S

We took the morning commuter train from Suzhou to Shanghai, got off, and took a taxi to our preselected hotel, the Bailemen, which our friend Xie Ming in Beijing had recommended. Usually we just arrive in town and either pick one from the Lonely Planet, or more often whatever the first tout proposes to us. At the Bailemen we were very nicely situated and they had the best buffet breakfast of anyplace we stayed; they got very used to Gerry coming for his morning pair of fried eggs. Overheard a few times were their whispers about his beard.

The most interesting things for us were the street market where we saw live butchering, etc., and the homes of Zhou Enlai and Sun Yat Sen (and his widow Soong Ching Ling). Jan had already finished an all-roses biography of her by the communist lackey, Israel Epstein (bought at her Beijing residence, now a museum), and Gerry was reading it, so visiting their home was also a must.

We saw the new area of Pudong and didn't like it, but we generally don't like "new cities" with their sterile uniformity of glass towers and no street life. (Maybe we should get a car.) The Bund was fun to see for its historical importance, but it's really not impressive; in fact, Pudong, seen from the Bund across the river, is more interesting. We made three visits to an internet cafe, two of them very successful but the middle one was a failure because their net-link was down and the Sysop was nowhere to be found.