Zhou Enlai and Yellow High Heels

A rare, sunny day in Shanghai. I started out in Xintiandi at the Coffee & Tea for a 30 kuai breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast. I threw away the sausage and substituted a whole wheat roll I'd bought from Paul's nearby. Two hours of answering emails under the skylight and I was off to Fuxing Road and west to Fuxing Park (formerly French Park) and a drop by at Zhou Enlai's old residence and a photo exhibit on the bad ol' Nationalists and their American friends. I was the only person in the museum on a Saturday - must be the quietest place in Shanghai.

Further south past the sprawling Ruijin Hospital to Taikang Art Street - a maze of alleys of old shikumen-style houses that have been turned into art shops and trendy eateries with seating in the alleys. It was 3 pm - time for lunch. Not a chair or table open anywhere - the alleys were choked with "the beautiful people" - yuppies and chuppies from brick wall to brick wall. An open table! I set down and order a margherita pizza and a Coke and enjoy the sunshine and the show. Europeans with their upside-down fork-in-left hand, chuppie girls in leather boots, black leggings and short denim skirts, and Party-boss landlord chatting up one of his young mistresses. The occassional non-glitterati local stumbles through - agog at the sight of all these foreigners and cosmopolitan Chinese hidden in these back alleys behind Jiangguo Street. One such laborer, taking what he thought was going to be a shortcut through the backalleys on his motorbike gets tangled up in a young blonde's cashmere sweater and in his panicked attempt to back out of the weird scene knocks over a caraffe of wine, spilling red over the canary yellow high heels of an Italian Niccole Kidman look-alike. I head home with the motorcyclist's and restauranteur's energetic argument fading into the distance.