Adrienne and me were walking through Shanghai yesterday following two routes from the Shanghai Lonely Planet that my Professor lent me for this trip. We were getting a bit disappointed about the sights, everything was very western and not so many strange things to see. The people selling “watch watch, bag bag, looki looki” were also getting on our nerves (at the end of the day exactly 50 people asked us for the bag bags!).

There was however one thing that made up for everything… The insect market. A huge market where people were selling strange insects. When we took a closer look we found out that they were selling thousands and thousands of crickets! We looked around astonished. After I saw a sort of “cage fight” dvd with crickets playing there, I found out that they were used for cricket fights. Large crowds of Chinese people were “testing” the poor bugs by provoking them with special straws and looking very seriously at how they would react. Try to imagine the noise in this place with millions of crickets chirping around! It was really a great experience.

Today we (Arjen, Adrienne and me) arrived in Xi’an and for the following two days we will have the tour guide “Henry” who Adrienne’s parents recommended, guide us around.