Don’t tell the peeps at the airport, but I’m having a day off!


My buddy Jose. Looking as straight as a die.

The occasion is a visit from my chum Jose, all the way from Manchester, England- he arrived on Wednesday and is here for a week.

We’ve had plenty of visitors in the last few months- Emma’s Mum Helen, Emma’s sister Frances, Emma’s friends Lisa and Neil, the turtles, and now Jose and my auntie Anne who arrives on Saturday.

We’ve worked out a pretty well-trodden path for visitors; walk from the apartment down Nanjing road to the Bund (about 3 hours and 815 people trying to sell you fake shoes), take the ferry across to Pudong (0.5RMB and worth every farthing for the best views of the skyline), the Tourist Tunnel back (you either love it or hate it, but you can’t not do it), and then dinner in one of about 6 tried and true restaurants.


Yesterday though we took a bit of a detour though. There’s a memorial at the north end of the bund that’s either dedicated to revolutionary heroes or the Ghostbusters (I forget which)- whilst we were there, some guy came up and persuaded us to go into his photography exhibition.

I knew it was a bit of a scam, but what the hell. He had literally three photos of the Bund from various years and then he took us to see his art. It was the kind of “Scene of an old man, working the land using his Ox on a mountainside” stuff you see all over the place, but this guys sales patter was pretty special:

You have a very equine nose, I think you appreciate art very much

If you buy this for your girlfriend she will love you very much, cook your clothes, wash your food, shave your beard and moustache

Jose, outside just now I heard a voice on the wind- it was from your girlfriend- she said that if you buy this for her, she will fall very deeply in love with you

Obviously me and J are too wise to fall for that kind of nonsense.
But on an unrelated note, if anyone wants to buy a scroll painting of a tiger, I have 18 spares.