CHINA 2010 MONDAY 22nd AUGUST

We spent a couple of hours walking round the old part of the city discovering more alley-ways and old buildings hidden behind new build. We came across some very old houses down one narrow way that brought us to a street corner Temple. As we approached the end of the alley we could hear lots of women chanting so we were very surprised that sitting in the shade of the small shrine were just 2 women who were just as surprised to see us! A recording must have been playing to attract attention – it certainly caught ours. Our little adventure brought us to a main road but the street sign was in green which we have decided indicates an ‘old street’ but no-one in the office that Keith has asked seems to know the difference between blue and green.
At the next junction we recognised our surroundings as being the end of Zhongshan Lu and the beginning of Siming Lu that will eventually take us to the University. Across the road was the ‘Millennium Harbourview Hotel’ with the road leading down to the sea. As we have not been down this road before we decided to take that route and passing the hotel saw their electronic temperature gauge said 32 degrees. The very large building next to the hotel, which we believe will block out any view of the harbour, was a Children’s Hospital not that we could read the signs but saw people entering the various doors with young children and in a small garden in front of the main entrance was a beautiful statue of Dr. Lin Qiaozhi whose face I recognised from the statue of her on Gulangyu. Also there were helium balloon sellers outside one of the entrances, and we had recently passed another who we thought was in danger of being blown away in the strong breeze blowing in that particular area.
The next building on the corner leading onto the coastal road was empty. It was a large grey impressive looking place, with a delightful water feature by the parking area where two large stone lions guarded the few steps leading up from the pavement. In the pool two light grey seahorses spouted water from their mouth whilst on the back wall flat rocks had been designed in simple shapes to allow water to cascade over them. There were signs of fountains but these were silent, unlike the busy traffic on the coastal road, and a small purple flowering water lily was about to show its glory.
Walking along towards the ‘Wyndham Hotel’ we were amazed to see so many tour buses lined up outside the ferry terminal on a weekday. Today the waterfall at the side of the car parking area of the hotel was running so I had to go and get a photo of the statue of the grand lady standing by the top of the fall in the gardens of the high ‘Terrace Cafe’. My argument was ‘we may not be staying here but we do have the hotel’s tourist map.”
As soon as we could we returned to the narrow streets ending up in the fish market whilst looking for this season’s small green seedless grapes. The taste of these grapes has taken me back to the mid 60s when in the summer I would buy them from the market to eat in the office. The flavour and sweetness was wonderful then as it is here almost 50 years on. Unfortunately the only grapes we saw were mainly large black ones so I had to do a stop at ‘Rainbow’ supermarket on our way home. We did not appreciate the icy blast from the store’s air conditioning system so quickly gathered the few items I wanted.
We went to eat at the ‘Sheng Kang’ again tonight which was very busy and the only table available was by the beer fridges. We had quite a wait for our food but that was no problem, we were not going anywhere. We had ordered the same dishes as our previous visit only changing the vegetable dish for what we were not sure and when the food arrived it was so delicious I think we could have eaten it again. Their version of spicy prawns are so succulent but then we have watched the chef come and take a generous helping of live prawns out of one of the several fish tanks and within 5 minutes they are on our table. How fresh can you get? Some of the local people are still surprised to see the foreigner in these small restaurants and we have noticed them passing comments to their waitress but they are always smiling so I don’t think they are saying anything too bad about us!