One Sunday back in March Trent and I met up with our friends Todd and Rebecca for brunch at Taikang Lu, which is a major tourist area and one of the last remaining truly "old" areas in Shanghai. You can check out Todd and Rebecca's musings on their awesome blog Knee How Shanghai. We were smart and got there early so there were no crowds just some locals hanging out and doing awesome things like kissing their pet birds. We browsed around some shops because the place we wanted to eat brunch wasn't open yet, and that is when someone thought they had a celebrity sighting. Really it was just Rebecca. Even though we live in a city of 24 million people, for some Chinese people it is still exciting to see foreigners, and not just any foreigners blonde foreigners. Luckily, if Trent and I head to the Bund we get the same treatment and I can only imagine how many vacation photos we have ended up in. Secretly, I imagine that we end up in their family newsletter and Christmas Cards but that's just silly. After brunch we headed over to the Yu Yuan Garden area and went to a bird/pet market which was mostly cool and a little depressing. Then we went to the "antique" street which had an amazing amount of mostly crap. A lot of it was cool, but totally overpriced. Most of it was new made to look old and then there were the thousands of statues of Mao. I bought a small wooden jewelry box and I am still thinking about purchasing some statues I'll go back again I'm sure! We rounded out our day with a trip to the Museum of the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party near Xintiandi. Xintiandi is the fancy part of Shanghai that is made to look old but is really brand new. The museum is free and they frequently have different exhibits on display, when we were there they had an exhibit solely on the life of Zhou Enlai the first Premier of the PRC from 1949-1976 when he died. You're not allowed to take any pictures inside of the museum but I did manage to sneak one in the courtyard between buildings.
No comments:
Post a Comment