So where have I been?
I’m gonna let you guess. And I’m not cheating — I was in China, although I found this city to be full of surprises.
Such as: while I was still on the ground on the plane, the young lady sitting next to me murmured into her mobile phone so softly that at first I wondered what she was doing.
And, once I arrived, I noticed that people quietly lined up to get on the subway. See?
I’ve never seen a temple so busy as the Longshan Temple on Saturday morning. People of all ages were offering prayers
and some were tossing red fortune-telling crescents that landed with a clack.
Tables were piled high with offerings of food and flowers
including a can of Coke and a roll of Mentos!
We went nuts over the night markets and all the stalls of street food, chowing down on sesame noodles and passing on skewers of grilled congealed pigs’ blood. Alex couldn’t wait for a manguo bing (huge concoction of sliced mango and sweetened condensed milk over shaved ice)
But here was the biggest surprise, something we can’t find in Shanghai.
John about to chomp a sesame bagel
Figured it out yet? If not, I’ll leave a couple more hints. The biggest treasure in the museum’s enormous collection seems to be a cabbage. Well, it’s very realistic and carved from jade (no photos allowed).
And although the trademark tall skyscraper is an elegant bamboo stalk
it actually looks kind of forlorn from a distance, towering alone over all the rest.
Anyhow, I’m home in Shanghai now. But I’ll go back there again, now that there is a direct 80-minute flight.