IN SHANGHAI

Greetings from Shanghai, a city of 18.5 million people and traffic that you just wouldn't believe. We are on our post-Olympic tour with 37 people from our large group in Beijing, and Tom and I are the tour escorts.

That, in itself, is scary.

Today some of us took a side tour to what we thought would be a quaint town offering "a glimpse into the past," as we read in a newspaper article.

Well, let me tell you, with 1.3 billion people in China, I have decided there is NO little town anywhere and if there is, I want to have green tea there.

The bus ride to Suzhou, which is only about 45 miles away, took one and a half hours going and two hours and twenty minutes returning! Not fun for us, but certainly not fun for our bus driver. These are the guys who deserve gold medals.


This city of Suzhou has a 2,500 year history and there is an "old" section with a web of canals and cobblestone streets, but this old section now has 1.1 million people. Our tour guide said it is a "mini-sized city" and even the modern part of Suzhou, which has 6 million people, is considered "tiny" by Chinese standards.

On one of the canals - we spent most of our day in two "famous" gardens - one which was copied exactly by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Something we all noticed along the way was LOTS of construction everywhere. China is building huge, high-rise apartment buildings in this area west of Shanghai, because many high-tech firms have located here and want workers to live close to the factories so they can walk to work. I'm talking about hundreds of tall buildings in various stages of construction.

More later from the Yangtze River.

Here is the link to my latest photos, and when it opens just go to the TOP and select SLIDESHOW.

http://picasaweb.google.com/ecker.carol/SHANGHAICHINA



Carol