Due to technical difficulties, we are not able to post pictures...
As I'm writing this, I'm sitting under a chandelier and listening to a talented pianist who happens to be a current neighbour of ours. Life in Shanghai.
We started our day with croissants and scones - we are in the Former French Concession after all - but kept or breakfast light. Trish and I had booked ourselves a dumpling making class with a Chinese woman who would teach us how to make Shanghai style dumplings and dumplings from her home region father north. Trish navigated us there, and we found our teacher Cici waiting outside for us to make sure we didn't get lost once we reached her community. What they call communities here are what we might call a complex back home. They have a lane number (street number), block number (building number), and a room number (apartment/suite number).
Cici brought us to the kitchen, and had us settle in while waiting for two others to join. They would end up being late, but John and Kevin brought energy and entertainment with them. Friends from Malaysia, they were outgoing and friendly - traits they assured us were not common in their country. Together we kneaded, mixed, portioned and practiced under Cici's instructions as she patiently taught and retaught us each step with a good sense of humour. Hopefully there are some pictures here to demonstrate what good students we were. Once we passed Cici's inspection for our practice dumplings, we graduated to making the real deal. Filled, pinched, and twisted, Cici set to streaming and frying our creations.
While we waited, Cici provided us with cucumber and black fungus appetizers, along with local beer, rice wine, and red daughter wine (named so as traditionally the wine is made and buried when a daughter is born, left to ferment, and dug up for her wedding).
Soon enough our creations were ready to be eaten, and edible they were! Although some of the soup dumplings had leaked out the soup inside (yes, we now know the secret of how you get the soup inside the dumpling!) they were still good.
John was impressed that both Trish and I handled chopsticks properly, and I explained my Grandpa had been born here, and when I was little, would have us use chopsticks when we ate Canadian Chinese food with him. While we ate, John and Kevin gave us a cultural lesson on Malaysia versus Singapore and the rivalry we have. They also gave us advice on local shoes, electronic stores, online shopping, restaurant reviews, and John presented an argument in favour of arranged marriages (primarily related to issues with his own mother-in-law). We ended up staying well past when the class was meant to end, and only departed when we realized Cici had another class in 15 minutes. We agreed to meet up in Malaysia wearing "I hate Singapore" t-shirts, and I look forward to the reunion.
Filled up on dumplings, we stopped at home to drop off our leftovers and reset up before heading to our first museum visit of the trip. We hadn't gone to any museums on Friday as we didn't know if we'd be functional enough to take in the information. Saturday was International Museum Day, where many local museums were half price or free, and we had no interest in being caught up in the crowds. Sunday was China Tourism Day, with many major attractions being half price or free, so again, we avoided them very intentionally. We later heard about three hour waits for some entries, and knew we'd made the right choice.
Today being Monday, with no discounts on admission, we headed to the Shanghai Museum of Arts and Crafts. Housed in a French house built in 1905, the museum holds carvings and creations made of ivory, jade, wood, and textiles. Some of the designs were incredibly detailed and intricate.
The museum also provides workspace for current artisans, who continue to use the same kinds of materials and techniques. It wasn't entirely clear if we were allowed/supposed to watch them while they worked, so we were more inclined towards a "do not disturb" policy as we explored. One of the last sections we visited was artwork made of wool - and we were impressed. The level of detail made it hard to believe that someone had designed and created something that from a distance you would have sworn was a painting.
We stopped at a lovely little cafe called Spoooon (yes, all those "o"s are necessary), where we had some delicious waffles and a "special" espresso-yogurt coffee. While I was full of regret once I tasted the espresso-yogurt coffee, Trish seemed to like it? We did both agree the waffles with ice cream were delicious.
We wandered over to a shopping mall we had passed when we first arrived in the neighbourhood, to see what kind of stores it would hold. Well, turns out, it held a lot of very nice high-end stores. I immediately felt grubby in my travel clothes, looking at the lights and levels of this bright and shiny building. After wandering around a few floors, we realized that they had a movie theater. It took us a little longer than it should have to figure out where it was (and which floor it was on...that place was a maze to me), but eventually found our way into an English movie - Detective Pikachu. I learned a lot about the fluffy yellow creature, and Trish kindly answered my many questions after the show.
Back at the apartment we broke out the beer and Crazy 8's for some good old card competition, and we managed to stay up past 10pm. This is something of an accomplishment for us, as we've been struggling to get a solid night sleep and not wake up at some unreasonable hour. I know, we're such party animals.
For those keeping track, Trish saw eight cats today.
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