Some visitors

I’m sure you remember me saying that I developed a silly grin on my face every time I walked through Red Square in Moscow – well, it’s back! On Wednesday night I decided walk up to Nanjing Road. Nanjing Road is THE famous road in Shanghai. If you read the guide books they’ll say that the best shopping area is now Huai Hai Road. That’s true, but lots of the fancy sky-scrapers are around People’s Square, next to Nanjing Road. It was the fancy sky-scrapers all lit up for the evening that caused the grin. What a sight. I tried to take a photo or two, but they didn’t come out very well.

Last Saturday morning, I found the best way to not spend any money in the antique market – don’t take any money with you when you go!! I didn’t mean to go to the market – I was just going for a wander, and turned right instead of left when I left the hotel. The market is in the next street over, so there I was. It’s called an antique market, but only because everything is made to look antique. On my wee wander, I had planned on going to the bank as I had less than £5 in my purse – but I ended up at the market before the bank. While having my LOOK around the market, I decided that I’m going to have to start collecting dragons – they have some amazing ones there. I’ll need to go back when I have some money in my purse!

The biggest excitement for this week was that Denise & Thierry were in Shanghai. We met up for a couple of drinks on Saturday night, and then spent all Sunday exploring. It was so great to see them again – it’s been a year! Apart from a weekend in Paris last September, I hadn’t seen them since we were in China last year!! Who knew??? The highlights of the day were: watching all the boats on the river from the Bund, and being on one of the boats ourselves in the evening, admiring all the lights; going to a Chinese acrobat’s show; trying to eat crab from the shell with chopsticks and, of course, spending time chatting with my mates. Laurence, another pal from Paris, joined us later in the day. We had a great time, although at one point I had to admit to not been able to speak in French any more. It was a temporary glitch, as I managed for most of the rest of the time. . As the local ‘expert’, it’s difficult to realise that I’ve only been here for 2 months.

Quick weather report – it’s cooling down here. Most people are wearing light summer jackets or thin jumpers. I’m being a tough Scot and am just wearing my shirt-sleeves. OK, OK, it’s not even as low as 20 degrees, so I’m not that tough. Apparently, the first snow has arrived in Davydovo!

Brunch at the Westin

I’m still suffering from lack of sleep. I can’t get used to the alarm clock going off at 5:45 every morning – and more importantly, I can’t get used to thinking about going to bed before 10 o’clock. This not getting home until nearly 7 o’clock really shortens your evenings. Mind you, it does mean that 8 o’clock is a long lie at the weekend! The traffic coming home tonight was much worse than usual – even for a Friday night, and it took 2 hours to get home. I was all set for a wild Friday night, but now … I have found a way to make the trip more bearable – audio books. I just download the audio book onto my MP3 player, sit myself on the bus and let somebody read me a story! I must get reminders of bedtime stories, ‘cos I realise from time to time that things no longer make sense, and I’ve missed quite a bit of the story. Hmm. I’ve just finished ‘Going Postal’ by Terry Pratchett. Very funny!

I had a treat last Sunday. I went for brunch with Alan and Angie. We met at the Westin hotel at 12 o’clock, and then ate and drank for the next 3 hours. There was an amazing range of food: lobster and crabs, seafood and sushi, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, Peking duck and Chinese specialities, plus flavoured vodka and caviar – just to remind me of my time in Russia!! The champagne, wine, rum cocktails liqueurs and chocolates were included. Just in case that wasn’t enough – there was entertainment: an orchestra, singers, dancers, acrobats and pizza jugglers. Good to watch as you try and make a tiny space for another mouthful. All of this for the very reasonable price of £30 each. Of course, after all that we needed a walk and where better than the Bund? The Bund was the original British quarter of Shanghai. It’s now a walkway beside the river, with fantastic views over to Pudong, the new part of Shanghai. Our wee walk lasted 3 hours, so that was Sunday pretty much over – funnily enough, I had no room for my dinner, so I just had to spend Sunday night doing my ironing.

A Quiet Week

It's been a quiet week for me - recovering from my adventure during the bank holiday. On Sat I went back to the dentist, and today was my last visit. I always thought that the jokes about teeth & toffee were just that - jokes. No, they're not. I was wandering down the high St in Perth when Thornton’s caught my eye. I treated myself to some special toffee, and within a few minutes was standing holding one of my teeth! An emergency trip to the dentist, and then several other visits in Shanghai, and I now have a crown. What do you think, looks good? So, this turning 40 lark – teeth falling out, eyesight failing…. I know I’m not going deaf, ‘cos there’s so much noise here!

On Sunday, I went out for lunch with Alan, Angie and one of their pals, Garry. We went to a Japanese place near where I’m staying and ate Teppanyaki. You sit at a table with the chef standing in front of you. There’s a heated metal plate (hibachi) that the chef uses to cook your food. You choose lots of little dishes (we had 7 for the 4 of us) and the chef cooks them one by one, before dividing them up. We had a combination of steak and vegetables, finishing off with bananas, but the people we were sharing a table (and chef) with had king prawns, fish and shellfish. It all tasted great, helped along, I’m sure, by the copious amounts of butter, garlic and salt. I thought that the principle was great, and started designing my new dining room around a hibachi griddle. After a quick surf on the net, I discovered that you can get them as a trolley! Ideal! Just need a house for it now!

When Sheila was here, she bought me rice cooker/steamer. We didn’t get a chance to use it while she was here. Of course, all the instructions are in Chinese, and the buttons are labeled in Chinese. Hmm! I got them translated, and then figured out how to make it work. I’ve made rice a few times with it, and this week I had a go with dumplings Sheila had put in the freezer. It worked – yum! In the photo you can see the dumplings. They’re served with vinegar in Shanghai, but in the UK they’re served with soy sauce. I had both!

Continuing the food and drink theme, I have a hot and cold water distributor in my room. I can have a cool glass of water or, more usually, a cup of tea with the flick of a switch. It saves the constant boiling of the kettle!

I’ve been trying to do the blog thing on a Friday night, but I couldn’t last night – I was out. Alan is going to work in the factory in the north of China for the next 3 months, so was having a meal out. We’d a great time - the most challenging dish was beef tendons in jelly, and the most interesting was fruit salad in mayonnaise!! The restaurant was in XuJuiHui - a very lively part of Shanghai, a bit like Times Square in New York. It's all neon, and it never stops. My apartment will be 5 mins walk away from the centre of this area. Just a bit different from Davydovo. The latest date for my moving is mid-Nov, so still another 6 weeks living in a hotel! THe boat with my stuff will also arrive mid-Nov. I have no idea which route the boat took, but can't imagine it went North at this time of year. Just to finish the food theme, here's the photo of a bit of sculpture I took last night.

Weather Thingy

I've added a couple of weather thingies to show the current conditions in Shanghai and in Perth. Can you work out which is which?

The Weather

Looks like it's going to be a pretty good weekend - still no jumper needed!!

My National Holiday Trip

In China, the first 3 days of October are a National Holiday, so no work for me on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday this week! As I mentioned earlier, Christine, one of my Chinese teachers had invited me to spend a few days with her family. I was not impressed when my alarm clock went off at 4:30 on Monday morning - I was meant to be on holiday, but no - I had a train to catch. Christine had warned me to be at the train station at least an hour before the train left (scheduled for 6:30), so I had to get a taxi to the station - the metro doesn't start running until 5:30. Believe it or not there was a massive traffic jam around the station at 5:30. It was amazing, 5:30 in the morning on a bank holiday Monday!! Anyway, I gave up sitting in the taxi, and walked the last few minutes to the train station. I arrived at the station to find a completely different entrance to that I'd spent hours at trying to buy a ticket the week before! No matter; I queued up, got my ticket checked, my bag X-rayed and found my way to my waiting room. Then I waited...and waited. I still don't know why I had to be at the station so early. They didn't let you board the train until 10 mins before it left. Ach well, the experience was good for me - character building! So, at last I got on the train.

The trip was fairly uneventful. The carriage was very noisy - as I've come to expect everywhere in China, but I just plugged in my new MP3 player (which is about half the size of a box of matches) and listened to my own noise. After 4 hours, the train arrived in Lu Cheng and I was met by Christine and her brother Geraint. The promised trip to her village on the back of a motorbike didn't happen - we all took a car out to her aunt's house for a family party. After being introduced to the family, we went for a walk round the paddy fields - as I said I'd never been in one. Did you know that there are lots of snakes in paddy fields? There was a bloke hunting snakes in the field we went to visit, and he'd just caught one. He was so proud showing it off for the camera, before he put it in the basket on the front of his motorbike (with the other half dozen he had already caught) and drove off. I had to think of him later as we sat down for a great banquet, which included eels! Lunch was really amazing. The dishes just kept coming and coming. I ate as much as I could, but I put up a really poor show on the eating front compared to everybody else, but by the time my few days were over I had firmly established my reputation for having a small stomach. No, I don't think it's true either!

Later on in the afternoon, we went wandering through the paddy fields to a pool and went fishing. My attention soon wandered, and I ended up strolling through the paddy fields, keeping an eye out for snakes. I couldn't believe that I was there. I remember being taught about paddy fields in China while I was in Primary school, and here I was standing in one. Who'd have ever of thought?? I also remember learning about Chinese fisherman using cormorants to catch fish, but that's another trip. Our fishing trip was the classic type - rods, hooks and no fish. We'd been very optimistic and had taken a net out with us, and some kind soul dug up a couple of sweet potatoes from beside the pond so that I didn't return empty-handed. My announcement of 'look we got two fish' was met with laughter. I'm not sure if it was at the 'fish' or at my bad Chinese.

After another bumper meal, we headed back to Christine's, and I was ready for my shower (with hot water from a solar panel) and bed. It had been a long day! The next morning I did try to eat my rice porridge for breakfast, but didn't make a big dent in it. It's a specialty of the region, and when the Chinese kings traveled to the South of China they would stop off to eat the porridge. An acquired taste, I found. Next, I helped Christine with the washing. Or rather, I watched Christine sit on the doorstep and wash the clothes by hand, before taking them over to the village pond to rinse them out. We met quite a few of the neighbours on this trip, and word of the arrival of a foreigner started to spread! I was the first foreigner ever to visit the village, and it was a very strange experience. During the course of the day, everybody in the village found an excuse to come and visit us. Some people just stood and stared, others spoke to me and some of the younger kids ran away crying!

On Wednesday, I entertained the neighbours with my badminton and table tennis skills, befor esitting in the shade reading my book. Yes, even at 11 am it was uncomfortably hot in the sun. Well, it is October!! I had news from Russia - they're already scraping the cars in the morning!!! I haven't needed to wear a jumper yet, never mind a jacket. So, after lunch, I jumped on the back of a motorbike, no helmet, nowhere to hang on to and we headed off to the main road to meet up with some folks who were taking us to the nearest city - Danyang, a small place of 800,000 people. That's about the size of Glasgow, and I'd never even heard of it. It's famous for shoes and specs. I've never seen so many opticians! Across from the station there was a whole shopping centre - and every shop was an opticians. Christine was thinking about getting contact lenses, so we visited a couple. She was chatting to the assistant and I decided that I'd try out the eye test. When I had my medical for my visa, I had to have an eye test. When I go to the line I couldn't read any more I said so, and the doctor said 'really?', so I'm a bit concerned about this turning 40 lark, and started on the slippery slope. Anyway, I was standing testing my eyes on the chart, decideing that I didn't really have anything too much to worry about (but will get an eye test next time I'm home, just in case!) and I looked up to find a group of shop assistants watching me and laughing their heads off. Silly foreigners!

So back to work on Thursday. It was a bit of a struggle getting up 'cos I arrived back about midnight, so 5:45 came around a bit quick. I certainly seem to take this Chinese belief of early to rise to heart. I still need to work on the other half - the early to bed bit. It's great, it's the weekend again already! Wonder what mischief I can get into ?