Around town

Have we mentioned Shanghai is a town of bicycles?

Cielo is really enjoying herself here, as she seems to do everywhere

Lions are a very popular feature of most big buildings. Cielos knows them all personally. Here she does some pro bono dental work.

Another pet bird in a pretty cage.

Across the street from Synopsys is Zhong Shan Gong Yuan (Middle Mountain Public Park). It has a place called "Fundazzle" (that's not a translation) where they have a bunch of kid play areas, including a ball room:

Cielo still enjoys the playground at our place, though.

Alison read that about 120 people died in construction accidents in Shanghai in 2003. The goal for this year is to lower it by 10%. Here's some nice bamboo scaffolding for a project.

This looked like a TAE OT ECALP ECIN.

Yan An Lu is a big highway that runs east-west across the middle of Shanghai. There are several places where you cross it on big pedestrian skyways.

Outside every little bodega is some kind of electric animal or monster that you can ride on if you're small. You put one kuai in it (about 12c) and in return it plays very loud music. This chicken had a button on it that seemed to fire laser cannon or rockets or something (Vernon recognized several of its sound effects from the video game Defender).

Vernon's coworker Bo invited us to her house for dinner one night. Here are Bo's husband, his mother, and Alison all making jiao zi (dumplings for boiling). Alison got pretty good at it. Vernon tried a couple then chased Cielo around the house.