Travel Log of Kathleen Meadows Part 1
- a week in China.

We have arrived! Shanghai is enormous and round (round corners everywhere, good Feng Shui). We had a long dry flight next to friendly inquisitive people, and could not get the new-fangled electronics to work, so we talked a lot. Customs were kind and nodded us through with many smiles. I am on the verge of going to dinner and then collapsing, so much more later....

Our first day at Shanghai. It must have been four or 4:30 Am when I got up, after waking a couple of times during the night. I opened the curtains in the living & dining room of Michael and Margaret's 8th floor apartment and looked out on a dark quiet city. In Seattle and most major US cities there are generally lights on, 24 hours a day. Here, even the sky scrapers were dark.

I quietly cleaned the kitchen (the same routine I do at home) and greeted Mom who got up while I fixed an Ethiopian mocha coffee. The counters in the kitchen are about 6 to 8 inches shorter then the counters at home, and the walls are floor ceiling pale green tiles that are about 8" by 8". All the corridors, bathrooms and kitchens in this building are tiled floor to ceiling, and the toilets have drains in the floor beside them, just in case. While mom went out to a common stairwell to smoke a cigarette, I sat on the floor behind the couch in the living room on a pillow facing the floor to ceiling windows framed in heavy dark rose wood and used the sill for a writing desk. I wrote about the apricot sunrise and the sound of birds singing (robins dawn devotions?). The entire city was misted in gray moisture and the sun was a perfect orange ball beside a tall building. I wrote this haiku:

The dawn before me

Bathing Shanghai in peach mist

the day has begun.

Michael and Margaret rose and we shared a breakfast, standing around the short island in the kitchen. Boiled eggs, tiny croissants and egg custards we bought at a bakery that night, strong coffee, and orange juice. We walked to a bank (open on Sunday!), where a money-changer shortchanged me by half on a twenty dollar bill, who apologized profusely when my brother caught him and he gave me the correct money. We headed out to taxi to the Catholic Church, Saint Ignacious, a gracious brick cathedral with spires and three altars. Outside, there is a statue scene of Saint Bernadette kneeling before our Lady of Lourdes (interesting coincidence, my confirmation name is Bernadette).

We went inside the church and a choir in the back balcony sang in Latin, beautiful voices! We walked out to a little gallery adjoining the church's front garden, under construction and were begged by an old women who put her hand in front of us saying "Gei dian qian", (Give me some money). Walking with us and settling in front of me (maybe because I had my hand on my fanny pack.) I wanted to give her a coin, but was warned by Margaret that they are phonies and only to give to the truly handicapped. Otherwise visitors would be swamped by beggars that may or may not be in need. Margaret told the woman to go away..