Silk Market and Shanghai Dinner

At Huanghan Park

Sunday, 6-25: Yesterday was a largely Max day. We walked down the street to a dumpling dive and feasted on delicious dumplings with soup and pork inside. Some were potstickers and the others were spherical. Not sure how they seal the soup inside. He very helpfully loaded open office on my computer so I don't have to have Microsoft dunning me. While he did some real-life errands,  I  waited in Huanghan park, a lovely park with winding paths, play areas for kids, basketball courts, a water feature with huge boulders and some nice vistas.   When I was waiting out front on a bench, a paper blew away and I went into the bed to recover it, and other trash as well, but found I had lost my pen cap in the process. A couple on the bench nearby was watching and I gestured about the pen cap-- he looked in the flowerbed and found it! So we started a largely  mutually incomprehensible conversation. I think I conveyed that my son was coming, that he spoke Chinese, that I was visiting from America. I showed them my sketchbook and they wanted me to draw them, which I did. I was coughing and she said it was from smoking; they looked with interest at the poor drawing (need to work on people not just ever-cooperative plants) and then hustled off. But then, they returned, with a can of herbal tea!  I gave them my card, and he gave me his-- a landscape guy which I was somewhat able to guess because of the word yuan. So they left again, returning with a nurse friend of the woman from across the street. Not much idea what that was about. She left and they went across the street and got a big  sweet whipped cream thing from Starbucks-- very generous! I don't buy them for myself-- and left. I made Max drink it when he returned a few minutes later.

So, I can communicate basic necessities like how much, I'm American visiting (obvious) but when it comes to even minimal conversation, not so much. I am so annoyed that I didn't bring more of the Chinese materials, for vocab.

So, after a wonton lunch, during which both boys were accosted by a whole table of girls ( I like your glasses, you have beautiful eyes) we did go to the fabric market. The big markets are surrounded by independent street hawkers selling stuff (exceptionally cheap, in every way, knockoffs of purses and hats, food including grilled  meat) and a general air of busyness and festivity. The silk market itself is in a large building and has at least three floors of stalls selling fabric, made-to-measure clothes—coats, suits, shirts, you choose the fabrics and they take measurements and pick up a few days later); whole stalls of nothing but buttons or zippers. It is crowded and many of the sellers push their product hard. It is very different from the largely impersonal process of buying things in the US.  It is hard to know what a reasonable price might be—you certainly won’t find out from the seller.  I blew some money on silk. including what I said I wouldn't, a scarf with (old) Chinese charactars.  I bargained down to 35 from 180, but then felt bad; it was too far; but I doubt that the seller would give it to me for less than her bottom line. The silk merchant only went down 25% ;  but that seemed OK to me. It's wonderful stuff, a beautiful sanded brown and brilliant kingfisher blue green.. Max bought 3 shirts, one for Dad, made to measure (but I got the wrong measurements, too bad) and Jacob got some too.  

That night we went to Qing's apartment for a Shanghaiese dinner, which she cooked. Many courses! I do like her, she seems very relaxed and confident with all of us. It must not be easy dealing with just Jacob, but the Jacob and Max team! I wonder what she thinks and sees, and how her general worldview is. The boys are really hanging out with the best and brightest here; students who are the cream of the crop from all over China, in Jacob's case, and the wealthiest of local and foreign residents' children in Max'. Jacob has been teaching American culture as a professor, and in a high school has been teaching critical thinking from a literary and historical perspective. And, I guess, teaching them to write good essays! He will go to Mongolia for a brief trip with Qing, then to Harbin to study on the second and New York August 25; Max may go with me to Hangzhou (West Lake) for a quick overnight trip before he leaves, and Jacob to Souzhou. But Jacob’s visa stuff is still up in the air until maybe tomorrow afternoon.