Here’s the Grand Gateway at night.
This is the Tech Museum. Underneath is the fake market.We took an afternoon to check out the Shanghai Museum.
These are old drums.
We also took Lauryn for a day trip to Hangzhou. It is famous for it’s West Lake (think Westlake Soup- from Silver House, yum!) and for its silk. It was beautiful there. So green and peaceful.
We saw one of the famous temples in Hangzhou. The original one collapsed and they rebuilt this one with escalators from the park to the temple entrance.
In Hangzhou, we went to the mountains to try their famous Longjing tea. We had to first draw water from the well in the middle of town to wash our hands for good luck. Then a lady invited us to her house to try the tea they farmed. We had to walk the plank to the back of the house – a little daunting.
The story is that some Emperor from hundreds of years ago went to vacation in Hangzhou and went to the mountains for rest. He was poured some hot water to drink and while he stepped away to let his water cool, some leaves fell into his cup and turned the water brown. He tried the water and decided it was his new favorite drink.
We also saw the Silk Museum in Hangzhou. They showed us how to tell real silk from fake silk. When you burn silk, it should become powdery and flaky. If it's fake, it will be fibrous and stringy and have a smell of burnt plastic. Well, obviously, you wouldn't go around burning silk you're considering buying, so that wasn't too helpful. They both felt the same.
This is one of the silk spinning machines. You can see the silk worm cocoons (those little white balls at the bottom).
These are the dead silk worms after all the silk has been removed.We strolled the Bund, a big shopping district in Shanghai.
John wanted to go see his old school, Fudan University, where he studied Chinese before we got married.
This is the old dining hall.
This big building wasn’t here when he was studying here.
Here’s Big Mao.
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