Susan's Shanghai Blog - Week 33

I'm back in China after my 4-week business trip back to Raleigh. It was great to be able to see all my friends as well as some of my family.

The flight back to Shanghai was "uneventful", which is always good. I did happen to catch some nice pictures of Siberia. The first picture is the flightpath, which shows we had crossed Siberia, and the others are the pictures from the back of the plane showing the snow-capped mountains below. We were only flying at around 30,000 feet and it was really clear so the pictures (I think) came out great.









It was back to the grind this week in the office, trying to get caught up. As I came out of the metro station at ZhangJiang on Tuesday, there was this little old Chinese lady selling cacti from a box. They were tiny and cute and while I KNOW I cannot take it back to the US, I went ahead and picked one up, since they were only 3 RMB (which is like 50 cents). I've got him on my desk in the office.

This week, China will be on national holiday from Monday through Wednesday, April 2-5, celebrating the Qingming Festival. The Qingming festival gets its name from the fifth solar term (Qingming) and falls on the first day of the fifth solar term. A solar term is any of 24 points in traditional East Asian lunisolar calendars that matches a particular astronomical event or signifies some natural phenomenon. The points are spaced 15° apart along the ecliptic and are used by lunisolar calendars to stay synchronized with the seasons. This very important holiday is set aside to remember and celebrate the lives of ancestors. The actual holiday is on Wednesday, April 5, which is the day when you visit the resting place of their ancestors or friends. Most people call it "Tomb Sweeping Day", because, as the name suggests, people would clean headstones to show respect. People also bring gifts like fruit, breads, and paper money. Yellow flowers are also very common as yellow is the color of joy and happiness.

Also, when I got back, they were ripping up the pond in our complex. Seems that it has "sprung a leak". And they went ALL OUT on the repairs! Hopefully they have relocated our ducks and fish somewhere other than someone's freezer and hopefully they will be back when the construction is over.





This is quarter close again, so Tom is working through the weekend and I had to find something to keep myself occupied. I'm going to play golf with some ladies on Wednesday, so Saturday morning I caught a taxi down to our local driving range and hit balls for about 45 minutes. As I was waiting for the cab, I noticed that from where I was standing, I got a really nice view of the Nanpu Bridge.

Then I did a bit of work before heading over for a facial. A friend of mine had given me a coupon for a really big discount off a facial, although the place is not all that convenient. It is (per Google Maps) 51 minutes by bus, or 17 minutes by taxi. It is in the same complex that we get our haircuts in and next to Carrefour.