Long time, no see

So there has been a long hiatus on the blog, moving to a new city, getting everyone and everything set up took longer than I thought and I hit a wall with writing about our adventures in China because I miss my friends there. But we’re back and both need a procrastination tool and a writing prompt so we’ll pick up where we left off.

Also for Chinese New Year we went into Shanghai and had one of the last visits to Shanghai without knowing it would be one of the last. One place I know I’ve mentioned in a previous post is our favorite sesame noodle place. It’s always packed with a line, very tight community seating of if a space opens up you take it, regardless as to whether you know your table mates or not.

In this picture below, Alex and I are sitting at a half table against the cash register and Mark is behind Alex at the table next to us. Alex is an expert at getting his noodles all mixed up so the sesame sauce is on every bite.

My noodles below, Mark and I get a spicy pork addition to mix in to our noodles. There is so much stuff it’s hard to mix the noodles without getting sauce everywhere.

After a filling noodle lunch, we went to the Shanghai Natural History Museum, our group loves a museum and we had been waiting for a while to go to this one on a day where not every student in Shanghai would also be there.

Even the signs pointing the way to the museum are beautiful, I loved this mosaic sign leading to the entrance.

It’s funny to see this picture now, as this was still Covid-19 prevention methods time in China, but also because Alex has grown so much since this was taken.

I loved the life size models hanging from the ceiling and the whole animal section really.

There are lots of exhibits that are done well at the Shanghai Museum but the animal section is both impressive and hilarious.

Different species of turtles, to compare size and shapes between species/

And the life cycle of a turtle from egg to turtle to skeleton. I thought it was a neat way to present it.

I think this may be one of the largest variety of taxidermied monkeys I had ever seen. They had the monkeys posed in some odd positions, but you could see most of the features and they were all labeled in English and in Chinese.

A colleague brought Alex back a t-shirt from Uganda with the national bird of Uganda the grey crowned crane, and we saw a stuffed version of the bird so Alex wanted to pose with his shirt showing.

I know that a paragraph or two ago I said that the museum was also hilarious, and we’re going to get into that now.

This gorilla was given human glass eyes when he was taxidermied, and it gives him the most cringey look, like he has just waved at someone and then realized he doesn’t actually know them. I was cracking up about this.

If you type in Shanghai museum and lions, this next guy will come up in your search page, and while I was expecting it because I had seen the pictures, but it so much better in person.

I don’t know if the person who did the taxidermy was new, or had never seen a lion, but it is the most comical version of a lion that I’ve ever seen. All 3 of us were laughing like crazy over his derpy face.

The muzzle of the lion was smushed in a bit, and curved up at the ends giving him a deer in the headlights look. This poor lion alone was worth the price of admission– and I would go back just to see him again. Between him and the gorilla, the joy that they brought me was immeasurable.

This poor leopard isn’t looking so good either, but not as bad as the poor lion. And lest I seem too critical, I have seen similarly messed up animals at the Field museum in Chicago, just not quite this bad.

The boys humoring me in front of the wooly mammoth.

The museum had this really large and impressive butterfly house in the middle of the museum, with a huge variety of butterflies. A few, like this first picture, were a little worse for wear as it seemed like we were there at the end of the season.

I’ve never been that into butterflies, I think they’re beautiful like most people, but beyond a few basic types I don’t know what kinds they are. Feel free to comment below if any of these are ones that jump out at you.

This guy was one of my favorites, I love the green and blue iridescence on the wings, which got a little lost in the glare of the glass.

I like taking pictures of butterflies (and dragonflies) and flowers the most, I think flowers are my favorite subject.

Fossilized dragonflies, I thought this was just the coolest, but again, I have a thing for dragonflies.

I thought I had taken a video of the t-rex in action, but if I did, I can’t find it now. It breathes, roars, and moves, and then you can see the muscles inside move as they would during those actions. It was a neat exhibit, but lacks something without the video.

It was the year of the Ox that year, so they had oxes set up around the museum, I managed to get 2 pictures of the boys with them before the boys were done.

Almost at the end of the museum, there was this long hallway, and it had different mini rooms each filled with a large variety of one thing. For example, one room had spears, one room had eggs I think of different animals, but my favorite was the insects. They had hundreds, if not thousands, of insects to see up close.

This one came out terribly, but I kept it because it was the only one I got of this butterfly and I thought it was so beautiful that blurry is better than not seeing it.

This was my favorite piece in the whole museum, and is currently the wallpaper on my computer.

There is something zen like about this and it just makes me relaxed.

Our last day of the weekend in Shanghai was spent getting the best breakfast item that China has to offer in my opinion. I know I’ve mentioned this one before but I don’t think at this location. Mark and Alex found this place when they went to Shanghai while I was in Uganda and they talked about how good it was and how cool his set up was.

This man is making jian bing, it’s a non sweet pancake with egg, crispy crackers, and spicy sauce rolled up like a burrito. You can add meat, sausages, or other vegetables too, but we always just get the simple version.

The reason this guy’s set up is cool is that he is using a throttle and engine off of an ebike to spin the round hot plate that the crepe cooks on. Everyone else that we’ve ever seen has had a stationary one and moves their arms in the circular motion needed to smooth out the crepe batter. It’s clever and lets him make more with less effort, and he makes the best jian bing in Shanghai (I think).

The downside is there is no seating, so we found a covered wall to keep us dry while we ate our treats.

Alex was trying to make the whole Jian bing fit in his mouth, it is/was a bit of a hike to this area to get breakfast, but it is absolutely worth the journey.

Hopefully all our favorite places survived the lockdowns and are still available for you to go visit when you go to China!