Around Town

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Went to one of Shanghai's big antique markets today at Dongtai Lu. Most memorable was the Mao paraphanalia at nearly every stall (Mao posters, bags, watches, statues, plates, clocks, etc, and even lots of copies of Mao's little red book), and the few items of torture that we managed to find. In one of the last stalls we found something that looked like a metal glove with spikes all over it, and the guys we were with convinced me to put my hand in it. Pretty scary stuff! I also came away from there feeling really dirty, but was impressed by how much the antique markets here reflect Chinese culture, all the way from ancient times until pretty recently, at least until the Cultural Revolution. I'm not sure what or how much Mao paraphanalia I'm going to leave here with, but today I picked up a pretty cool Socialist propaganda poster.
We also ate lunch at a really local place right next to the market, and once again I felt in confict with my vegetarianism. I was in a group of people so I didn't want to make a fuss about things, so I kind of took a leap of faith when I ordered. I thought I ordered noodles, but I ended up with a noodle soup, and I've been trying not to get stuck eating soups here because I know they aren't vegetarian, but today I kinda went with it and picked at it, but what I was eating was certainly on my mind the whole time. Last night at dinner (CIEE took our entire group for hot pot, which was pretty uncomfortable for me and I definitely won't be going back there on my own time), a few of us created a "vegetarian section" and it was me and three people on the trip who are trying to eat Kosher, and we found out that although we asked for it to be vegetarian, one of the broths had shrimp floating in it. That kinda screwed all of us up. And I was sitting next to Lei who is also kind of a vegetarian, and she told me that she thought that if I wanted to stick with being a picky vegetarian - ie, not only not eating meat, but also not eating fish or meat/fish based broths, it would actually be impossible to do in China. I feel like I'm doing pretty well, but of all things so far, I'm finding this eating thing to be the most unfortunate.
We had a really nice day yesterday at Zhouzhuang, a water town about an hour and a half away. Apparently it was supposed to resemble little venice. I'm hoping to go back there with my parents when they come. Despite that, I was feeling like I was getting sick throughout the day, and I came home and took two airborne things in hopes that I could prevent it, but I woke up this morning and am definitely sick, most likely a cold, and no, its certainly not bird flu. I guess it could be expected, with the weird eating and being pretty exhausted - on Thursday night I was out until 4am, and then had to wake up at 8 for the field trip- but I'm trying not to let being sick prevent me from doing stuff. I didn't go out last night, but I'm still planning on going out tonight (tonight is night 14, because some people on our trip have gone out now for 14 nights consecutively! Shanghai is definitely a party city!) and I hope it won't screw me up too much.

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