The Search Is Over...

Weather: 11C couldy/smog

Time:1030am

See Suits, if nothing else.

Weiqi Lunch

In my Chinese Culture course, we've been taking field trips.  The first one I wrote about was the Peking Opera (Beijing Opera)  This past Wednesday all 30+ of us went out to lunch on the Shanghai Jiao Tong University budget.  We caught our coach bus from our hotel.  After 40 minutes, we arrived in an older part / touristy type of area.  Aside; It's hard to tell how big the city is since everything is in minutes and kilometers - it's big, but I still can't scale it to something.  We arrived at the restaurant and we had our own dining room.  This leads well into the next section.

Odd Food (again) 

Theres was plenty of food served in the traditional Chinese way, using a spinning center plate - lazy susan style.  It started with some cold things - this part of the mean is particularly surprising since most of the stuff they serve cold - I would have at least steamed.  Pumpkin was served with a small round ball that.. wasn't doing it for me.  Then there was a warm Lotus root stuffed with sticky rice?  It wasn't so bad.  Soon after, the "1000 year old eggs" came out.  I think they're called leather eggs too.  It's a hard boiled egg that is soaked in vinegar and soy, if I was told right.  The white is brown - and clear / gelatinous.  I did not partake.  Then came the Phoenix Feet.  Don't let the name confuse you - they're chicken feet.  They were served cold and appeared shiny, so I suppose they had been soaked in something.  Either way, I was't about to eat the skin off of that.  The few brave enough didn't give any raving reviews so I stayed clear.

Then came the onslaught of half normal food.  Noodles and pork, beef and bamboo, some other vegetables.  There were also a couple of decent surprises.  They served something very much like a potato cake, hash brown, fried something.  It wasn't potato based - it just had that shape and texture.  It tasted a lot like an unsweetened elephant ear / funnel cake.  That was something that was completely eaten.  They were also very small shrimp served in a large plate of seaweed, perhaps to make them feel more at home.  The small shrimp are eaten in one bite - legs, eyes, shell, the whole thing.  If you can get past that part - it's pretty good.  My big test of the day was being served small fish.  Small fish was a delicacy because they're hard to cook and easy to eat - or so I was told.  The idea is that small fish have very small bones so you can eat the bones and still be good.  You know, I believed them - that was my biggest mistake.  I took a bite from the tail end and it wasn't so bad.  It was that next one that got into the rib cage when I kinda wanted to spit it out.  I choked it down and considered that test over.  Next time my grandpa wants to eat fish, this experience will come back to mind and I will decline. 

  

Living Situation

It's been nearly 3 weeks since I arrived in this dwelling and I don't think I've talked about it much on the blog.  We're located in the heart of the city.  It takes about 10 minutes to walk to the nearest subway stop and can take 30 minutes to get to the river.  Theres plenty of expensive shopping in the area, Burberry, Swarovski, and the likes.  Best Buy is about 10 minutes away, lots of tall buildings.  The hotel we're in would be like living in the Purdue Memorial Union.  It's the on campus hotel.  Each room is fitted with two beds, 1 bathroom, 1 desk, 1 tv, etc.  There is a maid service that comes through each day and makes the bed and changes the towels.  My room has a particularly good view, when there is no smog - which is about as rare as a full moon.  It's a nice place, very comfortable and took little adjusting from the american lifestyle.  The biggest inconvenience is only one internet port in every room.  Some people bought wireless routers to solve this problem.  I told them that wouldn't be the best idea since we're in China - the routers would come in Chinese.  Many people bought them anyways - and setup unsecured networks.  After I told them how much of a very bad idea that was, I offered to help secure it.

As many of you know, I don't speak chinese - and I definitely can't read hieroglyphics.  However, it just so happens I've setup so many routers I pretty much know most of the name brands well enough I don't need the words.  So - I secured a few routers and now I've got the passwords.  This way I got a free wireless connection that is secured. :)

The other large internet problem is it appears that the internet is a 1.5 mgb connection.  This is divided between 30+ american students and .. it really sucks.  Combine that with the Chinese Firewall (google it) and the whole experience kinda blows.  Takes minutes to load pages and they often fail entirely.

Fruit on a stick man

A very simple business.  This guy stand outside the university and for like $0.60 you get the picture above.  He just puts fruit on a stick, then has a wok there full of water and sugar.  He runs the fruit through and caramelizes the crap out of it.  It's a pretty good treat. 

Super Bowl

I'm excited.  I'm beginning my search to find a restaurant that will be showing the game live.  I heard it'll be starting at 630pm est, which is 730am monday.  I think I may have to miss part of my morning class to watch the game - and I'm okay with that - I just want to watch it live.

Lack of Driving / Foreign Money

As I said earlier, it's been almost three weeks since I've gotten to drive a car.  It's like being fifteen again.  It's hard to believe that people in New York City don't own cars and the same is true over here.  I just miss driving.  I really would love to be on a motorcycle too.  There are a lot of scooters, mopods, and bikes over here.  Other than the occasional police yamaha, I'll see one very poorly kept up motorcycle a week.  I can't even imagine the chaos a loud bike could cause over here.  A bike like a Harley-D would maybe be able to drown out the excessive use of horns.

Horns

Sitting in my room right now with the window closed, I can hear the horns of passing motorists.  It is difficult to go more than 10 seconds without hearing at least one horn.  To say it in another way, at night - motorists will forgo having their headlights on occasionally, but I don't think anyone would drive without their horn working.  In America, horns are a warning of a hazard or to tell someone you're upset with them.  In China, horns are more of a announcement of where the driver is.  A train does the same thing in America - they blow their horn when they get to a crossing.  Mopeds, Scooters, Taxis, Buses, Bikes - they all have horns - and use them liberally.  I likely won't be able to sleep when I get home without a sound therapy machine honking all night long. 

Bike Ride

Theres a great opportunity next weekend, that is kind of expensive - but anyways.  There is a local group, unaffiliated with the school program, just a Shanghai group that will be going 2 hrs away by car to go on a Mountain Biking / Hiking trip.  It's like 80 usd, for transportation - bike rental - lunch - water.. etc.  I hope it's fun, it'll be cold and rainy.

Suits

This is the most important topic of the week.  I went to the fabric market for the first time yesterday.  This is the place to go to get tailored suits / coats / shirts on the cheap.  A full suit of silk/wool blend is about 80usd from scratch.  I'm really looking to capitalize on this opportunity.  I also have NO idea what to get.  I'm reaching out to people in the know here - please send me an email of a good looking suit.  I want business suits and maybe a nice casual suit (pimp suit).  I'm looking for suggestions on color, cut, material.  I can get just about anything it seems - silk, wool, cashmere, ... felt.  Just please please send me suggestions with pictures (to my email).  I don't know how I'll get these home yet, but I'll figure that out when the time comes.

Coat

I also can get a pea coat for relatively cheap.  I found on that is pretty nice looking.  I was told it's "Korean" style.  It's very plain and fitted.  The buttons are hidden, theres a high collar, and on the left shoulder theres an extra flap.  I think I'd get my initials embroidered on it.  If I were to get a black coat or very dark grey, what color should my initials be?  Are putting my initials on it tacky?  I'm not sure.  Your comments would be appreciated.

Look forward to your suit suggestions,

JBiber (at) g m a i l [dot] com

Old Town

Today:

-Weather: 7C

-Local Time: 10:10pm

Saturday

Saturday afternoon I went out with a friend of mine to find a couple other people.  As a group of four, we made it to a part of Shanghai known as "Old Town."  Old Town, or OT from here on, is located next to the famous Yu Yuan Garden.  It was quite difficult to actually find our friends we were meeting up with because while our reading skills are improving our pronunciation is just terrible at this point.  We also didn't have a map, because - who needs that?  It took us about an hour to get from campus to finally meeting up with the other two.

Old Town

Our group of four began to stroll the streets of OT.  It is a district that has very tradition architecture, and is very much so an area for shoppers to go.  It is full of tourist and local type of shops, more tourist though.  Really, it comes down to hundreds of stores selling the same thing.  Chinese clothing, chopsticks, stones carved for stamps (to mark on important documents), copyright infringing dvd and cd stores, toys (remote helicopters and matchbox cars), tea shops, knives + lighters, paintings and art, leather bags and belts, and small electronics.  We spent a good amount of time looking into almost all of the stores in this area.  We arrived around 3pm and shopped for 3 hours.  I got a set of chopsticks (6 pair + holders) for 7usd.  My friends got art, silk bags, new years decorations, and a lighter.  We did a lot of shopping and a lot of haggling.  Surely, if you're reading this blog - you know how much I enjoy haggling.

Haggling in China is part of the culture.  We've learned a lot about it in the culture classes we are taking.  As part of the holistic lifestyle, buying something has everything to do with the path to finding the right price.  In western culture, we're very binary.  The price is posted and we'll either buy or pass.  Here the price is determined with each individual buyer.  The culture is focused on the path to finding the price, where two people agree the value of an item.  I very much enjoy haggling because it is a conversation of worth, not a predetermined value.

Green Laser Pointer

As the sun began to set, we were browsing a store and the gentleman behind the boxes had some green laser pointers.  Let me stop here and express how awesome green laser pointers are.  Without boring you with the science, the human eye is more sensitive to the green wavelength.  Unlike a red laser, a green laser can be seen in air; the air between the laser pointer and the dot on the wall.  Well I started talking to this guy about this laser pointers and he's showing it off.  I get a hold of one and start playing with it.  I asked if he had any better ones... he showed me that he had a 300mV, which topped the 50 mV I was currently using.  I decided I needed one.  We began at his price point, 285 yuan (42usd).  An excellent price, because this is at least 100usd in the USA.  I counter him with 40 yuan. After a few counter offers, we get to the point where he said, "Best price?"  I typed it into his calculator (the way haggling is done, so there is no miscommunication). 85 yuan, I typed.  He lowered to 160. I said no and walked away.  He shouted for me, I came back. 135. I typed 85. He rejected, I walked.  This repeated, 4 times. Finally he said 90.  I typed 85, and walked away.  I got about 60 ft away before he said "85!"  I came back and bought my green laser pointer for 12.50 usd.  I'm pretty happy with it, I think my price was good enough.

Annoying Folks

As many of you know, I enjoy being annoying to people who are bothering me.  Well whenever you go to an touristy place like OT you are approached by folks trying to show you a laminated sheet of products.  DVDs Watches Purses iPods etc.  These people are hired to talk to us in english and get them to come into their store.  They're particularly annoying.  I enjoy egging them on and wasting their time.   We make fake names and they become very friendly.  The group I was with discovered that no english speaking chinese person knows pig-latin.  We would talk to each other this way and then kinda screw with the sales people.  It was also very helpful for communicating while haggling to see if the other that it was worth the price.  Anyways we were approached in OT by a gentlemen who was quite annoying and so we talked to him and walked with him, then went into a store.  Then when he started to walk away we'd act interested again.  Then we'd go into another shop.  This obviously continues until he realizes we're just screwing with him.  It's a great way to pass the time.

We finished our time in OT and went to a restaurant.  I have nothing good to say about this meal other than I had fun playing with my laser pointer in the restaurant.  We finished our night near campus at a nice bar, they have a computer with iTunes and you can play songs whenever you want otherwise it's on shuffle.  They had 44,000 songs so it had a lot of good music.  I very much enjoyed playing DJ for the evening.

Sunday was a lot of homework.

Monday

Formal Dinner

The Shanghai Jiao Tong University(SJTU) dean invited our program out to dinner.  We went out for a 6pm dinner with some of the teachers we have and some folks in the administration who were helping with the program.  There was plenty of unique food served.  A few memorable items; Jellyfish w/ Soy Dipping Sauce, Chicken Liver, Chicken in some hot spices, Beef, Eel with sandwich rolls, a large Fish, other raw meats, some vegetables, Baozi, and watermelon to finish.  I tried most of that stuff, except the liver.  Let it be known, there are certain textures I just don't like. Gooey, Slimy, excessively chewy items with little to no flavor.  Jellyfish is a GREAT example of this.  Putting my better judgement aside, I tried it.  It was just about the most awful thing I've eaten since I got here, it ranked right up there with that bird heart.  There was some good stuff, but the best was no doubt the watermelon - it just is delicious.  Tasted just like home, one of the very few things that is not different.  We also got some good group pictures, this is the attached photo.

My roommate has a new camera and I have a new laser pointer, so we've been playing with that, I'll soon post a link to the results soon. I also have done some laser safety training at GE and at school.  I am aware of the dangers and keep it in mind when using it.  That being said.. it should be mentioned, this laser is visible at well over 5 miles -- awesome.  I was shining it out the window earlier and I got a text message from my downstairs neighbor, it said "I can see your laser outside the window."

Please send me email or text messages, I miss home - let me know what you've been up to.

Thanks for reading,

JBiber (at) g mail <dot} c o m

765 two three zero two JON

Saturday Morning

Time: 1030am Saturday

Weather: 2C, 36F

First: http://cid-359512ac45bb5a76.skydrive.live.com/play.aspx/Shanghai%20Xujaihui?ref=1

This week was full of school.  I'm not going to talk about that here.

Peking Opera

Our Chinese Culture class took us on a field trip to see the Peking Opera school of China.  Every three years, they take the best 100 opera kids from across China.  We saw them perform basic kung fu on Wednesday during their final exam tests.  Flips, crazy back bends, and simple gymnastics.  We had the option to go back the next day and see their full dress rehearsal.  It was an experience.  Aside from the very loud wood block player, it was rather enjoyable.  I couldn't stand much of it, but I guess thats not really the point.  We saw a very professional show put on by "12" year olds.  I saw twelve like that because I believe that there are some exceptions - these privileged children also get the privilege of skipping what appeared to be 5 yrs of their life as there were some children who couldn't pass for 8 yrs old in my opinion.  You'll see a few pictures in my album above.

The Food

I'm really doing alright people.  In the album above you'll see some of the different kinds of food thats served.  The taste is usually pretty average, it is just sometimes hard to get warm food unless you know where to go.  We are all learning as a group where the best places to eat are.  A group I wasn't with went out last night and got a fish at a restaurant.  I guess they picked it out of the tank, then saw it clubbed, and prepared at their table.  It is not bad, just different.  One friend of mine said he ate the eye adding it popped like a blueberry, this is not something you'll expect to hear in my stories when I return.

Odd Things

Going to shop for chopsticks last night, I saw a lady in the park with a VERY fast dog on a leash.  It was puzzling and when I got a bit closer I saw the ears of the animal.  She had a bunny on a leash and was taking it for a walk.  It was quite an odd thing to see.  The chopsticks store had plenty of selection.  Chopsticks on the walls for not much money.  A usable pair cost about $2usd.  I took a picture of the small store in and it's in the album above.

Camera

My Kodak Zi8 is doing pretty well.  I found that it is not very good at taking still photos.  The aperture time is much too long maybe as long as 1/2 second.  It makes still photos quite worthless.  The videos are pretty good looking, sometimes spoiled by my shaking hands.

Medicine

I still have a bit of a sinus issue.  I went to the pharmacy and tried to describe a z-pack with what little Chinese I've learned.  I must of gotten the point across because she handed me azithromycin tablets.  They were only $2.07 usd.  Good deal, hopefully they contain active ingredient.

The weather this weekend won't be amazing, cloudy / overcast / smog and mid 40s.  Smog is really a disappointing reality.  Might go to Yu Yuan gardens today, some people I know went to the fabric market this morning.  Apparently it is 3 floors of tailors.  I would have liked to have gone, but there is some homework I need to do with a group in a bit.

UPDATE:
If anyone has a good idea on how to stream the Colts game to me, live and at a low bitrate.. I will wake up Monday morning at 4am to watch it.  Last week I tried everything, I even bought the $70 nfl gamepass to watch the post-season online, but like most things on the internet in china, it didn't work.  I got my money back. myp2p.eu didn't work and Justin.tv failed too. I need a direct link to a server.  Everything I've looked at doesn't work so far.
Doesn't work:
-Sopcast
-Justin.tv
-Streamtorrent
-TVants
-Webguide for WMC
-Windows Media Encoder

Rumor has it that slingbox works, but the internet doesn't usually connect well enough to watch it  - but if some one is willing to let me try it i'll test it out this weekend!

JBiber

Weekend

Tuesday:

-Weather: 60F partly sunny

-Local Time: 825pm

Saturday Recap

We got a late start, not for any specific reason other than it was nice to relax a little bit.  The plan that had been formulated the day before was to make it to Yu Yuan Gardens.  There were some problems with this as we met up as a small group and talked about it.  One problem was it was overcast and low 50s.  Other people also wanted to go to the gardens and it was realized last week that it is very difficult to get a large group of engineering to agree to do anything.  The few people I was hanging out with on Saturday at noon were thinking it'd be good to keep a small group.  When people in the hotel found out that there was a group interested - we decided we'd let them go.  We decided it wasn't the best day to go to an outdoor activity like that.  The goal was to go down to Pudong (the area east of the river) and go to the indoor aquarium.

Lunch

Some of us left and we left a few people behind to finish their laundry.  A group of four of us headed into the city.  We got down to the tourist area and saw that there were plenty of awesomely tall buildings.  After a quick photo shoot we decided the Subway just down the road looked great.  An american sub shop is not as common as people might think over here.  We stopped in to see the prices and were surprised to find an excellent daily deal menu.  A 6" deal of the day was only 15 yuan.  Unfortunately, SeaSupreme wasn't what I wanted, so I just opted for a 12" ham, with two cookies and a drink for 60 yuan.  It was an american price for an american sub, i liked it.

Early Afternoon

Our small group headed towards the river.  We saw some shops and restaurants on the river walk. Nothing cheap, all very touristy - but neat to see it anyways.  We saw a few brides getting their picture taken.  The young couples here do things differently than in America.  We try and cram everything - ceremony and all into one day.  Here pictures can take place weeks after the legal paper work.  So - we saw many brides getting their pictures taken with their husbands.  We also saw The Bund from the east side of the river.  We had just tried to go up to the Cloud 9 lounge the night before so it was nice to see all these areas in the daytime.  While we walked the river, we saw the tallest building in the area - and promptly decided that it would be more fun than the aquarium.  When we got to the base of the building it was late afternoon and we saw that it was 150 yuan to go up there and go on the glass skywalk.  We thought it'd be more fun in the evening so we killed sometime at the bar, buy one get one free happy hour.  Our waitress spilled some of the drinks when she brought them to the table (party foul) so they gave us from free dessert with our drinks.

Shanghai World Financial Center

-474m tall (1500+ ft)

-100 floors

We got out of the bar just after 630pm and went up to the observatory deck.  We grabbed an elevator up to the 94th floor.  Then we took an escalator up to the 97th floor.  Then went up the last 3 floors with an elevator.  I was excited to see that it was about as awesome I was hoping.  The deck had some glass in the floors so that you could see the shear drop below.  When you look at the building in the link above - it appears to look like a very large bottle opener.  The skywalk is along the top of the bottle opener.

It was excellent, I got a few good HD videos.  Some of my friends got a few good photos.  We retired back to the hotel and played some card games before sleeping.

Sunday

Sunday started all about football.  The colts were playing in the playoffs and I was willing to do anything I could.  I spent the hrs before the game trying to find an illegitimate way to watch the game.  As the first quarter ended, I bought the NFL gamepass for 70USD.  I tried to get that to work during the 2nd quarter and then called to get my money back.  I was told I was refunded.  I found a Hooter's not too far away so I told my floormates and we grabbed a cab and headed that way.  We got to the store and found out that it wasn't going to be on, according to the manager, for 25 more minutes. We ordered and waited.  It didn't come on.  We got upset.  We sat around for a couple more hrs.  It came on in the last 5 minutes while we were in the restaurant.  Luckily I had my cards that I bought on saturday with me and we got in a couple good games of Euchre; an Indiana tradition.  As we left I got a text message telling me the colts had won, which was well enough.  Unfortunately, my good friend lost her phone in the cab on the way to Hooter's.  

Phone Hunt

I didn't grab the taxi receipt when I got out of the cab; however I did pay for the cab with the metro card.  So - When I called the taxi cab translation service and told them the situation they texted me the address of the place I was going to go.  I got in the subway with her and we started out going that way.  Basically - we go to the public transportation card company and they didn't speak english at all.  So I ended up passing my phone through the window while on the line with the translation people who were trying to help me locate the cabbie that we used earlier in the day.  After 30 minutes of waiting we heard back from the cab company and the phone was lost.  It was crushing so we got some I bought some doughnuts to console.  We returned to People Square and walked around a bit.  It was a bit concerning actually, as we walked around folks from behind us kept saying "Hello, How are you?" "Do you speak English?" "Are you American?"  It was all said from different people over the course of 5 minutes.  It sounded very under the breath of the folks who were saying it and it creeped me out so much I didn't turn around.  Apparently, the folks go to People's Square to practice their English on the foreigners.  We finished our people's square visit then went to Papa John's for dinner.  It was close to the American taste, but the cheese was different and they use more flour on the dough.

Monday and Tuesday

I've spent the last couple of days working for class and trying to get things read and be ready for everything this week.  I'm excited that tomorrow we'll be going to the Theater tomorrow for class.  We'll be going to see how the actors in the opera train for their shows.  I expect it to be painful to watch in some parts.  As part of my attempts to make the internet a bit more usable, I've shared www.mesh.com with one of my professors.  I think it'll help our class, but I really think it has the potential to help everyone. Check it out, see if you think it'd be helpful.  It saves me from emailing multiple copies of files myself.

Other than that I've just been happy to stay busy getting things done.  More to come, thanks for reading.

JBiber

News and Current Events

Time:    1145am SAT

Weather:  5C party sunny

This week there were some interesting news stories that came up and I was emailed about but never really got too far into the content of them.  News this week: Google Takes on China, Haiti Feels an Earthquake, Jay and Conan: FACE2FACE!,  and related.

The coverage of Google coming out and saying that the censorship in China must stop, especially after China has hacked Google seems like a very legitimate reaction.  All I have been able to find are stories I can't read.  This is what I know.  In Dec, Google as well as many other business got hit hard from Asia based hackers.  It seems that they did successfully break into some human rights persons gmail accounts.  Now Google is upset and thinks that since China broke the trust relationship, Google shouldn't be doing any favors by filtering the search results (which is a very real thing).  Google now is wanting to offer unfiltered results and realizes that might mean no Google China.  I hope this ends well because I use a lot of Google products to communicate back to the USA.  Then I guess, according to new headlines (basically the only thing I can read) the US gov came out and backed Google in saying that censorship needs to end.

We asked our culture teacher what the chines are thinking of this.  She said that it really doesn't matter to much of the population of China.  The majority of Chinese users don't need a search engine that is like Google, capable of handling english and chinese.  There is a search engine called baidu or something - that apparently is chinese and has 65% market share.  The people who use google are not the majority and those people who do use it are mostly from academia and research fields.  The chinese people don't feel that they are missing out on anything from the censorship.  From my prospective, missing out on anything is missing out on something.  I don't agree with the generally accepted - "if you say so" approach.

Haiti apparently went through and earthquake this week.  The headlines read that it was over 7.0 and 100,000+ are dead located near Port-au-Prince.  Thats pretty much all I know.  I heard from a friend that the US government is giving $100 million in aid.  I know there are likely some troops being sent, but I don't know how many.  I just wonder how bad things would be here if a similar earthquake struck.  I don't know what I would do as a foreign student, I'd attempt to find the US embassy.

Jay and Conan apparently are having some trouble back home.  It seems that Conan's ratings are that great and Jay's are "as predicted" which were low enough that he should clearly be taken off the air.  Now NBC wants to put Jay back on during part of Conan's time slot or even give the tonight show back to Jay.  It looks like their on the brink of an agreement to allow Jay back on later and pay off Conan.  I know I'm missing many details here, but that because I can't read many news stories at all.

I hope that Jay is unsuccessful.  I like Conan and he's been doing a great job on the Tonight show.  I also think Jimmy Fallon is growing as a host, but still laughs a bit too much to be a host.

The internet here really is crippled.  I don't know if it's obvious, but I can't access my own blog.  I have no way of uploading pictures to a good file sharing site.  I can't embed photos or videos I've taken while I've been here.  I can't access the new york times, washington post, or many many other news sites.  I must rely on AOL.com and MSN.com for new stories.  Facebook is blocked, twitter is blocked, and even worse, it appear that the blocking just gets worse everyday.  I get a ping of 130ms to whitehouse.gov (which I can't always load).  Many students are having trouble accessing purdue's webmail, blackboard, and other purdue services.  Loading webpages often takes multiple attempts and it gets very frustrating.  It is quite limiting as to what can actually be done on the internet.  For a country who is expected to be beating the USA in multiple years - it feels as though if they lifted their internet restrictions they would be past the USA much quicker if they had full access to the information pool that is the internet.  The only way to really stay productive here is to have an VPN back home.  I heard this is the only way that there was full coverage of the olympics a couple years ago and I believe thats the only way there will be coverage of the World Expo in may.

The world Expo is going to be huge for Shanghai.  It is impossible to walk past a modernized section of the city and not see the signature construction walls with the Expo banners on them.  Welding is going on non-stop and can be seen from our window.  Cement and semi trucks litter the street and aside from taxi's are the only thing on the roads at night.  I believe that the construction is round the clock trying to be done by May.  It is impressive.

Facts:

The water everywhere is not drinkable. Always must use water bottles and such.

Be sure to see the post below as it was published earlier this morning,

JBiber