Anyway, I spent another day and a half in Shanghai solo after seeing Ross off to Canada for an extended home visit. By then I had picked up some tourist brochures and found all sorts of places I wanted to see but didn't have time for. I chose Yuyuan Gardens, which was easy to reach on the subway. I took my sunglasses and an umbrella, which ladies use here as parasols. I was also wearing the water-absorbent gel-filled neck cooler things I'd bought in Weihai and slapped sunscreen on the back of my neck.
By "sizzling" I mean, hot. Chinese summers are hot and humid. Shanghai is the farthest south we went this year and although places like Guilin look absolutely breathtaking, there is no way I'm going to visit there in the heat of summer. It will have to wait for some fall or spring when I'm not teaching, if that ever happens at all. Anyway, I spent another day and a half in Shanghai solo after seeing Ross off to Canada for an extended home visit. By then I had picked up some tourist brochures and found all sorts of places I wanted to see but didn't have time for. I chose Yuyuan Gardens, which was easy to reach on the subway. I took my sunglasses and an umbrella, which ladies use here as parasols. I was also wearing the water-absorbent gel-filled neck cooler things I'd bought in Weihai and slapped sunscreen on the back of my neck.
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I'd better wrap up my posts about our summer vacation before the first snows fall. I've covered our trip to Shaanxi Province, where we took in the terra cotta warriors and the revered-by-Communist-nostalgia buffs hideout of Mao and his cronies before they busted out and took over the country. (To the left, the Chairman and his notorious fourth wife, in happier times, as the Daily Mail would say, in Yan'an.) I've just sampled Red Star Over China, by the way, and Edgar Snow's writing style is so breezy and engaging that I think I'll continue reading it, even though it's Commie agitprop. While travelling to Yan'an, I was trying to visualize what it would have been like at the time of the war, and I can travel along with Edgar Snow and experience it through his eyes. Ross and I also made a brief trip to the seaside city of Weihai, where we had a delicious seafood dinner and enjoyed some walks along the waterfront. Weihai has a lot of factories that make fishing poles and tackle, too. We noticed that swimming suits in China are very modest compared to Western or South American standards. Bottom left, some kids at the restaurant watching the fish. Bottom right, boy, that octopus was amazing... I've blogged previously about our visit to Xi'an, home of the famous terra cotta warriors. We also took a two-day escorted tour bus trip to Yan'an, the remote city where Mao and the surviving remnants of the Communist Army collected after the harrowing Long March and established a base to essentially wait out the Second World War. The bus trip was an all-Chinese affair except for Ross and me. The tour guide was worried about what to do with us at first, but I was confident that some other tourist on that bus would speak enough English to translate the vital bits to us, like "be back on the bus by 2:00." And we were right. We were seated right behind Carol, a charming lady on vacation with her family who kept us in the loop. And while our cute young tour guide could talk -- and talk -- to her captive audience, we already knew enough about Yan'an and Mao's time there to understand what we were seeing. When this old world starts to getting me down..... For me, the highlight of the visit to the ancient city of Xi'an was our time spent up on the city walls. The Bell Tower and Drum Tower are beautiful and worth a visit, but riding a biycle around the city walls was a real pinch-me moment. Here we are, riding around the top of the city walls on a bicycle in the middle of China! How 'bout that! We were proud too, of completing the 14 kilometer ride especially on such a hot day while many others were opting for a chauffered ride in the electric carts. Some of the Chinese tourists were cheering the old foreigners on, giving us the "thumbs up." First of course, there's stairs..... there are always stairs.... Which this bride used to great effect for her wedding portrait. She is wearing red, the color for celebrations in China.
As you can see, it was a hazy day, unfortunately, but that's par for the course in China's cities. But if "bike riding on top of a wall" sounded like an unwise proposition, you can see for yourself how broad and level the top of the wall is... |
About the author:I blog about my research into Jane Austen and her world, plus a few other interests. Welcome! My earlier posts (prior to June 2017) are about my time as a teacher of ESL in China (just click on "China" in the menu below). More about me here. Categories
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