Beautiful, clear sky outside the window - 30 stories up - looking out over Shanghai. I won't say that the air is pollution-free, but it is much better than the rest of our trip so far and it feels bright and cheery rather than overcast.
As we ride the elevators down to the lobby for breakfast - and back up - and such - we have "incidents" where various elevator-sharers with us don't pay close attention and just step out the door - when it isn't their floor - then have to leap back in before the door closes. After a few of these happen, someone suggest that "there ought to be a word for that - for leaving an elevator before you actually get to your floor".
So I chew on that idea a bit and proudly come up with: "Premature Elevacuation". Learn it. Use it twice in a sentence today and it will become yours. I have no idea how it would translate to Chinese.
Down to the bus and a quick tour about town - tantalizingly whisking past what is usually considered THE skyline of Shanghai: the view from the Bund. We're in "Old Shanghai", but our bus whisks past the waterfront and across the river is the section with the new huge skyscrapers including the Oriental Pearl TV Tower
and "the bottle opener" building - the SWFC: Shanghai World Financial Center. 
We'll get a much-better view of these later this afternoon, but have to just have our appetites whetted - for now. I do really love the look of the Pearl TV Tower: SO distinctive - and we hear that it lights up in different colors at night. I'm getting used to seeing and hearing about very-tall buildings and these are in the general category of the World Trade Center in New York - which means that they are "tall, but not world-class anymore". A little Google work shows that Dubai has just creamed all of the competition here: they have a building which is over 2700 feet high - as compared to these which are in the 1000-1300-foot range. So. Yes, these are "noteworthy" buildings, but while each city's guide tells us that *their* city's buildings are "the tallest in the world", Dubai has firmly taken that crown. At least for now.But. We whisk past and I'm disappointed to hear that we're heading, instead, to Yu Gardens: "a charming shopping area recreated in the old style for tourists". Sigh. Sounds really cheesy and dumb.
But we pull in, park, and run a small gauntlet of vendors hawking actually-surprisingly-cute tourist stuff - and step through an archway - into - well - into a lot of fun.
OK. I understand that this whole area was specifically *built* as a tourist trap, but they did a great job of making something that is fun for tourists. 
And most of the tourists are *Chinese* tourists.WHAT is that? Dumplings on a stick?
It isn't until I get back *home* that I watch Anthony Bourdain on FoodTV - who shows that these are more-traditional dumplings. They are huge (relative to the ones we'd been having) and they are carefully constructed so that only when they are steamed super-hot - do they "melt" inside and create a yummy broth. So the straw isn't to *carry* the dumpling with - it is to slurp out the broth - with. Basically, you *drink* your dumpling before eating the outsides. But I don't know that right now, so I don't try one. Pity.It's a whole little city of shopping:
T-shirts, chopsticks, trinkets, gobs of different smells and tastes - and the skyline of New Shanghai is periodically visible over the old. 
Shortly, we emerge onto a beautiful small pond in the middle of it all - with a cool walkway zig-zagging itself across.
In the middle of it all, 2 workmen quietly repaint a planter - between the inlaid stones - 
and we emerge at the entrance to YuYuan Gardens - smack in the middle of all of this. 
Next: YuYuan Gardens: More Blood-pressure medication
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