Shanghai Zoo

We've been here for more than 3 years and yet we never thought of visiting the zoo.  I guess we are not really zoo people to begin with.  

We didn't expect much to be honest and we were surprised to see the vast variety of animals!

This is the first vulture I saw in real life.  We were down-wind and I swear I could almost smell the raw meat.  It put me off a bit.

Cute little jack-ass penguins.

This has to be the ugliest brown bear in the world.  For some reason the mouth is all crooked?  Too many biscuits?  Poor thing is being fed junk all day.

Begging for food here.  So sad.

At least the pandas are kept behind glass otherwise they will be eating junk too.

A cool cat.

My husband said he was sure the lion heard his shutter and decided to stare right into his camera.  It freaked him out a bit.

My favourite animal for the day.

There were at least four giraffes as we could see.  I wonder why so many?

Too bad there were so many clowns in there feeding the poor animals junk food.  Where are the park rangers when you need them?

Only in China

Taken at Century Park Pudong.

Shanghai furniture

We had seen some pretty nasty stuff before but this shop left us speechless still. Why????

Signs in China

We heard on the news that Beijing will start correcting all the English signs in the city before the 2008 Olympics. Nooooooooooooooooo!

my 100th post!

My 100th post! I shall dedicate it to the great signs here in China.

Suzhou day trip

We finally made it to Suzhou, the most famous attraction in Jiangsu because of its silk production, old Chinese gardens, and canals with the old bridges. Before we went I was expecting a somewhat quiet and historic town but the truth is a little different. Unlike the picturesque Hangzhou it's pretty modernized with a number of Chinese gardens dotted around here and there. And like many tourist spots in China the place was packed with tourists, a bit of a nuisance but I am sure the people said the same thing about us. We started our trip at the Garden of the Master of the Nets. We picked it because of its funny name but it turned out to be a cute little garden. Built in the 12th century, it was abandoned and restored in the 18th century by an retired official who wanted to be a fisherman - hence the name of the place.

We then visited the Lion Grove, constructed in 1350 by a monk as a memorial to his master. The place was full of abstract stone lion sculptures but I thought the mazes and the buildings were more interesting.

When things started to look a bit similar after two gardens we decided to have lunch. Then it was time to see the new Suzhou Museum, designed by I.M.Pei. The relatively small exhibits of wood carvings, porcelains, jade, and other artifacts were interesting, but the museum itself was rather captivating.

The next stop was the North Temple's pagoda. The nine-storey wooden structure provided a birds eye view of the city it's worth the climb.

Lastly we decided to take a look at the Grand Canal, which links Beijing and Hangzhou together. Traffic was a lot busier than we thought and the barges could go fast!

Fish anyone?

I saw these right before Chinese New Year at the market as well the previous but had no idea what they were. This year I got photographic evidence and showed my Aiyi.

Look at the size of them! Absolutely humongous!

And guess that they are.

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Roll drums.......

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They are eels! They are only available in winter because of the way they are dried and prepared. It's a very popular item for Chinese New Year because the pronunciation of the word fish is auspicious. It sounds the same as plenty and abundance. Each one of them would cost between RMB150 to RMB200 depending on the size. My Aiyi said it's very nice - I will take her word for it.

A Day at the Museum

Er, I think it's trying to tell us that it's now OK to bang foreigners?

Park Life

I know my dear friend M would love this one:

P.S. How's life in Calgary? Frozen to death yet?

Christmas tree

What can you do with your two-bit plastic tree until the next Christmas?

A little advertising?

The Dark Side

There is always the dark side in a city. In Hong Kong there is Kowloon being the dark side. In Vancouver you have Richmond. In Halifax you have Dartmouth. In Shanghai you have the north of Suzhou Creek.

Travelling to the north of Suzhou Creek is totally unnecessary in your day-to-day life, as there isn't a lot going on there. The only time I go over the creek would be to visit the Qipu clothing mall, which has now slowly being taken over by the ex-Xiang Yang Market vendors. (Xiang Yang Market was the place to be to buy your top-quality-international-renowned brand names such as "Lolex" and "Guci". Anyways. My neighbour U and I decided to brave it and visit the dark side today. The trip's purpose was to explore the Lu Xun (a famous Chinese writer 1881-1936)Park and Museum, and to walk the former Jewish neighbourhood.

For a full cultural experience we decided to take the train/subway. The subway here is pretty efficient but usually cramp-packed with travellers. Usually it's a lot easiler to get a taxi - except in the rain of course. For today we figured it was not rush hour and we should be alright.
We were also pretty stoked to go on the Line, 3 which is above ground.

There were more people on the train then we anticipated. Overall people were not too pushy and we all got on gracefully. You definitely need your space here on the train and this was probably as crowded as we can handle. Take note of the guy's hair. I hope it's hair wax.

View from the train. This is as sunny as Shanghai gets. I guess the grease patches on the window on the train made it look worse.

I think a lot of these people were travelling to the train station to go back to their home towns (hence the luggage). They were generally happy smiley people (and a little curious on us as we looked a little out of space with our maps etc). I think the prospect of them going home for Chinese New Year put smiles on their faces. How sweet!

A common sight in the city: puff jackets and bicycle.

Finally we made it to Lu Xun Park - a lot more beautiful then I thought it would be!

Retired opera performers giving public performance

Another nice view in the park. We decided that it has picnic potential! Glass of wine and some cheese in the Spring perhaps?

We headed to Lu Xun's former residence not too far from the park. The tour was nice and sweet.

Lu Xun's front door:

After our lunch break we decided to walk down to the Bund and saved the Jewish neighbourhood for some other day.

The walk, while not eventful, was rather interesting with a number of unique looking buildings. It was good to burn off our pizzas too.

Suzhou Creek.

A newly discovered church - it was bricked in for all those years. Not sure what the story was behind it.

Thought of the day: Shanghai is pretty tourist-friendly I have to say. You can walk around most part of the city without feeling threatened or worried. People mind their own businesses and never once I felt worried walking on my own (even at night) ever since we moved here.