Neon City Shanghai

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There are many ways to travel; sometimes you are alone and surrounded by strange things; sometimes you have a purpose and a specific endpoint; sometimes you are simply along for the ride. My most recent trip to China was of the third variety. I was lucky enough to visit with my boyfriend to meet his family and see the city where he was born. Due to these circumstances, I had an amazing trip that I did little to plan.

This is actually my second trip to China. For my first trip, I only visited Beijing and I spent a lot of time going to hospitals and tourist spots like the Great Wall. It was fun, but fast and I didn't get to explore much on my own.

I landed in Shanghai and was whisked to the Hua Ting Guest House and had a dinner that included pepper steak, mapo tofu and raw chicken in spicy peanut sauce. I must admit, for the last dish mentioned the Public Health side of me freaked out a little, but food poisoning was avoided and it was actually quite tasty. This was the first night of what ended up being a strange culinary journey into exciting and delicious traditional Chinese cuisine. I tried so many new things, and I developed a love of red bean paste, steamed dumplings, and bok choy.

We were only in Shanghai for a couple of days. Highlights of the trip included the Old Town, where we had incredible steamed dumplings, the Bund on the Huangpu river, and the superfast, superclean subways. We went to the Bund at night and unfortunately I didn't get a lot of good pictures, which was a theme of this trip for me. Maybe it's me, maybe it's the camera, maybe it was the infamous Chinese smog. For whatever reason, things are a little blurry, so I apologize for my poor photography skills.

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