Will may blog more reflections and some themes later, but now it is time to rest and unpack.
July 18, 2006
July 17, 2006
July 16, 2006
Dinner with the Du Family
Everyone split up tonight to eat dinner with families in Shanghai. Mrs. Pang and Mrs. Story, your bloggers, went to dinner with the Du family, so these are the photos we have tonight.
Ma Du had the great idea to have us make dumplings for our dinner. It helped take the pressure off us and Chenny for translating all the time. It turns out that Mr. Du is the best dumpling maker in his family so Mrs. Story tried to have her best dumpling compete with his ... of course, he knew immediately which of the two on the bottom was his. Oh well, at least I tried!!
btw the left one is Mrs. Story's ...
These were all of his pristine ones! They tasted great, btw.
Now those inept Americans have added to the pile ... oh dear.
Here we all are in the Du apartment. Thanks Chenny!!!
Sunday Lunch
Lunch was Dim Sum with some previous exchange students to Crystal Springs. This is the outside of the restaurant. You can see it is very popular. The signs extol the virtues of the restaurant: Creative, Humor, Award, Elegance, Harmony. The following picture is of the statue in front demonstrating what happens when you eat too much of the great food. You get fat but happy ... which is how many of us on this trip are starting to feel!! We have truly eaten like Kings, thanks to Mr. Kwong.
I just loved this sign. It is on a staircase with big railings. Any small child would want to climb them, but clearly the management wants to warn us about the dangers of climbing. I think the drawings say it all.
Chinese Communist Party Museum
While most of the group went to see art treasures at the Shanghai Museum, Mrs. Story went to the Communist Party museum. It is a renovated Shikumen near the trendy Xitiandi area of Shanghai. The meeting for the founding of the CPC was held in 1921 in secret at the Bowen Girls' School. They have meticulously recreated the actual room complete with table and tea cups. The museum has three sections: 1) dedicated to the imperialist period (Opium War to fall of Qing dynasty); 2) "bourgeois" revolution with Dr. Sun Yat sen and the rise of the proletariat; 3) founding of the CPC in 1921. They had to leave out the persecution (and near crippling) of the communist party presaging the Long March; I think it marred the great and glorious narrative.
For Mrs. Story, making it to the museum was really the culmination of many graduate student dreams. In fact, she convinced a Chinese tourist to take her picture with the sign in front!
Actually, as you can see, there were no shortages of tourists to ask! This was the line to get in.
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