Here's one side of the brochure. The center is located in the French Concession area of Shanghai. We had seen the description in the Lonely Planet guide book to Shanghai. Thankfully we brought the book with us. There is no indication on the street that this place exists. I don't know how the writers of the guide book ever learned of this place. The book instructs you to walk towards a block of apartment buildings and go into the basement of one of them. The center is in the basement and is housed in 3 separate rooms. Admission is 20RMB (2.50 USD) per person. The posters are organized by date. The first room has a variety of propaganda posters. Photos are prohibited so I satisfied myself by taking pictures of the brochure.
The things I wanted to really take pictures of were in the second room, which contained the dàzìbào or 'big character' posters. These posters were hand written in large characters and were used to for propaganda or for protest or for debate. Also in that room were a couple of intricate Chinese paper cuts on red tissue paper. One had a large Mao face in the center with a crowd of people underneath. Both had to be at least 2 feet wide.
Sunday, we had Penny and her aunt over for pizza. Penny's aunt wanted to learn to make pizza. Originally, Penny was going to watch and take pictures and extensive notes, but we decided to simply invite her over.
Here, I'm stretching the pizza dough while Penny's aunt is taking notes. Pizza is such a simple, basic dish to me that it's hard to imagine what the process must be like to a newcomer. I take shortcuts, like buying ready-made dough at Carrefour and pasta sauce in a jar.
I suppose pizza is something of a novelty because few Chinese have ovens in their kitchens. The oven we have now is not as big as a standard oven in the U.S. My cookie sheets barely fit in the oven. I actually slide it onto the rack tracks inside the oven. It just fits. Penny's aunt loves Italian food, so maybe I'll have to plan on a lasagne lesson sometime.
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