Hong Kong and Shanghai

I am in the freezing cold computer room where I am wrapped up in Hailey's blanket and have just finished a hot cup of tea.
I like Hong Kong a whole lot. I would love to have stayed here longer. The people of Hong Kong are gentle and kind--no pushy salespeople here. We spent the first day walking through the city of Hong Kong. Taking the advice of a friend, who comes here all the time, we took a taxi up hill to the temple on Hollywood Road and then walked back down to the ship. The sky scrapers are so thick and so tall, that we had to look straight up to see the sky. We couldn't see the Harbor or Victoria Peak, but we could always tell which way was downhill. That night we went for drinks and dinner to the grand, elegant Peninsula Hotel. A group of us had drinks in the lobby before we went upstairs to see the beautiful hotel suite of one of our friend, Dianne Baker. Dianne is a pilot of jumbo jets whose grandfather used to come to Hong Kong to sell Alabama cotton and always stayed in the posh Peninsula Hotel. Her rooms were the most impressive hotel suite I have ever seen. She had plenty of space to entertain the seven of us in her room while she showed off all of her delightful remote control gadgets.
The last day in Hong Kong ,we took a public bus for 65 cents to Stanley Market--the biggest and best market we have seen so far. The bus took us up into the mountains in the center of Hong Kong Island and then back down on the side opposite of all of the sky scrapers. We had a very nice about 45 minute bus ride with gorgeous views. We stayed most of the day and then took the bus back with friends from our ship whom we had run into in the market. On the bus ride back to the port area, a group of teenagers got on the bus to go home from school. I spoke with a boy near me, and he introduced me to all of his friends. I told the girls they were pretty and one of the boys started singing "Pretty Woman". We all laughed and had a good time. The last stop on the bus line was both their stop and ours. I stayed put when the bus got to our stop so everyone else could because we had bought so much stuff in the market, most of which was in my lap, that we needed to wait until the bus was empty to get off. Oh, I forgot to mention that we were on the top of a double decker bus. Anyway, each student said good bye to me as he or she climbed off and then each of the Chinese adults said good bye to me also. What sweet, friendly people.
To get to the ferry to and from the ship to the city of Hong Kong we had to walk through a shopping mall of designer stores, most of which were for children's items. Did you know that Christian Dior, Armani, Burberry, and Versachi all have children's lines? One guess about why so many expensive children's stores is that there are now a good number of Chinese millionaires who are still allowed to have only one child--so perhaps they lavish designer goods on these cherished children. Also maybe rich American grandparents also buy expensive presents. Sorry to my three, no designor outfits are coming home to you this time. The only designer baby clothes I buy are from lizajanebaby.
The Shopping Mall was huge, ten times the size of any mall in Virginia or South Carolina. Rob and I priced a few things. We could have spent $90 US on a Nautica shirt-- but we didn't. We were not even close to being willing to pay the prices in the mall.
We docked in Shanghai two days after leaving Hong Kong. The China Association for International Friendly Contact, the group who invited Rob (with Andrew Wyndham and David Berringer of his staff) to China and then treated them like rock stars a few years ago, offered to do anything for us that we would like--except let Rob see Kevin-the impressive young Chinese man who spent two weeks with Rob when they were here before and then came to Charlottesville for a month along with his boss. Rob thinks possibly he was too close to Kevin. The two have become great friends and Kevin now addresses all of his e-mails to Rob: Dear Uncle Rob. Kevin did manage to get a call through to Rob while we were in Shanghai by calling Fei, this trip's Kevin.
We had two wonderful days in Shanghai being entertained and shown the sights in a very fancy black car with a driver and a young man who speaks perfect English named Fei. The Governor General (President or Director) of the Association that was entertaining us took us to dinner last night with Fei. All the meals, two lunches and a dinner, were lavish. Rob loved all of the food--I liked most of it. The second afternoon we spent in the pouring rain at a great market. Rob and I had fun using our bargaining skills. I love everything we bought.
Obama was in Shanghai on our second day there. At least one of our students got in to hear him speak. That night when we pulled up to the ship with our car and driver, the students who saw us thought they were about to see Obama step out. When we stepped out, they wanted to know how we got such royal treatment.
We got back to the ship in plenty of time--on ship time is one hour before we sail. As soon as we got back, we learned that the ship was not leaving until 2PM the next day instead of 6 PM right then. The cold rainstorm we had been drenched with while we bargained in the market was bad enough that our captain would not take the ship out of port until the next afternoon. The sea was quite rough out in the ocean between Shanghai and Japan, even after we waited in port an extra day. We were very sheltered in a river right in the middle of Shanghai--a city of 20 million people and 3,000 huge, beautiful, modern and mostly brand new, sky scrapers. Shanghai made Hong Kong seem like a village.
Except that it was cold and wet and miserable, I loved the market in Shanghai. So, given the extra morning there, Rob and I went back to the market with friends, Carla Tolbert and Sandra White (from Australia). We found more bargains for each of us. My particular favorite was a stuffed Panda Bear, in a little Chinese silk vest, for Holden (age 2). I danced around the little shop with the bear. The shop was playing very loud rock'n roll music. I guess the music must encourage Americans to buy more. All of Shanghai catered to Americans. All the signs were in both Chinese and English. Everyone was warm and gracious and friendly to us.
Amost all of the wealth of China is concentrated on the coast and in Bejing. China has 300,000 middle class out of 1.2 billion people. The rest are poor. The only poverty I was was in a few shanties in a huge area of Shanghai that is all new. People who were here before and Fei all said that the whole area had been rice farms and shanties a few years ago. Today it is all huge, stunning sky scrapers, except for the few shanties which we were told would soon be cleared like the rest in order to build another sky scraper.