Wait just a minute..are you suggesting that ekscrunchy is unreliable??

I am putting that book on my list..thanks, Shanghainese.

By the way: Has anyone at all noticed that I was the 100th poster on this thread??????

Only 266 more posts to catch up to the "interminable trip report".

EKS has promised a Gala dinner if Bob and I take a road trip to NYC. We'll see. I'll probably end up with a Big Mac.

Ek -- I dare not, just trying to figure out how to catch up with a jetsetter.

Panda -- you and Bob are lucky, mine is when she is in Shanghai!?

"Lucky" may be a very flexible word. Not only has she promised a gala dinner, but the opportunity to meet some of her "friends". I'd normally think, "It can't be that bad, At least it will be over in an hour or two." However, if her dinners are anything like her trip reprts, I could need two weeks. And this is with Bob. LSP-long-suffering Panda.

<b><i>a Gala dinner</i></b>

Much more practical than a Gala Night, especially at your age.

As for the book, think of it as 7 bucks/walk. Still sounds like a bad deal, though.

The book is 108 pages with lots of pictures and maps. I hate to think how much a word. Nonetheless, if we pick out two good walks from it, the price is meaningless. I've spent way more dining with the POB. Talk about a waste of money.

i thought this thread was to be about shanghai.....it seems to have taken a lower road

It is about Shanghai. Just a few "side trips". Note how the last real post, i.e., not from Bob, was about the book "Six Shanghai Walks". That would seem to the rest of us to be about Shanghai.

rhkkmk, Re Tiananmen tear-up, just wondered whether other things are being torn up for 60th Anniversary shindig and whether that would bollux up Beijing sightseeing, or hotels would be hard to come by.

Marya: I read that Evans book. I thought it was a little superficial, but fun to read; that is why it will not garner any credits in the course.

This is another one along those lines:



http://www.amazon.com/Foreign-Babes-.../dp/0393059022

I did read FOREIGN BABES IN BEIJING and I agree. Both books are a little too fluffy to make the e-syllabus yet they do convey much of the feel of fast-changing China so are fine for light reads.

Now I am enjoying Fallows' POSTCARDS FROM TOMORROW and have just gotten word that Chang's FACTORY GIRLS has arrived through inter-library loan. You perhaps saw the several reviews of books about China in last Sunday's New York Times Book Review...

Marya: I did read those reviews!

I put the Fallows book on my list.

The NYPL does not yet have How To Cook a Dragon, but the author has written another book set in Japan so I put THAT on my list!

I also added a new one by Jeffrey Tayler; he wrote a pretty good book about Africa a few years ago..Facing the Congo.

The new one is:

http://www.amazon.com/Murderers-Maus...6984059&sr=1-1

I am glad to announce that the pandas will be traveling to Beijing in late September. Many thanks to all with their suggestions. The plan is that we will now have a few side trips from Shanghai and spend 5-7 days in Beijing.

Yes! That's good news.

So glad to hear that you are Beijing-bound. (Good move, Mrs. Panda.) In addition to planning visits to major monuments, you will want to be sure to secure an updated copy of Peter NH's hutong tour.

If you can make the time, may I also suggest that you consider reading Michael Meyer's THE LAST DAYS OF OLD BEIJING: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed? It is a warm, personal story written by a westerner who lived in a traditional siheyuan/courtyard home in Beijing for two years while volunteer teaching English in a local elementary school. While that may not sound thrilling, Meyer does a very beautiful job of evoking a sense of the place he lived and the people with whom he lived. Peter Hessler said that "Nobody writing in English knows this world as well as (Meyer) does."

We have bandied about many different titles in recent weeks but, at the risk of really overdoing it, I need to plug the following book to you and anyone planning a first trip to China. John Pomfret's CHINESE LESSONS: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China is a treasure trove.

Happy planning.

CHINESE LESSONS just made it onto my list at #15 (we can only reserve 15 at a time!!)

I look forward to reading this as it looks terrific! Thanks, Marya.

Good move, Panda! Now we can start a whole new, meandering thread about Beijing!

Meander? I don't think so. This thread went in a direct line from an inquiry about Shanghai side trips, through multiple recommendations to visit Beijing and spiced with countless boof suggestions. It "concluded" with a decoision to take a "side trip" to Beijing. This is as direct as anything else in my life. At least a clear conclusion was reached.

Bookmarking


Anyone want to add anything new??

BeachGirl247: Follow Gpanda's DS and DIL's hilarious blog, they are spending 2 months in Shanghai right now.