Drying out
Monday, June 28, |
| One alternative to long lunches in the hotels to is check out the "business center." At this hotel it is only 15 Yuan, down from 40 at the Peace Hotel. We are on our way to the airport, so this hotel is out of town. The Peace hotel is obviously a prime location on the bund -- this is not a German word (like bundt cake), but rather an English word (imported from India) for river bank and pronounced more like a breakfast "bun." |
| Yesterday, after signing off the Internet I headed upstairs to take in the rest of the spanking new library in Shanghai. It is a glorious place, but unfortunately since it was Sunday, the fourth floor was closed. According to the signs, this is were there is a UN depository of documents and foreign periodicals. I was most curious to know if anyone could walk into those areas, or if you needed a special "reason." I guess I will have to come back to find out. |
| The library was crowded, mostly with young people -- none of the elderly denizens of many American public libraries were in evidence. I wandered around the various floors, shooting some video and ended up in the gift shop (the NYPL now has one, too!) where I purchased a book of illustrations of Old Shanghai and a new calligraphy brush pen with the ink inside the handle. I can find these "brush-markers" in NYC but they aren't very good. The best I have ever found were Japanese ones that I found in Paris -- very expensive though. The Chinese ones are reasonable, about three dollars, and they work nicely. |
| From the library, I decided to skip my walk through the French quarter in the drenching rain and headed back to the Museum where I settled in for a cup of tea in the lovely tea shop there. I invited a Chinese woman and her daughter to share my table, and while the mother went off to order the tea, I suggested to the four-year-old that we could draw pictures together. She drew some flowers and I drew a picture of her. She tried out my calligraphy brush, but then decided the markers were a safer bet. Later I drew a picture of flowers and we then exchanged them. |
| I spent the rest of the afternoon revisiting some of my favorite spots in the museum and then headed back to the hotel in the rain. I considered a taxi, but ended up instead with a motorcycle turned into a three-wheel vehicle with a little cart on the back. It had no doors or windows, so it offered quite a fine, if bumpy, opportunity to shoot some video of Shanghai streets. |
| The flight was uneventful and we are now in Xi'an -- a distinct change -- flat wheat fields, looking much like the midwest, but on a smaller scale. Xi'an is definitely a provincial city and there is a feeling among the whole group that after Shanghai we are now back in China. |
| This business center is definitely less formal. People are talking all around me and I can't concentrate. I will try this again in the morning. |
