My Shanghai walking tour.

right by the rubble slum.

avril lavigne has joined the ranks of mao tse dong.

i wanted a cup but was afraid there was toxic paint on/in them

at Tian Zi Fang, they sell tons of ironic propanganda and political items. this store had all this mao stuff, stickers, toys, these Empower Women tiles, and a very bored employee..

tons of cool cafes. it's an expat haven

TianZiFang

shutters...love those shutters. sunlight pours right thru them!

old cool house

a spanish house

cool looking old bar

love the walkways

Sun Yat Sen's former residence. u can see his likeness. the prices are double for lao wai.

sun yat sen's pad

the tea shop

more compressed tea balls

tea ballz

is it bad luck to walk under bamboo sticks?

love this house.

a french wine shop..

a very large beetle with a big stick in its mouth..

peering down alleyways again..

roof of an old house.

i think the sign in the front said it was some patriotic gathering place

old school compressed tea into the form of money.

Sun Yat Sen's former residence

i like how bamboo, steel, wood and brick are all used..

some cool looking restaurant

old ancient doors..love these things..

more doors..

doorway to a pretty bad slum

i was walking by and decided to look into preceding red door. i saw a woman cooking on the stove (brown thing on the right) and the w/d next to the stove. these people live in rubble, with all these new high rises around them..it's pretty compelling.

I decided to take myself on a tour of places in shanghai. After lunch at a taiwanese restaurant with some coworkers, I stopped by Ho Jo's and asked for a city map cus i left mine at home. Then i began to walk. Some of the streets are pretty familiar to me now, like HuaiHai, FuXing, ShanXi, etc. With a map in hand, i felt pretty secure i could find a Metro at any point if i felt tired or bored. I think I walked continuously for at least 4 hours that day-my pelvis and shins were killing me at the end of the day. I started from the French Concession, walked down HuaiHai road, which is a huge shopping center street, went into a chinese bookstore hoping to find travel books and a Chinese atlas written in English but did not find either. I walked into a couple of clothing stores but got bored easily. I kept going, then decided I was going to walk to TianZiFang, the old school alleyways which is called Artists' Alley, which is full of shops, galleries and cafes. I walked past Sun Yat Sen's former residence, and took some pics and used the public toilet where I was relieved I had some papertowels in my purse. I spent tons of time at TianZiFang, one of my fave SH spots, got attacked by mosquitoes. I saw a couple of cool T-shirt stores where there were logos of the chinese army, mao, shirts saying "it's all propaganda," shirts showing you how to use chopsticks, i love china shirts and wanted to get one for me and dave but didn't want to pay the money for it. they had cool bags and different paraphernalia too. i continue to be amused by how communist history is kinda a joke now when it's printed on t-shirts that tourists love to take home. i wonder if these people know it's kinda irreverent and how that is a form of resistance? and maybe people are able to get away with anti-establishment ideas b/c they are all printed on shirts and little cards and purses that are geared towards foreigners. i just chuckle every time i see these stores. i checked out a bunch of cool art galleries, once again with political themes underlying them, but we couldn't take pics. then i proceeded to walk towards XinTianDi, hoping to catch a glimpe of the old Shikumen houses i had read about. What i found was the slum rubble house i took pics of which resemble the ruins just outside the new XinTianDi the book Urbanatomy of SH had written about. Then I proceeded to look for the Metro cus my legs were getting tired by now and found the HuangpiNan Lu stop and decided to pay dave a visit since his work stop was 2 exits down. We went to Blarney Stone's to eat after a long day of work for him and a long day of sightseeing for me. All in all, it was a fun day but my left leg was feeling numb and sore all night.