Shanghai

Today was our second to last full day in China. We're in Shanghai now. It's quite different from Beijing. It seems like people here have more money. In Beijing the roads were filled with old rusty bicycles, but here the bikes are newer and lots of people have motorized bikes. However, there are also beggars here. I didn't see any an Beijing -- only people trying to sell stuff. Don't think for a second that people here don't try to sell stuff too though. Today I made it without spending much money at all -- only 10 yuan for 5 smiley balls. Yesterday was not so good. I bought a chess set, then let someone talk me into buying another one made of jade, plus I made a dowwn payment on my suit and got conned into buying a fake Rolex. And that's nothing compared to the day we visited the jade factory. Speaking of which, I've started uploading more pictures at picasaweb. The jade plant I bought is the one on the right.

Today we visited the "water village" near Shanghei. I won't even try to spell it's name, but it's pretty much the Chinese version of Venice. It was absolutely gorgeous. I haven't uploaded all of my pictures from there yet, but there's a few at the msyo blog.