Our next day in Shanghai

SHANGHAI, DAY 2, 02/16/08

I’m up early, brewing Community coffee, one cup at a time, in our travel brew pot, and posting videos (my still camera battery is dead, and I am waiting on a converter to charge it). The videos are easy to shoot, but take forever to upload to the internet. This blogging stuff takes a lot of time, and I begin to understand why Scott’s blog went from daily to weekly, to a couple of times a month. Typing is not my strength, so I suspect my entries will become shorter and more episodic. Anyway, I brought a couple of pots of coffee up from the coffee shop, and while Dee and Scott sleep, I’m working on this. After yesterday’s full agenda, I think they will sleep for a while. The city is humming (I have the window open) but not really noisy We are on the twentieth floor, and sounds blend together on their way up, except for the occasional angry tattoo of horns, or the late night fireworks still being used to mark the lunar new year.

When my crew is up and ready (after 10), we walk to People’s Park, a large area set aside to celebrate the revolution. On the way, I stop at a branch of the Bank of China to exchange some money, and it goes much quicker here The park, where we enter it, is not much of a memorial or celebration. Large groups of people seem to be looking for work, a kind of open air networking. The grounds are poorly maintained and rather grim. Perhaps in the spring, with the blooms, this is a brighter, cheerier place, but now it is somber and a little depressing.

We take the subway, bright, clean, huge, modern, to the are of town called the French Concession. The name is a hold over from the early 1900's when the then “Imperial Powers” forced themselves on China for trade rights and divided up Shanghai into areas of control. The French, British, German, Russians, and good old USA each took a piece, like tasty pie, and made it their own. The French built extensively, and the architecture remains in this area.. Walking and seeing the sights stirs our appetites, so at about 1 we take a cab to the modern dining are we had seen yesterday at the intersection of Madang Road and Taicang Road. We dine, alfresco, at Paulaner Munchen, a Bavarian restaurant and brewhouse. Dee and Scott have a dark beer, and I sip Pelegrina sparkling water with lime. We start off with white sausages, soft pretzels and course mustard. I have the Weiner Schnitzel with potato salad, Scott opts for the knackwurst, bratwurst and sauerkraut, Dee has a mushroom and barley soup with a large salad. Very pleasant, with the crowds strolling by us distinctively international. We stroll through the are to an exact replica of a Parisian bakery, and again sit outside for coffee and pastries. Quite decadent, and very satisfying. Full as ticks on a hound, we toddle off to the subway for a ride to the Shanghai National Museum.

The National Museum is in a different section of the People’s Park. This part is beautiful, broad and open, nicely landscaped, with wide walkways. The museum building is very modernistic. We pay our modest entry fee, and note a Rembrandt exhibit is in house this week. Who’d a thunk it? We check our coats and bags, put away our cameras, and begin exploring the antiquities of China, from pottery, porcelains, bronzes, sculpture, clothing, seals, currencies, paintings, weavings, jade pieces, the list is endless. At five o’clock sharp, a special musical tone throughout the building alerts us of closing time, and we join the huge stream of folks (where in the hell were all these people??) Leaving the museum. The steps out front are filled with vendors - selling kites! Many are flying their wares, and one is a replica of a dragon, maybe 30 feet long, writhing and twisting at about 150 feet up. Very cool. Dee makes the mistake of showing interest in a kite, a red one in the shape of a squid? Jellyfish? Anyway, Scott comes to the rescue, and bargains the price down to a third of the asking price, a task too foreign to Dee. She has now made her first purchase in China, to show her school students. We walk through the park, a lovely evening (but for my sore feet) and travel the seven or eight blocks (BIG BLOCKS) to our hotel, satisfied with another full day. In the hotel, we sit in the lounge. The wait staff, curious about us “white faces”, are all eager to serve and practice their English. While enjoying a cool drink, we listen to the young lady playing a grand piano, mostly American standards, when, amazing! She plays a jazz version of “You are my Sunshine”! Here we are, in Shanghai, listening to a tune penned by a governor of the State of Louisiana, our own Jimmy Davis! The world is indeed small.

Dee is exhausted, and still full from our late (and large) lunch, but Scott is always hungry, so Dee stays in and Scott and I head up the street to a Thai restaurant in another hotel we passed while out today. Scott orders, and we dine on fried shrimp cakes, golden shrimp curry, and sliced pork neck, with sticky white rice and fried egg noodles. I am able to eat with chopsticks; its neither elegant nor efficient, but I am not going hungry. The meal is followed by an unordered “chef’s surprise” post meal sweet. I can not describe the contents of this little cool cup in any polite way - it was like a bowl of cold snot. Neither of us got past the first sip. Back to the hotel, and a good night of sleep.