Tourists in our own town...still

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. 

Yu Garden and Qing Fang Market

During the Golden Week a national holiday in China, back at the beginning of October Trent and I had plans to travel but we didn't make them soon enough because literally the entire country is on vacation so it is really difficult to get flights anywhere! So we decided to do some additional exploring in Shanghai which turned out to be very rewarding. We decided to spend one of the days to hunt for a craft supply store for me  made the mistake of wandering into Yu Yuan Gardens a gigantic tourist trap filled with Chinese people on Holiday. I imagined something with garden in the name to be peaceful and full of trees and flowers, maybe some koi ponds instead it is an area of markets and stalls full of junk in buildings made to look old. We literally could not move it was so crowded and every 5 steps someone was trying to sell us a bag or a watch. It was ridiculous.

However, on this same trip we had the pleasant surprise of finding an entire street with several huddles of Chinese men all circled up intently looking at something, so of course I had to know what it was. We went over and discovered they were betting on cricket fights. It was very amusing and interesting to watch, and I think when they turned around and saw a tall white girl watching/photographing intently they were equally amused with me.

We also went to a different fabric market way on the other side of the city in search of fabric for me to craft/sew with. The metro station was connected to another bird and flower market so we wandered through and looked at their wares. There were more interesting creatures and critters to be seen. I really love the bird and flower markets here, they are so visually stimulating and the people are always happy to see us.

The market we went to was humongous, they sold fabric for upholstery and drapes and the prices for cotton fabric were outstanding, it is a wholesale market so they actually supply tailors with fabric for making clothes but they were happy to sell me 1 meter sections of their beautiful fabrics. We wandered across the street from the fabric market and tried to find a sewing machine in this row of shops. There was a lot of ridiculousness going on outside and nothing to see inside. There were again, tons of people complete with three miserable girls dancing in front of an electronics store advertising something but based on their dance it was not readily apparent what.

We had to go on quite a long walk to try and find the sewing machine shops which offered a lot of interesting scenery. I also found a cat at the one sewing machine dealer who was open during the holiday week, it was really beautiful and tucked into a box but as I got closer it gave me quite a warning meow so I backed off.