The kids have made multiple references to eating at food courts in malls so I thought I would talk about that briefly. Its funny because it sounds like we are a bunch of lame travelers afraid to eat in regular places. In truth every morning I walk down to a literal hole in the wall place and order random stuff to go for breakfast in Chinese but mall food courts seem to have taken the place of night markets or street markets here. Plus they are warm and indoors out of the rain. There is literally a mega mall on almost every corner in central Shanghai. Sometimes there are two on opposite corners. These are 7, 8, or even 9 stories tall with hundreds of shops including incredibly high end luxury brands and more regular stuff. All of them have between 1 and 3 stories underground that are almost entirely devoted to food. You can find all kinds of little stands that sell everything from soup dumplings to fried squid to sushi to egg puffs. Everything is made right there and very little of it looks like preprepared fast food or prepackaged stuff just stocked there. Many are like the little stands you would have seen in the night markets.  There are even communal tables like you would find in the night markets. Mixed in are higher end restaurants and even some very fancy looking places. Perhaps the strangest thing is the American chains mixed in. They have recognizable names and logos but otherwise often look completely different. Papa John's looks like a white table cloth Italian restaurant. Taco Bell has a wine list!  Although, as you can see in the attached picture Carl's Jr looks pretty much like a Carl's Jr.  We were having some great soup dumpling sitting right next to the Carl's Jr.

I also wanted to mention all the scooters in town. It looks like almost all the scooters in Shanghai have been converted to electric drive. Many look like they started out as electric scooters but others are clearly gas scooters that have had their guts ripped out and replaced with electric. Even the giant three wheeled motorized bicycles used to haul recycled cardboard have been electrified. Its so universal that when you hear a little gas powered scooter you are surprised. I'm sure this was done to fight the local air pollution. A few million oil burning 2 stroke engines can't be good for the city's air.  That is a great thing but unfortunately that means the scooters are now deadly silent.  That wouldn't be so bad until you experience how they are driven. Scooters go the wrong way on one way streets. They pretty much universally run red lights unless there is a cop directing traffic. They ignore all rules of the road. They ride in the bike lanes. They ride on the side walks.  We call them death scooters and you spend all your time with your head on a swivel looking for silent, stealth scooters coming from any direction. Multiple times per day we are grabbing each other and yanking each other back while yelling, "Look out, Scooter!"