Hello, everyone,
We had another couple of good adventures and we’re only a few days away from meeting Sun Bao Tong. We’ve got the list of potential names down to 5, now.

Yesterday, we decided to have a light day. We’ve been getting up between 5 & 6am to get ready and start touring, but instead had a leisurely breakfast (those at the hotel have a tremendous variety), and just hung around our room. Took Kira swimming in the afternoon and let her nap. I went shopping for a few necessities and found a grocery store a few blocks away. There doesn’t seem to be a high emphasis on zoning, as shops seem to be located almost anywhere. Living and commercial space is extremely compact in Shanghai. Our guide today told us that in Shanghai there are over 2000 buildings more than 10 stories in height!

Last night, we went on a tour and had supper at a very posh place ontop of a building not far from People’s Square. The view and the food were spectacular. After that, we went to a show by Chinese acrobats. It was simply amazing. There was a lion dance, juggling, lots of flipping and unusual human pyramids, chair balancing, contortionists and incredibly strong people. The finale came when 5 motorbikes rode around in a sphere perhaps 25 ft. in diameter, racing every which-way. Since the show, we’ve had to play “acrobat” with Kira in our hotel room and explain why it’s not OK to do that in the restaurant for breakfast.

Today, we got an early start and visited a city called Suzhou. It’s an ancient city, starting well before to Christ’s time. The thing to see there is the gardens. There are around 60 old gardens still intact. Most were built in the Ming dynasty, though some are from an earlier period. These are no run-of-the-mill vegetable gardens. These are walled areas that were originally part of private residences and took years to construct, with hills, walkways, ponds and bridges, buildings and all sorts of trees and other plants. The Chinese philosophy on gardens is to try and mimic nature. There are few straight lines when it comes to the walkways and bridges. Often, stones and earthen hills are constructed to look like mountains from other parts of the country. One we visited has its 500th birthday this year. It was several hectares in size. The second was much smaller and older. Much of it was an incredibly intricate maze of stones arranged in tight, winding passages with small caves built-in occasionally. The incredible part was that it was 3-D. The maze would constantly loop-back on itself at 2 or even 3 different levels. The planning required for such a thing would be a serious challenge today, let-alone hundreds of years ago. No matter how much planning went into the original design, it was still hot today. We had to find a toilet a number of times today. She's getting used to the strange arrangements, as most restrooms are really just holes in the floor. Stools are found in only the places that tend to cater to westerners. We got back to Shanghai in time to take Kira swimming again and then go for supper.

Thunderstorms had moved-in, so we ate at a Szechuan restaurant in the hotel. It’s a fancy place and we tried 4 or 5 different things, but the meal still came to less than $50. Among other things, we had giant prawns and chicken served on a mixture of hot chilies and peanuts, then we had lotus root for desert. Kira couldn’t make it through supper. She was completely out of gas – so much so that as I carried her back to our room, she couldn’t wake up enough and peed on me before we got there. As we cleaned her up, I thought, “There’s something honest about this. I’m sure there will be many times when she pees on me metaphorically that will be much less direct.”

Anyway, we hope all of you are doing well and having dry adventures of your own.

Kim