We have been getting comments from several people, most consistently from Richard and Ophelia, and we want to say how much we appreciate them. I haven't figured out a quick way to answer them yet (or post them where they can be easily seen) but, if I did, I would say that, for me, the comments are the best part.

Winging it like this, we sometimes feel pretty isolated. Everytime we walk down the street, any street, every street; we are being hustled. For trinkets, for tours, by guides (or pseudo guide), for watches, for the the best Chinese restaurant, by "students" who want to learn English and will show us a good place to shop. Yesterday we got hustled by a couple of real pros. They were a young couple on vacation who asked us to take their picture (the problem is that this happens alot and is usually legit). They were here to see a Chinese Tea Festival which sounded like a good place to get some pics, so we went along. Two wasted hours and some very expensive, but delicious, tea later, we got out. It definitely put a damper on our first afternoon in Shanghai. So coming back to the room and seeing comments from a friend is a real spirit lifter.

Richard commented that China is like the 19th century industrialists/western expansion zealots but with 20th century technology and that is exactly what I keep thinking. Without the robber barons of the 1880's trying to make money off of hotels and railroads, we wouldn't have Yellowstone or Yosemite. A huge amount of damage was done by the exploitation of the west but much of the result was good. There is an audacity of taking on the future in China that is exciting and admirable. We look down on the railway station from our room (on the 22nd floor, the highest I have ever stayed in a hotel – and it is a Holiday Inn Express!) and see gleaming white electric high-speed trains. Why can't we do that in the good ol' US? We see new buildings everywhere with huge Bladerunner jumbotrons (gigatrons?) on the sides.

Hong Kong and Shanghai have great subways that go within a few blocks of every where. There is an adventurousness and boldness, an old-west no rules rashness that is very exciting.

-Steve

In response to Richard's question: "What is about the food you've had elsewhere that separates it form true local cuisine?" there are several things.

1. Many of the places where we have eaten have large menus that include items from various regions. This is especially true of the restaurants with English language menus, which are obviously geared toward tourists, but also the restaurant where we ate last night here in Shanghai had a section on it's menu for Cantonese barbecue, in addition to a number of Sushi items. 
2. It frequently seems like the English menu is not always the same as the local menu. In an extreme case of this, when we had dinner at the hotel in Zhangjiajie, they brought us an English menu that did not include any of the items we saw others eating around us. And when we tried to order off this menu, the only thing that they had was the bottle of wine, the one thing we expected them to tell us they didn't have. All the food dishes we ordered were not available. After the first two waitresses got tired of running back and forth to the kitchen, finally a boy from the kitchen staff came out and we would point to things and he would shake his head, until we finally found something he could make. This obviously was not their regular menu.
3. When we don't have an English menu available, we have been getting by with a mixture someone with limited English helping out and pointing to items on the menus I brought with me from home. I didn't think to bring a menu from each region, so when all else fails, we eat Kung Pao Chicken and green vegetables with mushrooms. Everyone seems to be able to make that.
4. This menu was very limited. He only had the local ingredients like smoked ham and cabbage, and the chicken he may have just killed out back for us, to work with. And we had someone to explain to us what these options were so we could work out a menu that really worked for us (which really means we avoided the "chicken stomach."

-Michele

After our walk in the "Grand Canyon of Zhangjiajie" we decided to visit a nearby cave and to have lunch at a restaurant across the street. When we arrived at the restaurant, Steve and I both thought, "Oh dear, what is this that we have gotten ourselves into this time?"
 

But this turned out to be the best meal of the whole trip, so far.

We had the advantage of a guide to help us figure out a meal, but the real advantage was that we were out far enough that this was the real deal in terms of being representative of the local cuisine. We ordered smoked ham with peppers (one of Steve's specialities from a Hunan cookbook he has been using and something we knew from Henry's Hunan in San Francisco), cabbage (something I learned from Yan Can Cook many years ago) and half a chicken, stir-fried. I was busy chatting with the guide when Steve said "There goes your chicken. It has blue feet." That was when I started to get interested.

The chef (he really was a chef, not just a cook) had put the chicken into a wok full of boiling water to poach and then left it to go into the back kitchen to chop the other ingredients.  I had been trying not to pay attention to the fact that the back kitchen was this dark outside area behind the dining room, but once I went back there I realized that, even with a dirt floor, this was so neat and organized that this was a master's kitchen.
  

I proceeded to watch him as he expertly flipped the ingredients into the air with his wok:

and when done with each dish, rinse out the wok and just toss the dirty water out onto the ground (there are some real advantages to an outside kitchen).

The resulting meal was fresh, delicately seasoned and a true delight:

For our last day in the Wulingyuan/Zhangjaijei area, we hired a guide who had been off and on bugging us for days. We bumped into him while looking for a place to eat last night. He suggested a newly opened area and we weren't sure what to expect since his English is so bad – he said he would arrange a mini-bus for us, but instead we ended up in an old VW taxi. Michele and I got in back and our guide, a friend of his, and the driver crammed in front.

After about an hour ride over curvy, steep, mountain roads; we drove up the first dirt road we have been on in China. At the end of the dirt road is a entry pavilion to The Canyon Ride. That isn't what it is called, but it is closer to a Disneyland ride than anything else. In a good way. Really. It is also, to me, emblematic of China. Start with a gorgeous place, over-develop it to make money and provide jobs. 

We bought our ticket at the Pavilion, walked through the gate, and were at the top of the longest steepest staircase I have ever seen – 300 meters high (at 7 steps per meter, that's 2100 steps). We were told this took 10 years to build but that seems long.

After climbing down the 2100 steps, we got to the top of a 100 meter high slide, all polished granite. (It looked much scarier than it was.)

All this was to get us down into a Escalante, Utah type slot canyon with a big stream at the bottom. It was beautiful and very familiar to any one who has hiked in South Eastern Utah, except…

At the bottom of the stair/slide entry was a waterfall – made by diverting part of the stream through a channel hacked through the almost vertical canyon walls at about 500 feet up.

Across from the bottom of the waterfall, sales stalls are being built to provide jobs for food and trinket vendors. Why anyone would climb all the way down here and all of a sudden decide they need a new Hello Kitty analog trinket is beyond me, but seems like there are billions and billions of these sales stalls everywhere; so they must work.

From there it is a wander down a very improved path along the canyon floor, and in long stretches, hanging from the canyon walls, over the stream.

At about three quarters of the way down the canyon, we went through a cave – still on the improved path.

At the end, is a boat ride across an old reservoir.

In Utah, this would be a two to three day day backpacking wilderness experience, if it could be made at all. And there is no question that it would not have been made by Michele and me without the improvements.  Here it is a two hour canyon ride (which we stretched to three by walking slowly) and jobs for, maybe, a hundred people.

There are very few westerners here, actually very few foreigners. Michele did run into a Japanese couple who asked her to take their picture and we have seen five westerners in the last five days – three who(m?) we were close enough to talk to.

There is a tram, a gondola, a elevator, and a small train to help everyone get around. And to get to the top of the canyon walls. Imagine going to Yosemite and taking an elevator to the top of Glacier Point and then finding a trail like this.

It is no worse than taking a bus, but it sure is different. On all the trails, there are vendors selling food and junky trinkets. And we kept seeing a sign that should warm the heart of any good developer: Human should coexist with nature. Exploitation should cohere with protection. 

Another surprise was a Buddhist temple at the top of the gondola ride. Actually, at the top of the gondola ride, we took a bus to another area where there were vendors (natch) hundreds of people

on their tours and a serene temple.