Visiting the countryside

On our second day with PK, we venture out of the city to see some historic sights.



Our two-hour drive into the countryside is a near-constant display of cranes and skyscraper construction. The "suburbs" around Shanghai are under aggressive expansion. One impressive feat - which we didn't photograph - is the devotion to maintaining the landscaping around the highway. For hundreds of yards in either direction, there are perfectly planted and staked trees, hedges, flowers and sometimes vegetable gardens, in incredible variety.

On our way to Suzhou, we visit Tiger Hill, the historic burial site of a local king. We cheat by taking a little bus to the top (did I mention the heat?) but only after the boys oblige requests to stand in family photos.



At the top of the hill, we explore the old buddhist shrine, which has been restored after the damage done during the Cultural Revolution (our guide explains).



Kobi never misses the chance to make a little prayer, regardless of the local religion....




...or ring the temple bell...



My favorite part of the tour is the Chinese solution to "sign fatigue", which in the museum business means that people just tune out signs that tell them not to do stuff. Each one of these "Keep off the grass" signs has a different bit of philosophical poetry, that makes you want to go up and read them.



Don't tread on the grass as they also have life!





Indeed, people are keeping off the grass -- I don't know whether it can be attributed to the signs, but it's impressive.

Next we stop at a Buddhist monastery/tourist attraction where the kids make a 10 RMB offering to ring an even bigger temple bell.



Maggie stops for the view from the temple steps:



Kobi pretends to be a crane, crossing the stepping stones.




The kids surround PK with fans, as is his due...



...and he takes us to lunch. PK calls this Square Fish.



Karma stops at a roadside stand to buy a lottery ticket, but I'm not exactly sure how we are supposed to tell if we won.



Finally, we arrive at the Garden of the Humble Administrator, a famous villa and classic Chinese garden (500 years old!) with ponds full of lotus flowers and pavilions perched on boulders.



The kids show off their fan technique.



Finally we head back to Shanghai (after a highway stop where our passports are checked...) and marvel at the Saturday night crowds on East Nanjing Road.

Food, glorious food

For our first three days in Shanghai, we were pretty conservative about food, especially since two of us can't eat gluten (that means no soy sauce - hard to explain!) But now that our friend PK is in town, we're ready for adventure.

PK and Mark were friends in the 1980's when PK was a student at Wesleyan.



I remember PK because we lived across the street from each other in 1986 on the corner of Lincoln and High - he was in India house and I was in Energy House (they're both private homes now.)

Within moments of his arrival, PK is enjoying the rapt attention of the kids as he tells stories about traveling with Mark in France (a tale in which Mark shows off his Xavier-acquired French by asking a Parisian waiter if he can "parlez-vous francais")...and going swimming at Miller's Pond (without benefit of clothing).

PK and a friend took us to a tiny family-run restaurant for our first legit Chinese meal. There were eight of us in all, and PK must have ordered at least 20 different dishes, many adjusted to avoid wheat. It was one of the best meals of my life!

If anyone reading this attempts to find this restaurant in Shanghai, what can I tell you? All I know is that it is around the corner from the New Harbour hotel, and located in one of these storefronts.



After a long succession of platters of greens, fish, dumplings, sticky rice, thousand year eggs and tofu, the kitchen sent out an incredible pot of chicken soup.



Amazingly, we had room for it all, but were barely able to move at the end. Tenzin and I posed to show that we were slightly outsize for the room - if we stood on tippy-toes, we hit the ceiling.



After lunch we stroll the neighborhood and then take naps.



Later, Mark and the kids check out a Chinese-only discount mall where they bargain for clothes, something that was definitely on their "list".





With lunch still a fresh memory, PK arrives to take us out to dinner. Fortunately, we do some nighttime sightseeing first, to work up an appetite.

Shanghai is divided into two halves by the Huangpu River. One of the most famous spots in town is a sharp bend in the river, the site of a string of colonial-era buildings called The Bund. We head to the opposite bank in Pudong to get the best view.

Apparently this is a popular evening activity, because we are far from the only people strolling and taking photos, not to mention the cruise ships full of tourists.



Here we are posing, a little giddy, in front of the skyline.



While we take in the illuminated facades of columns and domes, we can't help but also consider the Pudong side of the river, where the architecture is anything but colonial. In fact, modern architecture appears to be Shanghai's local sport, and we stroll past buildings that resemble huge golf balls and up-ended tweezers. Some are clad in LED screens with rippling advertisements or blinking lite-brite designs. It's like a party every time you look up.



For dinner, we head to a 24-hour Cantonese restaurant on the older side of the river.



It reminds us of O'Rourke's, except that they are serving pineapples full of rice and spicy fish soup.



The drinks menu, (you can click the photo for a close-up), includes Pumpkin and Corn Juice, and Hot Honeyed Citron Tea. Mmm.



Stuffed again, we waddle home. Upon reflection, we did little in this day except eat. Well spent indeed.

One Photo Op After the Next!

The EXPO is just a short subway ride from our hotel. We buy tickets at a kiosk for just 3 RMB each (50 cents) and ride Line 8 five stops to Yuahao Road.

After we spent a few hours LOST yesterday, it's kind of funny when we come across the "Lost Children" station. If only we'd known about that! Mark entertains the kids with his story of how he got lost at the World's Fair in NYC in 1964 and leapfrogged the gate at the lost kids station so he could go explore on his own. Hopefully, they won't be following his example!



We start out at the South Africa pavilion, where we have more luck than yesterday in making friends in line:



The pavilions-in-the-know have multiple photo ops, like this giant South African soccer ball. The kids are asked again and again to step into family photos.



And we meet this guy, who loves Kobi (or maybe Kobe...we're not sure.) We continue to run into him throughout the day.



Some countries can't support a pavilion of their own, so they group in centers by continent.



The African pavilion has dozens of countries inside, and we say hello to the folks in Ghana. We introduce Maggie (whose middle name Akosua is a Ghanaian day name for 'born on Sunday') and Kobi (Ghanaian for 'Tuesday's boy child') to the nice lady at the desk - turns out she was born on Saturday.



It's lots of fun at the African pavilion - Tenzin falls in love with the iced coffee from Ethiopia, and the kids get reprimanded for playing cards in the middle of the floor, but not after drawing a big crowd watching their ongoing spit tournament.

We head for Italy, which has one of most coherent themes we've seen so far.



It's about Design, loud and clear. There's a Ferrari, giant Italian shoes and 15 ft. high mannequins dressed in couture.






We can't resist the Italian restaurant - and though the food is wonderful, the experience is hardly genuine - instead of the Mediterranean 2-hour lunch, we are in and out in about 20 minutes.

So, we thought it was hot yesterday. But it turns out that it was just a warm-up for today's true sauna-like weather. The thermometer reads 35 C. but that doesn't begin to express the humidity, and we never pass up the chance to cool off at a misting station.



Electronic billboards remind us -- in English -- to drink water and stay out of the sun. The clever folks at the Netherlands pavilion have created a shaded public park by elevating their building and opening an astroturf-and-sheep experience underneath. It's delightful and popular.



We also learn how the thousands of flower planters stay lush in this heat. Irrigation by rickshaw!



There are some unfortunate pavilions which have succumbed to what I call "Ramp Design", which means that the interactive experience consist of passing signage and electronic kiosks as you traverse the giant internal ramp. Some do it better than others. The Urban Planet theme pavilion seems to think that we'll appreciate the impending environmental apocolypse more if they turn out all the lights and use a lot of neon.

Even so, I almost always find something that I like - this faucet-and-bubble-pillar illustrates water consumption per capita in an interesting way.



The Indonesian pavilion is also in the giant-ramp-with-signs style, but does a much better job of conveying its message of biodiversity, partly by nestling the building in a bamboo forest, and by eschewing air-conditioning.



I love the slices-of-bamboo flooring...



Karma finds something she likes here. This display on "The Law of Karma" recommends avoiding gossip and focusing on philanthropy.



The kids continue their spit tournament (seen here in an Italian cafe)...



...while the parents head to the Singapore building.



It has an enticing green roof that we want to check out for inspiration for Mark's hoped-for project in Main Street, Middletown.



It's a beautiful end to our EXPO day.