A Little More Shanghai

Thomas and I got back from Shanghai late last night, and today was back to Monday morning for the whole family. I'll report our Shanghai trip in a few different posts. Today, the boring one. Below is a shot of the famous Pearl building in the Bund area by the harbor. This photo was from the only "clear" day. Thomas took it from a moving taxi. It was so foggy the other days, you couldn't see halfway up the building.

So the weekend went pretty much like this. We were holed up in a campus hotel, where the food was - in one of my favorite Chinese words - 马马虎虎mamahuhu [just so-so]. A student would come to collect me and I would give a lecture in the really imposing building below.

The picture cannot do it justice. It's about 30 0r 35 floors with massive classical [that's western classical] columns all around. My lectures were usually on the 23rd floor.

Above is a really nice poster for my talks. I got them so I can bring them back and shamelessly display them. But Ann says they are going into the basement.

Here Thomas and I are not eating at the campus hotel but in a popular Shanghai restaurant [not trendy, just popular]. Shanghai food is very sweet, and one of the students said that people in Shanghai have a higher rate of diabetes than the rest of China.

Well, the best part of the trip for Thomas was actually not all the pigeons he ate, but getting to stay in the hotel room while I gave my talks. Because we brought the computer, Thomas could watch DVDs while I was away. Since I gave 3 talks that lasted 2 hours each (plus walking time), that came to about 7+ hours of DVD heaven. And what did he watch? Star Trek: The Next Generation. Ann's favorite is now one of Thomas's favorite.