A great weekend!

Spring has finally made it to Shanghai and like anywhere in the world it feels fresh and exciting  and you want to spend as much time outside as you can.
Therefore this time instead of writing much I will show you how we enjoyed our first spring weekend in the city.

Friday night:
I was invited to the 2nd concert of AMRTA, the event in the Shanghai Oriental Art Center where I took the pictures at in November. It was ever so exciting to go again to enjoy the music without my camera and to be in the concert hall with some hundret people who were all looking at the program which was designed with my pictures :-)

Unfortunately Paul was not able to join me as he had to participate one of those over night "team building events" which he somehow was able to miss for over a year. This time he didn´t have a good enough excuse and finally his colleagues got the opportunity to "gambei" him to the bitter end - or in other words, got him really really drunk with Beiju (50%+ alcohol, also called Chinese wine)...

Aparently he managed that night very well, bravely eating snake (comment Paul: a lot of bones..) and turtles and sea cucumbers ("taste of nothing..") he sang karaoke and was declared "hero" next morning. Hopefully that gave him enough  Guanxi (= your personal network, required to do anything in China) to last for the year.

Saturday:

Paul still away until late afternooon gave me a great excuse to hit the fake- and flower market with Kerstin. Some 6 hours later we returned home happily after a sucessfull shopping trip requiring trasport in a mini van taxi:

Later  Paul returned home also with full hands - a bag full of chinese goodies given out after the meeting. A way of the company to increase it´s guanxi with the employes. This time the box included tea, nuts, some undefinable meat stuff  and - 30 fresh eggs. We are not sure why  because Easter is not celebrated here. But our ayi assured me that it was eggs from Chicken. So we have now enough to paint on for sunday and will probably live on omlett for breakfast in the coming weeks...

Sunday:

The weather at it´s best, we decided to go for a stroll in the sun on the river at the pudong site. Luck has it that the superbrand mall shopping center is located right there, too so that I got the chance to visit Esprit, Zarar and Next :-) At least the title "Tai Tai" is now justified :-)!

.. and Paul got the chance to enjoy a nice Hefeweizen in the Paulaner beer garden afterwards

(much more healthy than Beiju!)

On our way we came across this beautifully pimped Mercedes which I must show you:

(Comment of the crowd looking at it: "Ohh..Hen hao kan"..very good looking..)

In the evening we met up with Dave and Marie and their friends to enjoy cocktails

on the terrace of Mortons, watching the sun setting over puxi and the lights of Pudong coming on:

Over all: A real "Expat weekend" in Shangers..

and a  very nice one indeed!  :-)