Anhui & Shanghai - China Part II

During our trip to China, I (Mel) had the opportunity to visit the “great-grand” motherland in Anhui province and pay respects to my great-grandparents (bottom left). My dad’s side of the family is originally from this area, but moved to Taiwan before the Cultural Revolution. While I always knew education was important, it became clear that there is an even higher value for education from this province. We went to a performance that shares about the local history where they had a dance dedicated to education…awesome! Check out the abacus dance in the bottom right pic. The Anhui province is also known for the beautiful Yellow Mountains which inspires a lot of the mountain scenery in Chinese art. We spent a few days hiking this picturesque area (top pics).

We had an abrupt change from the serene Anhui to the city life in Shanghai. We took a night boat tour around the Bund to see all the buildings at night (bottom left & middle). There was a brief oasis from the sky scrapers in Yu Garden (top right pics). While I’ve only seen China post-Olympics and post-World Expo, it’s obvious that China is developing at a speed that is unparalleled in any other country. I should definitely continue practicing my Chinese.



We had the chance to try many new dishes in Anhui and Shanghai – deep fried dumplings (top left), whole frogs…I’ve had frog legs before (bottom left), soft stinky tofu (bottom middle), and ginormous soup dumplings (bottom right, top left). We are now back in Taiwan for family vaca, part 2 minus Michael.