Shanghai take too with some doo

Well ( my friend told me this is how all good emails begin)

we are back in Shanghai. We thought we were going to go to a Lake city called Hangzhou but I guess in the autumn is isn't very nice so we took a bus (that got caught in an hour standstill traffic jam) back to S-town.The transportation systems here are excellent...like they are use to trafficking around millions of people or something. Nice bus but sadly we have made our first travel foh-pah and left our most excellent tripod on the bus. It was Mike's last staff discount purchase and funnily enough the same one is more expnsive here. We tried to track it down but no luck. Oh well. a real pain because it was a VERY cool tripod and for those of you who know Mike, I know you can feel his disappointment.lucky we have insurance.

This morning we got up and made our way to the Shanghai museum. For 4 NZ $ you can see a very impressive collection of pottery, seals, coins, clothing, etc. We started by visiting the rooms with an exhibition from the Prado of cool stuff from Europe spanning the Renaissance to Impressionism. That was more up our alley but we still were energized for the exquisite display of chinese pottery...wow they knew how to fire up a fine pot! Some incredible colours and thousands of years ago they were doing this. Energy waned quickly and our investigation of the coins and chops was less thorough.

It was the driest day we have had yet, quite warm really and enjoyed seeing the city bloom with people and energy a bit more. ( oh last night post-tripod loss, Lucy and I went down to the river along with the other 10,000 people and got some really cool pix of those amazing/sparkly buildings....quite a site). We took the metro to Carrefoure which is a French store thinking we might be able to find some muffins or something (silly us) but did get some interesting sort of pastry items. They had a Coldstone and so we indulged ( and it really is because its like twice the price of a 4 dish dinner) but it tasted soooo good. A jolly white man walked in with a grin and sat near us. The staff all sort of chime into these singsongy rhymes every few minutes and so we were all laughing in a collective foreigner laugh and he asked us how long we'd been here etc...turns out he is an english teacher (duh) and had lived in China for a year a while back so he gave us all sorts of advice on our trip to Tibet and other things to see and things do and not do...very helpful. He was great, eccentric in a sort of endearing way. He could talk about as much as Mike about whatever subject you can think up. It was fun listening to them talk about Tibet and the history...he had some crazy stories about places he'd been but he was almost like a silly guy so very unexpected but refreshing.

So we have made plans to head up to Qufu which is the birthplace and death place of Confuscious ( I can never spell that). Next week (from the 1-7) is China national holiday so things are about to get really really busy so we are going to head north before the rest of the country get on the trains too. From there we will make our way to Beijing where we are meeting a friend on the 4th.

And for the last and most amusing story ( maybe not amusing).

Yesterday while wandering back to the train station in Suzhou we stopped at a McDonalds to cool off and sit down. We noticed this father and is son over in the corner and I looked over to see the little kid just wizzing away...see some of the kids wear these pants with slits all the way from the bum to the front for easy release. So there he was just wizzing on the floor! So we all laughed (ha ha) and couldn't believe that he was doing it right there on the floor ( as we have seen lots of people wizzing in corners and bushes but not on public floors!) but then the kid went down to squat ( he was like 2) and BOOM! right there he was doing the DOO! and this wasn't baby DOO, this was sick nasty baby DOO and a lot of it! We were stunned but just kept watching. I would look away to dry heave and then go back for another look! sick I know. So his dad takes a wrapper and covers it up like no, my baby didn't just nasty crap all over the floor here under this tissue. Obviously the kid was sick because he just kept squatting having more to go. So there it was, a floor of wiz and doo right there next to us. The woman who cleans walked by and looked and asked in suprise (translated by Mike), "is he going to the bathroom?" so the dad picked up his kid having to hold him in such a way that nothing else spewed forth from the split in his pants and he was gone leaving the woman to clean up baby diarrhea ( i know that may sound really grosse but I have to use these strong words as to properly express what we beheld). Uh yeah. So what do you think about that. Later Mike said he just really wished he had videoed it so he could put it on You tube. I just had to work all day to not remember what I had seen and throw up in my mouth!

So there you go. More later.

c & m