Shanghai again

When we returned back to China after our holiday trip of Canada and the States we stayed overnight in Shanghai our first night back.

Needless to say when you get off that plane after the short 14 hours you're a little tired and grimy feeling. Nothing that a quick shower at the hotel doesn't cure, and then we are off to meet up with some colleagues for dinner.

This being the lead up to the big holiday of Chinese New Year you get a lot of work parties and the such, when we first got to the restaurant it was packed full of celebrating Chinese. It's sort of like all the holiday parties that we have before Christmas only with more drinking - I know, I didn't think it possible either....

In addition to the general loud fun of a work outing, we were at a Middle Eastern restaurant so we also got to enjoy belly-dancing shows every 15-20 minutes.
The table nearest the stage were quite excited and they all brought out their big camera equipment so that they could capture all the fun.
Poor Tina and I didn't think to bring our big cameras so all we get are these quick shots that we took with our little point and shoot cameras.

The next day, since we had a few hours before our flight, Tina made sure that we got up first thing so that we could return to the big market in Shanghai. This market we've mentioned before, it's located beneath the Technology Museum, and you can get great deals on clothes, jackets, shoes, purses - all that stuff. This time we returned to purchase material to take back to our tailor in Xiamen as the material seemed to be of a slightly better quality up in Shanghai.

Well once we trek down to the market we find out that it doesn't open as early as we thought. We had to return back to Xiamen without and material...

But we did wander around that morning outside near the market and managed to snap this photo of the new World Financial Center, that almost makes it worth it.