The Last Bits of Shanghai

It was Saturday afternoon, and I was ready to go.

It's funny. Nothing had felt right since the Tuesday puke-fest. Purple Mountain in Nanjing was a peaceful, cool interlude, but it's also the only post-Tuesday memory I have of the whole journey that has retained much clarity.

We strolled around the Shanghai Museum for a couple of hours, and saw this:



This is, believe it or not, made by northern ethnic Chinese entirely of salmon skin.

Before we went to the museum, we had taken lunch at an Indian restaurant called Tandoor. Earlier in the trip, O had expressed his disgust at Indian food, particularly the curry involved. But once he realized we liked it, he insisted that we go there for lunch. He was in Shanghai every day, he said, and could eat his favorite foods anytime.

I have to admit, the aroma when I walked into Tandoor aroused my appetite more than anything had in the past four days. There was plenty of naan, and we shared shrimp masala and shrimp biryani, and I ate. I ate! Yippee! Gone, for awhile, was the constant feeling of faintness I'd been carrying around with me -- chased away by the heartiness of naan and a good biryani. I even had a taste of saffron ice cream after lunch:



We also spent some time at the market, where I discovered that bargaining animates my otherwise extremely mellow husband. It's odd, really, like watching someone morph from Droopy to the Road Runner. The routine is fixed: He asks the price, then no matter what it is, he has a sort of fake heart attack, complete with a little screech and a press of the hand to the heart. Of course, then the vendor asks what price he thinks would be fair, and the newly-minted Road Runner responds with a number no more than a third of whatever price was originally named by the vendor. The vendor then loudly rejects this, and Road Runner/Bargainer waves his hand in disgust and begins to walk firmly away. The vendor waits a few seconds, then calls out after him. He does not respond. Vendor runs after him, grabs his arm and agrees to the price he named. RR/B grumbles as he removes his wallet. "I pay too much! I pay too much!"

O, having accompanied him to the market at least five or six times before, shook his head and smiled this time after maybe the third negotiation. He turned to me. "Bladerunner, he always get the price he want. I don't know how he do that."

At the end of the day, after we'd finished at the museum and were ready to head to dinner, we spotted an older man selling kites on People's Square. Unable to resist one last negotiation, Bladerunner decided Trailhead Kid needed a kite. Thus ensued yet another fake cardiac episode accompanied by the obligatory shriek. But a little over twenty-four hours, two flights and another brutal round of jet lag later, we arrived home with a kite.