Strolling around the French Concession

Looking for the Italian embassy and some italian restaurant in which HE could have worked, I found myself strolling around the beautiful french concession, the richest and glamorous part of town.

Again the city magically changes at night time...

新年快乐！Happy New Year!

It took some time, but I menaged to contact a chinese family that knew HIM.
I just wanted to ask some questions, but they insisted on inviting me for dinner for New Year. I was very embarassed by the idea of having dinner with chinese people I didn't knew. What if the food was weird? What if I would have offended them someways?
Despite my fears, I went. It was a good choice.

The house was very small and very old. Two bedrooms, one little kitchen in the same space as the living room, which was also the mother hairdreses parlor.

I could not speak with them and they could not speak with me, we could only exchange some words but there was no problem in undestanding each other.
After few bottles of beers, undestanding became easier and also less important.

It has been one of the most interesting experience of my life. They were so welcoming with me, they say they really liked HIM and they miss HIM too.

At first they offered me endless tea (wahtever I wanted it or not) and then dinner started.

There was a lot of different kinds of food and sauces on the table, and everyone had to pick some of this and some of that with the chopsticks and put it in his own plate. The best was the Shanghai crab, which has to be open, crushed and eaten with hands

After dinner I moved to the Bund again
for fireworks. HE loves fireworks, I'm sure he didn't missed the show.

And the next ay I've been invited to the nepew birthday in (did NOT expected that) a 5 star restaurant! As the night before I was feeling very uneasy, a full chinese family ( 3 tables) was there!

But in the end everybody was very welcoming, another cool  experience!

And the night finished at the Chinese favorite karaoke! (in which I was also forced to sing a BEP song, but I refused to sing Lady GaGa!)

It was my second day here and I decided to go for a stroll to the most famous part of the city, The Bund. New Year's was close and streets were empty. Most of Shanghainese people come from other parts of China, and for New Year they all went home. Peace reins on the streets. I wonder if HE can feel it too right now.

Outside the very center huge buildings leave space to little peculiar chinese houses. Less fancy maybe, but very fascinating.

This is a monument to the chinese soldier's died in war. A chinese woman asked me if I could have a photo with her in front of it. Her dauther and husband were with her and they took the photo...who knows what they really think about "us". Are "we" cool? Or "we" are just funny looking?















A wall with pictures surrounds it


It was a foggy day so the skyline wasn't great. Luckily at night it looks better.

Something with flowers...















One of the thousands boats that cross the HangPu river
















On the other side of the skyline there's a long line of very beautiful art decò buildings, all owned by the numerous chinese banks

I alredy saw this somewhere...
Oh now it's all clear....















A french meteo tower. Being french it looks pretty, and for the same reason probably useless...
This remainds me a lot about photos HE took that one time he went to Beijing.
As Beijing looked pretty much all like this Shanghai really does not, history has been replaiced by shopping










A very chinese Apple store. Now we are in East Nanjing Road, THE shopping street.

Another monument for the dead. We are now in People square.



















AND NOW IT'S NIGHT TIME...the city just magically changes its face...

 Mao

And this is all I'm eating this days. "spaghetti secchi" o "istant noodles". You just add hot water (and some weird stuff) and you have lunch. 30 euro cent, I have to say it's quite good.