Up goes the tree

School photo

Zara's preschool photo 2012.

Asia Christmas

Shop employees wearing big fake wings.

Vending machine

Especially for tissues! Another strange china sight.

Staying in touch

Count the phones this taxi driver has going. Maybe he has six girlfriends on the go. Or maybe he acts as an answering service for his friends. Whatever it is, it was the first time I had seen this many phones at once.

Interested

In fine form, Max was very interested in these workmen fixing a moving walk-way. He even hollered out to them "hey you men what are you fixing?".

Characters

Chinese language uses characters rather than alphabet letters like English.  Number plates on cars use a character to denote the province the car is registered in.  I've seen lot of Shanghai (沪) cars on the roads and plenty from neighbouring Zhejiang (浙) Anhui and Jiangsu (苏) provinces but never this one (below).  I think it looks pretty neat for a Chinese character.  No idea which of China's 33 or so provinces it's from. 

Declaration of love

Nanjing Rd, downtown Shanghai.

Shanghai skyline

This photo, taken after Sunday brunch at the Fairmont Peace Hotel, shows the very modern Shanghai skyline, including the Pearl Tower and the Bottle opener.

Class photo

Max's class photo "Elefantengruppe" (Elephant Group).

Lanterns

Yesterday I spent the morning at school helping Max creates a lantern for the Lantern festival. This is a German tradition that is held every year. He was pretty proud of his result. Zara's class also participates and she made her own dragon lantern.

Tonight we will go to the school again for the parade. A little light is put in the lantern to light it up in the dark.

Puzzles

Zara is quite into jigsaw puzzles at the moment. Here is a picture of the ones she did today.

Big shoes

Under the bonsai tree, Suzhou

Cool security guard

Lap of luxury? This guy works in his glass enclosed guard hut, made all the more comfortable by the wall-mounted split system air conditioner. You can even see the compressor unit at the back. Decadent.

The irony in all this? This was taken outside the State Grid building in Nanjing - the government organisation responsible for electricity distribution.

Craftsman

In Suzhou last week I came across a man selling marble hand-carved stamps. They were essentially polished marble about the size of a medicine bottle and he used a sharp point to etch out on the bottom. I got him to carve a pair for Max and Zara - it has their names in English as well as Chinese characters. Watching him work - digging out the marble bit by bit - was amazing. I should post a photo of the finished product. More amazing was that it was all done for about $8 a stamp.

Smile of the day

Nut feast

Max and Zara pulled out the macadamia cracker on Saturday and chowed down on some of Grandad's macadamias while colouring in.

Spectacle

This actually happened today when we had stopped to eat some soft serve frozen yoghurt. The kids sat down on the step to eat their sweet treat and within a matter of seconds there was a frenzy of clicking cameras. The kids didn't even look up though - the yoghurt tastes that good.

Eating it really brings back childhood memories of delicious creamy, tangy soft serve frozen yoghurt at Oxford Pantry.

Florist on wheels

What I saw while walking today

And what of it!

Weather

At the risk of sounding boring, I do feel it is necessary to mention how spectacular the weather has been in Shanghai the last week or so. Temps around mid 20s and beautiful blue skies. Perfect for bike riding, walking and exploring. All of which I have been doing.

Shollywood?

Movie set or photo shoot seen on Wu Yi Lu, Shanghai.

Chinese eggs

Yesterday I bought organic eggs for the first time in China. They weren't that much more expensive than regular eggs. I am told, though, that China lacks legislation that governing organic food standards - meaning that anyone could label their goods "organic" without having to comply with a regulator's guidelines. Nevertheless organic eggs it was for us. When I opened them at home I was surprised to find them individually wrapped in a layer of styrofoam - not unlike a precious ornament. As for the taste it was hard to tell as the first one went into a batch of pikelet batter.

Mongolia Adventure

Some photos of our trip to Mongolia - click here.  Make sure to click on the first picture to display a larger version - then you can use the arrows on the keyboard to move to the next photo.