On Sunday morning before the football game, Warren and I walked to the Peoples Park in Shanghai. It was nice to go for a walk after breakfast but there was another reason, there was a geo cache waiting to be found!
It was a nice easy stroll and as it was early morning 7.45 am, not too many people about by Shanghai standards. We crossed the road in one big blob of people, only about twenty or so (we have been there where a mob of hundred plus were trying to get across the road.)
We get our phones out only to discover that only mine will give the co ordinates, we set off and as we needed to be the other side of the park, made a quick decision to walk through the park rather than around, which would be on the roadside. Much nicer going through the park with the shade and greenery and the occasional groups doing Tai Chi.
One lady seemed to talking to the ground behind her and I stopped to watch, next thing a ginger and white cat came out of the bushes, it came quite close to me and went over to her. I commented on her cat to the lady in Chinese. She smiled and said something which had me at a loss, we waved and continued on, following the gps which seemed to have a mind of it own but we thought we were heading in the right direction.
About ten minutes later we saw the same lady but no cat. I asked her "Ni Mao, na li?' which is "where is your cat" she smiled and motioned for us to follow her back down the path, a few metres and there was still no cat, then she stopped and brushed away the bushes, under the bushes were five or six cats feeding. The woman then shows me what she had in plastic bags, it looked like mashed up food, the same as the cats were eating. Not her cat but she feeds them! the cats seemed quite friendly and doing some research there are many cats that live in the parks and forage for what food they can get or hopefully people will give them. They looked clean and reasonably healthy.
The photo above is not mine but the bushes and the cats look like what we saw. It is a myth that Chinese people eat cats, they view them as almost spiritual beings.
After watching the cats eat for awhile we continued on our task, the GPS never really settled and we ended up going with our gut feelings, the task we had to perform was to find and count the number of torches, take a selfie and send an email. We walked back to the front of the Shanghai museum, found, snapped, retired to Starbucks for a coffee and to send email. By the time we had our coffee in front of us, we also had our virtual souvenir for China. Happy days!
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