Shanghai- Round town

Noodle pulling is an art at the 'Henan Lamian' shop close to our house.  Noodles are made fresh and 'with attitude' for each order

'A Niang Noodles'  dishes up 'croakers' (yellow fish) in a broth that is so tasty there are line ups every day at lunchtime.

This tiny animal market a block from our house sells 'lucky' crickets in bamboo baskets (at right)  as well as birds, turtles, chickens, cats, ducks, chipmunks….  One of the bird shops has a resident cat…go figure?!

On a 'gangster tour' of Xintiandi we learned about the opium dealers and how the drugs were safely delivered in police cars.  We also got to try our hand at pickpocketing and cheating at cards.  Yes, our year of homeschooling is going very well! 

Shanghai has copious examples of art deco as the 'Bund' (financial district) and many of the expat neighborhoods were built in the early 1900's.  Monika and Daniela (visiting from Canada) were kind enough to believe that we knew what we were talking about.

Xi'an

Xi'an (no idea why the ') is the location of the Terra Cotta Warriors.  Pretty impressive array of clay soldiers and horses, all with individual features.

This is the 'hospital area'  where the freshly unearthed warriors are repaired prior to being put on display.  They still have years worth of warriors to fix and likely many more sites to unearth.  Xi'an was the center of power in China for hundreds of years.

All of the warriors were originally painted but within hours of being exposed to the air the colors fade to beige. 

The cave on the top left is the home of cliff dwellers that live close to Xi'an; naturally cool in the summer and warm in winter.  Not so brilliant at venting smoke, though.

This woman lives in a residence attached to a cave.  Her husband is a cook in another town and her kids are working in the city.  She tends to her vegetable garden and her walnut orchards on her own….which she seems to prefer.  She was really quick and funny and bragged about how she beat all the men at Mahjong.

We were thrilled with she pulled out her tiles and offered to teach us how to play.  

Within short order other women from the village joined the game and at one point four of them were ensuring that Bruce didn't make any wrong moves.

Xi'an (the city, not the warrior site) is surrounded by a 13km long defensive wall that you can bike on top of…very cool views down into the city.