Blooming Tea

Looks like somehow I never published this post??? I wrote it in 2009 I think...


开花茶, kai hua cha (open flower tea) or Blooming Tea. I love these, they are so beautiful!

At first they look like a small dried ball of tea but when you pour hot water over them they slowly start to open into a "flower." 

There is an infinite number of blooming teas to choose from, main ingredient is generally green tea (or white tea in some cases.) The flowers used most commonly are Jasmine, marigold, yellow crysathamum, lily, globeamaranth, tropaeolum, camellia, jade iris, sweet osmanthus and carnations. They sew together different types of flowers and tea to create all kinds of designs and tastes.

XinTianDi Again and Cats...

新天地 (xīn tiān dì) is a very short walk from my apartment to if I just feel like taking a break and getting some exercise I love going there, its really pretty and even more so at night. As I have mentioned before it is a restored part of old Shanghai (link,) it is clean, beautifully lit, has a very pretty park and is full of police. 

The other day we are walking through the park which is just starting to bloom with lots of cheery and magnolia blossoms, when Ping notices a cat... a very dirty but very cute white cat.

One thing I have learned about Wu Zheng Ping is that he really likes cats, especially cute fluffy white cats, which is exactly what this little kitty looked like. "Can we take him to my mom's house? He is way cuter than my cat aww" :D ... He really wanted to take it home, "If you take him home your mom is going to kill you O_o ... look at him he's fat, I'm sure he gets enough food and he is in the nicest part of the city" Oh well.... (No, we did not take it home,) I already have a bunny to deal with...

"Hey, look a cat... awww"

"mimi~ come here...

This was not a dumb cat, he knows exactly where he's going to get food (and he's adorable.) This park is full of cats. They hid in the bushes, and like to walk out over a small (closed off) bridge onto the island in the middle of the man-made-lake at the center of the park. Its actually very funny because on a sunny day you can see at least 20 cats sunbathing very comfortably knowing no human can get into the island.

"Can we take him home pleaseee? he's so cute~" oh no, dont touch it...

 "Oh look..." oh no, here comes another one! 

Airports Suck

I left the house at 1:30AM, my mom and grandma drove me to the Appleton airport to board the plane at 5:30AM, apparently you need to check-in 3 hours early for an international flight.
I almost missed my second flight because the first plane was late taking off and we ended up waiting (flying in circles) for another plane to land before us. The sunrise was beautiful though.
Atlanta airport was hellishly huge. I got lucky and noticed a subway type thing that just happened to be going to my gate, yes, the airport is actually so big they need a train (subway?) to get you from one end to the other fast enough. By some insane chance, the gate I landed at was at one end of the airport and the gate I needed to get to was completely at the opposite end of the airport and... only 20 minutes to check-in to my next flight.

However I did check-in with about 5min left. I was next to the-guy-that-talks-to-much and the crying baby but almost everyone was speaking Chinese so I was still happy.
14 hours on a plane didn't sound so bad somehow when I read it, now I never want to get on a plane again.
It wasn't even the sheer boredom, so much as the fact that I think I started to lose feeling in my legs after about 8 hours, and the fact that I still had 6 more hours to go made me want to cry (I didn't.)
I tried to sleep but only succeeded in actually falling asleep for about a total of 2 hours and only about 30min each time. Next time I'll bring more of my own food, I had changed my meals to vegetarian which ended up being totally ridiculous because all they did was take out the meat, no protein added. No wonder I was so tired!

Finally we landed. Pu Dong airport was surprisingly easy to get though even though it was mostly in Chinese, it was also beautiful, they had hanging plants all over. My luggage was the very last to come out.

I got out of the airport and it was very hot and humid, but at the end of the exit line was Wu Zheng Ping waiting and smiling.

*picture Pudong airport, which is gorgeous.