Shedding Some Light on the Situation

Good morning,

I know, I've been lax in writing BUT I have good reasons. I've been out and about and there are more good posts to come.

Today I'm talking about lighting. Here in Shanghai, it's very poor except at night when you really need it. Oh, okay - It's not poor on the Bund or in Yu Yuan or in Pudong along the River or even on Nanjing Lu where all the scammers are.

It is just poor in my apartment because we only have 8 watt lightbulbs. George Westinghouse would be appalled now, wouldn't he?

Yes, I can get Phillips light bulbs but the ones you see most often are 8 watt - I've added some 24 watt bulbs to my supply and now that I've got my beautiful porcelain lamps, I'll run down to Carrefour to pick up some more. I hate shopping there - the store is dirty and so very crowded. I'd much rather go to City Shop where I know the produce is good and the meat comes from Australia or Japan. Enough about that - more on that later this week because there IS good news on the meat front. . .

Anyway, the East lamp store in Hongqiao is having a MOVING sale - 50% OFF. I had dragged Mike out there a few months ago to see this store - it is absolutely amazing - every size, shape, color of porcelain lamp you can imagine. And furniture too - beautiful pieces - all Chinese in one place.

So CeCe and I were in Hongqiao on one of our many trips with Skip and we were driving by the store and lo and behold there were signs and well - we couldn't stop that day but CeCe and Skip went back later that week which was about 2 weeks ago.

I don't know where I was that day - maybe American Womens Club but she came back to Shama and called me and said, "Come see my lamps". So, I trudged down to the lobby and asked the concierge for permission (I have to do that because my elevator key only goes to the 7th floor and CeCe lives on 30).

She opened her door and showed me the most gorgeous JADE lamps I had ever seen. They were heavy too - very heavy. All I wanted was porcelain and she bought JADE. So, I had to whine a wee bit.

So two weeks ago, we were on an excursion to Hongqiao with Elise and I asked Skip to stop. I found two lamps that have some green (to match my sofas in Pittsburgh) and some gold to match what we have here. They are beautiful - as I'm sure you will agree.

I've tried to show the detail and the lamp shades so you get an idea of what they look like.

Stay tuned - I've got more to show you.