Back on line - Shanghai Nov 2011

I happened to look through this old blog of ours this morning and realised the commentary in the blog was quite useful in helping us remember the events associated with the photos. I remember starting this blog when the family was dispersed across Singapore, Australia, Europe and Hong Kong, for family members to keep track of how HY and TP were doing, hence the title of the blog. This was before Facebook (I think Friendster was the in thing then if I recall correctly).

Anyway, after a 3-years hiatus, I thought I'd get this going again as I think I'll tend to write more in a blog, rather than just posting photos on Facebook. To start, the first post will be our family trip to Shanghai in Nov 2011.

This was HY's second gymnastics training trip to Shanghai. The first time was with her school. This time, it was organised by the gym club, and the whole family decided to go. TP, needless to say, was overjoyed because it meant skipping 1 week of school.

The gymnasts at the Bund

As always, the food is an important aspect of our holidays. The organisers for the trip included dinner for most nights. But the food was terrible - there was always fried eggs, egg and tomato soup, fried vegetables with slivers of meat. My friends who are more seasoned travelers in China tell me this is something peculiar for Singapore groups in China because it seems we are not used to the typical Chinese cuisine, which often tend to be more oily. Our friend, Joyce, who were with us on this trip told us that the fried eggs was always the highlight (i.e., most edible dish) of her previous trip to somewhere more ulu in China. Anyway, we decided to eat out on our own whenever possible and found the food really good. Maybe this is because we were in Shanghai.

Here is TP enjoying Peking Duck at Duck King restaurant. The Chinese style Peking Duck is quite different from what we have back home as we only eat the skin in the wraps. The one we had here included more meat, and we did enjoy it as much, if not more.

We had Hai Di Lao for lunch on the recommendation of Howie. It was good and we decided to bring HY and some of her buddies back another night.

The street food was also good. TP really enjoyed this roadside lamb satay. I guess barbecued meat is always tasty. And barbecued lamb in winter is always unbeatable. TP asked me to include the following photo of what they do with the satay sticks after consumption. I won't be surprised if the sticks are also recycled. It's probably good for the environment, but I just don't want to imagine how they clean the sticks, assuming they do clean the sticks.

This is the Shanghai street version of popcorn. It's oven roasted in a cast iron container and tastes pretty good too. It's probably more healthy than the ones we get with butter or salt.

HY didn't get to do much sightseeing as she was in the gym all day, everyday. Fortunately she went to most of the usual touristy places in her last trip. Now that she's older, she's also got new interests. Her favourite place we visited was Tao Bao Chen, a small shopping centre that sells just about anything that we normally cannot afford to buy in their original boutiques.

TP enjoying the view from the glass floor 300 ft above ground at the Shanghai Oriental Pearl TV Tower

For our last day in Shanghai, the local gym where the girls were training opened their doors for the parents to visit. This was an opportunity for us to see where all the money went, or will be going to. Anyway, the girls enjoyed the gift exchange and photo sessions.

Some of HY's friends from her previous trip

Besides Shanghai, we also spent some time visiting nearby places. One interesting place was Zhou Zhuang, which is a water township in the Jiangsu province. We were lucky that it was hairy crab season. Instead of choosing hairy crabs with all their limbs tightly bound in the fridge, the restaurants in the area had tonnes of hairy crabs swimming in the fish tanks. We actually contemplated making the trip to Yangcheng Lake for hairy crabs, but decided against it after we heard how hard it was to get authentic Yangcheng hairy crabs that are born and bred in Yangcheng. It seems that quite a lot of farmers breed the hairy crabs in some other location. They are then harvested and placed in Yangcheng lake for a duration so as to qualify as a Yangcheng hairy crab, complete with microchip. Here's a photo of TP with HL on the streets of Zhou Zhuang.

We also had a quick tour of Suzhou and Hangzhou. It was a really quick tour through these two places. Here's a photo in front of Hanshan Temple in Suzhou.

The Master of the Nets Garden

Here's a photo of us at Westlake in Hangzhou. It's a nice place, but I can't stop thinking of Kong Bak Pau when one mentions Westlake.