Yesterday morning we arose early so that we could help one on my colleagues that was here for the week. He wanted to buy some paintings and a purse for his wife before he returned back to the states. For the purse he was surprised that, unlike the south of China, here knock offs are hidden away. A lot of the Chinese seem to think that these things don't exist here when you ask them, but we know where they are. Actually Tina knows, and I offered up her expertise as a tour guide on Saturday morning.
So, bright and early we meet up with Yang and Syed for a trip over to Gulang Yu, the little island just off the island where we reside. A quick ferry ride and we are walking through the streets and alleys and then into the back room of a shop where the walls are covered with purses and a center table is littered with watches. Nice.
From there we go to a painter that Tina has talked to before, he does excellent paintings and we are waiting for us to find that perfect photo from one of our trips for him to paint for us. We spent a while looking through all of his paintings, and Syed grabbed a few to take home with him. We even bought one, a nice scene from Suzhou, a city we are planning on visiting in May. I'd post a photo of it but we asked him to sign it for us and therefore we need the paint to dry and will pick it up after the spring holiday.
From there, we sat down and enjoyed several teas at a tea store. Tina and I are becoming well versed in tea, and drink quite a bit of a local favorite, oolong tea.
That was close to a full day for us, and we left Syed in the late afternoon so he could catch his flight. After that, we met up with Ravi for dinner and a few drinks. Ravi had been at work all morning working and we think that a good meal and a few drinks was just what he needed.
An excellent hot pot meal, a quick stop at Temptations, and then a few drinks at the little pub we just love, My Way.
It was a fun day, and Tina is getting really good at playing tour guide. For those of you coming to visit, you should have a lot of fun being shown the odd and hidden aspects of the city.
And, for other peoples stories, we have been reading some other blogs written by folks over here in China and have updated our sidebar with their links. Some are good funny, and some may only be funny to us since we live here but try them out anyway. I'd recommend this link to a story from pastey white guy's blog. Most of these sites don't post as often as we do, maybe that's why they seem to read better. Also, while we were relaxing today we uploaded even more photos up to our Flickr site, enjoy...
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