detailed out in a book on the local architecture, I don't know the name of the book! My friend Kathy copies the pages for the particular walk and then we use that to navigate. This week Kathy, Angie, Sabrina, and I toured the Suzhou Creek area. That starts at the north end of the Bund and criss-crosses the creek that runs east-west. I took a nice group pic at the start. The creek used to separate the British settlement (north side) established in 1842 and the American settlement (south side) established in 1854. In 1863, the two settlements combined to form the International Settlement. During the late 1930's, after the Japanese bombings north of Shanghai, the Japanese occupied the north of the creek and the international settlement guarded the south. it was a political boundary! However, by 1941, Shanghai was completely occupied by the Japanese. I realized after reading this tour book that I had a lot to learn to about China and it's history. After toodling past the People's Heroes Monument (no pic as it is kind of boring) we headed across the river on the Garden Bridge , which I also didn't get a good picture of. The Garden Bridge is also known as Waibaidu Qiao or "bridge of the outermost ferry". It was built in 1907 on the site of the first wooden bridge across Suzhou Creek, it was Shanghai's first steel bridge.
Next we stopped at the Astor House Hotel, #15 Haungpu Lu, known locally as Pujiang Binguan. That is the building here in this picture. It was completed in 1911 on the site where there was another hotel built in the 1850's. We walked around inside this hotel and it was interesting to read some of the historical things that took place near there. The first electric light in Shanghai was lit outside of the hotel. From the Hotel we walked back across the Garden bridge and saw the former British Consulate location. Not sure what it is now, though something is there as some of the gardens inside the fence were being maintained. From there we crossed and re-crossed the bridge a couple of more times. For lots of reasons there is not always a lot of significant 
landmarks left. Sometimes there are just small remnants like a part of a building or maybe just a part of some balconies. In the picture on the left you can see some interesting window designs in the Quinsan Garden Apartments. This is considered Queen Ann/Victorian style. So we saw some cool buildings and learned a lot of history (or learned that we didn't know!). But the fun part of taking these walks is getting away from the overly "touristy" spots and seeing the people and their culture.
I always find it amazing to observe the Shanghaiese conducting their daily lives. In this picture on the left you can see these two guys who clearly needed to rest so they just parked their bikes and rested. While at first this just seems funny, when I go back and look at them, I realize that is what I love about China: you get what you get. These guys are not ever going to be embarrassed in the least about laying down and resting and no one is ever going to judge them. It is assumed they had been working since 6:00 am (and the likelihood is very high that they had) and they needed to rest before finishing the next 6-10 hours of work! Still, it is pretty humorous. I also love the candidness of the 
Chinese. In the picture on the right you see the nice smile that this lady shared with me. And all I said was "Ni Hao" and pointed to my camera. She had been holding those flowers and talking to the man when I took a picture of the path they were standing on. I walked on down to take a closer picture and got nothing but big smiles. We also watched several groups of children walking from school to lunch, many of the children yelled "Hello!" and "Hi!". Like us knowing "ni hao" I guess. I uploaded a good You tube video on showing them walking, and you might be able to hear them calling to us. And then there are the signs with English translations on them. Some of them are just horrible! I guess they have a Chinese who has learned English translate them or maybe they are using BabelFish.com, but some of the translations you see are hilarious. I am 
actually going to start a whole page with just the funny English signs. In the park sign on the left you can sort of see that in rule number 1 that "children 1.2 and less of stature and spiritual disease patent can't enter the garden". And in Rule number 5 it clearly states that no "activities of feudalism or superstition" are allowed! So we had to leave...We finished the tour and headed back to the Bund for lunch. We at at T Sen, a fusion restaurant right on the water and headed home. So, the walk was nice and we learned some history too. Overall it was a nice day and a nice walk.
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