Classic New Shanghai (Pudong and the River)

Around Shasha's home village

Final transport across the river to reach Shasha's village

The family settle in before the wedding. Grandmothers old house on left. Roof of the newer family apartments on right (where outside wedding photos were taken). This is their own 'road' between the different family apartments.

The village centre seen from the apartment roof.

Getting the building material off the road before the next bus comes

There's always room for another house

Serious wedding fireworks - made for noise rather than light. Keeps the bad spirits away.

Shasha's family gathering for post wedding photos - adults left to right (sorry I dont know any names) - uncle, grandmother, father, mother, uncle, Shasha, Oliver. The children are cousins, but I never quite worked out which family was which, mainly because they are very much one big family.

Half way up the hill behind the village. It's steep!

View from the top down to the village and the flooded valley. This was a small river dammed about 40 years ago a long way down stream so it is now more of a lake, with no obvious flow. The original village moved up the hill.

A lot of fish are bred in pens and the river is used for transport over long distances with regular ferries calling in to every little village and delivering goods and post etc. This is also how we started our return journey as in the photo.

Travels near Shanghai

Cycling around Souzhou



Souzhou - view from the pagoda




Souzhou - paper lights for the moon festival



Back in Shanghai - old town market


Shanghai - temple gardens in the rain


Off to She Xian - 'are we nearly there?'

Old village near She Xian

Another wedding in full swing

Photos - Oliver and Shasha's wedding

(Quite a lot of these photos were not mine - thanks to those who took them)

Bribes received, Shasha is released by the bridesmaids to meet her bridegroom.

Bride and groom proceed to the wedding surrounded by fireworks and confetti.

The 'ceremony'. On the roof of the family's shared block of accommodation overlooking the flooded river valley.

Getting in some practice with the baijiu ('white alcohol' for toasting - like neat vodka).

Never ending supply of food conjured from the kitchen(s) for 200 people.

Bride and groom continue their duties - now in their Chinese wedding attire.

Some water from the kitchen to help the digestion of the wedding feast.

Gambei! (bottoms up) - Again!

Happy Chinese uncles, aunts and grandmother. (I dont know - he was smiling in the next photo!)

The kitchen helpers get their chance to eat.

Dance time - less poular with the Chinese contingent, who prefer to play cards and mahjong.

Photos - Shanghai

Looks like putting photos into old posts retrospectively makes them a bit hard to find, so I will put them into new posts in future. The ones that I put in yesterday from Shanghai I will move to this post so you can find them more easily.


Oliver and Shasha in their 15th floor apartment tending their herb garden.


This was one of our meals in Shanghai after Phoebe Isabelle and Henry had arrived. Food arrayed for sharing on a rotating central turntable and tea 'on tap'. Same arrangement seen in many other eating places we went to, usually with less smart decor.


Street scenes in Shanghai. In spite of most older ones being replaced there are still a huge variety of small and large buildings. Streets usually quite wide. In spite of the apparent chaos of the traffic, it is quite easy to get around and vehicle drivers never seem to mind having to go around a few pedestrians - stopping the vehicle is not an options of course! Our hostel was very close to the base of the pointy skyscraper in this night shot, so we could usually find our way back quite easily.



People's Square metro - one tiny bit of it! Mass transport is brilliant in China. This rush hour crowd is no problem, just join the flow and you will get where you are going in very little time.




Contrasts: New street light and power pole (concrete of course) being delivered entirely manually by a crew with a heavy duty 'wheelbarrow'.

Old and new architecture.

Full Access to the Blog

We have now reached the Australian part of our tour and are comfortably installed at the house of Liz's cousin Sarah in Castlemaine Victoria. Full access to the blog is therefore restored as well as plenty of time to update it and add pictures, so in the next few days I expect to do a bit of backdated photo-adding and complete the writing up of the remainder of our Chinese adventures.

Since it will be a lot of backdated information all at once, I shall try to break it up a bit into readable sections.

I have already added some pictures to the earlier 'Shanghai' post.