2005-05-06 - 12:18 a.m.

This week has been heaven on a biscuit. We have been sleeping ‘til noon, eating lots of good food, watching tons of DVDs, and walking around Shanghai. We went to Zonghshan Park yesterday. It has lots of kiddie rides and a little lake with canoes and boats you can rent. Some of the rides were strange.

This contraption allows you to pedal this little circle-shaped car around a track that is no larger than your average living room. Why? And Warner Bros. or some big movie company set up a “Mummy Returns” exhibit, and I swear half the population of Shanghai was in line for it. I don’t do long lines like that. So we took this picture instead.

There were two highlights of our week- 1)This picture of Mike with Ping Pong Ball and Paddle.

I actually got him to go down to the stadium, but the tickets for the WORLD TABLE TENNIS CHAMPIONSHIP matches were a little expensive, so we walked around the outside and found these two guys. I love China. I love oversized costumes of bizarre inanimate objects.

2) We went to a little town called Shuangxi, and participated in a “driftage” (their word) This is the mystery trip I told you about. The town had beautiful scenery, scary people- movers and flotation devices, animal-abusing children and adults, and(except for the animal abuse) was an all-around fantastic experience.
First of all, the guide on this day trip did not speak English, so when we pulled into the parking lot, she explained everything the town had, where to go to get on a raft, and what time to be back at the bus. Mike and I picked a man and woman to stalk, and when they went to the bus, we would go too. It turns out that they spoke English and were very friendly. They translated everything for us, and we were all set. I think they noticed us following them and felt weird about it. Of the thousands of people in this small town, we were the ONLY foreigners there. Our first people-mover experience was riding a wagon pulled by the sweetest big ole ox ever.

I love them. They were all over the place-in the water and on the road.

Kids were throwing rocks at them and laughing. The parents were laughing too. I was horrified and was about to reprimand them in my meanest teacher voice, but Mike reminded me that we are in China. Oh yeah. Culture. This was the first animal abuse shock of the day, and oh boy! There were more to come. The next person that I wanted to tell to go the principal’s office or miss recess or something was the wagon driver. He whipped the ox the whole way down the road. Poor ox. Mike was mad too. He said he could have walked the half mile and no one would get beaten. He’s so sweet. The ox pooped on the driver so I was happy. Instant karma.

We then got on the most rickety raft ever created out of bamboo. The benches weren’t bolted down or anything.
They just plopped the benches on the raft, plopped us on the benches, and off we went. Here are a few pictures of the scenery.

It was really relaxing and nice until we got to the rapids. The water was suddenly up to our waists. They didn’t tell us about this. They probably did actually, but you know, our Mandarin skills….I wondered why ladies were selling blue plastic pants. We got some for our shoes,

but I didn’t think we would need a body suit! It was fun. In the middle of the ride, we passed another raft with people dressed in traditional Chinese outfits singing traditional songs. It was lovely.
(They could have been singing about anything- I really don’t know if they were traditional songs or not.) The end of the ride was the most exciting part. In case the rapids didn’t get you soaked, these two concrete dragons on both sides of the stream shot “Dragon Water” at you.

Right before you glided past the dragons, a lady standing on the bank threw hats at you so you wouldn’t get so wet. There was no easy hand-off of the hats. She chucked them at us.
It was great.
The end of the raft ride was hysterical. I was soaking wet, trying to find my socks and shoes (Being the brainiac I am, I took them off in the middle of the ride) and Mike was holding up the backpack to help me look. Some woman came up and took our picture and ran away. My first thought was “How rude is that? You don’t shove a camera in strangers’ faces and then run away!” Then I remembered- in China, anything is okay. If you can blow snot on strangers, you most definitely can take a picture of strangers. So we let it go. We watched the workers dismantle the rafts and drive them back to the beginning of the “driftage” ride, where they would be reassembled.
I thought it was clever. Is it? Seriously. I want to know. I have been here too long. The logical side of my brain has stopped functioning. As we were walking into the little village area, the picture-taking bandit appeared and was waving her arms saying “Hello Hello!” I thought, wow she really likes us. She really liked our money. She was a souvenir vendor and was trying to sell us the picture she took. We couldn’t resist buying key chains with the world’s worst picture of two people on a vacation. I look like I fell off the Freedom Bus of ’69 and Mike looks like a wildcat- his hair is sticking up and he looks ready to throw the backpack at the lady takin’ the picture. I’m holding my socks up for goodness sake! Here is a picture of the picture-

I am tired of writing, but wait until tomorrow and you will hear about several more silly people-movers and sadly, people shooting arrows at live chickens for fun. You will not be disappointed. Until then...

?lt;/P>

previous - next