legendary hairy crab
legendary hairy crab, originally uploaded by thisisjohnny.
after waking up at 4:30 AM thoughts of china’s legendary hairy crab dominate the morning. meeting and greeting local team members at people’s square I learn new chinese phrases and quickly test them out on late arrivals. its clear from the confused look on their faces that I’m butchering this beautiful language and should probably stick to “ni hao”.
we board our buses and depart for Shangjiang before 9:00 and a few false alarms, several u-turns, and two confused bus drivers later, we arrive at what I can only describe as a hybrid revolutionary museum / meditative boat ride through shallow calming willow reed waters. a strange juxtaposition of chairman blessed marriage certificates and see-saw rides on a back drop of IT team building fun.
morning festivities soon give way to lunch in a floating town of legendary hairy crab restaurants that exists for two-months out of the year. rows upon rows of these floating behemoths enclose a sprawling make shift concrete parking lot. inside our team of forty-some-odd IT developers and analysts are greeted by an entourage of uniformed wait-staff. dish after dish of local Chinese delicacies build to a climax of two individually hand wrapped crabs. the pictures ought to speak for themselves.
The rest of my day three photos can be found here

