Yes I Even Got Zac to Go To Lisa Pearls

I can't go to Shanghai without going to Lisa Pearls and the Bee Cheng Hiang Meat market - Baubles for Nicole and meat with no bones for me.

Zac in Shanghai

Shanghai with the Metro, Maglev, and train system makes it an easy city to get around. It reminded Zac a lot of New York City except that he said the Metro was easier to figure out than the NYC subway system. We stayed in a really cool apartment/hotel that was reasonably priced and within walking distance of almost everything we wanted to see.

We did the Shanghai Museum and Shanghai Art Museum. Both of these buildings plus the theater are located on the People’s Square, which used to be the old Shanghai Race course during the times when there were large British, American and French concessions in the mid 1800’s. Besides the very interesting architecture Shanghai really does have a unique and very interesting history and one of the best museums I have ever been to.

Do You Think I Could Get Zac and Nicole to Dress Alike?

Not only do they buy the colorful Hawaiian type shirts they also buy the shorts and hats to match AND they make their family wear the matching ones. I would estimate that more than 30% of the couples and families that came to the “End of the Earth” rocks wore such matching outfits. They sure must have cooperative kids - It would have never worked with Zac.

End of the Earth

On Friday it sprinkled most of the day so it was a perfect day to climb on the double decker bus that stopped infront of our hotel and we toured a large part of Sanya for 10 yuan. (about $1.50) Only disadvantage to sitting on top was every so often if I wasn’t paying attention palm leaves would hit me in the face. We got off at the “End of the Earth” There are two rocks that each have two characters carved into them. One has “Tian Ya” means edge of the sky and the other one has the characters “Hai Jiao” meaning end of the sea. Together they mean “End of the Earth”. The picture of the rock is on the two Yuan bill and millions of Chinese come here to have their photo taken infront of the rocks. We also joined the crowd and documented our trip.

Hainan Island - Sanya

Located in the south part of China, it is an island that is supposed to resemble Hawaii. Like Hawaii, it has clear ocean water, shells, mountains, colorful shirts (and more) and lots of palm trees. Unlike Hawaii it has a lot of Russian tourists and lots cheap tour buses. Our first full day was beautiful and sunny but not too hot. We took advantage of the great weather and spent the day on the beach and in the huge hotel pool - both times carefully positioning ourselves under the big umbrellas. We still got sunburned, Cynthia got the worse – I had a good enough “base tan” from St Simons that I just got a little pink. For Zac’s information and anyone else that surfs – In Yulong Bay where we were staying there were no surfable waves and this was just days before a typhoon (their version of a hurricane) would be passing by.

One of the biggest differences between the USA and China is they do not cover the weather as thoroughly as we seem to do. We looked for information on many of the TV channels and still heard little about when or where it would hit. Weather seems to be American’s “small talk” where as the “small talk” for the Chinese seems to be centered around food.

The Wave - Qiantang River Tidal Bore

Mid-Autumn Festival is a national holiday so we got Monday off. I didn’t do anything special because I was giving my back a break from the “adventure” of Chinese travel and because there was lots of rain due to a typhoon off the coast of China. During this holiday people in this province eat mooncakes, look at the full moon, and watch the famous Qiantang River Tidal Bore. Our school is located on the bank of the Qiantang River so we joined the thousands of other students and families in watching this event. This tidal bore is supposedly the biggest in the world, but it still looked rather small to me. Click here to read more about tidal bores.

I was initially more fascinated by all the people that came to watch the small dirty looking wave roll by but I changed my mind when I found a video online of Brad Gerlach an American surfer surfing the “Silver Dragon”. The "Silver Dragon" is a colorful name for this wave that runs from one side of the river to the other. The unfinished bridge that you see in the video is right beside our campus so we might have been witnesses to this event – but I doubt it. We did see a wave runner close to the other side of the river but no surfer.
http://www.surfline.com/video/video_player/video_player.cfm?id=17637

Mooncakes And The Wave

This is the Mid-Autumn Festival where everybody gives everybody else Moon Cakes usually in beautiful boxes and bags. Presentation is really important here. Moon Cakes remind me a LITTLE of fig newtons. But cake on the outside is much harder and dryer and the filling might not be fruit. Sometimes it is a sweet redbean paste with an egg yolk in the middle, sometimes it is a sweet green pea filling or a rubbery fruit filling (they are my favorite if I have to eat them). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mooncake They might be better if they were sampled with a big glass of ice cold milk, which is impossible here because all you can buy is the room temperature box milk which just doesn’t do it for me.

The Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15 day of the 8th lunar month, so the actual date will vary between mid September to mid October. I think it might have something to do with the harvests but I found lots of legends online – this web site had the most common 4 – just scroll down http://www.chinapage.com/Moon/moon00.html