My friend Bill arranged a guys' day trip to Shanghai this Saturday. Five of us including Bill, Stanley, Paul and Dave (a visitor from Aurora, Illinois) hired a van for the day and went to lunch then shopping. Dave's objective for the day was to bring home some good knock-off merchandise for his family in the U.S.
We started off by enjoying a fantastic Brazilian barbeque lunch at Latina's in Xin Tian Di. A Brazilian BBQ includes a buffet and unlimited meat of all kinds that is brought direct from the BBQ on skewers. The servers slice servings directly onto your plate. Stanley, our Brazilian colleague sitting front and right, eats frequently at Latina and knows the manager well. That is the manager you see serving skewered beef. He took very good care of us.
After strolling the surrounding streets and a nearby park, our next stop was the Hongqiao Pearl Market. Kathleen is a frequent shopper at Hongqiao, but this was my first time. I bought a new backpack, suitcase, wristwatch, sunglasses, and a couple China travel books. I also picked up two Mahjong sets to ship back to a colleague in Decatur whose wife has joined a Mahjong club. Mahjong is a Chinese board game that seems to be a cross between dominos and poker. You see older Chinese folks playing Mahjong all of the time at tea houses and in parks. I am intriqued to hear that there are Mahjong clubs springing up in the midwestern U.S.
This is probably only the second time in a year that we have gotten a group of friends together to out in downtown Shanghai. It takes some logistics and planning, but was well worth the effort as we all had a very good time.
We started off by enjoying a fantastic Brazilian barbeque lunch at Latina's in Xin Tian Di. A Brazilian BBQ includes a buffet and unlimited meat of all kinds that is brought direct from the BBQ on skewers. The servers slice servings directly onto your plate. Stanley, our Brazilian colleague sitting front and right, eats frequently at Latina and knows the manager well. That is the manager you see serving skewered beef. He took very good care of us.
After strolling the surrounding streets and a nearby park, our next stop was the Hongqiao Pearl Market. Kathleen is a frequent shopper at Hongqiao, but this was my first time. I bought a new backpack, suitcase, wristwatch, sunglasses, and a couple China travel books. I also picked up two Mahjong sets to ship back to a colleague in Decatur whose wife has joined a Mahjong club. Mahjong is a Chinese board game that seems to be a cross between dominos and poker. You see older Chinese folks playing Mahjong all of the time at tea houses and in parks. I am intriqued to hear that there are Mahjong clubs springing up in the midwestern U.S.
This is probably only the second time in a year that we have gotten a group of friends together to out in downtown Shanghai. It takes some logistics and planning, but was well worth the effort as we all had a very good time.
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