Tea

Wow the view from the River cruise was amazing! Tonight for our last night in China we had dinner in a revolving restaurant on the 45th floor, then a cruise on the Hangpu River. The lights were amazing!

Mimi, Natalie, Dan and I decided to check out Lunch in Pudong, the new development on the other side of the river from Shanghai! 15 years ago there was nothing, and now there are skyscrapers with post modern designs everywhere! Not only was lunch amazing, check out that view! We were eye to eye with the Pearl of the Orient.

Eveything in Shanghai seems to be new! It is perhaps, next to Hong Kong the most modern crazy city I have ever been to! And My favorite one in China. It's definitely a world city, but TVs in the Cabs???? Wow!

The Pagoda overlooking West Lake is even more beautiful at night!

Char was having fun in Hangzhou at the creek in the Temple of Hangzhou! We left our host in Jiashan early on Tuesday morning and spent the day in Hangzhou. The Chinese say, There is heaven, but on earth there are Hangzhou and Suzhou. Between West Lake and the Temple complex, it is the most beautiful place we have visited in China!

Yesterday we had a great day in scenic Xitang, the ancient water city where Mission Impossible III was filmed! Unfortunately we don't have regular e-mail access here in Jiashan so there will be fewer blogs than last week, but check back because we'll get one up every chance we get!

Zach, Laura, Cecilia, and Crystal found a way to stay entertained on the overnight train to Shanghai!

Currently everyone is in the crazy frenzy of packing and checking out. After two weeks of settling in and figuring out Beijing, we are now heading on to our next adventure in China, Jia Shan. Beijing was a lot of fun, and I’m sure I could spend years exploring the city and never come close to seeing all the cool places tucked away in back alleys and side roads. It’s still interesting to think how Beijing will host the 2008 Olympics, in a city already so crowded.
We had our last three hours of Chinese class today, and while it was a lot of fun learning a new language, three hours can get to be a bit long. If we speak really slowly, and find someone who speaks Chinese and has a lot of patience we may be able to carry on a short conversation, mostly about what we want to eat.
Last night we experienced Peking Opera. It was…… interesting, a bit of an assault to the ears at times, with loud crashing instrumentation, but still interesting. The three acts including, Stabbing a Clam, something about a girl sprinkling flower around the world….. and finally the monkey king. At times we were treated to a large light up sign that “translated” what we were seeing. However, the translation was questionable at best. Still, it was an interesting experience,