They were in front of my lane’s foot massage establishment, the one with the ratty gold towels perpetually hung out to dry, where, day and night, a few women lolled around inside waiting for customers who were never in evidence. I had always meant to dare my neighbor in the lane to join me for a foot massage there — who knows, maybe we were missing out on a good thing. But now the place was going quickly.

“What’s up?” I asked my neighbor, an elderly gentleman who wears a beret when it’s cold and smiles at me from his kitchen window. I didn’t understand his answer.

He tried again and then simply said, “Something bad.”

All the watchers were silent and now some were watching me. I lifted my phone to take a photo. As I clicked — why don’t I keep my phone on silent?! — a policeman yelled sharply at me, “Foreigner, don’t take photos!” He moved menacingly toward me and my phone. “No photos!”

I feigned incomprehension, shoved my phone in my pocket, and quickly turned the corner to my house. Oh, right. Thirty people can watch, but no photos. At least not by foreigners, who should stick to the shiny Expo buildings.

My photo didn’t quite catch the crowd, and only got half of the policeman. Obviously, I didn’t dare try for a better one.

This afternoon, it’s quiet in the lane. The foot massage place has vanished without a ripple.No towels hanging overhead. The neon foot sign has been removed. The curtains are pulled and the door is chained. I wonder where the women are.

And, for the record, here’s a photo of the also-usually-empty beauty parlor open day and night next door to the former foot massage place. I better capture it while I can.

But this blog’s about China, and here I am again in Shanghai — hot, noisy, and steaming rains to greet us. I’ve just deleted 850 spam comments — gosh, I hope you didn’t have to see them –although I almost kept the one offering zhu zhu puppies. (Who are these people who write in English and German and Russian and Greek?  Don’t they have anything better to do? The Greek should at least go out into the sunshine.)

Yes, I’m back and ready to write as I — gulp — move on into my seventh year in Shanghai. So stay tuned.

We covered her in a Guild blanket that I had brought along from one of our extended family of donors (in London!).After a while, she woke up, had a drink, stretched out her arms and legs to greet the day, and tried to look around.Mary was dying to pick her up, but of course can’t on account of her incision and the fact that she is still connected by tubes. But very soon now, she will be going home with Julie to recover for a while. She still has a lot ahead of her — gaining weight, cataract surgery, and of course learning to walk! But thank goodness the worst is now behind her.

Anyhow, the cleaver.  German, Chinese, what have you, in quite a range of prices.

“We’ll take that one,” I said in Chinese, indicating to the clerk to unlock the case.

“I need your hu jiao,” she replied.

“I get so frustrated with this language!” I said to my husband. “All the syllables sound the same. It sounded like she just asked me for my passport!”

And then she pointed to the sign.

Huh? So that if there is a stabbing somewhere during Expo, the police can check the records and see which foreigner recently bought a cleaver and track down the murderer? Admittedly, there have been some awful stabbings lately in China, widely reported. But aren’t there cleavers in every household? Back when I took a Chinese cooking class, the chef showed me how to whack ginger into cubes with a cleaver and then slice –no more careful peeling with a paring knife.

Anyhow, all ended well. Although I didn’t have my passport with me, in the back of my wallet I found a crumpled photocopy. Got the cleaver and the ribs were scrumptious.

Still, what’s with the hassles to give us a false sense of security here? Last week, at the entrance to Expo, security made a friend of mine apply the lipstick she was carrying in her purse — lest it be what, cyanide coated? Concealing a dangerous weapon?  C’mon — lipstick? It’s starting to feel like some other countries I know.

I am so excited! This week one of my essays was published in a literary magazine. My piece is called Drive My Car, and it’s about my driver here in Shanghai (hint: he’s not a golf club!).  Here’s what the editor of Still Crazy said on its website: “Kathryn Pauli (“Drive My Car”), who lives in China, has written a delightful essay about Liu, her wonderfully efficient, empathic chauffeur. ”

If you want to read it, you can find the beginning of the essay and how to purchase Still Crazy at http://www.crazylitmag.com/index.php.

Honk, honk! Toot, toot! Gotta go chill the champagne!

She came through her surgery with flying colors on Tuesday and is recovering well, I believe still in intensive care. When I have photos, I will be sure to share them. Meanwhile, keep your prayers and good wishes coming for her.

I know you were worried and I’m sorry for the delay. I was on a spectacular trip with Heart to Heart Shanghai, the group that arranged and sponsored her surgery, to Jiangsu Province, where we visited schools to donate books and to check in on rural children who have already had heart surgery. Stay tuned — you’ll hear more!

Our opportunity to do something significant came yesterday. Mifan (Rice) Mamas, an organization that supplies food and other necessities to an orphanage not too far away in Anhui Province, sent out an urgent plea. One of their little girls, called Xiao Xia and known in English as Baby Faith, had arrived in Shanghai last Thursday for medical treatment and had been diagnosed with a serious heart ailment.  Almost as if by chance, one of Mifan Mamas’ founders connected with the founder of Heart to Heart Shanghai, another organization we try to help, which raises funds for heart surgery for kids in need. Heart to Heart (yes, you recognize the name — I went with them on a trip I wrote about back earlier in the spring) jumped into action and got her examined yesterday morning by their heart specialists, agreed to pay half the costs of surgery, and scheduled Baby Faith for her critical operation tomorrow morning at 8 am.

25,000 RMB remained to be raised, which is where our Guild’s opportunity came in. Our coffers were holding 13,000, which I immediately pledged, and I sent out an email to our greater membership. Lo and behold, as of this evening, we have 22,000 in hand (about $3200). I am blown away by the generosity of my women friends, and feel so excited and lucky to help give this baby girl a second chance.

As luck has it, I’ll be rolling up the road in a bus with Heart to Heart tomorrow morning, on another trip to another place in Anhui. Baby Faith’s surgery is scheduled for Tuesday, 8:00 am Shanghai time. (That’s 8:00 pm Monday to those of you on the east coast.) I’ll be praying for her, and I hope you’ll think about her, too, wherever you are.

And if, by chance, you want to read about Mifan Mamas or Heart to Heart Shanghai, look for links on the website of our Guild, www.shanghaiguild.com.

I’ve been a couple of times now and I’m still wondering about the whole thing.

The site spans both sides of the Huangpu River, and we have spent most of it in the Urban Best Practices Area on the Puxi side, which is smaller and less crowded. This is what interests me anyhow — green technology, ecosystems, what the future portends. Indeed, the city of Chengdu has an exhibition of its Living Water Garden, which demonstrates how water plants can help clean water in industrial situations. But it wasn’t clear to me that anybody was taking in anything beyond the fact that they were in a pretty garden. Who and what is an Expo for, anyhow?

There were also some humorous sights, even if unintentional. Like the placement of the oil pavilion adjacent to a low-carbon exhibition.

I’ve heard that the GM pavilion is interesting, and perhaps it is, but facing a several-hour wait, we weren’t that interested after all. So instead, figuring it was as close as we will ever get, we wandered into a Saudi pavilion that shows how they put all those people making the hajj into a city of tents that are all air-conditioned!

And then we spent quite a while in two pavilions that seem to serve as bookends. The first, called in English the “Footprint Pavilion,” held out promise of discussing our carbon footprint. But then we walked into a room of gorgeous cave murals from western China, then to another room where I found myself standing on the Acropolis; in a central area, I found myself surrounded by people strolling around in togas as I stood in the middle of the Roman forum. History, I get it. Mankind’s footprint.

But upstairs, doubt intruded. What the heck is the gem wall of gloom?Turns out it’s a model of a prototype of a walled city, in which the wall mechanically rises and falls, buildings rise and are leveled again, and shrubs burst into tall palm trees and subside again. Why? Who can tell.

I wandered past a fake David in Florence, peeked into Amsterdam, and filed past films of Mohenjodaro and bits of Tenochtitlan, trying to get my bearings. And then I arrived in Troy. I know it was Troy not only because it said so, but because of the enormous horse with a hinged door that periodically squeaked open, revealing hidden soldiers brandishing their swords behind the heads of the oblivious crowd passing through. Okay, so the Trojan horse is not exactly historical, but mythological. I didn’t get really fussy until I saw what the archaeologists are uncovering:  medieval shields and a crown bearing a cross?

Done with history, or a fantasy of history, we moved onto the Future Pavilion. At first I felt nervous as I saw models of perfectly sterile buildings and films in which deer frolic happily among children playing harmoniously.(I wish I had counted the number of times we saw the word “harmonious.” No, really, I don’t.) By the time I got to the Control Tower, a pulsing tower of light, I felt sure I was trapped in a scary Star Trek episode. You read for yourself:
As my son said, what about all the issues we face to get to this perfect world? (Oops, would that include political issues? Whoa, now.) My plan was to wait for Captain James Kirk to arrive and save me.

But meantime, we contemplated getting an ice cream, but then decided the line’s too long.

I can believe it, after we spent three days last week in Yangshuo (Guangxi Province, in the south, although not where the worst problems are) biking and kayaking in the few moments between downpours and, yes, during the downpours.

Here is the dam that my son crossed on his bike last fall in drier times:No wonder people in the fields had been warning us, waving their arms and calling out 洪水，hong shui, which (as we came to learn) means “flood” and even “deluge.”

We had already made it across several small bridges,so we kept answering that we just wanted to take a look. We figured we could always turn around.

As we proceeded, we noticed that not only the rice fields, but also the pomelo groves, were under water. People tending oxen moved them onto higher ground.

Shortly before the dam, we stopped and asked a farmer if there was another place to cross further up. Yes, he said, there are two more bridges, but it’s hard to find the way. I’ll take you there.

And, amazingly enough, he did, leading us and our bikes across a cross-hatching of dikes around the rice fields, all of which was under water. At one point, the current (!) running across a field was so strong that he insisted that I hand over my bike to him. He took off his boots (the better to feel the slippery ground, I assume) and dragged my bike across. Then came back and insisted on taking my hand and dragging me across. Then repeated for my son’s bike, and finally for my son.

Eventually, we did find a bridge across the river and, before dark, we made it back to our hotel, tucked just below Moon-Gazing Mountain. (Note moon in mountain!)

Apparently, this was just the beginning of really serious rain. It’s been non-stop since we got home a week ago. I shudder to think about it. I am doing an anti-rain dance. I hope our farmer is okay.