{"id":24923,"date":"2010-09-19T23:21:10","date_gmt":"2010-09-20T03:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.IreneEng.com\/?p=24923"},"modified":"2011-05-02T14:02:54","modified_gmt":"2011-05-02T14:02:54","slug":"room-with-a-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/?p=24923","title":{"rendered":"Room with a view"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.IreneEng.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/DSCN8963.JPG\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-24924\" title=\"view from the living room .. \u5ba2\u5385\u671b\u51fa\u53bb\u7684\u666f\u8272\" src=\"http:\/\/www.IreneEng.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/DSCN8963-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"DSCN8963\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.IreneEng.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/DSCN8946.JPG\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-24925\" title=\"view from the bathroom .. \u6d17\u624b\u95f4\u671b\u51fa\u53bb\u7684\u666f\u8272\" src=\"http:\/\/www.IreneEng.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/DSCN8946-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"DSCN8946\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Le Meridien (Starwood) on Nanjing Road East in Shanghai.  A great location, but the lobby is less than desirable.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ireneeng.com\/?p=24910\">Stacks of moon cakes piled high, in prominent displayed<\/a> near the entrance, and were being handed out.  AT first I thought it were the guest who stays at the hotel.  But after I walked a bit on the street did I realize what&#8217;s going on.  Still, I didn&#8217;t understand why the hotel would want to get on distributing moon cake business.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.IreneEng.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/DSCN8964.JPG\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"left size-medium wp-image-24926\" title=\"yummy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.IreneEng.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/DSCN8964-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"DSCN8964\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a>The living room looks out to the east and the bathroom looks out to the Bund and beyond.<br \/>\nA while back, in a mocking article on New York magazine projected that by 2020, Americans would rush to China to find a job, like cute white college grad waiting at restaurants or being baby sitters who speak perfect Mandarin.  Well, I don&#8217;t know if we need to wait that long.  At one lounge at the hotel I spotted a tall and pretty cute blond among waiting staff.  Was she a trainee of some sort, or just a back packer who would do anything to stretch her stay at a foreign city.  Would people feel odd if a Chinese waiting at a hotel in Zambia?<br \/>\nThis <a href=\"http:\/\/www.IreneEng.com\/?p=25022 \">xiao long bao<\/a> juicy dumpling tastes pretty good.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.IreneEng.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/DSCN8387.JPG\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"right size-medium wp-image-28369\" title=\"DSCN8387\" src=\"http:\/\/www.IreneEng.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/DSCN8387-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"DSCN8387\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a>According to friends playing tennis in Shanghai can be a hassle and expensive proposition.  So I largely wrote it off.  Didn&#8217;t bring my gears.  But then thought what&#8217;s the heck.  Let&#8217;s try. Tried to line up with a coach who would provide me with a racket .. .. but that didn&#8217;t happen.<br \/>\nThen I spotted a tennis court from YZ&#8217;s apartment<br \/>\n&#8220;Yes you can play here.&#8221; He assured me.<br \/>\nI spotted few courts from this hotel .. don&#8217;t remember its name .. sorry senior moment ..<br \/>\nWhen I went to pick up <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ireneeng.com\/?p=1827\">Auntie Ida I found a cluster of courts<\/a> in her gated community.<br \/>\nAnd the courts were empty too!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Le Meridien (Starwood) on Nanjing Road East in Shanghai. A great location, but the lobby is less than desirable. Stacks of moon cakes piled high, in prominent displayed near the entrance, and were being handed out. AT first I thought it were the guest who stays at the hotel. But after I walked a bit [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,3],"tags":[9],"class_list":["post-24923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-uncategorized","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24923\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}