City tour #1: something old & something new

The College of Engineering at Shanghai Normal takes foreign lecturers on a couple of sight-seeing excursions during the term. Yesterday, we went to Yuyuan Garden and Xintianii. We've been outside Yuyuan (or just "Yu") garden before, but today we went inside to see one of the oldest parts of Shanghai. Xintiandi is a super-stylish part of Shanghai in the French concession...we may have seen more Westerners than locals when we walked around. To us, Xintiandi felt like a stylish Newbury Street in Boston with a 1900's Chinese flare.

Scottie's best and worst moments...Best: feeding the large "goldfish" (carp) up close in Yu garden. Worst: running full speed into an invisible glass wall in a Xintiandi shopping center.

Some Shanghai opera being performed on the street near Yu Garden.


Some beautiful structures in Yu Garden, including a 400 year old Gingko tree.


-----------------------------------

Scottie's encounters with goldfish. We all had fun until the gray monster carp showed up. I managed to get a snapshot (doesn't do him justice) of the Chinese Loc Ness before he took off my hand....in the last picture, you can see one eye and his mouth, which probably opened to be 2.5 inches in diameter. He splashed Scottie, reared his ugly head, scared us all, and thus ended the goldfish feeding frenzy.