What we feel about a place is often influenced by the type of experience we have there: whether we feel welcome, whether we have a chance to really explore all aspects of a place, whether we like the food and the people we meet. It was taking longer than usual to like China, mainly due to the awful rainy weather which was hampering our meandering, but Shanghai changed all that thanks to the hospitality of two of our past Host students Yan and Miranda.

Having stayed with us in 2015 they were both eager to return the favour, and show off new boyfriends and news of their jobs. Yan and Allen took us out for dinner on our first evening in Shanghai, introducing us to a number of new Chinese dishes, the concept of ordering a number of dishes for everyone to share instead of individually, and the modern way to place your order. In China virtually everyone you see is glued to a smartphone, watching films, reading comics, playing games or messaging friends. They also come into their own when you eat out as not only can you book your table, but on arrival can order your food by phone from the table. Things were going well until Allen, in an attempt to help accidentally deleted the order before Yan had time to send it, so we resorted to the good old fashioned method- filling in the order slip left on the table. In fact, we had so much food that we couldn't finish it so the restaurant happily supplied doggy boxes on request to take some home.

After the meal, we were treated to an evening trip along the Bund. A sight which in my opinion easily rivals if not supersedes Hong Kong Harbour. The Pearl tower was easily my favourite as the lights on the orb changed from blue to pink, to brown, to pink. From the other bank, we were able to look across at the many buildings created by various occupiers in the past including the British and French, with their grand facades and multiple columns. Indeed as we were to see later in the week the city is a cosmopolitan mix of buildings with some of the older Shanghai still nestled at the foot of huge towers and shopping malls.

The weather in Shanghai wasn't letting up and faced with the prospect of another day of wet and miserable weather we planned a visit to the Shanghai Museum. Now museums are great, but I have to admit to a short attention span in such places especially if things are not in English. I would however recommend this one, as I managed a couple of galleries before yearning for a cup of tea. Many captions are in English and they have a fantastic display of costumes from the various Chinese ethnic groups, as well as examples of their fantastic craftwork. Other galleries included calligraphy, Chinese painting, ceramics, jade, sculpture- not a bad way to miss the rain, and the interior of the building was pretty impressive too.

As the weather forecast predicted more days of rain we planned some trips taking this into account. Shanghai is home to the famous Maglev. The worlds fastest train. It actually only travels just over 30 km but does so in just over 7 minutes. That's a top speed of 431 km/hour- so we just had to try it, well why wouldn't you? The interesting fact about the train is it has no wheels. Apparently, wheels would limit its top speed so the trains float above the track using a magnetic levitation system, making the ride comfortable, as well as fast. John was very excited about the impending trip and didn't stop talking all the way there as we took the subway ride to the station. He's just a little boy at heart! Afterwards, we had a chance to head for the free Maglev museum to find out all the background. It was fascinating and would be a fantastic place for budding physicists and mechanics to come as it's all explained really well.

Our last day in Shanghai was very memorable thanks to Yan and Miranda, who arranged to take the afternoon off work to spend time with us, and the fact that the sun came out and it didn't rain. Starting off in the Civilised Park aka the French park, we wandered around the flower beds and water features watching groups of older people who had come to the park to watch the impromptu dancing and share stories in the sun. Yan had arranged for us to have afternoon tea at a very posh local restaurant sited in one of the western-influenced buildings at Sinan Manor. The petit fours were exquisite and looked too good to eat. Obviously, we did eat them though, savouring each crumb between snippets of conversation, and washing them down with Chinese tea.

A short meander through the alleys and small shops of Tianzifang led us to our dinner venue at Spicy, a restaurant specialising in Sichuan food which is famous for its use of chillies. Restaurants both here and in Japan are often busy, and the popular ones are easily spotted by the people queuing or sitting outside. The girls had booked a table so it was just a case of waiting for one to come free. We didn't have to wait long until we were taking our seats and scanning the menu. The frog was quite prominent, in a variety of guises, although we gave it a miss as we're not ready to croak yet! Miranda recommended a fish dish, so we ordered that alongside a number of other options to make up our own buffet. When the fish arrived it was difficult to see the fish pieces for whole chillies, the small red lethal ones, floating on the top. The spicy chicken which we ordered as well adopted a more discreet approach, and had chillies chopped up and distributed throughout the dish. In hindsight, as this was the more lethal of the two I decided my motto should be that it's better to see the enemy rather than just know it's there. The meal certainly rounded off our time in Shanghai and left us with a warm fuzzy feeling (and damp eyes) as we said goodbye.

Our departure from Shanghai was by G train, the fast train to Beijing. Miraculously we made it to the station in time to redeem our subway cards, and check in on time. Despite being nice and clean when we left the hotel we were sweating like a couple of old buffalo by the time we got to the station with our backpacks and found the appropriate check-in point. We were just grateful we didn't have to sit next to anyone else. The rest of the passengers, predominantly Chinese, noisily sorted themselves out, as John and I settled down with our respective tablets -the electronic ones, although we were soon wishing we had some of the other sorts as some of the passengers managed to maintain a high decibel level throughout the 6-hour journey. The thing we've noticed about many Chinese is that they are not worried about keeping their business private.

Before long we were cruising at a top speed of 304 km/hr as the world outside skimmed by. We hadn't gone far before we found rain clouds covering the countryside in a grey blanket, shrouding the buildings and countryside until it eventually started to clear on the other side of Nanjing. China is certainly suffering from some strange weather at the moment, with more rain than usual across the country. The journey seemed very quick and I'd only just managed to finish the jigsaw on the iPad before we were pulling into Beijing South.....for the next part of our adventure.