Arrival

I got picked up at 8 in the morning at the airport and we are taking a taxi into the Pudong (meaning east of the river). It is very western style you could think it is NYC except thjere are wide open spaces for people to walk and cars to ride. But the shops, the malls, even the new buildings look very close. So you can have a grande latte at Starbucks, go shopping at H&M and so on ...  

Amazing. So getting around with the Subyay is very easy, we went to the financial centre. Being on my own in the afternoon, I just got off the subway to visit Yundun garden, new building in the very clssic style. built and two females students asked me to take a picture, one being from Shanghai one the other one visiting her from the south. 


Foodstore

 Since it was very crowded in the garden, they decided to go to a tea ceremony, since this is the month f the tea festival. Very local thing, I would probably never recognized that in this street there is a tea festival going on. Some scenes from the street.










Mahjongg

It was a lot of fun I learned a lot about the god of tea of what kind of things you can make tea of, the tea of god, the different meanings of numbers nd how you can represent them with one hand up unitl at least twelve (six is luck (the handsign looks like the “Hang loose” greeting in Hawaii) and eight is becoming rich, that’s a s much as I remember. And tons of other things there was a lot of enternainment and stories provided. After telling me all the stuff around Konfuzious the four beauties, the gods, the meaning of the numbers, which tea is goodfor what, they kept asking me what more tradition and culture we have (whether we also have beauties we admire).

And I have to admit I was tired but still a little ashamed, either we don’t have that kind of culture (does beer drinking and humpdada in Munich really count?) or I don’t recall. Anyway this was a lot of fun meeting random people. Anyway after that I picked up where I left off, going to the garden.

And again, food and people became more interesting than anything else.

Surgar-glaced fruits (mostly strawberries)

you can smell it by looking at it

So, going out for dinner. Again, it is pathetic to go out for dinner on my own. I still decided to do it. I went to the soup experts. It turned out they have much much more then just soup.

They have a category that is called “Enhance masculinity and kidney”. And what you find there are mainly suche dishes like “double boiled deer penis with 10 treasures”. And of course there was a picture going with it. In the morning, my colleague laughed at me when I said I like spicy food. Such as Indian food. He said you don’t know how hot our food is. Anyway I went for the lamb (marked as spicy sand I was being asked two times whether I really wanted this) and … it is not really spicier than Indian food, just more chillies than other hot spices.

Another thing to mention, there was a couple sitting next to me, it took me half an hour to find out that they don’t talk to each other. Each of them looked in their smartphone. I thought, sure modern times, ut then the food came, they put the phones aside and they still weren’t talking.

She made two attempts, but clearly it was not welcome. I know I should not do tha, but I couldn’t resist, if you sit there on your own it’s really hard to not look around. So the stupidity of the men not communicating with their girlfriends is a worldwide problem. Even with such friendly and talkative people. She actually talked more with me than with her boyfriend, because she realized that I got the bill instead of the rice after the dish and nobody was speaking English (which by the way happened rarely to me today).

And now coming back to the hotel and finally thinking about why not only facebook is not reachable but also all links with the word “blog” in it are blocked. Unbelievable, censoring all blogs? So amazingly google+ works, facebook doesn’t all blogs don’t. So I dont give up, hopefully you can read this and somebody (i.e. Carsten) was so nice and able to post it for me ….