Chomping and Squishy

Day Two of the Labor Holiday. I got up late - about 10 am - and walked to the Moon River Diner for a big American breakfast and read the South China Morning Post. From there I took a taxi to the Longhua Temple in south Shanghai. They were having the Longhua Temple Fair and the neighborhood surrounding this old temple was packed. When I say packed I'm not kidding. I don't know how anyone could enjoy being jammed up so tightly. I felt like a canned sardine in gelatin. But while I usually hate crowds I found myself pushing and shoving through the crowd and almost enjoying it. People were chomping on skewers of meat and slurping Styrofoam bowls of noodles as they were jostled by the throng. [Tip: it's not a good idea to stick a skewer in your mouth when people are pushing and shoving.] Somewhere below, it was impossible to see one's feet, we were all stepping on something slimy and squishy - I hope it was discarded food and not some hapless fair-goer.

I finally made it to the temple, paid my 10 yuan and entered. Someone handed me some sticks of incense, and I was free of the crowd. There was no food for sale in the temple so there was plenty of room and I could walk around and enjoy the smell of incense and the fluttering flags.

After the temple I walked a bit to get away from the crowd and stumbled onto a large quiet park called the martyr's Mausoleum. This used to be Longhua Prison where the KMT imprisoned communists and "other patriots" in the early part of the 20th century.