2004-12-12 - 10:35 p.m.

Ni Hao yall----I played hooky from dance rehearsals this weekend-I mean, oooh my knee, my ankles, my back-they are sooo sore, too hurt to dance----anyway, Mike and I took a little walk in our neighborhood today. We walked exactly 5 blocks and ran into an amazing temple. Shanghai is like that. It feels much less overwhelming if you pretend your little block is all there is to it. So if you venture out, you get lots of happy surprises. Remember the movie, “Empire of the Sun”? This is Longhua Tower, part of Longhua Temple. It’s in the movie. In the movie, the tower looks like it’s in the middle of a field. Now there are all kinds of buildings around it. The movie was filmed in the ‘80’s though. Since then ALLLL the doziers from Fraggle Rock (my favorite topic in this diary) have moved in and built a gazillion McDonalds and KFCs around it. I am not kidding. I wish I was….

This is one of the Buddhas in the temple. I tried to get a picture of some monks chanting but Mike reminded how completely rude I was being. You know the whole gawking tourist thing that I am so good at. It was hard to get pictures without being completely rude. There weren’t many tourists there-most of the people seemed to be there only to pray.

They buy these incense candles and hold them to their heads and chant. At first I thought they were holding Roman candles (the firecrackers) to their heads and I thought, “Wow! This is the religion for me! What an exciting prayer time!” But no fireworks came out, as you can see…….

Next to the temple is a huge park/memorial/mausoleum to honor soldiers from some war. I wish I could tell you all about it, but all the signs were in Mandarin. I couldn’t read a lick of Mandarin if my life depended on it, so you’ll have to do your own research if you really want to know. I’m guessing it was during the Communist Revolution. The park is filled with huge sculptures. Here’s a guy half in (or out) of the ground.( and Mike’s head and my head)
Mike wanted desperately to climb up in the guy’s hand, but it was my turn to be the responsible tourist so I told him he couldn’t.

I saved the best picture for last-this is the public toilet in the park.

Why, you ask, would I show such a disgusting picture? Because I am fascinated with public toilets. Americans are spoiled rotten when it comes to just about everything-including public toilets. In China, women straddle this lovely trough right next to each other and do their business. No room to be shy here. The bathroom at my school is just like this one. (I am getting so used to the troughs that I am surprised to see whole toilets in public. It really does seem wasteful-all that porcelain for one booty.) I think this is one of the nicer public toilets too. I’m not sure about the men’s bathroom, but I am assuming it’s the same. I should have busted in there and said “Oh hi, excuse me. Mind if I take a few pictures? Is that a urinal? Where’s the trough? What? Sorry, I don’t speak Chinese…” Yes, I am always seconds away from being deported.

Today reminded me why Shanghai is so cool. We’ve lived in our place for a month, and never knew that this huge tourist attraction was right under our noses. Tomorrow, I think I’ll walk 5 blocks the other direction-maybe Santa lives there!!!! Xoxo, Julie

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