Our dinner last night included an amazing “face-changing” demonstration. A dancer dressed in traditional costume swirled and spun around, and seemingly instantly changed the color and look of his face. It clearly was a series of masks, but you had no idea how he could possibly have changed them so fast. He also changed colors of his cape along the way.

This morning, Lenny and I took a walk on our own for an hour around town before leaving for the airport. It’s been hot and humid all week, and we really felt it even at 8:00am. We visited an old temple in town and watched the congregants lighting incense and praying. Hanging from the ceiling were loads of coils, both large and small, which we only later found out also were incense slowly burning. I guess this is for the people who are too busy to stay and burn their incense themselves …. “light, burn and go”, as it were.

We had an uneventful flight to Shanghai’s beautiful, modern airport. We were lucky to arrive at a time when no other flights arrived and sailed through an empty immigration hall. This airport is scaled for huge volumes. The hallways were so long it almost seemed like we were looking down a mirrored walkway.

Shanghai – at least the part we saw on the way from the airport – is thoroughly modern. I’m not sure what happened to the old communist Chinese thing, but the streets here are full of designer boutiques and international labels. The skyscrapers all seem to have been built in the last ten years, and the architecture is striking. They fortunately seem to have skipped the bland architecture of the mid 1900’s, and as a result, one building was more beautiful than the next. Although tall, the buildings are more spread out than in Hong Kong, so the place feels much less dense.

We are staying at the Grand Hyatt Pudong. The building is decorated on the outside with art-deco looking ironwork that gives it a strong, textured look. The most amazing thing is that the hotel lobby is on the 54th floor, and the hotel rooms are on the floors above that. Even at those heights, the hotel has a vast, open interior space going from the 56th floor to the top (86?), which all the rooms on a balcony around the edge.

We were going to dinner with those from our group who also continued to Shanghai, but got started late, and hit bad traffic, so arrived at the restaurant with no time, since we had tickets to a Chinese acrobat show. Our delightful host, Danny Lui, had ordered “take-out” for us, so we grabbed out bags, and headed out to the show. Our Abecrombie and Kent guide I’m sure was quite surprised to find her four guests frantically eating in the van on the way to the show.

The show was great – a bit like Cirque du Soleil. We had front row seats, so could almost see the sweat on their faces as the (very young) acrobats did amazing tricks and feats of strength.

-- Donna