Yuyuan Garden

Sunday was Dragon Boat Festival (Duanwu Festival), so some of the Shanghai volunteers took us out to Yuyuan Garden to see if they had any activities. Duanwu Festival is major holiday and the one with the longest history. The legend says the festival commemorates the death of poet Qu Yuan who committed suicide by drowning himself on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. The local people, who admired him, dropped sticky rice triangles wrapped in bamboo leaves into the river to feed the fish and prevent them from eating Qu Yuan’s body. This is one of the reasons it’s a tradition to eat zongzi on this holiday. It is also said the local people paddled out on boats to retrieve his body hence the origin of dragon boat racing. We didn’t see the dragon boat racing but we did get to eat some zongzi. It was very good but I miss my Popo’s (grandma’s) zongzi back in Panama.

This was a very interesting zigzag shaped bridge

I loved this wall, the dragon is so creative!

Group picture!

Yu Garden also known as the Garden of Happiness or Peace is about 2 hectares big. I really liked this garden, it’s probably one of the nicest I’ve visited so far. It was like a little maze with small houses, bridges, lakes and nature in between. Everything had so many unique details. Wouldn’t it be awesome to have a house there? It was so peaceful, it was like stepping into another world right in the middle of the Shanghai’s hectic streets.

green tea ice cream with basil seeds and vanilla, milk custard and almonds & mochi balls and peanuts

In the afternoon we went to Honeymoon, a Hong Kong desserts restaurant in Wu Jiang Lu. They had many odd things but they all looked really good!! What I like about Chinese desserts is that they’re not overly sweet. Honeymoon is definitely a place, we will be visiting again.

So far I’m loving Shanghai. It’s a very different life from Tianjin. Tianjin was a lot more quiet and slow while Shanghai is a lot more hectic. There’s people everywhere walking and so many things to do; it has a very New York feeling to it. What I’ll really be missing from Tianjin are the prices! I think in Shanghai everything’s about double the price since it’s a very touristic area. In Tianjin a meal could be just about 1 USD. I know 3-5 USD is still very cheap but when you see it in yuans it makes a difference seeing 12Y compared to 24Y and for 4.5 weeks we were spoiled with very veryy low prices.