Tuesday, September 20: Yu Gardens

We went back to Yu Gardens in the morning.  Off the main roads were interesting alleys.  Many of them had   small restaurants with interesting looking food.  It was clear which areas catered to tourist and which areas were not for tourists.  Yu Gardens were less a traditional garden and more interesting Chinese buildings built on the water.  They catered mainly to tourists.

Obama t-shirt with Mao outfit.

Laundry

Eating area

Buddhist Nuns

Yu Gardens

Yu Gardens

 We left Yu Gardens and started walking towards the fabric market, but we found a store which sold silk along the way and wound up buying it there.

I bought the silk fabric pictured here. More about sewing it at this link.

Back at Yu Gardens at the Buddhist Temple

Restaurant where we ate lunch

Large wood carving with some kind of fresh creature below.  

We had dumplings and another dish, I think with tofu and mushrooms.

Yu Gardens is apparently famous for their dumplings

Outside view of the restaurant

The subway system was really easy to navigate. It was in both Chinese and English.

The subway wasn't super crowded especially when it wasn't rush hour.

Interesting sign at the subway station: No smoking,  no littering, no begging, no spitting.

Tiger's bag.   Some of the English was really interesting--kind of like if I tried to create something in Chinese. Not knowing any,  I would put words together in a way that pleased me without any worries about what it said.

We took the subway to Qibao.  Qibao is a small canal city southwest of Shanghai, completely accessible 

by subway.

After Qibao we went back to our hotel where we met Lim, a former co-worker of Gary now living and working in Shanghai.  We went out to dinner with him.