Blogs from Luwan, Shanghai, China, Asia

Partiamo al mattino verso le 7,30, un po’ piu tardi del solito.La strada procede più o meno piana fino al villaggio di Vioto. Qui c’è un check point e ci registriamo; c’è anche un piccolo gompa (santuario buddhista) che visito. Ogni villaggio ne ha almeno uno, oltre a varie ruote di preghiera (in Nepali “Manè”), e a svariati stupa o comuni edicolette votive. La strada è molto dissestata, costellata di rocce aguzze. In realtà è in corso di costruzione, ogni 20 minuti troviamo gruppetti di 3/4 operai intenti a spaccare le pietre, qualche volta con l’aiuto di macchinari, il più delle volte a martello. Altrettanto spesso vediamo grosse pietre percorrere il sentiero sulle spalle di qualche minuto portatore. Dopo circa 3 ore arriviamo a CHAME, uno dei principali villaggi della vallata. Anche questo è ... read more

July 14th, 2011 This morning, we went back to the 7-Colour Flower E. S. for different cultural activities such as table tennis, Kung Fu, Tea ceremony, and yo-yo activities. We had great fun! After having a tasty lunch we arrived at the circus town to participate in the closing ceremony. All 800 summer camp students from all over the world were there. We went in a dome-shaped building that was very big. I got a good view of the stage. After the closing ceremony, there were two parts for the circus act, the first part was performed by other students, and it was something like a talent show. The first part was very interesting; there were many talented performers and they performed acts such as: martial arts, playing instruments, singing and etc. The first part was ... read more

What sound is that?! it started with a spot of fireworks in front of my apartment. After a while, you hear another one 18 deg northeast, then 198 deg southwest, then 360 deg you see fireworks everywhere through the night! It's the 4th day of the Lunar New Year. It's believed that the God of Fortune will come visit and people believed in lighting firecrackers to welcome the God of Fortune. Xintiandi has a almost 20mins of fireworks at 12midnight. Who needs to come watch Fireworks Festival? I can sit in comfort at home to catch the most extensive unorchestrated fireworks show I've seen ever.... read more

For those of you regularly reading my travel blog, you may be getting tired of reading about the World Expo. If that's the case, you'll be glad to know that this was our last visit until the fall, when we hope to make one or two more trips. I'm a few weeks late posting this, as our actual trip was on July 8th. Before going to the Expo, we looked really close at the map to see what the largest areas we hadn't been to so far were and we mapped out our route. The only problem was - for some unknown reason (since I don't speak much Chinese), the taxi driver wouldn't take us to the entrance we wanted to go to. So, we decided to do our route backwards, which worked out OK. We ... read more

So it was back to the Expo. In an attempt to beat the queues, I headed off early - to get into the park at opening time. I had reckoned without the airport-style security. So I arrived for 9.30 and got into around 10.30. I naively headed first to the Chinese provinces pavillion, only to be told that it was entrance by reservation only. I couldn't really be bothered to queue for a reservation, so I headed instead for the Japan pavillion, right at the end of the Asian zone. I had also underestimated how fascinated the Chinese visitors would be by the Japanese pavillion (perhaps surprising given the lingering resentment after the violent Japanese occupation of the East coast of China). I joined the queue thinking optimistically that it would be an hour wait tops. ... read more