April 29, 2018 - Our best trip in China - Guilin!

This was a beautiful week - even if it started out as a mess.

Most Sundays, we and the Ansteads prepare a hot meal at the church for anywhere between 2-10 young single members in our area, many of whom are students.  It's a chance for them to eat American food and socialize after church.  So we generally navigate the subway with bags and various containers of food as we travel an hour to church.  Our task is complicated by the fact that there is no kitchen at the church, but we've been pretty creative about working around that fact, and the meals generally turn out well. Anyway, on this day we had made a bean soup and Clay Anstead had made potato soup, which we were going to put in crock pots, plug in, and warm up during the meetings.  We decided to take a taxi - only 30 minutes and less walking on both ends of the trip.  But there was a slip as we unloaded, and we ended up with a mess of "roadkill" potato soup...it's an accident that was waiting to happen!

We've been wanting to visit the Jewish refugee museum, and finally got the chance on Memorial Day, a day off school. It is a small museum that recognizes the people of Shanghai for accepting 23,000 Jewish refugees who came to China near the beginning of World War II. The museum included a synagogue they built. We tried to follow what was called "a walking tour" of the area and buildings by starting at the museum and ending at the Peace Hotel, a fabulous historic hotel built on the Bund by Sir Victor Sassoon.

Michael Blumenthal (who served as Secretary of the Treasury),
 age 10 when he escaped Nazi Germany with his  family in 1939,
is included on a wall of names of people who spent time here
during a time when Shanghai was occupied by the Japanese.

The synagogue

On our walk we found gardens of roses in full bloom along the Bund.

We also accidentally crashed a couple of weddings. Who knew that some of the hotels near the Bund (where we were looking for restrooms and/or art galleries) were sites for some pretty extravagant weddings during the Memorial Day holiday? In one case, the elevator we were in opened right behind the photographer. The young couple he was photographing looked at us in surprise, probably trying to figure out who had invited the sweaty-looking foreigners.

Looking for yet more fun, at the end of the week we flew to Guilin, the site of the quintessential mountains in many a Chinese painting. It was beautiful, and the mosquitoes weren't biting yet. We visited a night market with a variety of delicacies,

Yes, they have scorpion kabobs!

visited a huge cave with stalagtite/stalagmite sculptures lit with various colored lights to enhance their beauty,

The features around this shallow lake in the cave were lit with
a blue light which reflected in the water, and a screen  showed
dancers performing a beautiful and moving piece from Swan Lake.

watched a waterfall come down from the top of our hotel,

took a cruise down the Li River,

Now, everyone will want a water buffalo (Veggie Tales allusion)

Our cruise ship.

We saw the view that is on the back of the 20 RMB note.

had a thrilling/peaceful ride on a lawn chair lashed to a bamboo raft,

Bamboo raft and captain

saw ethnic marriage clothing (both ancient and "good deals" created for tourists),

walked down an old section of the town where we were invited into the home of a woman who practices the ancient art of "cupping," which is supposed to provide joint relief,

watched a show at the convergence of two rivers,

The show in on the water, with the limestone cliffs providing the background

and took a bike ride through the countryside.

A solar-powered bug catcher: a light to attract them,
a fan to suck them in, and a jar for collection -
all powered by the sun. Shaped like a fish to blend in?

The countryside included farms, rice paddies, and little outhouses that provide fertilizer for the farms. We've certainly seen a variety of restrooms in this country. Here are a couple from this trip:

John walked through a doorway into a restroom with this view!

We were incredibly fortunate that we experienced little rain in Guilin, because the clouds rolled in as we were leaving (after a 3 hour flight delay).  We watched a great light show from our airplane

and our guide texted us the next week with pictures of downpours and flooding all along the peaceful places we had enjoyed visiting.

April 22, 2018 - Out and about in Shanghai

A couple of different adventurous adventures recently!

The first started innocently enough.  The Ansteads discovered a park fairly near our apartment and wanted to show it to us.  The "green spaces" in this huge city are really amazing! Colorful in both sight and sound.  Quiet and yet busy. This one has walking paths, a patio with many couples dancing (in the middle of a weekday afternoon), a lake with boat rentals, a petting zoo, an amusement park, etc.

We like the sign.

With only two other boats on the lake, we decided on a nice, peaceful $7 boat ride.  These boats have electric motors and move about noiselessly and rather slowly. We had a lovely view of trees, flowers, people, and a few turtles basking in the sun. John drove with Kathy beside him and Clay and Tammie in the back seat. Then a fish jumps. Nice, right? Into the boat next to Clay! We were all digging for phones to record this, which resulted in us nearly driving into the rock wall. John should not look for his phone while driving a boat, even a slow one. Kathy had to turn the wheel away from a sure loss of our deposit. Clay tried to grab the fish to display his "catch," but the slippery guy "got away," sliming him and Kathy's arm in the process.  We have no evidence, but this is a true fish tale of the one that got away.

A peaceful park in the middle of a city of  25 million people.

"Feed the birds" - One took a morsel
right from his hand.

Our next outing was to Chongming Island.  This is a very large island (nearly 500 square miles) at the mouth of the Yangtze River.  It is technically part of Shanghai, but much of it is a very different from the major metropolis we're used to.  It's about an hour ride by bus to the bus terminal on the island.  We visited two parks, starting with the Dongtan Wetlands Park at the southern tip.

A map showing where Chongming Island is in relation to Shanghai.

Definitely a change from the hustle and bustle of downtown!

We toured the park on a "bicycle built for two" - our first
experience with this.  And we enhanced our teamwork skills!

We found goats. John has a student from
Chongming who says they are "delicious." The
goat thought John was delicious, too!

A highlight was the group of Chinese visitors who called the swans in for a visit:

Next, we got a taxi to Dongping National Forest Park, which is about two-thirds of the way to the north end of the island.  This meant an hour taxi ride.  Getting a taxi to pick us up at the wetlands was a story all by itself, but part of the adventure and resulted in reaffirming for us how very helpful strangers can be when we don't speak the language and find ourselves unable to call a taxi with our usual means! 

Besides a colorful entrance, the park's entry
walk is decorated with umbrellas hung upside down.

We thought the plant dragons were particularly interesting.

One walkway had several colorful trellis arches.

And there were barrels pouring out flowers. You can see some of
the forest in the background. There are miles of walkways through
the forest, most paved, and some camping (RV) and picnicking grounds. 

The grounds are cared for manually, at least along the walkways.

We followed the lead of an old Chinese couple who had fun mimicking the hearts.

 Then it was time to go back to Shanghai to teach our holiday makeup class on Saturday.  We had gone to the island on a Friday to beat the crowds of a holiday weekend, which takes place Sunday - Tuesday.  It worked - no crowds at all.  We came away glad we had decided to seek out this island that we heard a student praise last fall.  It was a great outing!