qipu lu pics from last week

went with a few classmates last week to qipu lu (chee poo loo, aka cheap pu lu), which is this shopping 'street' with tons of vendors selling cheap clothes. we'd heard that it was a crowded mess, but wanted to see for ourselves. the clothes were underwhelming - your typical chinese fashion with an excess of rhinestones, ruching, tassles, strings, paint, print, what have you - and the vendors were insanely aggressive. two women from a clothes stall followed us for 3 stories (the stalls are indoors in these multi-plexes of commerce), pulling on our clothes and blocking our path to get us to buy from them. it got annoying and we left without buying anything, but i guess it's good i experienced it (?). i had half an eye out for shoes since i was brilliant enough to bring from home two pairs of sneakers on their last legs, but all the pumas were... shall we say, less than authentic? you can tell mostly because the tread on the bottom of the shoes feel hard and plastic-y, not supple and rubbery. sure to make you scrub and fall when running through the metro on a rainy day.

the more fun part for me was walking back from the shopping district to the metro, where you get to be amongst the hustle and bustle. this was cool because qipu is situated in a non-foreigner area, so it's not like your senses are being assaulted by 3-story high billboards for lancome or giordano or whatever. there are tons of people loitering around, buying snacks from food vendors and standing around discussing stuff. linda and i stopped by a steam-food stall for these dumplings made of sticky rice wrapped in dough. starchy goodness.


mob scene we were greeted by upon leaving - trying to sell us watches and bags


waiting to cross


roasted chestnuts are a common street-vendor food


tangerine guy

i'm being self-indulgent

...but i can't help it. i got everyone's pics from this weekend and i can't stop looking at them and laughing. it's too funny.


from tonight... at ye shanghai. girls night out.


les and pru earlier today at yuyuan gardens


yuyuan gardens


saturday night... continued. these pics are fuggin money


neither ladies remember this being taken. wtf?


tang, cyn, pru


me, les, and that ho again

monday night

les, some ho, cyn


me, tang, alvin


tang, and cyn getting squished into pru's breastsssss



still kinda recovering from saturday. les and pru came to class with me today and were... bored. it was a pretty boring class, i have to say. mondays are usually lackluster.

we went to eat before class and found this little hole in the wall that everyone else seems to have known about... ordered won ton, 2 orders of dumplings, soup noodles, and pork chops and it was all 24 kuai. holy sh*t! and it was good food, too. les and pru were fiending for local food - street food - and this was perfect. i can't wait to go back, but it's one of those places where you really have to know how to order in chinese or you get pushed aside - it's super busy and tiny. so of course i'm not going back unless i have someone with me who is either fluent or ballsy.

came home after meeting up with them and chilled for a bit. still tired from being up till 6 last night - we decided to go out at midnight last night to check out the salsa scene. ain't much going on at 1 am on a rainy sunday night. the first place we tried to go to didn't seem to exist, so we relented and went to zapata's and it was so dead. poor les - we walked in and there were only like 2 couples dancing, and i guess she thought we were just in the entry way so she kept walking back thinking there would be more people in the back... and ended up near the bathrooms. oh well. so we ended up at bi feng tang and ordered a ton of food and sat and talked until the wee hours. including some pics from sat night. hilarity as usual.

and... we're back

damn it. so i guess for now i have to use this service. i don't think any blogging service is without its challenges here in shanghai - or is it the whole country? i don't know. here are some pics from the shark diving thing i did with alvin a while back. been meaning to get these pics for a while and finally did. yay!

les and prudence arrived yesterday for a 4-day visit. true to form, shortly after landing they were ready to go party. we had a pretty big night last night, and they were troopers. started off with tian jia - our sushi place - and 2 bottles of sake... progressed to glamour bar for cosmos and a couple shots where christoph was there for the tail end of one of his events... ended up at attica where i had to sweet talk the damn door guy to let 5 of us girls in for the price of 3. clubbing 101 - when there's a group of all-girls, you should pay them to come in, shoot.... attica was fun. lots of dancing in the hip hop room. alvin, allen, linda, lisa, tang were all there. more indonesians came later, which just makes the party bigger...