We arrived in Shanghai and Liang Liang (who visited us from Hangzhou in September), greeted us with big hugs which made me feel really good. She brought with her two drivers from the library who took us to Hangzhou in the pouring rain. The library van had cushy cream upholstery with embroidered pillows to make it even comfier. I have since seen that everybody has these extra pillows in their cars. We rode in an Audi today that had a pillow with an Audi emblem on it.
After dropping our things off at our apartment we went to a restaurant down the street where we tried to pick out dishes we wanted from about 50 pictures on the wall. I can’t remember what we ate but there was a lot of it. We sat at a big round table with a huge glass lazy Susan in the middle. The food just keeps coming and coming. You just keep spinning the lazy Susan and everybody dips into the dishes with their chopsticks as they roll by. No serving spoons, just grab what you want and stick it in your mouth.
I was pleased that the two drivers told Sailan that they were impressed with my capability at eating spicy foods and being able to handle the chopsticks (sort of). More food talk later. Oh, yeah, and I’ll get to the library stuff soon.
—Ann
