Hello again from the Far East, our faithful friends and
family!
First, let us apologize for being remiss in our posting; it
seems that every day holds such adventure that even trying to write about an
average day can feel a mighty task. Our days have been anything but average for
the past few weeks, however. As it happens, late September through the month of
October have always held busy times for us in terms of celebrations (my
birthday is September 29th, our anniversary is October 9th,
and Brett’s birthday is October 30th – not to mention all of the
other family members’ birthdays that fall in between). Throw on top of all of
that merriment-making of an 11-day national holiday in a foreign country, and boy,
is there a lot to share! To that end, and because of our lack of regular
updates, I’ll try my hardest to be comprehensive and brief – a monumental task, if you have ever read my writing.
I’ll back up a bit to my birthday, Saturday, September 29th.
We put an album on Facebook of some pictures of the wonderful dinner we had at
our friend Ying Ying’s parents’ restaurant. (Here's a link, for those of you who are not on Facebook.) It was truly a spectacular feast,
in the typical Chinese family-style tradition. Her parents prepared all kinds
of wonderful foods they don’t even serve in the restaurant, just for the occasion.
Brett and I are constantly amazed at how welcoming the Chinese people are, and
this was another such occasion that we felt such warmth, kindness, and selfless
generosity that it still fills my heart to bursting to think of it now.
Our
dinner companions that night were a truly multicultural crowd: in attendance
were four Americans (our friends Jesse and Vaughn, and ourselves), Ying Ying
and her parents (all Chinese, but from a different province than Jiangsu), a
Punjabi Indian man named Diraj, his Chinese wife Mo Mo, and their beautiful
daughter Monica, and two of Diraj’s colleagues, one Indian man and one Chinese
fellow. It was wonderful to hear at any moment Mandarin, Wu (a local dialect),
English, or Hindi.
My friends and Brett all conspired to have a birthday cake
made in the likeness of Jack Skellington (they know me so well!), and I killed
the cake, true to my grandfather Peepa's style. They liked it so much, I think they’ll take up his
practice. I know he’d be proud. I also led a sing-along to one of my mom’s
favorite tunes, “Señor don Gato.” All in all, it was a really
great night, and not one I’ll soon forget.
My companions were perhaps a bit over-zealous in their
"meow-meow-meow"-ing...
The next night was the Mid-Autumn Festival, which follows
the lunar calendar, so it happened to fall only one day before National Day. True
to Chinese tradition, Brett and I ate our mooncakes under the full moon,
though we were feeling a bit under the weather (did I mention how much fun we
had the night before?)
The following days, Monday, October 1st, and
Tuesday, October 2nd, Brett and I visited two of the local parks in
our city: Liangfeng Ecological Park and Shazhou Park. Monday was National Day,
so Liangfeng was a bit crowded, but we were still able to find a shady spot to
have a picnic and do some reading. Shazhou Park is quieter in general, and more
beautiful, to my mind, and we brought along our instruments – all in all, it
was a fun, relaxing couple of days.
This is a video slideshow Brett put together
of the first
couple of days of our vacation
Thursday, October 4th began the traveling portion
of our holiday. We went first to Shanghai, were we were able to catch our
friend Jesse performing in a multi-cultural tap dance revue. She specializes in
traditional Irish dance, but there were many other kinds on display that day as
well. She showed us around to a couple of neat districts in Shanghai that
evening, namely Tianzifang
and other areas of the French
Concession. We ended up at a great little brewery, and got our craft beer
and buffalo wing fix.
The next day, Friday the 4th, Brett and I struck
out on our own for Old Shanghai, a very touristy area that still has the
ancient-style buildings for many blocks. There’s a ton of shopping, sights, and
street food to partake in, and the hours flew by. By that night, our other
flatmate Ashley had joined us from her travels earlier in the week to a tropical
island off the southern coast called Hainan.
We were able to satisfy another Western food craving that night, as we found a
Zapata’s. Yes, UNC Charlotte friends, the EXACT same restaurant as the one we
used to eat at in grad school! Much to my dismay, however, though the food was
delicious, cheese dip was nowhere to be found on the menu. As the Chinese say
when they’re frustrated, ai-yah! We
ended the night playing cards over some Tiger beers in a cute little bar down
the way.
Because National Day is such a popular time to travel,
Shanghai was literally swarming with people. You’ll see in the video below just
how crazy it was to even cross a street. We had a great time, but I’ll be glad
to go back again when it’s a little less insane.
"Shouldering through Shanghai" is the best way we can
describe the crowds that week
Saturday the 5th, we traveled by bullet train to Suzhou, a beautiful, ancient city
only an hour south of us. It’s full of gardens and temples, but also has the
largest ex-pat community in all of China, so it’s an interesting city on
multiple fronts. For example, there’s a bar called the Drunken Clam, which is
Peter Griffin’s favorite haunt, for all of you Family Guy fans out there. The
bar itself is Family Guy themed, and the neon
sign is the exact one in the show – animated an all.
Though we were there for 3 days and 3 nights, we feel as
though we barely scratched the surface. This post is already ridiculously long,
so I’ll allow the beautiful videos Brett made do most of the talking here. Very
quickly, we visited a Buddhist temple, a Taoist temple, a street of bars that
is not, in fact, bar street, and stayed in a beautiful hostel located on an
historic alley-style pedestrian street called Piang Jiang Lu. We also
celebrated our first wedding anniversary (woo hoo!) in real style at a
fantastic upscale Italian restaurant owned by a Frenchman. The food was
phenomenal, I finally got both my mushroom soup AND cheese fixes, and we had
the first great bottle of red wine we’ve had in China (good vintages are surprisingly hard
to come by).
All in all, it’s hard to believe that only ten days have
passed since we last posted. We’ve experienced so much that’s impossible to put
into words, but hopefully these slideshows will help. Brett did a beautiful job
putting them together, and composed original music for the Shanghai video (though he’s
too modest to toot his own horn and tell you guys – that’s what I’m for!). We
hope you enjoy watching them as much as we enjoyed living the experiences!
Until next time…
Liz & Brett
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