Visitors!

March was our lucky month....a visit from Bonnie one weekend, quickly followed by the arrival of Margaret Chase and Penny and Elizabeth Ashford in Shanghai, as well as a quick dinner with Dover's own Jens Eckstein in town...when it rains it pours!

The most faithful visitor award of the year goes to Bonnie Henderson. Always upbeat and never jet-lagged despite her world travels, she arrived ready to whip some chinese student doctors into shape with a full weekend schedule of teaching and lectures, but managed to carve out time for dinner with me and the kids and a little side trip to do some shopping:)

And right on the heels of our time with Bonnie, over popped the Ashfords and the one and only Margaret Chase.....welcome to Shanghai!

Here's a little blurry shot of Peter greeting the girls at the airport late Thursday night....

First stop Friday morning, a tour of a local Shanghai wet market followed by cooking school in Puxi where we all learned how to (sort of) make dumplings and stir-fry.  Lots to look at at the Wet Market!  We visited with our cooking school chef Mike, who showed us around and bought the ingredients for our class later that morning.  Not for the faint of heart!

Rice wine in jugs:

Cooking School....these are Mike's dumplings, not ours...we wish...it's a lot trickier than it looks!

Endless selflies!

Shopping...

The Beautiful Bund at night....a site we will never ever grow tired of...

Always the paparazzi shots with fascinated Chinese tourists

Our fabulous tour of the migrant worker village.....Shanghai has a population exceeding 22 million, 9 million of which are migrant workers.  These are the people who have built the city from the ground up, clean its streets, do most of the menial labor jobs, and yet receive minimal social benefits from living here.   We saw street foods from all over China, visited some unusual business that are only found in these neighborhoods and were welcomed into a few homes to better understand the lives of these hardworking and very proud people. We also learned more about China’s hukou-based social system and some of the issues migrant workers face while living away from home.

Here are the neighborhood showers:

Baozi

A home shared by three families, 11 people in 2 bedrooms:

Thanks to Penny for sharing her beautiful pictures and thanks to all for making the incredible effort to come visit us.  We love having visitors and felt very proud to have been able to show you around this beautiful and incredibly vibrant city.  Hopefully it was a trip you will never forget!