Shanghai

Shanghai is huge.

So here we are in Shanghai. We arrived four days ago, after spending a few weeks in the west of China with danio and Lillian and her parents.

I would like our experiences in China to help reduce stereotypes and prejudices about China, in the US and the rest of the world. I'd like to use my blogs for that purpose, but I'm not sure how to go about it. Part of it might be talking about our daily life here, but I'm not good at that. I'll try.

I'll start by talking about our life in Korla, in the west of China. In each post I'll just talk about one or two of our experiences there.

Patty had both knees replaced in May, and she's still using a cane to walk. The city buses in Korla don't have machines for the bus fares. There's a person on each bus who collects the money from people after they get on. Almost every time we rode the bus, either someone spontaneously got up and gave Patty a seat, or the person who took the money asked someone to give her a seat. Often someone offered me a seat too.

Another thing I'd like to mention about China is the theme and the mascots for the 2008 Olympics. The theme was "One World, One Dream." We've seen it posted everywhere. We saw it when we came to China in December. There are also five cartoon mascots, one for each of the Olympic rings:

- Beibei, a blue Fish
- Jingjing, a black Panda
- Huanhuan, the Olympic Flame
- Yingying, a yellow Tibetan Antelope
- Nini, a green Swallow

Together, the names spell "Bei Jing Huan Ying Ni," which means "Beijing Welcomes You."

For more information see The Official Mascots of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

I'd also like to mention China's efforts to help stop the spread of the deserts. More about that later.

Next: Inventing our own sign language at the post office.