Lots of stuff!

Dear River Friends,

Let's bring you up to snuff.

First, we arrived safe and sound in Shanghai, so if you haven't heard from any of us, don't worry!
Here we are at the airport:

After a good long wait for the rickety unairconditioned shuttle, we arrived at our hotel in Pudong, the last town on the Yangtze before it empties out into the East China Sea. We had dinner in a tiny little fish restaurant where we picked out the fish we wanted to eat from styrofoam coolers, and then they cooked them up. In restaurants like these, there aren't any waiters. If you want to order something, or if your order's taking too long, you walk right up to the kitchen and holler right inside at the cooks. Ping did the hollering. 

Here's the outside of the restaurant, which was also a fish market:

Here, wait, lemme introduce you to everyone, so you can tell who everyone all is in all these pictures:

Right here's Mississippi Bluesman Alex Wand, playin the guitar. He plays a custom-made National guitar designed by composer Lou Harrison, with frets designed for a just intonation tuning system, based on the harmonic series. There are only 5 that exist!:

Here we've got wiz-kid videographer Alex Howard. He's only just graduated high school, but shoots video with the best of 'em. He's got right here Canon T3I with a Tokina 16-mm superwide lens on a Glidecam HD 100 stabilizer. There are more than five of them that exist:

Ariel Lerner, holding a large lollipop:

Wang Ping, internationally renowned author, river queen, beloved professor, Chinese medicine doctor, champion oarswoman, skilled musician, award-winning figure skater, professional flamenco dancer, talented photographer, master chef, deadly swordswoman, academic freedom fighter, adventurer:

And here's me! Oliver St. John, Kinship of Rivers blogger extraordinaire, your buddy on the this adventure:

Anyway, that's just the first day. I'll tell you about the next day in the next post!

Love,

-Oliver