Ni hao! Shanghai has been really overwhelming and we're both suffering from culture shock. The people are loud and seem to need to shout everything all the time; the traffic is mad, cars are honking all the time and pedestrian crossings might as well not be there; the food is all completely unknown to us and even when the menu has picture of the food you're still not entirely sure what you've ordered and when it turns up it looks nothing like the picture anyway! We are slowly but surely settling into it though.

Tuesday 5th April - arrive in Shanghai.

Wednesday 6th April - The Bund Sightseeing Tunnel. Our first day in Shanghai and we hit probably the mos tackiest tourist attraction here - the Sightseeing Tunnel! It's a little cable car that goes underground beneath the river. You are whisked through the tunnel as digital images and fibre optic displays flash all over the tunnel walls, while a voice narrates it by saying things like "heaven... and hell". We're still undecided as to whether we enjoyed it or not!

Thursday 7th April - Propaganda Poster Museum and Jing'An Temple. The temple was pretty, but it seems to be undergoing some rennovations. There was building work going on all over, and the hammering and drilling kind of spoiled the atmosphere a bit. The Propaganda Poster Museum holds a rare collection of Chinese propaganda posters from the 1940s to 1970s. It's quite hard to find though, as it's on the basement floor of a block of flats. Fortunately the guard outside the flats is quite used to confused Westerners wandering up and down the road and he knew what we were looking for. The posters were very interesting, from World War 2 and the Cold War when they were all about stomping out the American imperialists, through to the Mao years and the Cultural Revolution where the focus was more on farming, industrialism and progress.

Friday 8th April - Renmin Square, Jade Buddha Temple and Yu Yuan Gardens. There wasnt much to see at the Square other than a small park. The Jade Buddha Temple was nice though. The gardens weren't gardens at all, but a very hectic bazaar/tourist trap. There were tiny shops in every nook and cranny selling all manner of things, and swarms of tourists photographing everything that moved. All the shops were in ornate pagoda-like buildings. I don't know if they were original buildings or recent reproductions, but they added to the festive atmosphere. In the middle of it all is a tea house where the likes of Bill Clinton have visited, so obviously we went there too. The menu was full of teas with names like 'mystic dragon' and 'golden candlestick with silver spoon' but they turned out just to be jasmine and rose. It would have been a lot easier to order if they'd just put that on the menu! The teas were served in clear pots filled with boiling water and the head of a flower. We were also given some free nibbles, including something hard and sweet, something chewy, and some hardboiled quails eggs.

Saturday 9th April - Century Park. This is huge park where you can hire bikes to cycle around. There's also a lake where you can hire pedlos, so we leapt at the chance to do that! Unfortunately, they were electric boats, not pedalos, so we spent our time steering a very slow moving boat around the lake.

Sunday 10th April - around Shanghai. We just took today easy and ambled about it.

Monday 11th April - Botannical Gardens. For our last day we headed across town to the Botannical Gardens. The gardens were lovely. They had hundreds of tulips on display, all different tyes and colours. There was also a large greenhouse filled with beautiful orchids.

But it's time to move on now. Next stop: Nanjing.

Bye!
Lindsay and Chris