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Well, after visiting the Shanghai Exhibit in San Francisco, Shanghai's sister city, I got nostalgic and decided to return to Shanghai for a week in May. While in town, I've managed to visit the "Expo" (world fair), see friends and former colleagues from the French School, and visit the orphanage where I volunteered last year.
It's fun to return to a place where you lived for six months, and with a place like Shanghai, you notice changes. In just a year, there are now 10 metro lines (instead of 3 or 4 last year) and numerous new stops. On the streets and elevated by-passes, you see cute new taxis, lots of repainted facades and decorated trees. In DVD and CD shops, there is a front space for "legal" items but behind the back wall there is another part of the shop where you can still buy counterfeited ones. At the Expo and in the metro there are lots of young English-speaking "volunteers" in flourescent green jackets. I enjoyed staying with two sets of friends and their husbands for 6 nights in my old neighborhood in the French concession, where I went to local Chinese and Italian (pasta is big here!)
HK at M on the Bund
great view from the terrace of this restaurant, where I attended the Literary Festival last year restaurants, took the metro, window shopped and had a massage at my old haunt. I also returned to the Shanghai Museum and visited one I didn't know: the Propaganda Poster Museum, which houses a collection of posters from the Mao era.
I am now out in Qing Pu (a part of western Shanghai) where the French and German schools are located on a common campus and am staying in a lovely house in a gated community ("a compound") with a former German colleague (who is also an artist) and her family. Yesterday, I spent two hours at the school saying hello to everyone, and last night I was invited to the home of another colleague. As I said, it's fun to come back a year later to a place where you've lived.
The two highlights of my trip have been to visit the Expo and to return to the orphanage. I'll let the photos here of the Expo speak for themselves. (I've posted some 85 photos but only 21 appear on each page, so please click "next" to see them all.) The Fair takes place in two locations along the Huangpu River. The country pavilions are all on
the "right bank" side--the newly developed and modern Pudong area--and the corporate and theme pavilions are on the "left bank" in the older Puxi area. To get from one to the other, you can take a ferry or a metro (just one stop--and it's free). There are many more people visiting the Pudong side--crowds and crowds, in fact. I spent two days at Expo, buying a ticket as soon as I arrived in the morning. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get into the Chinese pavilion, as they hand out "reservations" (vouchers) for it every day as soon as the Fair opens at 9 am and they were all gone by 9:05! After waiting in line for 2 hours to get into the Saudi pavilion and being somewhat disappointed once I got in, I decided I wouldn't stand in line for more than half an hour after that. This meant that I didn't get into some of the more popular pavilions (e.g. the Italian, Japanese, etc.), but I did visit quite a few of them and I enjoyed walking around and seeing the architecture from the outside. I particularly liked visiting the African Pavilion, where there were no lines to get
Orphanage - kids in Koala Room
eating the tangerines I brought in and where various African countries had smaller stands that were colorful and animated. I also liked the unusual British Pavilion, which kept to the theme of the Expo ("Better City, Better Life"), unlike many of the other national pavilions. The French pavilion was also well-done. An unusual theme pavilion on the Puxi side was the "Pavilion of the Footprint" (see my comments on the photos).
Two days ago, I went out to the orphanage, the Shanghai Children's Home, where I volunteered one day a week last year. Because of the threat of swine flu, it has been closed to western volunteers for many months. But, thanks to the help of an English-speaking Chinese woman with whom I kept in touch out there, I was lucky enough to be able to enter the orphanage and distribute tangerines and cookies to children in the room where I worked last year. I was also able to follow up on one of my favorites: Wei Chun, who is hearing and speech impaired. Now four years old, she has started, since I last saw her, receiving "rehabilitation" for her disability; and I was told that she's going to be adopted by an American
family! I couldn't be more pleased. I was also very pleased to meet, as I was leaving the orphanage, an American couple who had just adopted another little girl. And my French colleague and friend, Frederique, and her husband told me last night that their adoption papers have finally gone through and that they will soon be able to go and fetch their little daughter, probably in another province of China. Is China going back to allowing more foreign adoptions? I don't know the answer but am happy to relate what I know about these three cases.
All in all, it's been a wonderful stay. Shanghai is a vibrant and fascinating place which I invite you to visit.
As for myself, I'm flying back to California tomorrow for two weeks, one of which will be spent on holiday on the Pacific Coast of Mexico. Then, on May 29, I'm returning to Paris, where Grandchild Number One is due in July. I'll be in France during the summer and hope to see any of you who are in town while I'm there.
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betty blum
non-member comment
glad to hear from you
Hilary, So good to hear from you--you jet-setter!! Are you ever in one place for more than 2 weeks? It is fun to travel with you to all the places you go. It seems you go from vacation to vacation. Let's keep it up (with me on your shoulders). Your comments are really interesting. Are you thinking of coming to the OHA annual meeting in the fall? It would be fun to see you once again. Congrats to the father and mother and grandmother of the new addition. Being a grand parent is the dividend we get for having children. Cordially, Betty