Times Square Mall

May 22, 2007 Tuesday

My mornings are very much the same. Make breakfast, do the chores (dishes, laundry, etc.) make lunch. I am not used to having breakfast and lunch with Chuck. He really dithers around in the morning. By the time he leaves, there is not enough time for me to go out to do much exploring.

I have noticed that China is not as buggy as I expected it to be. The apartment was furnished with 2 fly swatters. Coming from New Jersey, where the state bird is the mosquito, I was expecting to be eaten alive. We do have some bug bites, but I don’t know what the bugs are. I do see some that look like mosquitoes, but have not had the dreaded whining dive bombers in the night. Some of our bites itch if disturbed. I did bring some benadryl cream that stops it right away. (Costco was having a sale just before we left.) I did kill a giant cockroach, but haven’t seen any others. Maybe they just drown in the humidity.

After lunch I went to a new mall called Times Square. This is one that I spotted from the Hilton’s rooftop. The Hilton card had a nice map which include the mall (in both Chinese and English.)

The first part was really low end and went into a supermarket. Realizing that I wasn’t seeing it all, I went outside to go around the building. (A big sacrifice – it is really hot and humid today!!) Finally found the right part. It was the normal mall department store – 1000 clerks, 2 customers. In all of my shopping, I’m not really seeing anything that says “Buy me, the folks at home would love this.” (4 flights)

For dinner, we went back to Mao Jia the Hunan restaurant. The strangest thing, the first cab wouldn’t take us. Do not know why. The second cab hemmed and hawed. I think that there must be more than one Mao Jia. I knew the way – so just waved him in the right direction.

At the restaurant next door, there were dueling brides again. One of them had a brass band.

They looked like they were already on the way to being drunk. They sounded like a Salvation Army group.

Happy bride with band:

Unhappy bride:

We choose some good things from the picture menu:

Crudities, Pork ribs, spicy shrimp on skewers, and greens.

Since it was cooler and we had a chance to see exactly where this place was, we walked home. We could take a better street (still under construction, but with less traffic) and get to the south gate and then walk across the campus.

(4 flights) 8 total.