Wet weekend

Me and Tony went out clubbing last night and got really drunk whilst Abigail stayed at home with the children and had to wait up for me until 3am because I forgot my key. Nah, only joking.

Tony left the office at 7pm or so on Friday, heading directly out for dinner followed by an evening at Muse 2, the new, new hottest place in town to see and be seen.

I went home, kissed the children good night and cooked my little dumplings. That's not a euphemism - you can get lovely bags of dumplings from the store and cook them in the wok in 3 minutes. Delicious with a dash of soy sauce and some vinegar.

Thus the difference between Shanghai visit number 1 and number 2. I'm not grumbling, it's just different.

The weather has been beautiful today - fabulous blue skies and baking hot. we have had 3 proper China experiences today for very different reasons:

Number 1 - the supermarket on Saturday morning. A cross between a bunfight and a rugby scrum is how best to describe the scene at the meat counter type-thing. The cuts of meat are sluiced into a big open tray for throngs of shoppers to delve into. Happily, most people were using the plastic bags provided for picking up the bits of meat to inspect them before tossing them back and picking up another one to scrutinise. At the bakery bit, there was a big queue as people waited for hot buns of some description to arrive on the shelves. Freshness is much valued here and I think the noisy scrum bit is a throwback to real market days.

Number 2 - a trip to Yuyuan market. A "real experience" not because you can buy all the tourist tat and Chairman Mao watches that your heart desires, but because you get to observe "real" (not Shanghai sophisticates with Ferrari's) Chinese people from all over China at leisure. You can clearly see different ethnic groups and spot country cousins visiting the big 'ole city a mile off. Generally the men are wearing poor dentures , baggy shorts, a polo shirt with an improbable colour scheme (tucked in) and a pair of formal slip on shoes made out of plastic (think Idi Amin / Robert Mugabe style). At leisure means eating, chatting, drinking, smoking and taking photographs of each other (often at the same time) with the volume control set to 11. It's a riot.

Number 3 - Shanghai Aquarium (a wet weekend, geddit???) Brilliant fun, big fish, small fish, sharks and again an opportunity to savour life Shanghai style. Don't even think about lingering to look at a tank for more than a minute or you will be swept away in a tidal wave of noisy flash-happy fish spotters. Most of the fish have cataracts and are deaf now. I made that bit up as well.

The children were understandably hot, tired and irritable after all this excitement. What better time to make them go to a restaurant and force-feed them stuff they have never tried before? Things got off to a rocky start with some chopstick throwing incidents and a broken spoon but I am proud to say that my two children tucked into sizzling beef in black bean sauce, chilli prawns (Max loved these), assorted dim sum and the now obligatory noodles (Lilli thinks it's spaghetti).