Spicy dinner

One of my Chinese coworkers recommended a restaurant to me that was located about 15 minutes from our house in PuDong.  The name of the restaurant is Ba Guo Bu Yi and it serves traditional Sichuan fare and at 7pm each night they have a performer known only to me as "change face" which basically describes his act.  Cynthia and I had just finished shopping for a new camera in the electronics marketplace for Regan's trip to Beijing and picked up Landon from a friend's house when we decided that we should try out this new place.  Now, I knew that it would be spicy but none of us knew just how spicy it would be - WOW!  As you can see from one of the pictures that I posted Cynthia and Mason were diving for relief in their drinks.  At one point we were all sniffing from the hot spices and had tears in our eyes.  Landon was the only one immune to the whole experience as he wisely stuck to rice and dumplings.  After making a valiant effort to finish all that we ordered we were waiting for the usual watermelon slices to arrive at our table.  When they did not seem to be forthcoming I decided to try and order them from one of the waiters by using a translation program that Mason had downloaded onto his i-Touch.  The Chinese word for watermelon is xi gua which I requested from the waiter.  Several minutes later a pitcher of freshly blended watermelon juice arrived at our table - warm watermelon juice - not exactly what we were looking for.  I then resorted to drawing on my napkin a picture of watermelon slices - which were being served to every table around us and finally got the message across.  We had a great time overall and they even ended up taking the watermelon juice off the bill even though we drank all of it. 

I want to thank all of you who have been clicking on the Google ads.  We have raised over $60 so far for the Bao Bei Foundation.  We will be donating the money once we reach $400 which is the amount needed for one cleft palate operation.

Lao Shi Landon

The Chinese word for teacher is Lao Shi and Landon is becoming our Chinese teacher or Lao Shi Landon.  While driving in the car he enjoys giving lessons in counting.  He can give his entire birth day, month and year all in Chinese.  He is also picking up the local dialect known as Shanghai-nese.  As he is imparting all his daily Mandarin learnings to us, our driver Mr. Dong is listening in and every once in a while will turn around and give a big smile, thumbs up and a hearty "Hen hao! Landon" We are very proud of him.  Of course Mason and Regan are also quickly surpassing me - no surprise there - in the local language.  I still have one up on my lovely bride however. 

Regan's class trip to Beijing leaves on Monday morning and they will be gone for 5 days.  In preparation for the trip the teachers asked the students to bring in their digital cameras for some lessons in photography.  Regan did a really nice job on some of the shots and I have posted some of them here.  I am looking forward to what images he will capture in and around Beijing. 

Missing Home

The weather in Shanghai has become very nice with daytime highs in the 70s and low humidity.  At night you need to put on a light sweater or jacket. Fall was always one of my favorite seasons in Minnesota with the crisp chill in the air, leaves beginning to change color, fall baseball and the football season just getting underway.  We are all missing something from home. 

Landon misses his school friends and seeing Grandma and Grandpa.  Regan misses Huntley and Roscoe along with his friends.  Mason misses Ali and Cynthia misses everyone.  However, we are adjusting to this new life and there are many things that have been added which we would never have had back in Minnesota.  We spend a lot less time watching TV and a lot more time together as a family going out to eat or spending time at the gym.  Regan has a school trip to Beijing this weekend and Landon plays on both defense and offense for his football team.  Mason gets the opportunity to study at the most prestigious college in Shanghai and Cynthia is making many new friends and is enjoying long lunches with lots of laughter. We all attended church together last week and found it to be a great message on families and forgiveness that we all needed to hear. Afterwards we rode our scooter and three wheeler to a restaurant and had a nice meal. 

Cynthia has a new e-mail address if you would like to drop her a line without the whole Smith clan having access, it is crsmith@live.com.  I am sure she would love to hear from you.   If you have Skype you can find us by searching rssmith0214.  We would love to hear from you and if you call remember that we are 13 hours ahead of CST or 14 hours ahead once daylight savings time ends.  Sorry for the melancholy tone of this blog post but it can't be wine and roses all the time.  Take care and stay in touch.

Kopi Luwak

Okay, for all of you who didn't find the time to google Kopi Luwak you can find a web link on the right side of the blog page.  The link is from the movie "The Bucket List" and does a great job of defining the coffee's unique origins.  Enjoy!  Thanks to my friend Pete for sending me the link!

Have a great day!

Expo 2010 Day 2

The family set out for the Expo at 7:30am on Tuesday - Mason and Regan on the electric bike and Scott driving the three wheeler with Cynthia and Landon on the back.  I am sure we were quite a sight for the early rising Chinese.  It was only about 3 kilometers to the metro station where we caught the subway to the PuDong side of the Expo.  The view of the China Pavilion filled the horizon as we joined the thousands of fellow Expo-ites for a day filled with walking, walking and more walking.  In total we took in 39 pavilions over the course of two days.  One of our favorites was Indonesia where we partook of the worlds most expensive coffee - Kopi Luwak.  One small cup was $56.  However, by purchasing this most rich cup of coffee you were treated to a luxurious coffee lounge with soft leather chairs and specially made Indonesian coconut treats. The coffee was prepared table-side in a most elaborate process that reminded me of Chemistry lab.   I would tell you what makes Kopi Luwak so special but I think you will appreciate it much more if you were to Google the term and learn first hand why this is such a delicacy.  (Yes, this blog requires a bit of homework!) We drank the coffee black and it was silky smooth in texture with just a hint of berries.  Mason and Regan even tried it but we couldn't persuade Landon.  Another favorite was the Caribbean pavilion.  It was just like going home and brought back lots of good memories.  We visited Dominica (our favorite of all the islands we visited during our time in the USVI), Jamaica, St. Kitts, Belize, Antigua and many others.  The displays were manned by local natives of each island and we had a great time talking with them and reminiscing about our days in the sun.  The Jamaican folks were especially friendly and offered us two small airport bottles of rum.  Cynthia made an off the cuff comment of "Oh thank you, we really missed this" which then brought a reply of "Well den dear you mus have de whol box den"  She disappeared for a minute in the back room and came out with a dozen bottles of rum for us (airport size of course).  We also met someone from the Shanghai Caribbean Association and got invited to their annual get together being held next month.  Apparently there is quite a large Caribbean population in Shanghai - go figure.  Mason and Regan decided to part ways with us and head back home around 2 pm.  They had no problem finding the exit gate, making their way to the subway, changing trains once, finding the scooter at the final stop and heading home - whew!  I must admit it is a bit unnerving releasing your kids to travel halfway across Shanghai but I guess it really speaks to how safe and easy it is to get around this huge city.

Cynthia, Landon and I finished the day at the New Zealand pavilion and really enjoyed all the flora and fauna that was exhibited.  I would really like to visit there someday.  We finally left the Expo around 5pm but not before Landon posed for literally 20 photographs with various Chinese.  Landon was the only 9 year old westerner for miles around and it seems the Chinese think he is sooooo cute!  Landon is a bit camera shy but he obligingly and patiently posed for all the pictures.  We finally met a young girl on the subway home who was also 9 years old.  We started talking with her in Chinese (her Dad helped translate) I was using my very basic words like counting to ten, reciting and pointing to colors.  I would count to ten in Chinese then she would count in English. I would say an animal name in Chinese and she would reply with the English name.  This went on for several stops and we became quite the source of entertainment for those around us.  An elderly Chinese man had been observing this entire exchange and finally addressed me and said that he was glad I was speaking Chinese and that the US and China are very good allies (this all came via the little girls dad translating). It was fun and made me realize how much I really want to be able to converse in the local language.

Finally, I wanted to let you know the name of the orphanage/foster care facility that we want to support with the funds raised by all of you clicking on a Google Ad on our blog page.  The group is called the Bao Bei (bao-bay) Foundation.  BaoBei Foster Home in Shanghai is a temporary home for orphans from other provinces. These children come to Shanghai to receive medical attention or to undergo medical procedures that will save their lives or restore them to health. Before and after a medical intervention, the children receive loving care at Baobei Foster Home which prepares them physically and emotionally for an intervention and helps them recuperate from it. The services of BaoBei Foster Home are free but not the medical procedures. Therefore BaoBei Foster Home depends on its volunteer network for financial support.


Once the children recuperate, they can either be placed in local foster homes or they can be returned to the orphanage from which they came. One way or the other, the children will leave BaoBei Foster Home only once they are fully recovered from the operation they needed.

I have also included a link on the blog so you can get more information - to date we have earned about $35 from the blog ads.  The price for one cleft palate operation is $400.  I would love to be able to raise that much to impact the life of one child.  Thanks for your support.

Shanghai Expo 2010

Yesterday we (Mason, Landon and I) visited Expo 2010.  The Expo is the world's fair that is held every four years in various cities around the world.  The theme of this years Expo is "Better City, Better Life" and all of the pavilions from cities around the world display their latest plans and technologies for creating greener, more sustainable cites.  The Expo grounds are expansive and are split in the center by the Huang Pu river with the East side being referred to as the PuDong (literally "river east") and the West side is PuXi (poo-shee) Cynthia and Regan chose to stay home as Regan was extremely tired from his weekend retreat and Cynthia was just tired from being a wife and mother of three boys.

The day started out with a three wheeler ride from our apartment to the subway line.  On the way we stopped to participate in a bit of morning tai chi.  The master helped Mason and Landon strike the correct pose after several terse commands that none of us could understand.  The master finally gave up and I took the picture.

On the subway we met one of the Expo workers, Sally, and she guided us to the ticket gate and made sure we were on our way before heading to her assignment.  As we were walking to the gate a Chinese girl in front of us dropped her map and Mason picked it up to return it to her.  We thought nothing of it until a few minutes later the same girl asked Mason if she could accompany us since she was travelling alone.  She spoke limited English and we agreed to have a local companion to tour the Puxi side of the Expo.  Our new friend's name was Kimi, she is 23 and works as a graphic designer for a construction company in Fujian.  She was enamored with Landon and must have taken 50 pictures of him and with him. She had travelled to Shanghai to visit her sister and take in the sights during the National Holiday. We finally parted ways around 3:30 as she was heading to The Bund to continue her sight seeing there. It was nice to have someone who spoke Chinese help us get around and we all felt good that we could be her "friends" so she didn't have to be alone. 

Speaking of photos - Landon was a hit!  During the course of day we had several Chinese come up and want to take our picture - okay - Landon and Mason's picture.  One little Chinese girl even thought Landon was pre-teen pop idol - Justin Bieber!  The average daily attendance for the Expo is about 400 thousand and on the day we were there I could count on two hands the number of westerners visiting!  We really were a minority and that probably accounted for some of the keen interest by the Chinese.

We are now out the door with the entire family this time to head to the PuDong side of the Expo.  This is the more crowded and popular venue where the major country pavilions are located.  Will have more to report tomorrow.  Enjoy the new pictures on the blog and don't forget to click on an ad or two in order to generate funds for the local orphanage here.  I will be posting a brief story on the orphanage so you can get a better idea of how the funds raised from Google Ads will be used.