Photo Essay: A Market in Shanghai
A tea shop - my favorite photo from our stroll through the market in Nanshi, the Old Town of Shanghai. This area used to be the old walled city of Shanghai before the foreign concessions moved in next door in the mid-1800s. Pots and mugs for that tea. The day we visited the Old Town was the only day of [...]
A Lane House in Shanghai
I really should have started my Shanghai series with sharing photos of this lane house in the Jing'an District, as it was the first place my friend took me to visit. It was a particularly neat treat because this is one of the traditional Shanghai lane houses (called Shikumen), carefully restored and modernized by a friend of my friend. [...]
On Having to Read a Book
My daughter's stack of books she wants to read These days, I feel like my children, a middle schooler and two high schoolers: I have to read certain books by certain days. Each of them had to read certain books over Passover break, and I had to nag them to read their daily page allotments. Nevertheless, I myself let [...]
Photo Essay: Laundry in Shanghai
It struck me that in Shanghai laundry is everywhere, except the strict business area along the riverfront. Otherwise, in any halfway residential area, laundry is hung out to dry. Not only on balconies and from windows, but publicly between two poles on the sidewalk. They still have phone booths in Shanghai, and sure enough, they also serve for airing [...]
Photo Essay: Shanghai’s Former Jewish Ghetto
Old meets new in this view of Hongkou rooftops sharing the sky with the top of the Shanghai World Financial Center, built across the Huang Pu River in Pudong, which used to be mostly farmland twenty years ago and is now Shanghai's Wall Street. I thought this picture would be quite appropriate to show you first of all the [...]
Photo Essay: Maple Sugar Festival in the Indiana Dunes
Going to the Maple Sugar Time Festival in the Indiana Dunes is one family tradition I started when the kids were little. Since we missed it last year, my daughter insisted we not miss it this time around. At the end of winter, the sap rises in the trees as they prepare for spring. That is the time to [...]