OLD TOWN AND THE YUYUAN GARDEN OF FORKING PATHS

Here we are in Old Town.   The buildings are breathtakingly beautiful and old.  Unfortunately, for us, lucky for the buildings, several are draped in plastic, apparently being in the middle of some preservation work.

Ironically in the the middle of Old Town we find Dairy Queen and Haagen Dazs.

We make our way to the restaurant where the Clintons ate when they came to Old Town.  Here's our lunch:

Nothing too special.  From the left sweet and sour eel, braised asparagus, a lotus root roll with a sweet sauce and in the back a carton of black rice milk.

After lunch we head for Yuyuan Gardens, for what I think will be a quick 20 minute tour before we head for the Bund.   How wrong I am.

The garden was started in 1559, the guidebook says, was ransacked several times, once by the British and once by the French, but is now fully restored.   Now, I love Japanese Gardens for their simple lines and serenity, and I love our Vashon gardens, which we see during the June tours.  Here's a glance at a couple Vashon gardens:

Just before the entrance to the garden, we see this gentelman making tea, drying it in this heated metal bowl.

Nothing in the other gardens can compare to Yuyuan Gardens.   It's not a big garden, but it's laid out in a maze, and we walk for three hours never sure if we are seeing something for the first or the third time; in reality we see only a few things twice.  So these forking paths are not Borges's figurative, literary, or even imaginative paths, but real ones.   The paths don't always fork, but there are doorways and there are entrances, all of which take you to places you don't expect . 

Take a look at the detail in the walkways, the buildings, the rockery, the ponds, and the flowers and trees. We spend three hours here and leave only because we are up against the 5 p.m. closing.

We never make it to the Bund!  nor to any of the other recommended tourist venues in the area.


And here is the garden:

Rockeries abound.

400 year old Gingko

 The pathways are all "tiled" with stones.

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This is the path we walked.   In other places the tiling is even more elaborate.

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And the roofs are filled with warriors, phoenixes, and dragons.

Under the dragon's chin, is that a toad?

Obviously, dueling dragons.

Not quite a doorway.

Which way will you go?

Another doorway.

These carp may have caught our vibes.   It is 5 PM and closing time.  And there is so much more.

MORE MARTIAL

I'm writing this on April 13.   It is Sunday, and it has rained the past two days. I put on my down sweater and the black hooded Columbia jacket and walk out to the park (I've got my Gor-Tex hiking shoes on). The park is almost empty.  No one is practicing.  No one is doing a form.  There are some high school kids practicing something, led by an adult or two, but not really being led. They are simply doing what high schoolers are supposed to do.  Screw around.

And I decide to do the long form.   I find a tree and make myself comfortable under it.   Inhale and exhale, doing the form.   About two-thirds through, I notice someone apparently taking a video of me.   And I smile to myself, "What would she do if she discovered she was videoing a mei guo ren doing Tai Chi.


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This is Tuesday April 15.  After breakfast I walk out to the park.  The lady with the extensions is there demonstrating to a 50 year old how to move his body, turn and keep and use his core.  She leaves a few minutes after I get there.  I have been obvious, watching them.

In the far corner are another couple doing a form in mirror.  She doing the form right-sided; he on the left. He's dressed in black, and she's dressed in white; I get it: Yin and Yang.  They face each other, and for a while it works pretty good, then he lags behind or she rushes ahead.  It takes me a while to recognize the Yang long form since the postures and transitions are quite different, but I finally recognize the sequence and the movement. His left side flows very nicely, and he's very relaxed,  though he seems to stumble on the sequence later in the form, as he waits for her to get into the next move. Snake creeps down never creeps or gets down, but it seems to work in their form.  Here they are.

TAKING A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE

At first glance I was going to write that traffic here in Shanghai is like traffic no where in the world, other than every other major Asian city outside of Japan and Korea. This may not be true; all I do know is that traffic in Shanghai is like a stampede of cars being rounded up by Cowboy Cats.  To create a confusion of metaphors,   the cars stream off in every which direction regardless of the traffic lights (though most stop on red, but not for long), and the unruly streaks of bicycles, mopeds, motorbikes, and motorcycles weave in and out of the pedestrian traffic like streaking lines of flaming fireworks.   Walking the streets through traffic, even with the Walk signal, becomes a maze of confusion and surprises.

The other night I saw a middle-aged couple cross the street against the light.   The man looked neither left nor right; he just held his wife's hand and started walking purposely across the street.  The cars navigated around him.   As I watch the traffic flow through the crowds of people and the cyclists weave across the path of traffic, I get the sense that everyone is on a path created in the driver's mind or the walker's mind, and that's all that matters; somehow, like that asteroid that missed the earth, these drivers miss each other and the pedestrians.

The middle-aged couple?  When they got to my side of the street, they found a parked moped, which the husband cranked up and, with his wife behind him, headed out into traffic.  I think the way he walked across the street is the way he and all others navigate their way home. 

That got me to thinking that the safest way to cross a street is not to look, to set a path and walk purposely along that path. (It sounds like a way of living one's life, though I'm afraid on the real streets of Shanghai, it may  be a short life.)

The big shocker happens when I'm feeling safe because I've made it across the street.  I am happily walking toward the mall when I am confronted by a full-size motorcycle coming at me down the sidewalk!  Not only do they have the streets and the crosswalks, but  the burly bikes can magically appear riding down the sidewalk in front of Shanghai's grandest mall (more of that another time.)

This photo has to be my favorite traffic moment.   The black car spotted the smallest opening in the traffic and swung its nose into the left lane, where it is now, but it got itself locked in place with no where to go or turn, and blocked both lanes.   He needed the bus in front to move just a little to get himself straightened out, and just when the bus moved, the black car was a little late, and the taxi squeezed its nose between the black car and the bus;  the taxi was the lynchpin that locked the traffic up for the next five minutes.  No one could move until the traffic on the other side of the light could make some room.

What's truly fascinating about this and all the other days I have watched traffic is the absolute determination of everyone to take the lane they are going to take--no looking around to keep from hitting or being hit by an oncoming car--just eyes straight ahead. True of both vehicles and pedestrians.  And with all the near misses and dumb driving moves, no one seems to lose his or her cool.   No road rage.   Just an acceptance that there are a lot of people trying to go in different directions every hour of every day..

LITTLE THINGS MAY BRING DELIGHT, BUT NOTHING LIKE BREAKFAST

Then there will be seconds and thirds and . . . .I have at least 10 more items to taste!

Amy and I have always wondered what Koreans and Japanese and Chinese eat for everyday breakfast. So here’s one answer.  The breakfast buffet here at the SJTU Faculty Club probably has something every vegetarian can eat.   There were over 18 items as I counted them Sunday, and I notice there is also bread and a toaster today, when a tall Laowai  walks over to put toast in the big machine.    But otherwise it’s a vegetarian delight of sorts.     There are separate plates of beans, broccoli, squash, sliced raw tomatoes, toasted squares of sticky rice, a dish of greens with black fungus and slices of mochi (thought they were potato), French Fries, I think Fried Chicken—thought it was chicken but I look closer today and it is a not green vegetable deep fried (this was today, and yesterday it may have been chicken), small pieces of corn on the cob, something else that’s like a spring roll but white and deep fried—maybe it’s vermicelli stuffed with some vegetable or a sausage, white rice, purple potatoes, fried rice with very little bits of egg and green, a couple kinds of eggs that make me nervous—one looks like it’s been cooked or boiled in soy sauce, and the other looks like eggs that really are more than a hundred years old in name, some pickled vegetables, always Shanghai noodles, and get this--a pan of sato imo with the skins on! which I ate whole (I notice on subsequent days that some of the skin has been removed, and a deep fried ball about an inch or two in diameter that is filled with dark sweet bean paste, with the wrapping being a thin layer of sticky rice or mochi—really good tasting. 

Most of the veggies are very plain.   Just cooked, placed on a plate or left in a pan.  Notice the bow-tied kombu?  It is new on this day.  There's also soup for everyone, but I spot a few people with huge bowls of soup most likely filled with dumplings.  They get these at the counter, but have to tell the cook what they want. The advantages of speaking the language are very clear.

There are two kinds of congee (okayu or juk.  depending on who eats with you) and  today I notice some taste bud awakeners on the side  to add to the congee (green onions, what I originally thought were small shreds of chicken that ended up being baby shrimp a quarter of an inch long [brine shrimp?], and some dried seaweed) and some oils, hot sauce and soy sauce.  There is a pan full of a variety of bao, the one I had yesterday was a mixed meat bao, but today I find what I pick has no filling.  So in addition to the eggs, there's a touch of animal protein.   I usually see some kind of sausage that looks like a little-fingered-sized wiener, which I have yet to try..

So breakfast is the good meal of the day.  There also are juices, soy milk (I think), and yogurt.   (I am told the coffee is awful, but it's China, so I would expect tea to be excellent.) 

About 38 Yuan.

LOVE CONNECTION: PEOPLE'S SQUARE

People's Square is a destination recommended by guidebooks, but just the name should be enough to send any tourist looking for the Metro. 1, 2, or 8.  We caught line 1 from Xujiahui, and in a matter of minutes we were emerging from the tunnel onto People's Square, where we easily found the People's Park. 

Notice the people in the background and the umbrellas.

See the small boxes and the big display boards in the back ground.

 Practically everyone you see in these photos is 50 or older.   At first I thought this was some kind of club meeting.  And then I guessed that it might be an elderly protest, maybe for more money to support their elderly habits.  It was a sunny day, so no one really needed the umbrellas, except to post their little signs.  And the large boards in the back are full of photos of younger people between the ages of  25 and 40.   They are successful young people with jobs, sometimes their own homes or apartments, living here or in another city.

Pause too long to look at a sign or a photo  and you'll find the person attending that spot talking to you.  If you walk away, the person will follow, trying to get you to come back to the photo.  These are parents looking for matches for their single children.   This park may be the original MatchMaker.com.  I wonder if the children know that their parents are out there shopping their resumes.

Escaping further into the park, we passed MOCA (Shanghai Museum of Modern Art), which was closed being between exhibits and into the park where people sit at small tables playing cards or Mahjong, and the path twists past some beautiful garden moments. and then back into the very modern city.

There is ambitious architecture everywhere.

SHANGHAI MUSEUM

A little walk from People's Park brings us to the Shanghai Museum.   Shanghai blocks must be triple the length we have in Seattle, and some just seem to have no end to them.   Oh,and then there is the tunnel that takes us under the street.  

So here's the museum.   Notice the line to the left.  It was  quite long  and stayed that way the whole afternoon.

This is Tomb Sweeping weekend, and there are lots of people out apparently having finished with their sweeping.   The museum has a Green policy.  If you're over 60, you can walk through the "green" door on the right and skip the line.   Of course, we skipped the line.

We covered only the floor.  There are some 6 floors to cover, so I plan to return on my own another day.
The first floor was spectacular.  It was the Bronze age.  Here are a few of the prized items in the collection.

 

Obviously the videographer needs some training.  Close your eyes and listen.

Obviously, I need to go back to shoot some more.
One bronze piece was large enough to fit a person into.   For wine?  or water?
While in the museum I also thought of all the millions who didn't have any of these items,who may not have had a cup or a plate, while someone could have the luxury of what we see here.   I had just walked through the south side of the campus where the tenements were overflowing with laundry hanging over the streets to dry.  

THIS IS LONNY'S HOME FOR 90 DAYS

SHANGHAI JIAO TONG UNIVERSITY

The entry gate to the campus.  Notice the buses that carry us to the Minhang campus.

This will be home for thirteen weeks.

This will be my home again at the end of thirteen weeks 

Here is the room I stayed in for the first week. The hotel needed to work on the room, and asked me to move for a couple nights.

They moved me to a smaller room in not very good shape (Susan's old room, I was told, but this year it was full of old cigarette smoke).  When it was time to move back, I was told I’d have to go to another room.  So, I’m close to the first room, but I’m in a room that’s a bit smaller.  It's clean and functional; it's big enough to be comfortable for a couple months, but small enough that I can hit a wall if I need to. It looks just like this one, with a little balcony.

What will follow here, I know not, except that it will be the naive impressions of someone seeing the world for the first time. So if you laugh, I won't mind.   I'm not planning to do a lot of touring, but people keep saying I should. If you're one who has been here and done all of this, perhaps you'll remember the little things you've forgotten.  I'll probably forget to record the BIG things.   I hope I enjoy this journey  and if you follow along, I hope you do too.