Zhujiajiao

---

Last night the British Council in Shanghai held a reception dinner for all the newly arrived ELAs. We had been (falsely) led to believe it would be a fairly formal affair and so we were (mostly) booted and suited and suffering in the heat because of it. (Needlessly it turns out). We were again subjected to several speeches. The Confucius quote "Truly happiness is friends coming from afar" seems a real favourite!

A free buffet and bar was provided at the reception which some people maybe abused a little too much. The buffet was actually quite dissapointing, it was mostly western food and there was really very little on offer for vegetarians, it's the first time since I've been here that I've had any real difficulty being veggie. Using a knife and fork for the first time in a week was a strange experience too! We did get a chance to chat with the local British Council staff and with some of their Chinese counterparts too, which was really interesting.

After the reception finished a fair few of us moved on to an expat bar in the French Concession of Shanghai. The bar itself was quite cool but like a lot of Shanghai it was quite expensive. It was about ¥40 (about ₤2.60) for a pint which might not seem like a lot but you can quite easily get an evening meal for less than ¥10 (about 60p). It was nice to drink from a pint glass rather than one of the glorified shot glasses that they serve beer in at dinner though!

I didn't stay that late as Daneel, one of my roommates overdid it a little so Dave (my other roommate) and I had to take him home in a taxi. We were quite annoyed at the time as we missed out on the rest of the night but in hindsight it was probably a good thing as we had to be up early in the morning for the trip to nearby Zhujiajiao. Needless to say many of the ELAs, including Daneel, didn't make it.

Zhujiajiao was pretty cool, not really what I was expecting. It's known locally as the Venice of Shanghai because of all the traditional architecture and the bridges which span the waterways running through it. The town itself had quite a sleepy atmosphere to it despite all the tourists (mostly Chinese), beggars and street vendors. I spent most of the morning in a (probably vastly overpriced) tea house sipping tea and watching the boats punting up and down the river.

Lunch was provided as part of the trip and, as we've started to expect, was quite impressive. There were so many dishes that they had to pile them on top of one another in the centre of the table. There were quite a few "unusual" dishes too inlcuding some kind of clam in an egg jelly and strips of fried jellyfish, which was described by Dave as surprisingly crunchy and disgusting. Most people steered clear of the beer at lunch as they were still a little delicate after the night before and so opted for Coke, which had a picture of Wayne Rooney on the bottle.

The coach trip back into Shanghai was quite impressive too. It was the first time I'd really got to see any of Shanghai proper as we're stuck out in Pudong most of the time. The architecture is crazy, it looks so modern and futuristic and at the same time functionless and out of place as if the whole city is screaming "look at how advanced we are" to everyone who passes through it, which in a way I suppose it is.

---