I heart Shanghai

Today was Papa’s 49th birthday and he wanted to spend it in Shanghai.

Instead, he spent the entire day with his mobile phone glued onto his ear as we drove around the city with Linda, the best tour guide ever! And our driver, who’s good at kung fu and chose not to be photographed lol. Wonder if he’s some Chink commie, or some unknown stuntman whose flying kicks and super high jumps we have unknowingly seen in whatever Chinese film. So like I said, Papa got the best tour guide ever. Apparently, she is the “VIP” tour guide and took famous people around, like the Warner Brothers President Bruce Rosenblum, Tommy Hilfiger, Morgan Freeman, and many more including, check this out: some Filipino-Chinese sidekick of PGMA who traveled with a blonde Russian woman and told her he had just received a gift from the husband of PGMA and that he was famous in the Philippines. I wanted to puke.

She took us to these obscure places around Shanghai and because of her, we were indeed treated like noble figures in this foreign land. She first took us to the Jade Buddha Temple where I witnessed devout Buddhists pray on this lucky day (well 26th of December but I've been up since then). The entire place smelled of incense, which was quite pungent to the nostrils and resonated with chants led by the monks. The temple was absolutely gorgeous, but perhaps I am biased because of my undisclosed beliefs to this ideology and the fact that this temple was mainly for the female Buddha called the Goddess of Mercy – girl power!Next stop, we watched a fat oyster get knifed up yielding over 20 pearls, which we got to keep for free. It wasn’t even a factory or a tourist stop, but cause we seemed like a great bunch, they said we could keep not just one or two pieces, but every single pearl found in the oyster my mom chose. To warm up our chilly bods the Chinese way, (well, I just realized its not really Chinese but more British because they were China’s colonizers) Linda took us to an authentic tea house called, A Place for Tea Art. Here, we witnessed how tea should be prepared and served, and partook in a mock tea ceremony led by a Tea Doctor (basically an artsy fartsy name for being an expert in teas). Pics below were taken outside the tea house with my lovely sisters.Then we went to the Confucius school which was actually closed but since our tour guide was all hooked up and shiznit, we were allowed in. After that tour with a student volunteer, we went to the silk factory where we watched how silk was collected from silkworm cocoons and made into pillows, blankets/quilts, clothes, and embroidery. The lady who was explaining how silk was drawn from cocoons started picking out the silkworms and there was a point when I thought she would actually just pop it into her mouth like a fucking peanut. But she didn’t.

Finally, we had dinner at the Jin Jiang Tower revolving restaurant where I maximized input to appease my orally fixated self. Idk why but I just realized my parentals love revolving restaurants. It’s so odd.

I know I'm missing on a helluvalot of details but here's a mind map of the things I did today. Believe it or not, I understand every squiggle on that sheet of paper.Oh and I'm mad pissed cause I can't view my blog. I can write new posts and add pics but I can't view it because of the Great Firewall of China. Boo.