The Final Morning

Well can you believe it???? I am all packed and ready to come home! What a long trip it has been. I hope you have enjoyed my blog and will continue to update as I keep reorganizing my photos... I only skimmed the surface of this trip... I have lots of catching up to do when I get home.

Please note the additional luggage I have had to add to my collection so that I can get home... I hope my parents bring the big car to pick me up at the airport!

Thank you for listening! See you in the States! :)

Shanghai Nights

Shanghai 2006

Some Sights of Shanghai:

Suzhou Silk Process

The cocoons are separated, then boiled and then attached to spindles. The silk on spindles are dyed and then feed into the loom for weaving. The double cocoons (twins) are boiled and then streched. They are pulled out by 4 workers and layered to make duvets.

Famous Gardens of Suzhou

Before we hit the Silk factory we had to hit the famous Suzhou gardens.

Meijiawu Tea Farm, Hanzhou

These bushes on the hill are tea bushes - this was our trip to the tea farm. China is the largest grower of tea in the world. Hangzhou is famous for its green tea. The farmers wife spends about 11 hours picking the tea leaves. Leaves are picked in the spring and the autumn (those are the best!), the farmer then dries them in the vat that is heated, he has to be careful not to scorch the leaves. He use tea oil to make sure the leaves are roasted correctly.

We are served green tea which is good for reducing high blood pressure and cholesterol.

The final photo is Rachel, Sarah, Bing (the most fabulous guide!) and me... Now we are off to Suzhou, home to the famous Silk Factories! Shopping....

West Lake, Hangzhou July 21

Here are a bunch of photos from our trip on the west lake. Pictures include the peacocks running free, the carp pond, and our boat trip around the lake, check out Keri, Rachel, Sarah and I - we are having lots of fun! But what else is new!

1st Morning in Shanghai!

We arrived in Shanghai about 9 pm, so we went off to bed and caught up on emails.

The next morning we checked out of our hotel (we left our big bags and packed overnight bags) and left for Hangzhou. Our 1st stop out of Shanghai was a meeting with a Real Estate company to talk about real estate opportunities in Shanghai. We were also show the condo complex "Verona" that they are building quite impressive for 80,000$ - anyone interested in property outside of Shanghai? Value will probably double to triple in the next couple of years!


We arrived in Hangzhou and checked into our hotel. (Check out the flower display in the hotel lobby!)Hangzhou is home to the famous West Lake - we took a walk around the lake in the evening and watched a fountain/light show. We even stopped for a Dairy Queen chocolate dipped cone! It was yummy!

Shanghai or Bust!

On July 19th we traveled from Zhangjiajie to Shanghai. Zhangjiajie has a very little airport but has the most spectacular views. Here is a view from the airport. The hole you see in the mountain is the one that several Russian fighters flew through during an air show... Pretty impressive!


On the 19th we also went to underground caves - it was great because the temperatures reached 102 degrees... Extremely hot! Here are some pictures from inside the cave. (They lit up the caves will some colored lights so some of the photos are weird!)