Cultural Event Day 2

Christine, Stephanie and I have been exploring Shanghai by taking short day trips to locations of interest. Shortly before Spring Festival, we went to check out a small pedestrian street called Dongwu Lu. On the walk there, we stumbled upon a small, dangerous looking amusement park.

And then we saw that Michael Jackson still has a source of income at a Chinese Optometrist.


The road was lined with small stalls selling dried fruits and meats. The surprise of seeing whole dried squids or pig faces is starting to wear out, but still gets some giggles out of us. We taught one vendor how to say "sea cucumber."

Unlike many of the tchotchkie roads, each of the vendors were selling something unique. We were drawn in by the snuff bottle painter. He uses a bent brush to paint intricate scenes on the inside of the bottles. He knew how to please tourists, because when we asked to take a photo he knew to pretend to be hard at work.
I hear they're delicious:


We ended up at a cafe that Stephanie had read about. It was very dark inside, but the women working there were incredibly friendly- especially when they realized we spoke Chinese at an infant level. They inspected our snuff bottles and let us know that 1) there was no snuff inside and 2) we paid too much.

On the way home, just hanging out:

Stephanie and I bought face masks to fit in with the Chinese: