Sunday in Shanghai

First up a visit to the Jing' An Temple. A Buddhist temple on the main street. Surrounded by shops and traffic, this is a small and ancient oasis of peace. Although, it has been damaged over the centuries and is structurally more a modern replica than an original building. That said, watching monks study along side massive jade Buddhas still gives you a sense of time gone and the crazy Shanghai world outside the walls has temporarily stopped.

I know I am bordering on obsession with all things traffic, but I found where the cars go at night. They go into sky scrapper apartment buildings just like the people. See the pictures below. The car drives in, then disappears. It goes up into the sky scrapper car park. Or is it called a 'carpartment.'

The taxi driver dropped me off and pointed around the corner. I had know idea what I was looking for or where it was. Is strolled the streets that were very traditional style architecture.

I just wandered where the people seemed to be going. It was just crazy. I then grabbed some fried won tons (i think) from a stall and snacked. As I wandered, I watched people and took plenty of pics. After a couple of hours, I spotted people going into a hole in the wall. I found a small sign. It was the Yu Garden. That's what I was there to see. I just happened upon it. Luckily. (I could have just as easily missed it and gone home not knowing it existed)

As it turns out, this is a famous traditional Chinese garden ,preserved through thousands of year. Inside is just amazing in every way. The garden ,the building, the tiling everything. I even met a lady in a shop that spoke English and told me a lot about the Mao people of southern China. Outside the garden were thousands of stalls and shops. And the million odd people. It was again an oasis by contrast and an oasis by nature.

A big observation today was not that it was raining, but that everyone uses umbrellas. Now, in a city of millions of people, most about 5 to 5'6" tall, umbrellas are effective for them and a huge danger for me. Wandering around at 6'4" (that's the height they hold the umbrella), is a real challenge. I ducked, I weaved, I bobbed and still with thousands of people packed into small spaces, I was jabbed, pocked, skewered and garroted by umbrellas all day. I hope it stops raining soon.





Having walked myself into a stoop over the weekend, so I finished off with a foot massage. Ahhh, heaven. Some jazz on the Ipod, a cup of tea and a Chinese girl grumping that my feet are too big. Maybe that's my little revenge for the umbrellas.

Jing'An Temple


Yu Garden