Street scenes

I have been walking the streets of Shanghai seeing lane houses and street scenes. Shanghai had a lot of building in the 20's and 30's, the height of the art deco movement. There are many examples of this in the French Concession in particular, where we live. One thing we have discovered is that the Chinese will tear out and completely remake things, such as our sidewalk, in a beautiful, time intensive and good way. What doesn't seem to happen, however, is any sort of maintenance, of streets, sidewalks, buildings. They wait for the good work to go bad and then just redo the whole thing. This beautiful gate was all rusted.


The arch and lion's head above this gate. The arch ended in a corinthian capitol on the other side of the door frame.

Liked the sign. If you can't see it well: Poker Coffee Healthy That's always what I thought!
This is lovely Mei who makes the most wonderful meals for us. About 5 dishes every night with as many flavors and all delicious.
The girls were laughing hysterically at old videos showing shots of friends back home - and of themselves, of course. Paige is usually the photographer, Storey the actress.
On one of the walks I went into a wet market which is so called for the wet floors, I believe, of always cleaning up. It has meat and fish. A variety of things that I have no idea of what they are except for in the upper right hand corner. That is jelly fish which we have had the pleasure of trying. It is surprisingly crunchy.
Vegetables and some sort of root vegetables in the back.


This was on our street corner. Never much need to go far for something good!
A sunny day for hanging clothes. Down one of the many lanes I saw.
Peering into a beautiful doorway, stone and brick arched.
A street of many 30's style lane houses.
Another lane.
On our street. Look carefully and see the two workers taking a little break.
This is a new store on our street, very cute hand made shoes. The name is "No Concept." I keep thinking they may have meant "New Concept". The sign below the one you can see says, "No concpt".
Storey had a birthday party to go to, see photo below for her wacky outfit, and after roaming the Pearl Market for awhile, Paige, Ridley and I ended up at a Thai restaurant. Goofing around and having fun. Paige was eating sweet and sour chicken out of a pineapple. Yummy.
The party asked for whacky dressing, and we got there and only Storey had complied. Sweet girl. The red face came off immediately, as did the tie.
Overflowing flowers being pedaled along.
One lane we went down had someone cooking out of a window on the left side. The men were eating and playing cards and other games I don't know the names of.

This was once a grand Russian Orthodox church that has gone through many reincarnations. It was a factory, a restaurant, during the cultural revolution a headquarters of sorts, and now looks as if it is tumbling down, though I understand that it is used for something else now. Can't remember what.
These bamboo scaffoldings are everywhere. They go up and down in a day.

One of the dumpling shops. They make the dumplings by hand and then fry them up in this large pan. You buy them in groups of 4. Delicious.
Another set of workers taking a break on the job. I see them sleeping on their job sites at night, also. They may live far away and come into town to do these jobs and they just sleep there or on a cot on the sidewalk.



My mom and R's assistant arrive tomorrow. Next week the girls have off school for the National Holiday of mid-autumn festival. We will be going to Beijing and Xi'an. Our first excursions out of Shanghai.