the city, up close and personal

April 20, 2008
i awoke around six o'clock in the morning and felt very refreshed. breakfast was an interesting collection of western and eastern dishes. fried eggs turned in a skillet with chop sticks were fun to watch being made. my favorite dish was "beans with black fungus." apparently, mushroom doesn't translate well from chinese!

we boarded our bus around 8:30 AM and set off to the Yu Garden. This is a small garden and the title means "south garden." It was first built in the Ming Dynasty and there is a "rockery" (a man-made rock landscape designed to look like mountains) in the garden where legend has it the mortar used to construct the arrangement consisted of "sticky rice" and "mud."

after leaving the garden, we made our way to a "tourist" tea house where they prepared traditional gong-fu cha (the art of making tea). they served us jasmine tea (a green tea), li chi tea (a black tea), and an oolong tea. i broke down and purchased several ounces of the jasmine tea, several ounces of my favorite tea "tae kwan yen," and a 7-year-aged "purhr" tea. it is amazing to spend a couple of dollars per ounce here compared to what i have paid at home!

after leaving the tea house, we went to the "pearl of the orient." this is a telecommuncations tower in the new part of Shanghai, near the river. the building is a collection of three spheres, decreasing in size, as the tower rises. the middle section looks like reunion tower in dallas, to give you an idea of what it looks like. we went up the tower into the observation level and looked out over the city of Shanghai. smog was pretty bad... at one of the souvenier stands, there was a model of the Orient Pearl Tower next to the Eiffel Tower, apparently comparing their scale... i couldn't help but think, "See, our cultural phalus is bigger than your cultural phalus!!!"

we at lunch at a decent restaurant named Tian Hou. after we said grace at lunch, our tour guide asked john paul and me if we prayed at all our meals or only special occasions... he was quite curious about this practice and what it meant...

the resaurant was conviently located above a factory where they make silk thread from silk worm coccoons. They showed the different stages of the silkworm's life-cycle and how they unravel the silkworm's cocoon to make silk thread. the smell in the room was just what i remembered from childhood when mom and i raised silkworms! they only get single thread from small coccoons where there is one moth. when there are two moths, the threads are too interwoven to separrate. they use these to make silk comforters by stretching and pulling and placing them in layers. the silk comforter and ajoining shop remined me of the morano glass factory in venice, italy, where after the tour and being seen how things are made, you are expected to buy something...

we finished the day by attending church at Shanghai Community Fellowship (http://scfenglish.com/) where we worshiped with "foreign passport holders." It was perhaps one of the most culturally, ethnically, and racially diverse church services i have ever been in. I really enjoyed it. The building reminded me of Cox Chapel at HPUMC except there were also balconies over the sides of the sanctuary, not just in the back.

after church, john paul and i ate supper at Din Tai Fong. the restaurant is famous for it's dumplings. we tried the crab dumplings... not the best... not that i really cared, i was quite hungry and the dumplings were warm... most reataurants here have pictures so the westerners can point to what they want.

we ended the evening on a river cruise up and down the river. the lights of the Shanghai skyline were very pretty, in a "las vegas," "times square" sort of way. it was spitting rain by this time and chilly... we didn't remain on deck for very long. when i went below deck, i noted david and our tour guide were engrossed in a conversation. david was expanding and sharing with him about the friend we have in common... there was no decision that night; seeds have been planted...