Snap Happy (Courtney)

And so we return from the big city lights of Shanghai, back to little ole Wuxi. Funny though how after three months it's actually nice to open the front door and feel "home". Well, as home as we can feel anyways.

We took a mammoth amount of photos in the space of two days, however I will be nice as I am only going to subject you to 16. It's hard to know what to say about Shanghai. I absolutely love it there, but it's very difficult to pinpoint a reason why. Hopefully as I write some captions to the photos my reasons will become clearer...to myself! It's such a huge city, huge on a scale I couldn't have imagined, it just goes on and on seemingly forever. I love the modern, garish architecture of Pudong, feel like I'm in Europe strolling the Bund, and could just stare for hours down the narrow alleys of the old housing communities. There is so much happening in this city, and a lot of the time you don't feel as though you are in China China, but a paler version.

When I'm in Wuxi, being called out to and pointed and laughed at, I long for anonymity and to just be another face in the crowd, doing my grocery shopping or catching the bus. Yet then we hit Shanghai and I long for the quiet that comes with no one speaking English where we live. Shanghai swarms with people (literally - the population of Australia lives in this city alone) and the majority of those people have some level of English. It takes a while to sink back into hearing English everywhere...and suddenly everything seems noiser, mostly because you can understand what is being said around you, it's no longer just background noise. Everyone wants to talk to you and sell you something. Poor Marcus, he gets sucked in every time. I turn around and Marcus is still 50 metres behind me trapped in a conversation that is only leading in one direction. I am not kidding when I say we had been on the Bund for about 20 minutes and had only moved approximately 50 metres as Marcus said hello to anybody who caught his attention! Although, I should point out that whilst he was having his image torturously cut out of paper, I was being photographed by a man with his son. Initially I thought he was just flattering me when he said he wanted my photo because he thought I was beautiful...it was only hours later that it occurred to me that my image is now probably plastered on posters down the length of the Bund as advertising for the mobile photo people...sigh!

So Shanghai has its ups and downs, but what city doesn't. Regardless of the non stop hawkers (and they really are NON STOP) and people wanting to "practice" their English, Shanghai has a charm and a buzz to it that I dare say isn't found in any other Chinese city.

The Bund by day...how's the serenity...

Spectacular by night.

This is about 10:30 at night. Absolutely jumping with people.

And then the peacefulness of early morning. This was The Bund at its best. Quiet and breezy with the oldies doing their tai chi and exercise. I might point out that we got up at 5:30am to check it out!

Tai Chi...and some very funky sunvisors.

This is what I wanted to see most, the fan dancers. Sadly they were tucked away in this crummy little spot and I didn't manage to get even one ok photo. But seeing their graceful moves was a highlight for me.

Syncronised sword dancing. I wonder if it's master and prodigee.

A couple of streets away from the apartment was this fantastic block of streets, it was as though we had stumbled into Hong Kong. The street we ate on consisted of only 3 types of stores - restaurants, cigarette shops and of course, brothels.

The old, and fast disappearing laneways. You can really get a sense of what this city looked like a few decades ago. Life goes on here just as it always has. They are beautiful to see, yet at the same time you feel like you are invading their privacy.

And now for some miscellaneous shots...

The people of China will sleep ANYWHERE. Give them a surface and they will sleep on it, no matter how obscure. If you look closely you will see not one, but two people asleep in this picture.

Need an ear service? We saw this on the way to getting haircuts. Yes that's right, haircuts. And what a success it was! I thought we could both be sporting caps for a long time to come but the guys did a great job...and all for the low price of 68 yuan (about $10 including full movie star styling) for me, and 150 yuan for Marcus. Go figure!

The popular drink of the moment.

Lunch!

And finally, at a market we went to, we stumbled into one of the numerous Chinese art shops. Whilst Marcus was off looking at Chinese seals, I was anxiously eyeing a couple who were bartering over a series of 4 paintings. I was desperately hoping they wouldn't purchase them all as I had fallen in love with them myself. Well, it was my lucky day as they only bought 2 of them. So I snapped up the other two before she had a chance to move, and successfully cleared my purse of all money. Thankfully I had heard the whole bartering process that the other two went through (and one was Chinese, so the price is always lower), so she sold them to me for the same price. I just absolutely love them and was prepared to carry them on their frames all the way to Wuxi if need be. Not to worry though, within a jiffy they were off their frames and for an even cheaper price they now sit in a box awaiting our next home! They stand probably just over a metre tall, and remind us so much of the little kiddies we teach.

You can even just catch a glimpse of my very trendy 12 yuan slippers in the corner ;-)