We will be so blessed to have two wonderful guides for 99% of our trip.  They both grew up in China, and so, of course, speak fluent Mandarin.  There are 56 ethnic groups in China, each speaking their own dialect but the majority of the people all over the country speak Mandarin also.  While the guys are at the conference together, the ladies will be sightseeing and shopping all over Shanghai.   There are very few people in China who speak English, and so taking taxis, buses, and trains would be challenging without a native speaker.  In many of the larger restaurants you can get a menu in English but quite often, the prices are higher.  The streets signs are written two ways: Chinese characters and romanized letters called pinyan.  But it’s even hard to read pinyan because even though the letters are ones English-speakers recognize, they are not all pronounced the way we do in English.  So you may know the name of the road you are looking for, but you won’t recognize it in writing.

Our friends are staying an extra week so John and I will have to get from Beijing back to Shanghai by ourselves on the last day — over a thousand mile trip — to catch our plane back to Atlanta.  We are trying to decide if we will take the overnight sleeper train or if we will fly on one of the local airlines.

Taking the 12-hour train ride  has advantages: we’d save hotel expenses, it’s cheaper than flying, and there aren’t as many delays.  But in the “soft sleeper” compartments, there are 4 bunks, and there would be strangers sleeping in the other two.  On the other hand, flights are often delayed up to 4 hours and they are expensive but we’d fly right into the airport where we will be catching our international flight and so would not have to maneuver our way across the 25 million-peopled city.  Final decision to be announced.