Today John and I met up with Wang Jian and his wife Ge Hui Xia. They are related to Uncle Zhu and live in Shanghai. They are newlyweds and roughly the same age as us. Wang Jian works for Shanghai Mobile and his wife is an emergency room nurse. We spent the afternoon at the Oriental Pearl Radio and TV Tower in Pudong (“East of the River”). At 468 meters, it is the third tallest TV tower in the world. We squeezed into the elevator (there’s no such thing as “personal” space here) and rocketed up to 350 meters. The attendent spewed out a ton of facts in both Chinese and English–all perfectly timed for the few seconds we were in the elevator, but I missed most of it. My ears were popping. The view up top was incredible. We lucked out with a beautiful sunny day and you could see so far. I was really taken aback by just how large Shanghai is. I think you can really get a sense of our awe from the pictures.

The lower level of the tower has an extensive Shanghai history museum. They re-created many of the old-style buildings and small shops. The museum was really well-done but it was also a little tiring. Fortunately, Wang Jian and Ya-ya (her nickname) are our kind of museum-goers. They move through things pretty quickly.

For lunch, we ate at the China Shen Jia Garden Restaurant. WJ and Ya-ya ordered and every dish was a winner. We had salad, mushroom soup, fish, salted shrimp, chicken, and some super-potent wasabi-drenched veggie. I mistakenly shoved a bunch into my mouth and I think it burned out all my nosehairs. Lunch was excellent and with John’s help, we even won out with picking up the tab (it’s a constant battle over here).

After lunch, we invited WJ and Ya-ya to our place. We used the pups as our lure. I think they were curious to see just how big our animals were. Pretty big according to SH standards. They stayed for dinner (Nai and Yeb always have something going on in the kitchen).