The past week or so we have noticed Shanghai start to cool down. Summer is well and truly behind us and winter not too far away. So the in-between is autumn, with mild sunny days, with a hint of wind by afternoon. Today's temperature has hovered around 22 degrees - perfect weather for getting out and about on Shanghai streets. With this in mind, I've decided to buy a bicycle. Not a hardcore road racing bike or a rugged heavy mountain bike, but just a simple and inexpensive street bike. The models I have seen come with a wire basket at the front, simple rim brakes and a sprung (read: comfy) seat. Shanghai is totally flat, so there's really no need for gears and the roads are fairly busy, so no need whatsoever for speed. I visited an outlet of Giant Bicycles today but had no luck - the sales guy had no sales skills, and even though he spoke a little English, it seemed that he wasn't at all interested in doing business with a non-mandarin speaking foreigner. Maybe I approached it wrongly. I'll give it another go tomorrow at another store. Slightly inconvenienced though as I completely expected to ride out of the store on a bike, and had come prepared with the bolt-on baby seat for the back - with the intention of picking Max up from kindy at 12 noon. So instead of riding away, I carried the babyseat in my hand and walked the 2km or so from the bike store to the kindergarten. On the way, I passed a little shop selling steaming, hot dumplings - not the small dim sum variety wrapped in thin, almost transparent casing, but the big fluffy white variety - almost bready in texture. At 1 yuan per piece (about 15 cents) it was too good to pass up. I asked for one with pork meat in it and it was simply delicious. Standing in the mid-morning sun, burning my tongue on something akin to a Chinese version of a Brumby's meat pie, life seemed pretty good. Apart from the wretched heavy baby seat on my left arm.
No comments:
Post a Comment