China, Chapter 2: “Help will arrive within 5 minutes if anyone falls into the HuangPu River”
March 5th, 2010
Me, sporting one of my favorite new earrings!
Day 3 started around 6:30 am. I woke up, anxious to read the Shanghai Daily. This may sound odd, but starting my day with copious amounts of green tea and reading the entire English newspaper is a part of my day here that I just can’t skip. It is written by Chinese people in British English, with titles like: “Granny DJ Spins Hits”; “Teacher Pricked Pupils”; ”Freak Wave kills 2″; ”She saved a burn victim, but at a cost”; and, the title that is so fabulous it trumps any title I could ever create for this blog, so I’ve given in and copy-pasted: “Help will arrive within 5 minutes if anyone falls into the HuangPu River”. In other News, the Daily reported on Mao’s grandson’s self promotion due to “the people’s love of his grandfather”. Also, in attempts to clean the HuangPu River for the World Expo, “[the government] has asked 82 of the 280 businesses producing dangerous chemical products to relocate [their pollutants] to an industrial park across the city”.
I can’t get enough. The Daily is like a good movie-funny, informative, and controversial enough to make you blush.
I have to try everything on!
Shannon enjoying some green tea before our foot massage!
After 8 hours, Shannon is ready to go! But she's hanging in there.
Li Ming Ming, pricing our designs!
After lunch, and an eight-hour design and creation session with one of my vendors, we head to a Mexican place we found in the City Weekend Magazine-a publication for foreigners with tons of recommendations for food, nightlife, entertainment, etc. It’s packed, and we have no reservation, so Shannon and I order Passion Fruit Margaritas and sit at the bar until they can squeeze us in. The Margaritas were recommended to us by 2 women we met from Chicago and Paris, who are here in Shanghai looking for teaching jobs. We were seated next to a Scottish woman and Italian man on a 2nd date, who were quite friendly and recommended the Macho Nachos. We had great fun with the woman, who was obviously elated to not be alone on this date-she even commented that she thought he was only dating her to learn English, and told him she charged 600 RMB an hour for her services.
One of many earrings that we ARE NOT using! This one is just terrible! My mission: to design a custom earring for a bride... mission not accomplished, yet!
She gave us her card to keep in touch, and we grabbed a cab and headed to the hotel.
Ashley