Week 25: Y

I'm back from our trip to Qingdao and Shanghai, where we realized that visiting a summer seaside town in mid-February and Shanghai over the three days of the year when everything shuts down might not be the ideal travel conditions. However, we saw some new sights and learned some new things...and nothing got stolen, so I guess it was a plus/plus.

The YELLOW Sea. Beautiful Dalian is on the Yellow Sea, but so, too, is Qingdao--a big contender for the most beautiful city in China. Controlled by the Germans in the late 19th century, it has a real European flavor to it.  This is the famous pier which appears on every label of Tsingtao beer:

A lonely winter beach, until we came upon a group of men doing a polar-bear dip. COLD!

In Shanghai, the buildings along the Bund are known as a museum of modern architecture. What do you think?

There was some old, along with the new:

The night lights:

Unfortunately, we saw a lot of this. World Expo 2010 opens on May 1, and they have a lot of work left to do.

The YU Garden. Here is a picture of the ubiquitous Expo mascot on a boat in the 17th-century Yu Garden--all sponsored by Pepsi, of course.

The YU Garden in the driving winter rain. The bridges are crooked to stop evil spirits from entering the homes.

I wanted to show you pictures of the YANGTZE River cruise I had planned to take during this holiday, but when I found out that there were three prices--one for Chinese people, one for foreigners, and one for American foreigners--the idea lost some of its appeal.

Wishing you all a Happy Chinese New Year, and that every day be a happy one.