shanghai part 2

silk factory

doesn't that ^^^ look like a fun job? 

picking bugs out of silk all day = FUN

 (another) chinese lunch

chinese garden

this was some sort of special house/garden that had a name...

however i don't remember it since this was 4 months ago.

just know it was some place important and cool.

suzhou

do i know what that ^^ is?

no.

does it possibly look like dead bats?

yes.

suzhou is called the "venice of the east"

it was about an hour or two from shanghai, but it was night and day different.

shanghai had skyscrapers and taxis, and suzhou had canals and gondolas

how cute are the chinese babies?!

that's the only thing i wanted to take home,

but for some reason dawson wouldn't let me.

and i'm not sure i could have gotten it through customs.

gondola ride

dawson's conversation with the chinese gondola driver:

dawson: can i take a turn driving?

chinese lady: oh no no no no...

dawson: i'm a good driver, i promise!

chinese lady: oh no no no, not safe, you can not, i sorry...

dawson: how about if i give you a dollar?

and you can see what happened:

chinese public transit

i have to say, the public transportation in china 

was not even close to as stinky as the tube in london

the fake market

we spent 6 hours shopping in the fake market. it was the most fun yet exhausting thing of my life.

we got awesome stuff, but it took FOREVER to bargain your way down to a reasonable price.

they would literally start things out at 10x the price it should be,

so you would have to argue with them for 20 minutes before you could agree on a price.

some of my favorite phrases from the chinese workers:

"how you ask that price? that impossible!"

"we are friends, i give this price for you."

"what your lowest price?"

"ok ok, final price. shhh!"

they would make us type our final price into a calculator 

so other customers wouldn't hear if we were getting a cheaper price than them.

us girls did a pretty amazing job if you ask us.

if you ask our husbands they might give you a different answer.

(those duffle bags at our feet are the bags we had to buy to haul our stuff home!)

bobby the monkey

we found this little monkey outside our restaurant.

dawson is convinced him and dash would have been best friends.

don't worry, i didn't come back with lice.

hot pot dinner

we went to a restaurant that was similar to the melting pot, but a million times cheaper.

we had heard the food and service was great, however...

not ONE word of the menu was in english.

not ONE worker in the restaurant spoke english.

and none of us spoke a lick of chinese besides our two go-to phrases.

so needless to say, we were very happy when our food came out and was edible.

some of it was even delicious!

and trying to communicate with our chinese waiters was probably one of the funniest things of the trip.

nicole was a pro at acting out all of the food items we were wanting to order.

cheers to the best china group ever!!!!

and that is the end of our china trip
(besides the 36 hours it took to go from shanghai to beijing to LA to las vegas to salt lake)
it was an amazing trip with great friends, and we are lucky we were able to do it.

but now we're moving on to new countries... out with asia, in with south america!

if you wanna see pics of our other adventures in china, here they are:

first day in china

beijing part 1

beijing part 2

beijing part 3

shanghai part 1