus going one way and a cab going the other in the same lane. It was unreal.

In the city itself, things aren't quite as crowded, but the free-for-all is still the same. Cab drivers think nothing of backing up for 2 blocks if things are too tight to turn around. I can't imagine why the city invests in traffic signs or lights at all.

On the way into the city, I saw a store front with a sign that said "Zhen-Ao nucleic acid". Is this the sort of tourist impulse buy item that silk scarves and roasted nuts are? Evidently so. I probably don't want to know what the dispenser looks like. (In case you don't know, DNA is deoxyribonucleic acid.) What do you know? Zhen-Ao Nucleic Acid does have a web presence. And among other things, they sell dietary supplements. Who'da thunk it?

Our hotel room was pretty nice, and the hotel was located across the street from the first of the rock gardens we visited.

We decided to try a motor trike style taxi, and it was kind of fun, in an amusement park ride sort of way. Picture this. You're on the back of a 3-wheeled bicycle that has a little hut on the back made of plywood discarded prior to the WWII, but covered with a plastic shell plastered with new ads for McDonald's. This contracption is powered by what seemed to be the engine from a small chainsaw. There are no seatbelts or hand rails. Or seat cushions. Now, take it at its top speed of 10 mph into the traffic I described earlier. Weave in and out, both sides of the road, through parking lanes, bike lanes, maybe a sidewalk or two. It was rather exciting.

We went to the main shopping district in one of these, and Buttercup shopped as we looked for a place for dinner.

We got turned away from one place (we had no reservations, and it was popular enough to be full) and went across the street to another fancy place.

The food was good, but it's time to say something about food presentation. What makes food presentation palatable is different in China than in the US. For one thing, in the US, we generally prefer not to recognize the animal in question (some seafood being an exception) or the body part (chicken wings and ribs excepted). Here, the rules are different.

We had a crispy fish in a sweet sauce, head and all. And worse, the head was raised to make it look menacing and angry. And various flaps of meat had been pulled out and battered (and fried, presumably) to make it look like it had spines. I've never seen such a hostile looking meal! Almost like it was *daring* us to eat it. Once Buttercup had eaten enough of it to make it look less combative, I tried some, and found it quite tasty.

We also had a pork dish which was very tender pork, under a half-inch thick layer of blubber with a brown sauce on top, over pickled vegetables. The blubber was quite offputting, but we solved that problem by turning it over and getting at the meat from the bottom. I had my doubts about the veggies, as they looked distinctly like big flattened earthworms. They tasted good though.

We also had the fried rice specialty of the region which was not only good, but non-threatening in appearance. So the lesson to be learned here is to put your food appearance prejudices aside and at least taste things, though maybe with your eyes closed. Had I not tried those things, I'd have missed out on a good meal over nothing.

After dinner, Buttercup went shopping, and woe betide the shopkeeper who tried to sell her something! I am very glad Buttercup is on *my* side. I would NEVER want to bargain and haggle against her. Many children starved tonight and many merchants cursed the day she walked into their stalls to wreak such havok on their bottom lines.

2007-01-02 Shanghai Time

It's raining again. We bought an umbrella for me, as Buttercup already had one. If you know me, you'll know I have never owned an umbrella before and detest them. I switched to wearing boots against my doctor's advice since my sneakers are no longer waterproof and there were many puddles. What do you know? My feet hurt much less. Why do I listen to doctors? They are pretty callous about other people's pain, I've noticed. Always think we're making it up to get drugs or something. As if any doctor anywhere needed any convincing or arm twisting before writing any prescription! And the only pain killer I take is Tylenol, and even that sparingly.

We walked to breakfast, which was delicious. beef, veggies, and shrimp with several sorts of little beans we couldn't identify.

On the way, we passed a store called "The White Palace" which sold caucasian-looking dolls. Whatever!

Buttercup did some more shopping, and it was time to see what we came to see.

There is a big palace complex which includes lots of gardens, pongs, rock mazes, and now some museums. We started in 狮子林 (Shī Zi Lín - Lion Grove Garden). This was chock full of rock paths and tunnels. Many pictures are forthcoming.

We were in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. I was nearly eaten by a grue several times. Buttercup was unscathed.

After that, we went to see the Museum of Peoples Customs, which was not very large, then went to seek lunch. A lot of places were closed for renovation, all at the same time, for some reason. We landed in a little place and had a good meal, of course.

Then it was on to 拙政园 (Zhuōzèng Yuán - The Humble Administrator's Garden), which had more ponds and streams and fewer rock mazes, though there still were some. It was also a lot larger than the Lion Grove Garden. It's 13 acres, actually.

We hobbled back to the hotel for some rest, and then headed back out to dinner. Beef and mushrooms, thick soup of some sort, and Singapore rice noodles. All delicious, naturally.

Then back to the hotel for some much needed sleep. This was another chance to have a taxi driver back up for long long way after missing our hotel. Our hotel, BTW, is on the corner from the entrance to the Lion Grove Garden. This was a spectacularly good choice for the footsore tourists that we are (meaning that I am).

Couldn't sleep, so I took a moment to modify my wiki's page formatter to permit the insertion of raw HTML into a page. Don't know why that's not an option already. My intent is to allow me to insert thumbnails for the pix when I have time to put them up, rather than the train wreck of the pix in the BejingTrip200608 log.

2007-01-03 Shanghai Time

It's our 3rd anniversary! To celebrate, we went to the bank and headed to breakfast. Stewed pork and mixed noodles were nice, and Buttercup had something she wouldn't identify, but said I wouldn't like. I think it was tripe, in which case she was correct.

Here's a little note I may have mentioned elsewhere. If you are in an ethnic restaurant with a person from that ethnic group, and they tell you you won't like a particular dish, you *LISTEN*!

After breakfast, we took a taxi to the Tiger Hill Recreation Area. There is a tower there, which is considered to be the Tiger's tail. We climbed a lot of steps to see it, though we weren't allowed into the tower itself, so were spared *those* steps.

Actually, we rode a horse cart around part of the perimeter to the base of the stairs, then climbed. It's hard to take pictures from a moving horse cart, as it's quite bumpy.

In addition to the Tiger's Tail Tower, there are ponds and streams, including one called The Sword Pond (listen, strange women lying in ponds, distributing swords is no basis for a system of government...).

There were also various buildings, one of which was known as Great Buddha Hall. No visit to China can be considered complete without climbing a bunch of steps and seeing at least one big Buddha.

There is a pillar there called Thousand Man Rock. We don't know why. It doesn't seem big enough to have required 1000 men to move it.

There was also a bonsai garden. Most of these sites have them. Sometimes the weather is grumpy enough that it is tough to take good pix though. Bonsais in the mist aren't too impressive. Actually, I was a little surprised. My only prior experience with bonsais was Japanese. I'm not sure where the practice originated, and my net connection isn't helping me find out just now. According to Wikipedia, Bonsais originated in China as a practice called penjing in about 200AD. Who knew?

To get out of these places in Suzhou, it is necessary to run a maze of merchant stalls and beggars. And I don't mean just that these are NEAR the exit. I mean you can't get out without passing them all. And I'm not kidding about it being a maze, either. Sometimes the way out isn't clearly marked.

We found a restaurant on the adjacent street which was on the government's approved list. Presumably, this means the food is good, and there's a standard of cleanliness. We had shrimp wonton soup, noodle soup, and steamed pork buns, all quite good. And *cheap*! Food here is generally quite cheap compared to the US. You can get a bowl of wonton soup here big enough to soak your head in for about $0.50 American. That isn't the recommended way to eat it, by the way.

After lunch, we took a taxi to The Lingering Garden. That is, we got there, but the taxi driver, who had been speaking non-stop I might add, convinced Buttercup to go see the JiangSu Silk Research Institute. We got to see how silk is made, and more importantly, sold. They've done their research well...

Afterward, the same taxi driver, still talking non-stop, took us back to 留 园 (Liú Yuán The Lingering Garden), where we saw more gardens in the style of the others. Again, very pretty, very rainy, full of slippery rock paths, one of which nearly got me. I managed not to fall or smash the camera. One thing I really like about these places is their names, and the names of the buildings within them. Stuff like the Blue Pavillion of Everlasting Solitude Overlooking the Fragrant Scenic Cloud Melt. I'm not actually exaggerating by all that much. Go back and look at the signs in the Tiger Hill pictures to see what I mean.

We returned to the hotel for a nap, then went out to dinner at a place close enough to limp to. We then had to climb to our private dining room on the 200th (or maybe it was only the 4th) floor of the place, where we sat alone in a little room with our table and food. Sizzling beef, boiled chicken, and elaborate fried rice. All was good, though the chicken didn't really stand out. Then back to the hotel for a nap while Buttercup used the net connection to look into tomorrow's festivities.

2007-01-04 Shanghai Time

Awoke to lovely back cramps at about 2am, and can't get back to sleep. Probably can't get back to the bed anyway. Might as well work on the web site.

I have no clue what these are. They're from Buttercup's camera. Perhaps she went out before breakfast and I forgot to note it down?

The plan is to take a day trip to 同里 Tónglĭ Tongli, which is "The Little Venice of the Orient". Actually, there are several Little Venices of the Orient, but this one is handy. It's also small enough that we can do it in one day. I hope Buttercup was planning to carry me!

We caught a bus to Tongli, and were let off in a bus station near the scenic part of town. From the bus station, the scenery one sees is mud. A lot of the street and sidewalk is muddy and under construction, or maybe destruction. We had a late breakfast at a tiny place that had its doors wide open to the street and the weather.

After, we found the entrance to the scenic district. This is the area with the canals. Movies are shot here, and it's the subject of paintings, as well. Buttercup found this more attractive than I did. Authentic architecture is fine for paintings, but it didn't do much for me.

There are canals and bridges, and they were pretty enough. If you are expcecting Venice, though, you're better off going to Venice. We didn't take a boat ride, since the whole process looked too dirty for Buttercup's taste, and I was in too much pain by that point to add more rocking motion to things.

We did tour around the town, saw some more gardens, some ancient houses, a couple of museums. The town itself is over 1000 years old, and many of the houses have construction dates on them. Most commonly, they were made around the mid 1400s. The gardens were mainly constructed later, in the 1800s. These were similar to the other gardens we saw in Suzhou, rocks, pools, bridges, bushes in closets, etc.

There was a museum housing a collection of 3000 dendrites found by a railroad surveyor and his wife. These are stone formations that look like moss or shrubbery. A few were pretty cool. 3000 was too much of a good thing.

There was a museum filled with some pretty impressive wood carvings, too. Also a museum made of an ancient hotel with wood carvings and a display of ancient beds.

The thing you don't want to miss if you go here is the China Sex Museum. Why is the China Sex Museum located in Tongli? I have no clue. The Sex Museum had a garden with some sculptures that were, let us say, *exaggerated*. There were more serious exhibits, too. Some were educational, though if you have an internet connection, you probably don't need an education in that area. Some were historical, such as the collection of historical erotica. Most of these disallowed photography, although, there wasn't always someone around to prevent it. There was an exhibit on the oppression of women (foot binding and all), a reconstructed old-time prostitute's room, an exhibit about sex and religion, etc. You have to pay extra to see this museum, but it was entertaining enough to be worth the cost.

We stopped for a snack, and I will say that while the food wasn't bad, it was overpriced, and you can do better outside the tourist area.

There were also a lot of shops, selling the usual things, and while most of the merchants weren't as aggressive as in other districts, the guys with the pedicabs followed us around, nagging for quite a distance.

There are various web pages extolling the virtues of Tongli, and judging from the pictures, they were taken in the summer. Perhaps it looks nicer then.

One thing we saw did impress me, though. There was a woman in a boat, fishing with birds. (I found a reference later to the effect that the birds are cormorants.) Let me explain that. There are water birds in the canals which aren't domesticated exactly, but they do seem docile. They catch fish, though they don't like the fish. The locals paddle around, pick up the birds on the end of poles (the birds obligingly perch there), transfer the birds to the boat, and manipulate the birds' throats to get them to cough up the fish! I asked Buttercup to explain why the birds permit this, and she told me the locals feed the birds, and the birds prefer this human food to the fish. I'd never even heard of something like this, but we saw a woman doing exactly this.

Anyway, after the sex museum, I was in too much pain to do anything else. We went back to the bus station by way of a restaurant in which Buttercup grabbed a snack. Then back to the hotel to pass out.

I understand that tomorrow we're taking a train to Nanjing, where hopefully the hotel will have more comfortable beds and better upload speeds on the net connection. That's what's holding up the pictures. I've been uploading for days and hardly anything has made it up yet.

2007-01-05 Shanghai Time

We left our hotel early to head to the train station and catch a train to Nanjing. The trip took about 3 hours, and our tickets entitled us to seats this time.

We took a taxi to our hotel, and traffic was much more relaxed than in Suzhou. We got to our hotel, and it's a 4 Star Place! The beds are still very hard, but better than the last 2 places. This place is so deluxe that it appeared to have 2 network sockets. I examined the second one and found it to be for a modem, so I told Buttercup we didn't need to bother the staff asking for a second cable.

We went out for a brief sightseeing jaunt to the Presidential Palace. This was the headquarters of government for quite a few brief-lived regimes when China changed from being ruled by an Emperor to it's current government, which has since moved the capital to Beijing.

Actually, we first took pictures of the Nanjing library, which is visible from the Presidential Palace. Wow! Nice building for a library! And huge!

We then had a late lunch at Happy Noodle House. which immediately put me in mind of a song I occasionally hear on Dr. Demento called "Happy Noodle versus Sad Noodle". They fight, you see. Listen to the Song or Read the Lyrics Aaaaaanyway, we had a very spicy lamb dish with so much sauce that it took a while to fish all the lamb out of it, plus some noodle soup with *really* a lot of different stuff in it. All good, naturally. I'm sure no one is ever sad upon leaving Happy Noodle House.

Then we actually did go to the Presidential Palace, which is sort of a museum of history and politics. There wasn't much in English, and apart from some of the buildings and rooms themselves, which were preserved as they had been used, the rest were displays of pictures regarding various regimes and the noteworthy people involved. Also there was a lot of personal property that had belonged to Dr. Sun Yat-sen, who was provisional president of one of the regimes around 1912 (need to look that up when I have a faster net connection). There were even a few display with guns, though some of these appeared to be replicas and some were so rusty that it would be hard to say just what they were.

If you are a fan of history and politics, particularly that of China during the first half of the 20th Century, you'll find this pretty interesting (more so if you can read Chinese). I, however, am not really a fan of history or politics. Nor can I read much Chinese yet, having had but a single semester of it so far.

After the Presidential palace, we went looking for an open bank, and had to settle for an ATM. That let us head to Starbucks, where I was hoping for a caramel apple cider. This is only available seasonally in the US, and I don't recall seeing a lot of apples in China. Buttercup confirmed that they aren't very abundant here. When I got inside, I didn't see it on the menu, but I did see hot chocolate. Buttercup then went in search of ice cream elsewhere, leaving me to order on my own. I guess she expected me to exercise my command of Chinese. The person in front of me (a Westerner) ordered in English, and the fellow behind the counter answered in English. Problem solved!

By this time, it was rush hour, and impossible to find a cab. After a while of trying, we decided to start walking to the big shopping/eating district and hope to catch a cab on the way. We did manage it about a block later.

The shopping district has both stores and stalls, kind of like a big flea market, and Buttercup shopped. A lot. I paced, since right now standing still causes my back and hip to hurt more than walking does. And there was not one clean surface to sit down on anywhere.

I did a little shopping too, and we found a book with the names of a bunch of guns in it (in Chinese). It cost 7 yuan, which is about $1.00, maybe a little less. Can't beat it!

After more shopping, we found a restaurant. Dinner was a pork ball which was kind of like a fat bunless hamburger, only mushier. Taste was good, texture was a little creepy for me. We also had some veggies, some dumplings which had ginger and beef in them and were very good, and a big bowl of soup, contents unknown, except that there were a lot of purple threads in it. It wasn't bad, but not terribly exciting. Buttercup speculates that purple threads were seaweed of some kind. I theorized they might be the hair missing from that guy back in Shanghai with the ludicrous comb-around/over. In retrospect, it may be better that we just don't know.

We did a little more shopping (limping) and grabbed a cab back to the hotel. Evidently, Buttercup had forgotten that I said not to bother about a second network cable, and called about one. A hotel staffer showed up not only with a second cable, but 2 extra cables, a *hub*, and a power strip! 4 Stars indeed! I don't usually ask for much from a hotel, just a bed, a Western toilet, some reasonable sort of temperature control, and a net connection. This place is over and above. It's pricey, but I'm loving it! It's called the New Era Hotel, BTW. It doesn't look like all that much on the outside, but it's nice inside, and you definitely can't beat the service.

Sadly, the bandwidth problem to my web server seems to be nationwide, and not just limited to one hotel. Web sites in China load fast. There was a storm of some magnitude within a few days of when I left, and the news said it had snapped some undersea cables in this general region that were responsible for voice and data connections between Southern China/Taiwan and the US. Lovely, and perfect timing, I might add.

Sleep.

In an unrelated note, I only heard about the Rising Sun Anger Release Bar after I got back to the US. Had I known when I was in Nanjing, I'd have made it a point to check it out.

2007-01-06 Shanghai Time

We had breakfast in the hotel "Western" restaurant, where "Western" includes Korea. There were a lot of cold noodle dishes and cold vegetable dishes. Still, enough appealing food for us.

We went to see the 中山 Zhōngshān (Zhongshan) Scenic Area. This is an area commemorating some of the major political figures (who are viewed favorably) contributing to the current government of China.

The main hero is Dr. Sun Yat-sen (spelling varies). He was a medical doctor who was widely traveled and at one point was provisional president of China's government. Among the things to see in the Zhongshan Scenic Area are Dr. Sun Yat-sen's mausoleum, complete with a carving of him on the lid of his coffin. There are a lot of hills and stairs, some historical monuments, and a tower.

The weather was very nice as we walked to the mountain of stairs leading to the mausoleum, and of course, we climbed them. What would a day in China be without a mountain of stairs?

And that 9 story, 60m tower with the spiral staircase inside? We climbed it. On the way back down the hill from the tower, Buttercup stopped for a bowl of soup, while I attempted to regain the use of my legs.

Next, there was the Dr. Sun Yat-sen Memorial (different from the mausoleum). Judging from the set up, his prescription for health was to walk as many stairs as possible.

We also checked out the Open Air Theater. Though nothing was going on but tourists taking photos, there were flocks of white birds (doves?) that would eat out of your hand or perch on you for food. There was also a fountain. We didn't stay very long, for where there are flocks of well-fed birds, there is a flock's worth of bird poop. We got out unscathed, but not everyone was so lucky.

We took a taxi back to the shopping district for a late lunch, a pork ball, some non-descript veggies, and the most awesome pork and garlic dish. We're not talking pork and garlic *sauce* here. Not pork with a garlicky flavor. We're talking pork and *entire cloves of garlic*! It utterly rocked! Why can't I get that in the US?

Then it was back to Buttercup shopping, and me struggling not to be left behind. Where does she find the energy?

We had dinner at a famous restaurant called the Lion Bridge, which had, as you might imagine, a decor featuring lions out front and a bridge to cross inside. We had beef dumplings, 5-flavor chicken, and some kind of beef and pickled green beans on mushoo pancakes. While it was all good, I found the 5-flavor chicken kind of odd tasting. Any of the flavors would have been good singly, or in pairs, but all 5 at once seemed to me like having my tongue yelled at.

After dinner, exhausted as we were, Buttercup managed more shopping.

2007-01-07 Shanghai Time

We had breakfast at the hotel restaurant, which wasn't very special, but we were in a rush. We went out for a little fun and to get food for the train to Huangshan. I thought we were going to hit a pharmacy and maybe a market. WRONG!

Instead, we went to visit the Archaic Ji Ming Temple, which was very Buddhaful. We took pictures of various statues and colorful buildings, and I got yelled at for starting to take a picture of some particularly camera-shy Buddha whose sign bore nothing I could recognize as a ban on photography (and I checked). Perhaps it was in some ancient poetic style with which I'm not familiar.

• gentle supplicant

• photos annoy the Buddha

• Nirvana denied!

And yes, yes, I know haiku is Japanese...

After the temple, we walked along a part of the old Nanjing city wall, which was connected to the temple by a walkway. Inside there was a little museum with precious little English. I think it was about the wall itself.

From there, it was back to the shopping district (are you seeing a pattern yet?) for lunch. Chicken buns and noodle soup on the run in a little unheated place that we would consider to be fast food. Although, it sure took long enough to get our order!

We rushed back the hotel to clear out, and then off to the train station for the ride to Huangshan.

The train ride to Huangshan was around 7 and a half hours long, and we had bunks rather than seats. While the bunks were a bit small for me, it was very nice to put my feet up and catch a nap. We also snacked a little.

A taxi took us to our hotel, which was unheated apart from the rooms. A lot of places in China are unheated or largely so. This makes bathrooms extra fun. You get your choice of an Eastern one, where there's no contact, but there is an unfamiliar position that is quite uncomfortable if one has sore feet or legs, for example. Or, you can have the Western one, which requires no acrobatics, but does put your skin into contact with a below-freezing seat. Whatever doesn't kill us, only makes us stronger, right?

The mattresses in this place were a little different from the other hotels. While hard, they were made of memory foam. What they remembered while cold was to be convex, so it was like sleeping on a slightly curved (upward) rock. As the room warmed up and body heat softened the mattress, it was like sinking a bit into a form-fitting blob. Uncomfortable, yet creepy! We did feel a bit better (soreness-wise) in the morning, though. Another feature of this place was the micro-shower. Think rigid full-body condom. Too bad for those of us with elbows.

We had dinner down the street at one of the few places that was open, as it was getting late. We had a hot pot. For those of you who don't know what this is, think pot of boiling water with 2 sections. There are different spices, peppers, herbs, or whatever in them. You then get plates of raw meat, veggies, dumplings, eggs, noodles, whatever you want, and you boil them in the side of the pot you prefer. When they look done, eat them. We had lamb and some sort of veggies. Also, we had a sauce that was definitely peanut sauce, but not quite like satay sauce for dipping things in. It was pretty good, though I will admit that boiling isn't my preferred way of cooking meat. We also had dumplings which didn't go in the hot pot. Rather, they went directly into us.

On the way back the the hotel, we stopped in a little supermarket (maybe a contradiction in terms - corner store, more like) to get some gloves for Buttercup and some chocolate for me. The point of going to Huangshan is not to visit the town, but rather to climb the mountains. And by "climb", I mean take the stairs.

After that, it was a night of memory-foam vs. sleep, as I mentioned before.

2007-01-08 Shanghai Time

We ate breakfast in the unheated hotel restaurant (between the front door and the reception desk - WTF were they thinking?). This was a heap of assorted steamed buns, rice soup (think of boiling rice and not draining it - not one of my favorites), hard boiled eggs and various pickles and peanuts as condiments.

Perhaps I haven't mentioned it earlier, but tea is served with pretty much every meal, unless you ask for something else. And except for buffets, your selection is usually limited to tea. In the US, it's a given that you can get cold water (if not with ice, at least room temperature) with a meal. Not in China! You can get hot water. In other words, tea without the tea in it. Since many of the places we've eaten were unheated, it didn't take long for this to become not-hot water.

I'm betting all this tea consumption (generally green tea) is good for everyone's cholesterol. A number of people here have given it credit for long life and good health. I'm suspecting the lack of refined sugar and the plethora of stairs and other exercise count for something, too.

After breakfast, we packed up all our stuff and stored it at the hotel so as not to pay for a night we wouldn't be sleeping there. Then it was off to the bus for the mountain. On the way, we stopped at a market area, where people bought food. They actually let the hustlers *on* the bus! Buttercup bought a hat, and we bought these strap-on cleats for our shoes in case of ice. There turned out to be little of that, and in the one spot where it would have mattered, we didn't use them. I'll explain that later. Buttercup left the bus to get a little food, too.

We also stopped a couple of times on the way to drop people off, pick them up, and let them do a little shopping at a small store. Mostly it looked like they bought bottled water.

Eventually, we got to the tourist area. We took a cable car part way up, then hiked. It turns out that there is quite a lot of area up there, and there are no roads at all. There are a great many porters who climb up the stairs and back, bringing everything that gets used up there. I assume water is pumped up, but we saw these guys carrying everything, like building materials (some of the hotels up there are still under construction or renovation), tiles, bags of concrete, even a big rug rolled up. We saw others carrying propane tanks, food, magazines, bottled drinks, you name it. Buttercup asked them about it, and it turns out they make one trip up and down per day. And for that, they make 40 yuan, which is about $5.00 US. One guy said he was 68 and had been doing it for over 20 years. And he smokes!

The way they do it is to have one load at either end of a piece of bamboo which they carry over one shoulder at an angle, and they have a stout stick which they put over the other shoulder and kind of lever it under the bamboo rod. When they want to rest, they drop the heavier load on the ground and prop the stick at a marked point on the bamboo rod, and balance it, so the stick takes the weight of the load that isn't on the ground. It looked unbelievably tough. They sure looked chipper on their way back down, though!

Anyway, it turns out that our hotel was pretty far from the cable car. Like a couple of kilometers. There isn't too much flat space in these mountains, so on most of the trails, you're either going up stairs or going down stairs. It was very beautiful there, and most of the interesting stuff is up high, so to get from one to the next, there is a lot of going up and down stairs. I kvetched a lot about stairs during my BeijingTrip200608, but this really put that trip to shame. Good thing we brought chocolate and bottled water! (pictures forthcoming)

After a lot of hiking (stairs), we had lunch at one of the hotels (not ours, which was much further away). Things are 3 times as expensive up there as on the ground, but after seeing what it takes to drag anything up there, I don't begrudge it one bit! We had egg fried rice for lunch. That may not seem glamorous from where you're sitting now, but it was feast to us! It was also served in a for-2 portion, and that was a good thing.

Another eye-opener was that as far as we were from town, and as far apart as the various tourist destinations were (peaks, overlooks, certain trees, etc.), *everyone* got cell phone reception up there! T-Mobile, are you listening? You can't hear me now, can you, assholes? I can't get reception worth a damn on the NoVA campus in Annandale, but people can get cell reception at the top of an 1800+ meter peak or in a tunnel between 2 mountains in China??? Obcviously it's possible, just T-Mobile isn't doing what it takes!

The weather supported us nicely, too. It was cold, but not terribly so, and we didn't feel underdressed for the weather. And the sky couldn't have been more blue.

After a day of hiking, maybe 8-10km, we were worn out by the time we reached our hotel, just before sunset. Buttercup had heard that there were some great views of clouds/mist rising in the valleys, and wanted to go back out and grab some sunset pix. I wouldn't have cared if the building caught fire, so long as no one made me move.

The hotel room was tiny, which is hardly surprising considering the human effort needed to bring anything up there, including building materials. The common areas of the hotel were a bit surprising, though. They had a barber shop and a few stores. One sold jade and maybe jewelry, the other was more of a general store. There were a couple of dining halls, though the "Western" one was under renovation, and thus closed. They also had a massage place in the hotel (I certainly understand the need for *that*!), but what really got me was that they had a *dance hall*! Who the Hell could dance after a day of climbing up and down stairs??? Or *more than one* day? ` Buttercup came back with some great shots, and bestirred me to get some dinner, which was a hot pot buffet. I described what a hot pot is earlier, so what made this a buffet was that you had a large selection of things to put into your table's hot pot. There were a lot of different sorts of noodles, veggies, tofu in various shapes and forms, and some types of meat. There were little eggs, some very flimsy dumplings, LIVER, mushrooms, and some things I couldn't place. There was also a small server of egg fried rice and fried dumplings which weren't for the hot pot.

Be careful what you wish for. There were so many things in our hot pot that it became hard to distinguish them, and hard to tell when they were done. At one point, I grabbed what I thought was a mushroom, but turned out to be fish with entirely too many tiny bones. Another time I grabbed what I thought was lamb, but turned out to be liver.

It's time for a digression on liver. I *HATE* it! When I was little, my parents insisted I try liver, and I hated it then. They assured me that it was both delicious and good for me, and that some day, when I was older, my tastes would change and I would come to appreciate it. Guess what? My tastes haven't changed one iota, and I still fucking hate liver. I abominate, loathe, and detest it. It is the scourge of my palate, and no amount of fava beans or Chianti will make it edible to me. Feh! A pox on it! You can keep your liver!

And on a related note, I also can't stand licorice, bananas, or the taste of coffee or beer. Never have I acquired these tastes, nor do I care to. HHHHHhhhk-Ptui! (China's national pastime)

So, after I got the taste of liver out of my mouth with fried dumplings and a lot of little hot-pot-boiled eggs, we went back to our room to enjoy the stone hard beds, too tired to care.

The big kick in the pants here was that our hotel room did have internet connectivity. For a moment, I felt foolish for not bringing a laptop. Right up until I recalled and Buttercup was so kind to point out to me that we would have had to carry our laptops up and down 8-10km of stairs. Sca-rew that!!!

While I have said there wasn't much flat space, let me put that into perspective. Some of the stairs had landings, some didn't. Some stretches of as much as half a kilometer had no flat space at all, apart from an occasional landing 2-3 stair widths wide. And very occasionally, there's a bench.

I can't tell you how tired we were.

2007-01-09 Shanghai Time

Buttercup wanted to get some photos of the sunrise from Bright Summit, the highest point open to the public right now, and only slightly lower than the highest (and closed) peak. It's something like 1860 meters above sea level.

Bright Summit is conveniently located 3 km upstairs from our hotel. By the time we got our stuff together and woke up a desk clerk to check us out, we had maybe half an hour before sunrise. So, to recap, it's half an hour before sunrise, we have checked out of the hotel, and have that half an hour to climb 3 km of stairs to the 2nd (by a few meters) highest peak in the mountain range. If I were a third party, I'd be pointing to me, laughing, and thinking I was a schmuck. But since there were no suitable third parties present, I had to do all those things for myself in my head.

In an uncharacteristic bout of good planning, we brought very little with us. Apart from what we were wearing, Buttercup brought her purse, we both brought cameras, and we had a backpack with some bottled water, some chocolate, some curry covered roasted nuts we got in the shopping district in Nanjing, a change of shirts, socks, and underwear, a brush, and the charger for my camera battery. And the ice cleats we ended up not using. We were very glad not to have overpacked for this haul.

In any event, it was clear to me that nothing short of divine intervention was going to get me up all those stairs in half an hour. I took the backpack, Buttercup took a bottle of water and her camera and purse, and I told her not to wait for me, but that I'd be along as I could manage it.

She made it as the sun was rising, and I made it about 45 minutes later. And this is all before breakfast, remember. We did each have a chocolate bar, though. You can get Dove chocolate most places in candy-bar size. You can get it with or without nuts, dark or light. It's good for what ails you (unless you have diabetes - but I think the 20 or so km of stairs in 2 days earned me 2 friggin' chocolate bars).

When I got to Bright Summit, Buttercup had gotten her photos and had a bowl of soup. I finally got my breakfast of a couple of little chocolate muffins from a package of 4 (they were frozen) and a bottle of orange juice.

At this point, I thought we were finished, and going to head back down. Buttercup confirmed that we were heading down and out. In order to get to the down and out part, it was first necessary to ignore 2 or 3 cable cars and climb 2 giant mountains to the top. And of course, in order to get from one to another, you have to go pretty far down into the valley. There are no bridges over anything up there.

So, 2 giant mountains, and I don't know how many km of stairs later, we got to the Jade Something Or Other Welcome Pine, which is famed in song and story. If there hadn't been a sign, I'd never have known it was special. There was even a hotel and restaurant there to celebrate how special it is. And it would have been 3 giant mountains, but Lotus Peak, the highest one of the bunch, and a little higher than Bright Summit was blessedly closed to tourists at the time. We did see another stairway up a cliff face later that was closed, and at least in that case the reason was clear - it was iced over. I am REALLY glad we didn't have to climb *that* one. That one really looked more like a ladder than a staircase.

I know I keep saying "pictures forthcoming" like a typing parrot, but honestly, wait until you see the pictures of the stuff we had to get over to see this tree. My favorite had to be the insance stairway with ice and the chance to fall over a cliff and not one landing at all. After that was a stairway up named "The One Hundred Ladders" or something like that. One Hundred and One Heart Attacks and Strokes, more like.

The spot with this tree was the last spot shown on the maps leading up to this point, so I thought maybe it would be the end. Nope! It was the beginning of a whole new series of maps, with the tree at the beginning! It was 6 more km to the bottom, and this time, at least, it was mostly down. I doubt there were more than 50 stairs heading up in that whole 6 km. Everything else was down, with the occasional flat spot and landings were usually more common.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that there were several spots where the path was "under construction". This meant that there were spots where the stairs were shattered or parts were just missing. And in others, workmen were actively patching them with gravel and concrete, and you had to step lively over little slivers of wood or jump over the stairs entirely to get past. I can't imagine the dance the porters must have gone through to get past!

We hung out for half an hour by the Welcome Pine until the adjacent hotel restaurant opened for an early lunch, given the spareness of breakfast. We had noodle soup and dumplings, and tried to recover the use of our legs.

When one climbs a flight of stairs, it may seem like real work, while going down seems like no work at all. When one descends 6 km of stairs, one realizes that one was sorely mistaken before, and that one can no longer walk after 6 km of descending stairs. It took something like 3 hours, maybe a little less. Buttercup wen on ahead, and I limped down as best I could, resting whenever a place presented itself.

Just as in going up, going down here was hazardous as there were a lot of places with no railings, uneven steps, "construction", and steep drops. And in some places, no landings for a long way. In short, it would have been a big misfortune to make a mistake up there.

On the way back down, we passed a number of people in various degrees of suffering and complaining about their soreness. They had no idea how much more was instore for them uphill. We passed 2 guys being carried up on sedan chairs. If you don't know what a sedan chair is, think plastic picnic chair tied to a couple of bamboo poles with crosspieces at either end, so a person can sit in the chair and be carried by one guy at either end of the bamboo poles. The guys in the chairs looked happy and carefree. The guys carrying the chairs looked like their job was much tougher than the porters had it. I can't imagine how tough that was. And in order to get over steep spots, the poles were very springy and bent quite a lot. I bet the guys in the chairs wouldn't be laughing so much if they got dumped out over a cliff by the 2 tired skinny guys carrying them. I almost think this was more dangerous than going under your own power, where you'd have some chance to react to a bad step. In the case of the chair, you could be out and gone before you could grab anything.

In any event, I was very happy to finally see the EXIT sign.

We sat around for a while since all the cab drivers wanted 4 passengers to go anywhere, and we had to wait for 2 more. The taxi dropped us all at a place in the nearby town, and we switched to a different taxi for the trip back to our hotel. On the way, we stopped and picked up a young woman on the side of the road, who then sat in the front seat.

She was wearing a perfume so vomitous that I wanted to hurl for the entire trip. It was the sort of frangrance an old old lady might choose if, after a lifetime of heavy smoking, her sense of smell was no longer able to distinguish sulfur, petro-chemicals, rotting carcasses, or dung. I hope she didn't pay much for that guaranteed-to-snare-a-man bottle o' biohazard.

The same taxi took us from our hotel (where we collected our luggage) to the bank, and then to the bus station. We caught a bus to Hangzhou, whish was a 2-3 hour trip. On the way we passed a lot of clumps of houses, many looking to be in serious disrepair, but some having lights on. I wasn't clear at all how many were lived in, or whether the place was poor, scheduled to be demolished, or what. At one point, we passed an old man herding ducks along a dike between rice fields. My first impression of Hangzhou by night was that the roads were like parts of Philadelphia. There are gratuitous dividers in both directions, and the roads are very bumpy and in poor repair. The traffic flow is bewildering, with the added complexity of the roads to the outer edge of the dividers.

Our hotel had one bed, which was nice after several nights of seperate beds. It also had remarkably poor planning with respect to electrical outlets, there not being enough of them, and the cords of some of the applicances being too short to reach them from where they were placed. They did come up with a hub and power strip for us, though!

As we could barely walk at this point, we found the closest restaurant, in a shopping district where everything was closing, and had mushroom soup and crispy beef with an odd sauce. It appeared to be tomoto paste right out of a can. It actually went pretty well with the beef, though it's the sort of taste an American seldom experiences directly, since we have ketchup readily available, which is sweeter, and tomato paste usually goes into tomato sauce, which usually goes with pasta or pizza.

We were both dead tired and shuffled back to our hotel to hit the hay, sleeping poorly on our queen sized rock.

2007-01-10 Shanghai Time

We had breakfast at the hotel restaurant, which proved to be directly across the hall from our room. This was the first meal which actually wasn't good. It was indifferent at best. There were some crunchy sesame peanut things and some sweetish crackers that were OK, and the hard boiled eggs weren't bad. The rest wasn't too good, though. They had Tang, but it was too watery. On the plus side, they had an office-style water cooler that actually gave cold water, so for one meal, however ignoble, I had my preferred beverage.

Buttercup decided our hotel smelled bad (I hadn't noticed) and the the floor was filthy (one would have to be blind not to notice), and we moved to another hotel. But first, Buttercup went shopping, since there was a convenient shopping district near the hote, and I was too footsore to go. This way I wouldn't spoil all her bargains. She didn't buy anyting that I could detect, though. The new hotel room is smaller still, but the single bed isn't a rock for once, and the internet speed is VERY fast compared to all the others.

Once we moved in, we went out to lunch to a fancy, famous, and expensive place down the block. We had noodle soup and shredded pork, which was very nice. We shared a big table with another couple, and we chatted with them (partly in English). They let us try their desert which was fried dumplings with ice cream inside. Yum! On the way back to the hotel, we stopped in a bakery and bought a strawberry flavored piece of very tall cake, which we devoured like hungry exhausted ghouls back in the room.

Buttercup was going to go shopping and leave me the internet connection to put in a work day, of which I owe several in order to make the vacation longer. It has turned out that she is keeping the connection for herself, as I type this into a text file to paste to the web site later...

We walked around a bit, looked at the nearby lake, and looked for a place to have dinner. Buttercup picked a seafood place, and I wasn't hungry anyway. She ordered a dish that was bamboo and some sort of meat, but I didn't care for it, and she had her seafood dish.

Back at the hotel, I maanged to get internet sharing to work by bridging her wireless and ethernet ports, and having the Mac advertise a computer-to-computer network with actual security. There's probably a better way to do this, but this worked the first try, and I have no need to do better.

Buttercup brought back some soup for me. What a doll!

2007-01-11 Shanghai Time

Had breakfast at the hotel restaurant. It was a huge buffet, and quite good.

Today was to be a downtime day in which I tried to work. The net connection in this hotel isn't supporting me at it. Either it's doing some particularly unpleasant progressive bandwidth limiting, or the pipe is too small for the number of people I see on the network with Windows boxes alone, and packet loss is shutting me down.

We decided to take a walk around this part of Hangzhou, with Buttercup consulting a map. Right outside the hotel, a predatory off-duty tour guide started to follow us to try to rent us the use of his car. He followed us around for quite a while and quite a distance, never taking the subtle BU YAO! hint that we gave him. Buttercup started to waver over whether we should go with him. I didn't like him, and I particularly didn't like how much he wanted OUR business only, and wasn't bothering anyone else. I figured he was up to no good. Half a block after we finally ditched him a lady told Buttercup that he was a known rip-pff artist, and his thing is to strand people someplace remote and then have his partner swing by and offer a ride back at a really outrageous rate. Hope he starves to death.

We had lunch at a restaurant which was supposed to be famous and fancy (you starting to see a pattern?), consisting of mushroom soup and a local specialty called "chicken in a bag", "bag chicken", or "baggar's chicken", depending what translation you read. What it turned out to be was basically plain chicken cooked in what we would call an oven bag in the US. It takes the form of 97 or so layers of plastic wrap here, but the effect is the same. Mushy chicken swimming in a pool of its own juices where all the flavor went. While not *bad* per se, I wasn't at all impressed by this one. It also turned out to be expensive, so neither of us felt all that rewarded by the meal. I guess even in China, not every meal can be awesome. Some are just OK.

Afterwards, we stopped at Giovanni Gelato (which is apparently a chain here). This was a good choice. It was outstanding! And very colorful, as well.

We took a golf-cart-style tour bus partway around West Lake, which is the big natural feature of Hangzhou, and the model on which Beijing's Summer Palace lake was made (or at least modified to resemble). We got off at the first stop, which is a Pagoda. This one is a modern reconstruction over the ruins of a famous pagoda, the remains of which are still in the basement, as an exhibit. There is a story (or maybe fairy tale) associated with the place involving a lady angel who falls in love with a mortal guy, and some priest who wants to break them up. I didn't catch the name of the story, but I gather it's well-known.

To get to the top of the pagoda, you climb some stairs, take 2 escalators, and that puts you into the basement, with the ruins. The locals treat this like a wishing well, and throw money over the window (pictures forthcoming). Then you can take 2 elevators to the 4th floor, and finally stairs to the top. The view was nothing special as it was grey and misty, and not being set atop a mountain like Dr. Sun Yat-sen's you couldn't have seen too much on a good day.

When we'd seen all the mist we could take, we descended and walked about half-way around the lake in order to eat at a restaurant Buttercup wanted to try. On the way, Buttercup finally admitted to having overdone the exercise. This was a major triumph for my camp, though I could wish that MY declaration of having overdone it would have been sufficient to limit the pace a little back when I needed it.

Anyway, the place didn't open for at least half an hour after we arrived, so we had to kill some time. While we sat on a bench, waiing, Buttercup decided the place was too expensive, so we grabbed another golf-cart to what I hoped would be the lake spot closest to our hotel so we could rest up. No such luck.

Buttercup had us get off not long after we got on, in order to go to another

restaurant which turned out not to be there. It started to rain, and we were both feeling our pains, so we grabbed a cab to another famous and fancy place.

This restaurant is called Grandma's Kitchen. We had shrimp, beef with oyster sauce and green beans, scallion pancakes, fried spring rolls, and yam pancakes which were particularly good. An excellent meal.

Another taxi took us back to the hotel to sleep.

2007-01-12 Shanghai Time

This was also supposed to be a workday, but again, the network is too bogged down to let me connect long enough to even get to the directories where my work lives. Buttercup went shopping while I tried to work anyway.

Had breakfast and lunch at the hotel buffet, which was still good.

Buttercup came back later on, and I decided to punt on the network and we went out for a walk. We hit a bookstore and did a little shoppping. We also hit a computer store. This computer store was called PC Mall, and is a bit smaller than an equivalent store in the US. It was MUCH flashier, though, with lights and music making it more like a well-lit rave than a store for office equipment. We were there for a hub, some cables, and a USB camera for Buttercup. Her brother talked her out of it over the phone, though. He's going to take care of all that stuff for her. OK, then.

We were both pretty footsore at this point, so dinner was at another famous and fancy place. This time, I didn't like the place. What I really wanted was to hit the men's room, which turned out to be all Eastern fixtures and insufficient privacy. To make matters worse, my hip and back were so sore, I didn't think I could use them without mishap, so I decided to just hold it until getting back to the hotel. I did go to wash my hands, though, and while my hands were under the tap, a guy dropped down and put a dollop of liquid shoe polish on each of my boots. I objected, but what could I do at that point? He started shining my boots, unasked, while I looked for somewhere to dry my hands without moving. When he finished, he stuck out his hand for a tip. I had no Chinese money at the time, having handed all of it to Buttercup, and having left my wallet in my jacket next to her at the table. I turned my pockets out and said my wife had the money. And walked out. Asshole! I get that making a living is tough, but he's not going to make it from me by doing that shit unasked.

In the North, a few of the salespeople and hustlers were agressive, but this is more forward than I find acceptable. Between this and that vulture tour guide, I have to count this as a negative of the South. Buttercup also feels that there are more predators here than in North, and there are a lot of signs in various places telling you to beware of pickpockets here.

And I forgot to mention that the first night at West Lake after it was dark, some dude offered me a massage. What's wrong with this place?

2007-01-13 Shanghai Time

We skipped breakfast proper to get on a tour bus for Thousand Islands Lake, which is a man-made lake, according to Buttercup, having 170-ish islands above the water and 300+ peaks under water, so you don't really get all 1000. I'm unclear what about it is man made, though. The islands look like the peaks of the mountains we passed on the way there, and I figured the valleys are just low enough to be under water. She said there are 2 ancient cities down there, so perhaps the area was flooded by people, forming the lake. I don't know.

On the way through Hangzhou to the lake, we passed a Hooters, of all things. I have to admit to being curious about what qualifies one to work on the staff there, but didn't get the chance to find out.

We did stop at a roadside stand for food, with Buttercup getting some kind of scallion pancakes or something and some sweetish bread. It was good, though not fancy. More like what we used to grab in Beijing on the last trip.

There were a lot of things we passed on the way that I didn't get pictures of. Apart from the plethora of 3-wheeled cars and even trucks, I saw again that lawnmower engine on a stick contraption. And there was one area where a lot of the houses had what appeared to be Eiffel Towers on their roofs, though their real function may have been as antennas.

The tour bus let us off at a big boat on the lake. This turned out to be a floating 4-star hotel! It was 70 meters long. We cruised around the lake a bit, but the weather was gray and misty, and the pictures lackluster.

We then took a smaller tour boat to see 4 islands whose themes were dragons, fish, birds, and rocks. We took and even smaller boat with one oarsman between the last 2 islands rather than walking the bridge.

We had lunch on the big boat afterwards. That was seaweed soup, 2 kinds of veggies, and some kind of fish that seemed to be made entirely of bones. I stuck to the veggies. They were good, but the only thing 4-star about them was the price.

After about 2 hours of swerving and honking tour bus later, instead of landing back at our hotel, we stopped at a place where tea is sold by lady soldiers. Why? We don't know.

Next, we stopped at a silk factory much like the one in Suzhou. In addition to silk, when you finally approached the exit, there was a store full of snacks we couldn't identify and booze. We were hip to all this from the last trip and the Suzhou factory, so we just left without buying anything.

After this, the bus dropped us off at a restaurant district back in Hangzhou, and people split off to chow down. We stopped in a candy store and bought a bag of mixed chocolates. Then it was down the block to another fancy and probably famous place for dinner. This place also had an amazing menu (like Grandma's Kitchen had and I neglected to mention). Apart from things that looked delicious to me, it also had a wide variety of animals and body parts that you won't find in the US with a "Mc" in front of. Expect no McHooves, McTongue, McFrog, McTripe, etc. And some of the names defied description. One that stuck in my mind was "Oil pours the pig hand", or something like that. I haven't a clue what it could be. And there were many others like it. I wish they'd had a take-out menu, for I would have treasured the names of the dishes. I do recall that one of the dishes was something about horses' hooves, too.

Despite that, we had fish, beef and ginger, utterly awesome pumpkin rolls that had been deep fried in some kind of thin dough that formed like a pastry web around them, and cashews covered in spices. This was my last sit-down meal for this trip to China, and it truly rocked! What we in the US call pumpkins are the big orange jack-o'lantern things. What are called pumpkins in Asia, we would call sad little squash. The pumpkin rolls tonight were sweet and tasted like American pumpkin, not like wannabe-squash.

The rest of the evening is spent at the hotel, packing so I can catch an early car/bus/something to Shanghai tomorrow to catch my plane.

2007-01-14 Shanghai Time

Big shocker - I can't sleep. But nothing has happened yet.

Took a taxi to the bus station so I could catch a bus from Hangzhou to Shanghai Pudong International Airport. The bus ride was about 3 hours and uneventful. The flight to San Francisco was about 10 hours, and uneventful. I got pulled aside at US customs, and they searched 2 out of 3 of my bags, found the nothing that there was to find, and politely sent me on my way.

Chinese food is cool, and better than cool when one is in China. But after 2 and a half weeks, I needed some American chow. There was an obliging BK Lounge right outside customs, and a whopper switched me back to US gears. The flight from San Francisco to Dulles was about 4 and a half hours, and was also uneventful. I was totally nonplussed! No delays on the flights to or from China! No sudden changes of boarding gate. No lost luggage. No trouble at customs. The biggest event was having to wait for baggage to get taken off the plane outbound from Chicago after Customs detained some folks. I'm guessing that air travel is supposed to be free of hassles, but after my last trip, this was a nice surprise.

So, I'm home. The pictures it took hours and hours to incompletely upload from China took about 10 minutes from my living room. I'm back on US food and US timezones. It's good to be back, and I'm very much looking forward to my own bed. But I already miss Buttercup...

General Observations (preliminary)

One thing I've noticed about China is how few public clocks there are. In the US, particularly in cities, it's not unusual for a business to have a publicly visible clock as part of their sign out front, or maybe in their waiting area. In fact, most places with waiting areas, such as train stations, bus stations, and airports have clocks. And of course, government offices. In China, no. It's a little bit like the time of day is valuable, and no one would want to just GIVE IT AWAY for nothing. The only public clock we saw all day was on a bank, and it appeared to be broken. Oh well.

A note about the human hazards. Where there were plenty of hustlers in Beijing and Xi'an, the hustlers here are more prone to follow you. They have little folders with pictures of assorted knock-off goods of the watch-bag-dvd-mp3 variety rather than the handicrafts that were offered in the North (carved Buddha statue for you, sir?). And I didn't see anyone who wanted a water bottle from me. Perhaps this is more a summer phenomenon? Or reserved more for touristy places where everyone has a water bottle. And rather than trying to earn a living, even if it's by recycling, there is more outright begging here, with people either sitting and nodding or head-banging, a couple of them were just sprawled face down with a bowl out for coins. And then there are the aggressive ones who follow you, or send their kid to chase you.

There are two other human hazards, I'd like to mention here. One is spitting. Everyone does it, young and old, men and women. Even a well dressed young woman with a haughty demeanor can spit like a cowboy with a big chaw o' tobbaccy with no warning at all. I haven't seen anyone actively spit at or onto anyone else, but it's definitely a pedestrian traffic hazard. The other human hazard to mention is blowing one's nose directly onto the ground. Paper products cost money, and little gets wasted in China. Restaurants generally don't provide napkins (unless you pay extra for them), and many places don't have toilet paper or paper towels. You should bring your own. But it also means that people don't waste money on tissues when the ground is handy. Watch your toes!

General Advice (preliminary)

In the General Advice section of my Beijing trip report (BeijingTrip200608 near the bottom), I was lamenting about batteries. Got a spare battery for my camera (takes a flat square rechargeable) here. What really got me was the inability to recharge an iPod. Well, it turns out that APC makes a little rechargeable battery that can be used to power portable devices that can accept power through a USB connection. It's pricey at $75-ish, but it runs an iPod nano for 55 hours and can even recharge the iPod's internal battery. That's a good thing for a 14 hour plane ride or an overnight train trip, for example!

Asian Fever (preliminary)

I was somewhat reserved in the Asian Fever section of my Beijing trip report (BeijingTrip200608 at the bottom). While it's winter right now, the weather isn't much different from Virginia, which is fairly mild for winter. However, this does have an effect on fashion.

The big fashion is tight jeans and boots. I can't speak for anyone else, but to my eyes, that's a fine combination. And I do think there's a higher percentage of "babes" to general population than in the North. I can't speak to whether modesty is less here than in Beijing due to it being winter, though.

We did step into an "Adult Shop" near Nanjing Road rather than merely glimpse through the window. Without being too graphic or spoiling the surprise for anyone who might want to check it out first hand, let me merely say that there is less in the way of novelty items (though some of those were pretty special) and more in the way of, how to put it? "Functional surrogate devices". And exaggeration seems to play a large part in their design and construction. 'Nuff said.

Actually, Buttercup confirmed something I thought was my imagination. I thought there was a higher percentage of good-looking young ladies here than in our Northern travels. Buttercup tells me that Shanghai is where they come to shop and look good. So, there's a piece of advice for those of you who want to do some human sightseeing - Shanghai is a good place to look.

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