Welcome to my new blog.

Apparently my other blog was “harmonized” (Chinese slang for censored).  China blocks tons of websites with the Great Firewall (more slang), including: blogger, facebook, twitter, google groups etc.  I have had this domain for a few months now, as a failed attempt to become a “tech blogger” and get some industry credibility.  I quickly found that trying to blog formally is a lot of work and not too exciting.  I am going to use this site for my trip and by the end of the trip I will decide to either export my entries back to blogger and try to tech blogging again (doubtful), or import my blogger entries and keep this as a general use blog I will occasionally update on trips or when I see something of interest.

Now, on to the update.

After my last post, I went to the food court and ordered a bowl of dolsot bi bim bab with lot’s of spicy bulgogi on it.  It was incredible, I have pictures, but I am not sure how to upload them to Nan’s Mac.  It was some of the best Korean food I have eaten, and definitely the best airport food, and it was only like $8.  Korea is high on my list of desired destinations now.

My flight into Shanghai went smoothly, it was about 2 hours and I slept for a lot of it.  The airport was huge and empty, there was no one there except our flight which made immigration and baggage check super easy.  At the immigration stand, there was a little box with buttons I could push to indicate how satisfied I was with the interaction, I thought that was really cool, and the lady was one of the most friendly immigration officers I have ever dealt with.

I saw Nan as soon as I walked out, and even though he didn’t have a sign with my name on it like he promised, it was great to see him.  We tried to take the high speed maglev train, but we were 10 minutes past the last train of the night.  We took a cab instead which was like 30 miles, and about $10 each, so not a bad deal at all.  We are staying in Nan’s friend’s parents apartment (they are on vacation), which is a big, nice 3 bd 2 bath apt.  It was absolutely freezing last night, since the heaters haven’t been on inb weeks, but it is much more tolerable now.

I got up at 6 since I was kind of jet lagged, but really not too bad considering it was a 16 hour difference.  I waited for Nan to get up and then we went to eat breakfast.  We waked to a little stand on the street and ate various bao’s and friend things, as well as hot soy milk.  It was pretty tasty.  We then walked through a market which had a ton of different live seafood (inc eels and turtles) as well as like 6 different kinds of eggs.

After eating, we went into town and walked around the historic french concession.  There was a big park which was filled with old people who were flying kites, dancing, doing tai chi and playing cards.  They all seemed really happy and it was very communal, it seems like a great place to be old.  We visited Sun Ya Sen’s old house and museum, which had some neat artifacts.  After walking around for a bit, we met one of Nan’s friends at Ding Tai Fung, which is probably the most famous dumpling restaurant in the world.  They have locations all over Asia and were rated one of the top ten restaurants in the world by New York Times.  We stuffed ourselves on 4 kinds of dumplings, soups, veggies and fried rice.  It was all quite delicious, and Nan’s friend was very nice.

After that we walked around Huai Hai lane, a very famous upscale shopping district.  We went to the old house of our family friend Tina’s mom, which has since been renovated into a ULTRA posh luxury store.  The story of the house is here http://www.creativehunt.com/shanghai/articles/shanghai-shanghai.  It is huge, and has a massive yard behind a big gate right off the street, it is one of the nicest places we saw all day.  We also went to a big buddhist temple, which had an impressive giant buddha.

Shanghai is really modern – there are flat screens everywhere, really clean, not very crowded and easy to navigate – English on every sign.  It is way less intimidating then I expected China to be, and very nice.  Everyone we talk to who is from here says there really isn’t much to do in Shanghai except for eat and shop, but so far it has been very fun.  We will see how the week progresses!

Hopefully I will be able to keep writing regularly, right now we have wifi at the apartment, and Nan has lent me his computer, we will see how the hotel situation is.  Tomorrow I am going to Hangzhou, which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful cities in China, so I will be sure to take lots of pictures (I have taken 40 so far, mostly of food).

My cell phone here is (86) 13482506740 in case anyone needs to reach me.

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