still unimpressive

Man Shanghai has been crazy,

1. Taxi hell expensive

2. Hotel sucks.

3. Really nice

The good thing is after the 1st day we moved from the “Riverside Hotel” to the “大众大夏” or “Volkswagen Hotel”. Basically it was where all the Volkswagen employees congregated.  It was also a three-star hotel. It was actually very very nice. The second night they ran out of rooms and bumped us up to a bigger deluxe, whatever-they’d-like to call it.

So anyways in Shanghai I met my brother/cousin Dai Fang. He is this successful finance-something and basically I was taking a shower when he, his mom, and his girlfriend showed up in our hotel room to take us to dinner. Of course, I didn’t know about this until AFTER I was running around in a towel in front of everyone.

That night we went to fab Sichuan resturant. It was like 612x better than the one in ranch. It was like BEAST ma. There was this especially memorable dish, it was chicken’s blood with tofu and other stuff. Sounds nasty enough but it was just so wonderful. I wish I were there still. Oh and there was a show too– there was a fire guy who played with fire and more impressively a guy who changed masks in about a half second. Turns out the second guy was performing the ancient Chinese and very secretive “Bian Lian” act. Honestly, I was standing behind the guy, and when he changed his mask nothing moved, nothing went on or came off, just his face suddenly changed. Amazing.

The next day, the second day, We spent the morning changing hotels and I did work for the rest of the time. My mom went to see family, the ones we stayed with the last time I was in Shanghai in 2001. I really wish I had went but I didn’t have time =(. My dad and I ate our ghetto dinner in the back alley little restaurants. It was g.

Next day was Suzhou. We took one of the new CRH high speed trains that China put out in April. It only took 30 minutes to get there (going 248km/h! or 153 mph!). We went to the cemetery where my great grandma was memorialized.

More on that, not here.

So on the last day we didn’t do anything and took a train to Zhengzhou. I’ll write that post later! Too tired!