Xitang

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So today we took a field trip to a little water town about two hours outside of Shanghai called Xitang. It's a small little water village that is thousands of years old and now has touristy shops and rivers everywhere (8 rivers combine here). We hopped on the bus around 8:30 and headed out of town. At one point, we were on the freeway, when our driver realized he had missed our turn. An American driver would turn around and the next exit. Our driver, however stopped the car, then hit reverse! It was actually pretty hysterical.

The city itself was definitely worth seeing, the towns in China kind of blend into one another but this one in particular had a special section with all the rivers. The first place we went had a pond with a bunch of dead fish, then we went to the rice wine museum and the drunk gardens, neither of which were very interesting. I have pretty amazing pics of the city itself, lots of bridges and lots of polution in the water. It was pretty foggy but the air was better there than in Shanghai. At one point a small Chinese boy, maybe two or three came running at us and started pulling Kung-fu moves, we decided that either he watched too much tv or he was trying to get rid of the foreigners. There were also a lot of cats and dogs running around the town.

We got to go on a gondola tour and a bunch of people were taking pictures of us as we passed by on the Gondolas. Near the boarding platform they had people singing Chinese music, although they were heavily made up so we couldn't really tell if they were male or female. We ate at a restaurant and were served family style like many other Chinese restaurants, they brough us duck feet, and a lot of veggies. There was a pork dish that looked very fatty that I decided not to touch. I also tried some weird Chinese candy, one tasted like compacted cotton candy, and the other was basically melted sugar on sticks. I bit into it and got it everywhere (of course) so a lady was nice enough to let me use her sink. The only bathrooms in Xitang are squaters, but I couldn't hold it all day so we had to brave them after lunch. As we were leaving, an old Chinese lady with a stool and shoe polish began to harass Meaghan about cleaning her shoes for 5 kuai, Meaghan insisted on one, but instead of giving in the lady bargained at 3 kuai and then followed Meaghan for several minutes as we headed back to the bus before she finally gave up. Definitely a cool city, but not one that I would like to spend more than a day in.

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