Shanghai-jinks!

Shanghai! You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villany....

Especially with me, Tiffany, and Chris Mandel free to roam the city streets by day and night! Folsom House Does China! The Crazies are on the loose....

Little diner restaurant's menu in Shanghai:
- Fans of beef soup
- Even the pickle
- Mushrooms surface
- Wang surfaces bear
- New York small cattle
- According to the chicken thigh
- The small steamed bun

"Growing in strength has really been my biggest weakness." - Chris Mandel

"Be Yourself - Have Fun - Love Lice" - Girls's T-shirt in Shanghai Century Mall

"My GPS is 'lost and happy'" - Tiffany ;-)

On wandering through gallery after gallery in the Art District, we had the good fortune to fall into conversation with Zhang Ying Qin (Adela Zhang), as we perused her stuff in her studio space.... Adela is a very independent-minded beautiful Chinese artist girl-lady, very into yoga and Zen and abstraction in art, and we were happy when she accepted our invitation to dinner! We all became fast friends over the following week, and hung out a bunch.... Adela just doesn't quite fit in with her own culture, being far too independent and strong for the more limited roles which women are traditionally expected to take on over here in Zhongguo, and was overjoyed to have randomly fallen in with some of the spiritual counterculture hippie freaks from the US of A.... Folsom Family has officially extended overseas! Hope you come and stay in Boulder, dearie....

Bu Yao (lit. "No want"): A person who approaches you on the street, wanting to sell you something or get you to spend your money somehow

Bu Yaoing the Bu Yao's: The Bu Yao comes to Chris and i, offering lady massage, very beautiful ladies.... We say no no no, no thank you, and keep walking.... The Bu Yao continues to follow us, offering lady massage and sex, until i say, "We like men!" and Chris gives him a quick squeeze of the buttcheek.... He squeals and leaves very quickly ;-)

Another Shanghai restaurant menu:
- Spicy reserve the spear
- Sweet bean worse
- Article moss peanut
- Homely bean curd
- The moss croaker
- Pseudosciaena polyactis bean curd
- Bad fish slices
- The squirrel bass
- Sauce hairy crabs

"i don't judge.... i just make sweeping observations." - Tiffany

How do you go from shower-handles to Lancôme in two blocks? Welcome to Shanghai

Bu Yaoing the Bu Yao's: The Bu Yao walks up to me on East Nanjing Road asking if i want lady massage; i say no, i might want massage from a man.... He says he has that, whereupon i say, Well really, what i want is massage from a transvestite, someone with breasts and a penis.... He says, ladyboy! i have that too! Whereupon i say, Well really, what i'm really looking for is massage from someone with no genitals at all, flat-chested and the penis snipped away, like a Barbie or Ken doll.... He says that this is his business, and i should not waste his time, so what exactly do i want? And i say, i don't know what i want, whereupon he gives up and we part ways....

"If IT's not cute, IT's not worth my time." - Tiffany

We had an eyeball in our soup today at the Sichuan restaurant on the corner from the hostel.... A fish eyeball

The best Shanghai restaurant menu yet:
- The incense burns small lobster
- The characteristic burns lobster meter
- The sun purifies big lake brake crab
- Get rid of small lobster of head
- Overlord pig knuckles
- Open space pfiddlehead stewed meat
- The peasant family stir-fries flesh for a short time
- Twice Cooked pork with Burger King
- Zi chicken is hit by a wing
- Spiced salt blows up pig hand
- Decayed thick gravy fillet
- The little yellow croaker cooks a bean curd
- The incense burns screw
- Braise an arm pull in soy sauce
- Do the boiler bullfrog
- The tomato white potato discharges a soup for a short time
- Fry a fermented bean curd with no result
- Mushroom facecloth boiler
- Nanxiang is enveloped for a short time

Bu Yaoing the Bu Yao's: After stealing a little clear plastic disc off the end of a handrail in the snooty and overpriced but gorgeously-viewed 47th-floor Radisson Hotel Spiked Dome Lounge Bubble, i waited for just the right moment.... Once back down on Nanjing Road, the Bu Yao approaches me with the useless flashing-light shoe roller-wheels, and i hand him the useless plastic disc.... He is very surprised at this exchange, thinking the disc might be something relevant to his life, and by the time he figures out he can't use IT for anything, i have scurried away into the crowd....

Well, we got away with IT! Tiffany somehow (after the first night at Mingtown) convinced the staff that i checked out and went to another hostel, so for the unethical low price of 25 qwai a night, i got to sneak around for a week and never feel safe or honorable, but have a pirated roof over my head! And i guess they just stopped caring, because i'm pretty sure they knew exactly what was going on, and nothing ever happened, despite my best worrying and paranoia! When in Shanghai, i suppose.... i'm just not blackhearted enough of a scallywag, IT seems....

Words of Wisdom from Chris Mandel: "Don't trip.... just keep on with the mission." And: "The two parts of the misson are: Always see the mission through 'til the end.... and: Don't be attached to the mission."

Words of Wisdom from Adela Zhang: "Don't think.... Just live your life."