Happy Birthday China!

October 1, 2012

 Today is a holiday, the birthday of the founding of The People's Republic of China.  I wanted to go to Xitiandi, an affluent district of Shanghai that's covered in beautiful London planes (a popular tree), tasty restaurants and upscale shops.  I was delighted when Stacy, Chelsea, Cam, Krit and Courtney agreed to come too!
Some pictures:

                                                       Usual sculptures abound in Shanghai

 

        Lots of vendors on the outskirts of the district, this one is selling tea.  I bought a coconut from another one and he carved a whole in it so I could drink the water out with a straw.

Poor Cam was walking down the street and a shoeshine guy approached him.  Cam tried to communicate that he didn't want a shine but the guy got aggressive, grabbing Cam's leg and pouring polish on his shoe.  Cam tried to kick him off and run but the guy chased him across the street (where Chelsea and I were standing) and poured more on Cam's other shoe trying to force him into paying for a shine.  Cam was frantic, and I said, "Cam, tell him Bu yao!" (Meaning 'don't want') which Cam then yelled at him.  The guy stopped, grunted, and walked away.  In the picture above Cam is furiously trying to wipe the polish off his shoes with leaves, I'm afraid he didn't find this event quite as funny as I did.

Photo of  Museum of the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, 

located in Xitiandi.

 Posing outside a super overpriced German restaurant.

We walked around the shops for a bit and then found a Western restaurant for lunch.  Ok, don't judge me we paid way too much for our lunch and Cam and I ordered American wheat beer.  Think what you want, I was happy.

I can't even tell you how excited I was to eat smoked salmon and fruit.  The restaurant was  like home: the server took your drink order first, then delivered the drinks and took a food order, then actually stopped and checked in on you while you were eating, then brought the bill AFTER you'd finished and took the payment away to make change.  I was shocked!  I've yet to see this system anywhere else in Shanghai.

 Courtney ordered macaroni and cheese with grilled chicken and when it came I said, "Oh my gosh that looks so good I could just put my face in it!"  For some reason Cam and Chelsea thought that was super funny and started taking pictures with their face in their food.

Why did the street performer cross the road?

 The most typical Chinese site, a man carrying recyclables on the back of a bicycle.

Later, we broke off from Krit and Chelsea and went to see about getting tickets to an acrobatics show.  It looked like we'd have two hours to kill before the box office opened so we took a walk through the neighborhood. 

 We passed a man who had hung probably 30 birdcages on the sidewalk outside his house.  He didn't seem to be selling them, just had them out. When we walked back by two hours later he had brought them all inside...who knows, but they were pretty adorable.  A white cat was sitting under their cages watching them closely.
As we continued to walk we stumbled into the cutest little area of artsy shops and restaurants.  Down these alley ways was a maze of exciting things,and everywhere I looked something beautiful that I wanted to buy.  I escaped with only some photographs and a Shanghai coffee table game but I would love to go back.  Some photos below:

 We ducked into sidewalk cafe for a drink and ended up climbing to the third floor or a beautiful, narrowly built wine bar.  We stayed there for a bit then took off to get tickets for the show!

 Me, Courtney, Cam and Stacy in the lobby of the New Shanghai Circus Theatre, holding our tickets!

We had so much fun at this show!  It was not a high budget production and definitely caters to tourists but the tickets were cheap and it featured some seriously impressive acrobatics.  My favorite was also the showy MC, that wore an immaculate white suit and made energetic announcements in both Chinese and completely incomprehensible English.

 Afterwards we were ecstatic about the show, we stood there in the lobby talking about it for so long that we were there when some of the performers came out in there street clothes, ready to leave!  The performers spoke no English and they laughed at us when we rushed over to them and tried to communicate, "Great job!  Really awesome!  You were amazing!"  using lots of smiles and thumbs ups.  They happily posed for a picture and high-fived us as we said goodbye.  We left, gushing like we'd met big celebrities.  It was the best!
Note: The tall guy on the left was the one going through the hoop in the above pic. Also, there were many teenagers and a few children in the show.  The show runs seven days a week and I'm sure the kids perform every one of them with no labor-law issues. 

Overall it was an AWESOME day!