the Blue Frog and crazy taxi drivers

Lonnie and Ed (from the customer service department at Daktronics corporate) were here for about a week. Friday night we were going to eat near our apartment. They got in a cab and called us to instruct the taxi driver how to get there. Jon's phone locked up and he couldn't answer, so the taxi driver kicked them out of his cab because they didn't know where they were going. They walked to the Blue Frog and asked us to meet there. (The Blue Frog is an expat bar and grill. )


This shouldn't have been a problem. Perk, an animator from LEDtronics, was visiting too. Perk, Jon and I grabbed a cab and told him to go to Da Ning Lu. After telling him the first several turns, he exited the elevated road. Suddenly we were going to Pudong (the way to the airport, WAY out of Shanghai.) Perk speaks Chinese so he was telling him where to go, along with us. However the guy didn't have a clue. He kept speeding the wrong way.

He took us to Da Ming Lu, and next saw Da Lin Lu, but just kept going. We called Grace, one of the sales people, and told him exactly how to get there. He kept going in the same direction on the same street, the same wrong way. We started looking for another cab - we didn't want to get out without another cab to get us out of that strange part of town. I was starting to get very creeped out with a very bad feeling about this guy.

Luckily, we were at a stoplight when I saw one on the other side of the street. I said get out now! and we all jumped out (yes, without paying) and jumped into the other cab as quick as we could.

We told the other cab driver to drive away quick and we'd give him a big tip. Perk explained the situation and told him where we started and where we were trying to go. The new driver thought the other driver was insane for taking us where we were. Then, the first driver started following us. He was pulling up next to us on the wrong side of the lane, shouting at us, honking, etc. Jon was just furious and told the new driver that if they other guy followed us all the way there, he'd take care of it.

Our new driver had to backtrack for a very long way before getting on the right track to Da Ning Lu. Ed and Lonnie had been waiting for us for over an hour, when we should have been there in about 15 to 20 minutes.

Beijing Photography

These are a couple of my favorite photos from the Beijing trip.

We were too late to go to the Forbidden City, but I got a great photo of one of the towers. Daktronics has a project there and one of the guys will give us a private tour. He has worked there for many years and even gave Jon a book of his own photography of the city he had published!

This was the passage from the Forbidden City to Tianamen Square. Thousands of people were packed into it as the Forbidden City was closing.

Tiananmen Square

Tianamen Square is absolutely huge! We were there when all of the party members were coming in for the national Communist Party Meeting so things were a little crazy! A lot of things were blocked off and security was everywhere.

Mao's Mausoleum.

This is what is pretty gross about China. People (especially kids) will pee or poop anyway. Not in a bush, or grass, or on a tree. Anywhere in front of anyone. This mom helped her kid pee in Tiananmen Square! I saw another kid squatting in front of Mao's Mausoleum! MAO'S TOMB! Nothing is sacred!

There was a virtual geocache at this monument that we logged too! We had to take a photo of us with the GPS to prove we were there.

Ming Tombs - Beijing

After the Great Wall, we visited the Ming Tombs. There are tombs for 13 emperors from the Ming Dynasty. Only 2 are open to the public. We went to Dingling, which is an underground mausoleum.

Then we went to the Sacred Way, which has animals on both sides of the wide paved path. It was nice and there was a virtual geocache there!

The Great Wall of China

Jon was in Beijing last week for work, so I came up on the weekend. Saturday morning we went to see the Great Wall. It is all rebuilt where we went. It was cold and rainy and of course I didn't bring my sweatshirt. Conveniently, there were about 100 different people ready to sell a "I climbed the Great Wall" sweatshirt to me.


We saw hundreds of people going to the right on the wall, so we went to the right. And we discovered why there weren't so many people going that way - it was super steep!! We climbed a part of it with steps that were more like a ladder.

Beijing Opera

We saw the Beijing Opera on Saturday night. It was very interesting. It has a very different type of singing, and amazing costumes. It had subtitles on LCD screens so we could tell what was going on.

Beijing Chinglish

I would appreciate it if one of my Chinese friends could translate what the Mandarin actually says. Maybe it means "Don't start a fire with your cigarette so that water is needed to put out the fire."

This isn't too bad. I like how it forbids graffiti.

Three Gorges Photos

I finally got all of my Three Gorges photos uploaded. They are all here. http://www.emilyminor.com/ThreeGorges/index.html I'm going to post some of my favorites occasionally though.

This is going through the dam. It is the largest dam in the world now, and we read that the amount of water that it is holding back will actually change how the world rotates on it's axis. Crazy. It has a system of 5 locks. A bunch of ships sail in, they shut the rear gates, water floods in incredibly fast, they open the front gates and the process is repeated. It was weird sitting at the front of the boat knowing how many tons of pressure was pushing on that gate!

One of the gorges.
This is in Yichang. We spent a night there before getting on the boat. They had a bungee jump over the water! We decided that there's no way we'd trust a bungee jump in China - especially since we are not slender Asians!

This happens to me all of the time, and I finally got a photo of it. I look up and people are taking photos of me with their camera phone. Yes, I am really white. But there are enough foreigners in Shanghai that I would think I am not so much of a novelty. I've seen people trip over things cause they were staring - if they pass me, some people will turn around again several times to look. Jon gets it too. A big guy with bright blond hair attracts a lot of attention. Also, staring is not considered rude here. We've found out that if you make eye contact and stare back, they will not look at you again!

The people with my photo on their phones.... I just wonder what they do with it. I mean, would you really put it in an album and say "and this is a white person I saw on my vacation"? Or do they show it to their friends? Look at it for a laugh? Tell their friends they know me?

I do take photos of Chinese people too, but I think they are doing something interesting, like sleeping sitting up on the street or ridng a bike piled high with furniture or something.

Random stuff

Everything is a bit of an adventure when you are living in a country with cultural so different than your own. At the store I saw Wasabi flavored chips and also "Red Wine Chicken." I couldn't resist. Jon will like the wasabi ones. I tried the Red Wine Chicken. I can't taste any wine. They do taste like chicken, grilled or barbequed chicken. Interesting. I wish they had Salt and Vinegar though! Other flavors include ketchup, cucumber, tomato, prawn, and potato (aren't they supposed to taste like potatoes?)

This is pretty near our office. Nibe. Just do it.

Korean Pop Stars

A couple weeks ago we saw a huge commotion outside - hundreds of girls standing around a building across from us.

A famous Koren Pop group was in Shanghai and they were performing there. This is the group coming in. I still have no idea who they were, but the girls in the office were swooning over them.

The Pearl TV Tower

The first part of the week, Dr. Al Kurtenbach (the founder of Daktronics) was here visiting. It was his first time in China. It was very interesting to be able to learn from the person who started the company! Judy, Ning and I took him to the Pearl TV Tower on Sunday. It was pretty cool and there was a museum of old Shanghai in the bottom, which was interesting.



This is the tallest building in Shanghai now. It's the Shanghai World Financial Center, and should be finished in 2008.

Yee-haw - Shanghai, South Dakota

It's a bit strange to see a stuffed steer here. It's quite realistic. This is outside of a Japanese restaurant near the office. Abram, Sofia, Yvonne and I had sushi there for lunch once.

On the day before October holiday, Sofia wore these cowboy boots to the office. I pictured my dad wearing his cowboy boots with shorts..... first of all, farmers and cowboys never ever wear shorts. And they live in their boots. Of course, like any city, here they are just a fashion statement.

The Three Gorges

Jon and I went on a Three Gorges cruise during the October Holiday. I'm still working on uploading the photos. It was pretty good. A cruise isn't really our style - we felt like we were herded like cattle most of the time. We got woken up at 6:30 each morning and got a call saying we had to come to dinner when we were 10 minutes late on But, it is really the only way to see the Gorges.

It's pretty interesting. The water in the Yangtze River has risen a lot due to the construction of the Three Gorges Dam (the largest in the world) and will rise a lot more when it is finished in 2009.

Boats on the Yangtze

I took a lot of photos of all of the boats on the river. Some were tiny and some were huge. We're pretty removed from water traffic in South Dakota so I was pretty fascinated by the types of boats.

Chinglish from the Yangtze River

Before looking at the latest Chinglish I've seen, check out a few other sites. I thought I should post a link to a place about the reverse of Chinglish - native English speakers misusing Chinese or Japanese characters.

This site is devoted to the misuse of Kanji characters in Western Culture - it is in English so most people here can read it. Engrish.com also has links to sites in Japanese about this "reverse-Engrish".

If my rubbish isn't disposable, is it still rubbish?

This was along a steep dropoff.

On the rails around the Three Gorges visitor center.

No crowdign Thunder Stormy Day?

Does this mean "Don't push people when it's raining because the stairs are slippery?"