China - Day 138, Sunday

This will be my last post until after the holidays. We leave on Thursday to return to the States. I wish everyone a wonderful Christmas and a happy, healthy New Year. Looking forward to seeing as many people as we can, but we are only home for a little over a week!

A few months ago, Randy met with a customer, Shu How How (how it is said - not spelled) and this customer asked Randy to bring our family over to his house for dinner and to stay the night. Yesterday we drove to his house about an hour outside of Shanghai (which means a 2 hours drive from here). Since we don't really know this man or his family, we just went for dinner. We had Richard drive us and we also took a coworker of Randy's with us. We arrived at his apartment and walked up to the fifth floor (yes - walked - no elevator). His apartment was all white marble (which seems to be very normal here). The apartment was freezing. They were preparing dinner in their coats! When we arrived, they turned on the small heater, which never warmed up the room. We ate dinner with our coats on. We had family style hot pot. Hot Pot is a traditional meal with a pot of boiling water, then you add vegetables, meat, noodles, and what ever else you want to add. They also made dumplings, fish and some other things that I do not know the names of. They let me try to make a dumpling! It turned out OK. It was an interesting evening, but I am glad we didn't stay - it was soooo cold in that apartment!

Today we looked out the window of our apartment and they had a red carpet running from the street all the way to our entrance. It was set up for a wedding. I went downstairs to watch as the wedding party arrived. They had the wedding right in our building. I believe it was in the apartment above us. Very interesting.


I have wanted to do a blog on some of the different styles of transportation here in China. Although I have not been able to get pictures of everything, I do have pictures of quite a few.

So here is today's Cultural Differences/Frustrations 101

A regular bike with a child seat on the back

An Electric bike. Motorized - and silent,
you never hear them coming

Motor bike

This is how they deliver packages, take-out meals, etc.

This is a normal truck on the streets.
The numbers on the back are the license plate number.

This truck is selling Ice cream, etc.

Trash bike - I will try to get a picture of one that is really
loaded - this is small compared to most of them!

Typical site with baby on moped.

A bike that has a person sitting on top of the load.

This is a bike taxi!