After about 20 hours of travel, I arrived at my hotel in Shanghai at 2am local time. For those who haven't heard the story yet, Hainan Air changed the schedule of my 2nd flight. Instead of arriving at 11pm in Shanghai, it arrived at 1:20am. They notified me of this change by calling and leaving voicemail... in Chinese. This left me with a 6 hour layover in Beijing (it ended up being less because the flight was late) so I left the airport and headed over to Microsoft Beijing to have dinner with one of my co-workers who's working over there for a few months.

When I checked weather.com, it said something like 10% chance of rain, high in the mid 40's. TOTAL LIE. You know how I seem to attract snow when I'm traveling? Well, I got it today. Really overcast, light rain and snow the whole day. So it was a pretty miserable day for photography, but not too bad of a day for sightseeing. On the postcards I bought, I see how crowded some of the sights are on nice days, and it was nothing like that today.

I did two self-guided walking tours today,starting in the Bund. From the riverfront, you get a good view of the Pudong area across the river, and it is seriously weird, like it doesn't belong on this planet. Hopefully I get a day during this trip when the views are more clear. The Bund has a lot of massive buildings in Renaissance and Art Deco styles. I wish I could have gone inside more of them, but they station people at the entrances of pretty much any big building in this city, and sometimes they stop you and ask you what you want. I did walk inside the Peace Hotel, formerly the Cathay Hotel and the Shanghai equivalent to India's Taj Hotel. The interior is really swanky Art Deco. There's a sign up not to take pictures, though. Near the end of my Bund walk, I was getting really cold so I went inside the Waldorf-Astoria and had myself a pot of Tie Kuan Yin oolong tea. It wasn't cheap, but it was totally worth it. The tea was great and it was a fantastic place to sit and write. Like the Peace Hotel, there were a number of posh sitting aeas that were very welcoming and not very utilized.

It's 1:20am in Seattle right now and the jet lag is hitting me hard. =/

I continued walking along the riverfront down to the Yuyuan Gardens area, which is also the location of where many Chinese people lived when other parts of the city were split into foreign concessions. Some of it is being torn down and replaced with modern construction, but there's still some of the old stuff left. I accidentally stumbled into an area of residential alleys, streets too narrow for cars. It felt similar to walking in Beijing's hutongs. Nearby, there was a street called Si Pai Lou full of cheap local eats. I was offered stinky tofu a few times (no thanks) and finally settled for a plate of 20 dumplings (for $1).

The Lantern Festival takes place something like 2 weeks after Chinese New Year, on the 6th of February this year. I knew I was going to miss it, but I hoped to see some of the decorations before they took them down. I got there just in time... there were huge displays of figures and dragons around the Old Shanghai Teahouse and Bridge of 9 Turns that were being taken down this afternoon. They were mostly intact when I got there, but I'm guessing they will not be there tomorrow. Lots of little shops in that area, including a big antiques market that by the afternoon lacked customers so most of the vendors were playing enthusiastic games of cards. I also visited The Temple of the Town God in that area that I thought was a Buddhist temple, but it ended up being Daoist. The "town god" representation was a reddish-faced, kind of angry-looking man. I guess that explains the driving around here. I was crossing with a pedestrian green light and a police car turning left tried to kill me.

I am totally indulging my food cravings here. I haven't had dinner yet and so far today I have eaten 2 baozi, shaobing youtiao, and 20 dumplings. I was THIS close to getting in the line for the XLB at Nanxiang Mantou Dian but I decided not to spoil my dinner because they give you like 16 of them.