Blogs from Nanqiao, Fengxian, Shanghai, China, Asia

i am posting this a while after we actually got to China and went to Suzhou, but I am horrible at keeping up my blog. I am leaving on the original date so you can see when we went to Suzhou. After the first few days of being in China the National Holiday and Mid-Autumn Festival started and my dad got time off. So we went to Suzhou for the holiday. My next few posts will be about Suzhou. The day after we got to Suzhou we went to Shantang Street, it is an old shopping street. There were a lot of little stores and booths, and some people lived on Shantang Street ( the people who owned or worked at the stores and booths and some others). There were people selling food and there were ... read more

It was a LONG trip, but we made it! It took 26 hrs from the time we left home until we arrived at our Chinese "home." Our flight in Chicago was delayed because they had to do some repairs, but I won't complain, I'm always thankful that they find these problems and fix them while we are on the ground! The plane wasn't full, so the seat next to us was empty and we were able to sprawl out and relax a little better than usual. By the way, if anyone is ever flying from US to Asia, check out Airgorilla.com. I booked our flight through them and saved $700 for the exact same flights we had last time. Leah had gotten a new camera before we left, a Panasonic Lumix ZS3 (it's a fantastic camera!), ... read more

This past weekend, we went back to Guhua Park (which I wrote about earlier) both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday, we caught a cab, showed the taxi driver a picture of the park sign from when we were there before and it worked - we got there! We first had lunch at the restaurant next to the park, which we now know is called U.N.D.C. Coffee in English. After lunch, we walked through some areas of the park where we hadn’t been before and then went to the amusement park area. Jim and Leah went on some rides, then we walked a little more until we realized that the park was closing (at 4:30). A security guard led us to the exit because we weren’t sure how to get out from where we were! We walked a ... read more

Xiaotang is what everyone calls a “ small” town and is just a 5-10 minute walk from where we are living. This is where the other people who live here do their shopping. King Kong, who works with Jim, and his girlfriend, Miracle, walked to Xiaotang (pronounced show -like in cow - tahng) with us one night. Once we left the Ace gates, we heard music and saw a group of people across the street. They were standing in the driveway of a Honda dealer and we were told that these were the employees of that company and they were doing their “performance” as an advertisement. They were pretty good and definitely attracting attention. King Kong said that in the 3 years he has lived there, this was the first time he ever saw them doing ... read more

Thursday, May 28, 2009 was Dragon Boat Festival, or Duan Wu Jie, one of thre three biggest holidays celebrated in China. It falls on the 5th day of the 5th month on the lunar calendar and is therefore also sometimes called the Double Fifth Festival. This festival is actually celebrated to mourn for a man who died more than 2000 years ago (278BC)! He was Qu Yuan, a poet, writer, a patriotic officer who challenged corruption, and was very popular with the common people. When the Dynasty he served was defeated, he committed suicide by drowning himself in the river. Supposedly, the people hurried out on the river in their boats, beating drums to scare away the fish and feeding Zong zi to those that wouldn't be scared away so that they wouldn't eat Qu Yuan's ... read more