Outside Shanghai - Village Life

Life in this small village and the small town is very different to life in the centre of Beijing or Shanghai. It's much more relaxing, more simple and it feels more like 'real life'......

There's a lot of street food in China, and this old lady and her granddaughter are a typical example, selling a type of pancake and boiled eggs to any interested passer-by.

Talking of street food, the Shanghai region has a greater quantity and variety of fresh fruit than Beijing. This girl is pealing a pineapple for us - one of my favourite fruits of the moment, however it's going off season now in China so it's harder to get :-(

This smaller village seemed much more real and relaxed than the centre of Shanghai, as shown by this local happily spending his afternoon fishing in the local lake.

Life here is more basic, with locals using a simple outdoor hairdressers instead of a fancy Korean one that washes your hair, massages you and then cuts your hair. We saw numerous locals washing their clothes in the local lake, meaning the water is much cleaner than most of the rest of China.

We also saw lots of cute and nice things that just made us smile, including the small dog that happily slept on the street the whole afternoon, and this old lady just wandering slowly down the alleys and local shops.

A very relaxing, interesting and fun way to spend a weekend with one of my best friends in China.