Day 6: Shanghai

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Mom called the apartment and woke me up like a little before 9a. I needed to pee anyway.

I spent the morning relaxing, being online gchatting, updating photos and blogs, working out. They have like a little gym (and a pool) in the main building. It’s not huge but not small either. Several treadmills, a recumb stationary bike, reg stationary bike, stairmaster, couple elipticals, some older machines (lat pulldown, cables, etc etc), and some free weights. I did kind of a overall full body workout - nothing huge in any one area, but I hit some chest, back, abs, legs, and threw in some bike intervals for a little cardio.

Lunch at Tony G Restaurant nearby to the apartment. I helped puo puo walk to the elevator and then to the car and into the restaurant. She walks slowly but holds on pretty tightly. Yesterday xiao jio ma asked me if I knew how old puo puo is now – I said 90? She said no – 95! I’m not sure why I didn’t know that.

This restaurant is like Shanghai dim sum I guess sort of. We had some thinly sliced pork thing – had thin slices of cucumber to go w/ it, you dip in a spicy sauce, put on a wrapper w/ a couple slices of onion. Some sea vegetable (like a mushroom/fungus – clear, in a soy vinegar sauce w/ cucumber pieces). Sichuan boiled fish (awesome – spicy – w/ fresh green peppercorns – not just like the dried brown ones you usually see in Sichuan foods – ma la, they’re called – they make your tongue and mouth kind of tingle. This dish also had some tofu strands and bean sprouts – and a ton of chilis floating around in the broth). A tofu dish – on a flat skillet w/ a little bit of a lip – still boiling a little when it arrived at our table (which had slowly become overpopulated w/ dishes) – squares of tofu, soft, some thick yellowish sauce and egg at the bottom, and some tiny shrimp cooked in the sauce. Xiao jio jio and I had some Tsingtao beer. Puo puo liked the wrappers (w/o the spicy sauce b/c she doesn’t eat spicy stuff), the tofu, oh and we had some mushroom soup that I think she ate.

After lunch xiao jio jio took me and rui to take a look at the pudong towers (oriental pearl tv tower w/ the circles, financial center bottleopener, etc) and the riverfront view from near the Shangri-la hotel. Then we crossed under the tunnel to puxi to Chen2 hua2 miao4 – an outdoor mall area. We looked at this toy shop that was pretty cool. Things are apparently pretty cheap here. Got a tang bao (w/ the straw). Got some suan mei (dried sour plum candy things) and other sour dried fruits (raisins, cherries).
I gave puo puo the womens ultra mega vitamins I brought from the US, and we talked for a minute. She’s starting to remember me better.

Rui and I sat, interneting, chilling, talking about life and what we want to do w/ it. Life is sort of complicated when you get older… I mean, I guess it gets simpler later, too – like my grandmother seems to have a pretty simple schedule of getting up, meditating, sometimes going out to eat but she’s pretty happy just eating at home, meditating some more, taking a nap, visiting w/ the people who come to visit, going to bed.

There’s about to be a big party here at the apartment b/c they’ve got some other visitors – friends from new york – in town as well.
3 a yis and one of their daughters came over to have dinner. We had some appetizers first – eggplant first steamed so it’s super tender then refrigerated and served cool w/ garlic and some soy I think, prob something else. Super good. Tripe. Seaweed salad. Little fried fish. Soft egg rolls but the skin seemed more like tofu skin. Then we had some curry chicken (cooked in a big round claypot thing). Crab – pieces broken up and stir fried in a sauce w/ a bit of chilis and tasted like a little sugar maybe b/c a little sweet. Some veg. Salmon. White radish carved out like little half spheres w/ shreds of scallop. There was some other stuff I think. But I’m forgetting. There was a ton of different dishes that kept coming out. So good. We drank huang2 jiu3, which is like some rice wine – looks dark in color but in the light it’s yellowish, so I assume that’s why they call it huang2 (means yellow). We had some really good tea, they talked about the tea and I listened, they talked about vitamins, too.

My feet are kinda swollen and I’m not sure why… didn’t walk around a ton today nor was I in an airplane, so it’s confusing. I am about to start my period though, so who knows. Maybe this is a new thing. I’m going to bed and hopefully that’ll fix the swelling at least.