eat drink seth liz

Another guest post by Arleen and Steve.

The entire country of China is in a single time zone, Bejing time.  This time of year, dawn breaks in Shanghai at about 4:30 AM and it is night time by about 6:30 PM.  We go to bed early, awaken early and get sleepy at noon. Our body clocks are still adjusting.

Yesterday, Liz took us to a food court in one of the large malls for lunch.  We have never seen such a large food court and probably won't ever see one like this again. The progression of booths were, Asian, Asian, Asian, KFC, Asian, Asian, Burger King, Asian etc.  Later that PM we took in an acrobat show. We debated the age of one of the male performers, he looked about 12. He could stand up from a split by sliding his feet together, as if he was being pulled up by a string in the rafters.

Today, we had a half day tour of Shanghai scheduled.  We visited a very old part of the city which included a vast outdoor market and a very wonderful garden known as Shanghai Yuyan Garden, which dates back 400 years.  We also partook of a traditional Tea Ceremony. After sampling 6 types of teas, we were given a list of which teas cure certain ailments. There were teas for high blood pressure, pimples, gas, weight loss, & more.

Arleen's turn to blog.

As a child spending summers at NY beaches we were told that if you dug deep enough in the sand, you would dig to China. 50 years later, I finally got here. Shanghai is a strange city, hot, noisy, with strange smells & crazy drivers.

A few things that I find peculiar: all the purse hooks in the ladies bathrooms are very high (but the ladies are short), the beds are so hard that I thought that they were just box springs, some restaurants charge for paper napkins. 

Elana, Nana is having fun learning to eat with chopsticks, but sometimes if I am very hungry, I just use a spoon.

In this slide show: Yu Yuan Gardens, Tea House, Bear of Pearls, The Ball Castle