I just finished the book written by Ben Rhoads entitled "The world as it is - A memoir of the Obama White House" For a young man, it must be a thrill of his life to have served the Obama administration for eight years. I can not imagine all the struggles Obama had to sort through not only strive to be true to his conscience but to shrewdly balance the power play pressed upon him by his opponents. What Rhoads pointed out was that the "reality" to different people at different part of the world at different time are so different. And he still believes in the truth of life as he experienced, and a world as it ought to be.
Me being a very simple individual, I have tried to respect and protect my conscience. I have tried to be honest to myself and to the reality I see and understand. The challenge between Huilang and me rooted in how different the way we perceived "reality". Most of the time we stayed in Songjiang, which used to be the government center in ancient times before Shanghai was even known to the world. When we were in Songjiang, Huilang could not walk fast or far, and did not have much interest to visit various new places. So a lot of times I ended up hanging out in the local Starbuck in order to surf on the Internet. A few places we went were nearby. As I am not interested in previous life and reincarnation, some conversation ended up with me falling asleep. Below are some pictures I took during the visit.
The Starbuck where I spent a lot of time alone:
A little town which is about 3 hours train ride from Shanghai: We stayed there for three nights, and toured around the nearby points of interest.
An old village made of stone houses. People escaped to there to hide from the enemies.
Song Jiang has a lot of old stuff. Most of these places I ended up exploring on my own.
The WhaDong University:
The old government gate, now the gate to a middle school. I could not go inside the school, but was allowed to walk up the gate.
A column from the Tang Dynasty, sitting inside a primary school, exposed to all the elements.
One can sometime find an old bridge:
The old residence of the guy who founded the FuDan University. He once said that "I am like a dog barked thousands of times, yet I still could not wake up the Chinese"
In JaDing where one can arrive by transfer three times with the Shanghai metro (at the north east corner of Shanghai). Songjiang is at the southeast side of Shanghai.
I walked in the neighborhood of Huilang's apartment every morning, always before she got up.
The campus of the Shanghai International Language University. This is the Russian building.
Huilang's apartment is on the 26 floor of the building on the far right I think.
