My recent meanderings...

...around China have been quite fun! I've taken 2 small excursions to different districts in Shanghai with a friend of mine but I've forgotten to take pictures of most of the places. The two districts I went to were: Song Jiang District (松江区) and Zha Bei District (闸北区). Both of these areas are considered Shanghai suburbs and my friend took me to these areas because they wanted me to see another side of Shanghai and there are some good restaurants in these districts as well.

A nice little path behind a University in Song Jiang District.

 The first trip was on January 1st were we went to Song Jiang Qu in order to visit a university. The university was called Shanghai International Studies University (上海外国语大学). It was interesting and I think it was one of the better looking universities that I've seen. The library, which I didn't get a picture of but my friend did. Maybe I'll post the picture later if I can get the picture from them.

Song Jiang at night.

 I will say that at times Song Jiang didn't feel like Shanghai. It was definitely smaller and there were less people walking around the town. It wasn't as filled with sky scrapers as Shanghai. I liked the feeling of the smaller apartment buildings and nice restaurants you don't have to go 5 floors up to find. There were also a few man made rivers that sprawled around the town. It was nice. Though being a foreigner I did get stared at many times which is to be expected in an expat light area.

I forgot what we ate here... I'll ask my friend if they remember.

A street view of Song Jiang at night.

 Then yesterday (January 12th) we went to Zha Bei Qu for a specific park called Luxun Park (鲁迅公园) and for a specific hot pot restaurant called Xiabu Xiabu (呷哺呷哺). The park was kinda disappointing because it was very small compared to other parks that we've visited in Shanghai. We also couldn't find the museum that was said to be inside the park. We might not have seen it because it was night time by the time we got there as we had to buy tickets for a future trip in February to Xiamen (厦门).

Luxun Park, a picture of the tree tops.

 Zha Bei Qu was, to me, very similar to Shanghai as it was busy and had a lot going on. While we were there one of the delivery service guys had their scooter crash in the middle of the road. People crowded around the guy, I'm guessing to see if he was okay, but what bugged me was the cars that were around this man were honking for them all to move when they obviously saw this man take a huge crash. He was definitely dazed but we continued walking.

Zha Bei buildings... forgot why I took this picture.

Food wise we ate pretty well. For a snack we picked up some "scallion pancakes" (葱油饼) which are very common and very delicious. I recommend anyone traveling in China to get these lil'cheap things. Then after a couple hours walking around (散步) and being surprised at the park's small size we went to go eat some nice hot pot (火锅). Hot pot is normally a big pot that everyone shares but this hot pot was for individuals. Both of us were feeling a little sick so my friend decided to eat at this kind of place. It was pretty good.

You order your "hot pot soup/sauce" and then order the ingredients that you will put in the soup so that it cooks as the pot of soup is boiling. It's really good. Normally you then take your ingredients out of the soup and put them on rice or a plate but here you put it in a dipping sauce of your choice. I don't know all the selections as my friend chose the sauce for us but she chose a really good sauce. It was a peanut sauce which tasted almost exactly like peanut butter. So good...

I'm going to try and study some more this week as I need to have some manageable Chinese before our February trip which I will explain later.

What are you all up to recently?

-Jonah

"Make sure you enjoy working towards your goals"

 No music this time, just studying and chatting with friends.