Often I did not carry a card. It should be obvious but you can contact me at tpears AT aol.com if you want to ask a question or correct my story!
Toronto 2
Friday the 20th at Lu Town I met a young mother from Toronto with her 3 year old and 6 monther! She was visiting her parents in Shanghai for 6 weeks and had driven up to Keqiao with her sister and brother-in-law. She spotted me. I think she felt I should have spotted her as she was wearing a CANADA shirt, I begged forgiveness with the argument that everyone in China wears cloths with English printed on it and she looks and is Chinese! Her opening line, with a heavy Chinese accent, was “Where are you from”! It took a couple questions from me to get the real story. At first I though she was working in Shanghai.
I can count the number of English speaking and living outside China tourists I have met on one hand. i,e, one! I met a guy from New Orleans who has been working in Beijing for 10 years and stayed at Skywells with Ryan who is from the east coast USA and had been working in Beijing for 10+ years and Ed who owns Skywells is British but has been here for 10+ years. NO Tourists!
Toronto 2, as I will call her, having never asked her name, studied nursing here and then in Toronto where she met Canadian husband who works in glass? He is assigned to come over in a couple weeks and fly home with her and the children. Her sister flew over and performed the same role on the Toronto Shanghai flight. You can imagine what a 14 hour flight is like with 2 companions under 4.
Toronoto 2 did not get a VPN before coming so is a little cut off. I also told her about Ecard. It is recommended by one of my main sources of China Travel info, Josh Summers at travelchinacheaper.com. I’ll plug his materials lots of other places in this report. If you are thinking of going to China, buy his book, sign up for his emails, write him a great review on Amazon. Even if you do none of this, he will answer your questions. I would have used him a lot more but he is based way out west in Xinjiang. If I ever venture that far, I am certainly looking forward to meeting and thanking Josh. After that long divergence, let me pick up again. In order to do a lot of things in China you need to have WeChat. In order to have WeChat you need to have a China bank acount. Josh things that Ecard may be a way around this problem. I ordered mine too late for I an not confirm.
I think that is about it. Toronto 2 and her group had driven out from Shanghai and were staying in a local hotel. I did give her this URL and hope she will see this and contact me!
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