Sun 7/28

Hard to believe we're leaving today. Fastest 2 weeks plus ever. Friday night had an uneventful dinner except for the wine specialty.

Clearly I skipped the wine even though they said it was for good health. The restaurant also had a pretty poor floor show of no talent people but check out the nails on these women. yes those 6 inch gold things.

 

But then we went to the acrobats. That was amazing. No flashy costumes like in Vegas but I think because of that you could see the talent. One woman balanced wineglasses on her he'd while playing jingle bells on the clarinet

Our favorite was 2 young men dressed as infants. Their core muscles were amazing. One stood upside down on the others head balancing with just one hand. There was also a comic act that translated very well even though no words were spoken as well as juggling, high wire, spinning plates and gymnastics. Again this is hard to write about and is best discussed. No pictures were allowed. ( To protect intellectual property.....uhh.)This is the one time i wished I had the grandchildren here. They would have loved it.

Yesterday we visited a town on the canals. Like Venice but Chinese architecture. It was the original location of the city.

Went for a gondola ride.

 

In 100+ weather that felt good. We visited a house where the old guy who lives alone just wanted to talk. Fine but he had a parrot and I'm skittish about bird flu. Also past a pet shop with turtles and birds but again afraid to go on. Apparantly if we had come a few weeks earlier, we would not have of had chicken in the restaurants because of that. There are some bridges across the canal but most of are wood and basically connect houses through their living and or bedrooms.

When a general came through many hundreds of years ago he had no way of getting the horses across so the stopped for three days while they built a stone bridge

 

Visited a Buddhist temple of the jade Budda which is a 3 meter pieces of solid jade. Many of the jade and other artifacts were destroyed during the cultural revolution. Also visited some beautiful gardens. Got our last foot massage. Heaven. Then off to the French concession for dinner. They no longer refer to it as French or British concessions since the revolution. But we could both picture the Shanghai girls hanging around the French part.

Here's what we haven't discussed and David can really tell it better. Visited the Jewish museum in Harbin. It was pretty emotional. When our grandparents came to the US others went to Harbin for the same reason. There was no anti semitism felt by these people and they flourished, there was a strong group of entrepreneurs and another of artists - musicians and singers. When we walked in there was a 40 foot mural of many of the people and i swear, if my grandmother had a twin, she was there. Jerry, Judy why do you think? Is this Fanny or what?

 

They had many incredible artifacts from the time. The Jews apparently felt pretty much at home there and were involved with the politics (deputy mayor) and raised money for disasters such as flooding plus helped evacuated Chinese from floods. there were also zionist groups as elsewhere. The Jews left when the Communists came in. As far as Shanghai, when no one would take in Jews the Chinese did and many came after Crystalnicht. I find this is hard to write about and best discussed in person.

Last thought, whether it was a middle class apt or high end, people had clothing drying off the balconies. Also on the balconies at the boat. Like in the lower east side in my grandmothers day.

 

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