more sightseeing and meeting up with the family

Yesterday evening my brother and Mingzhu needed to make a selection of their wedding pictures out of hundred and hundreds of pictures just to bring them this morning to the photographer to be edited into "special" pictures.

While this was happening, me and Tania decided to once more make a quick visit to the Lu Luxun park. Mingzhu already told us that lots of people go to the park every morning to practise Tai Chi and go for walking and dancing, she wasn't wrong. The park was filled with people, to be more exactly ... filled with elderly people and lots of them brought their grandchildren. Most of them where dancing and to be honest, it was just one dance class after another. Chinese people are really into ballroom dancing!

We tried to find the tomb of the writer Lu Luxun inside the park but for some reason we couldn't find it. The signs were really contradictory, it was a real puzzle.

Not that we cared so much about it, we were merely filling the time till our fellow travel buddies were ready with their "obligations towards the wedding". Not much later we got a call from my brother that they were back in Hongkou and with the four of us we were ready to do some serious sightseeing!

First we headed for the Jade Buddha temple which is situated outside the city centre. We took a metro as close as we could, but from the nearest metrostation it was still quite a walk. Not that I am good in reading a map but between the four of us we managed to find the temple very quickly i must say!

The temple itself is very nice actually and to my surprise there weren't too much visitors. One of the people working in the temple shop told us that the crowds of tourists were going to come soon, so if we wanted to see the Jade Buddha we needed to be very fast. Tania was the only one of us four who already visited the temple on her previous visit to Shanghai and she had already seen the Jade Buddha, it is really ridiculous that you have to pay to see this buddha, but now that I was here ... I wanted to see it. I must say that it was nice, but not the big WAAUW everyone is talking about.

After taking some more pictures of the place we went back to the city centre and decided to go back to the old town and the Yu garden. My brother hasn't seen this place yet and since the weather was really nice, it was a good time to go for a walk inside the garden.

We didn't want to walk back all the way to the metrostation and took a taxi just outside the temple. Within a few minutes we arrived at the old town. I was glad to be out of the taxi. Sitting next to the driver wasn't all that good ... the last few days we noticed that the traffic is crazy, sitting next to a Chinese driver --> more than crazy, believe me! I wonder what the graffics say about road accidents! Or is it only in Shanghai that they drive this way?

Inside the old town it was even busier than yesterday and I was wondering if it was possible to be even busier? When in China, you are never alone!
We tried to get over the zigzag bridge to go to the Yu garden and although there were many groups inside the garden, we still managed to see everything and took some nice pictures in the process! I must say that I liked the dragon wall alot and the pavilions inside were really nice. This was certainly worth a visit, although it would be nice if there were less people inside, but we can't get it all of course.

After our visit we walked all the way back to the Bund and the colors of the buildings I must say are amazing. They are so bright and shiny because of the sun and their reflection in the water is so beautiful. We just can't seem to stop making pictures and Tania feels the moment has arrived to make some jump pictures ... she is so right about this. If there ever is a right moment ... this is it! We jump as much as we can to get the best picture, much to the delight of the people passing by.

Now that this moment of fun is over we head back to the Hongkou district. We are invited for dinner at Mingzhu's aunt. Me and my brother took alot of food from Belgium with us to bring to the family. We brought 10 boxes of milk powder with us for the little boy. He is the son of Mingzhu's cousin and they asked to bring as much with us as we possible could. We asked ourselves why he needed so much, chocolate is normal to bring with us as a present coz for some reason everybody loves ours, but the milk powder??? I don't know why but they believe it helps him grow ... but at the age of 3 years??? Oh what the hell, as long as they are happy!

The family dinner was very nice and it was great to finally meet the relatives of Mingzhu. They were very friendly and lovable.

At the end of this family dinner we already nicknamed the kid, the Nutrilon boy! May he have a long and happy life! Bless his heart, he is just really adorable!