An RMB Saved is an...

ATM machines are always polite, asking if you mind extra fees and never hesitating to take no for an answer, but the ones here in Shanghai are extra thoughtful. They say, "Please take cash and advice."

My advise, sadly, looked a lot like a receipt, but I couldn't tell for sure: it was in Chinese.

Tonight I walked back to my "magnificent" hotel through People's Square. There were four benches enclosing a tree at the southeast corner. On one, a young couple kissed desperately. On the bench next to theirs, a prone beggar perspired in the heat.

My hotel room has no chair, only a stool. The last hotel room I was in that had no chair was in Corpus Christi. Since I'm staying here for a few days, I decided to liberate a chair from the hotel restaurant. I'd have made it, too, if the elevator hadn't taken so long to reach the third floor that a waitress spotted me. I was duly reprimaned.

Later I decided to go by the book and asked the front desk for a chair. Smiles and nods all around. When I got back later in the day, they had delivered a second stool.

Now, if you mount two stools together and stick a pillow between them, you do sort of get a chair. And the air conditioning works. Also, there's a street full of yummy food stalls nearby--today I ate a fresh egg wrap for 2 RMB, or about 25 cents. So I'm not complaining.

Speaking of food, though, I had the best salad of my life (seriously) at a place called the Coffee Beanery near one of the schools I visited this morning, in Pudong. (The Coffee Beanery shouldn't be mistaken for the Coffee Bean, which also operates stores here in Shanghai.) Their so-called "Hawaiian Salad" was a Caesar plus pineapple, fresh chicken bits, and crunchy nuts. It was weird to eat something knowing that any salad I ate in the future would either be the best salad of my life or not as good as this one.

Alas, I doubt we'll be seeing any Coffee Beaneries opening up in California, unless they change their name--preferably to something other than the Tea Leafery.

Throughout the day, I've been editing Dean Webb's "Rest of Us" guide to Chinese history; if at any point the PRC confiscates my computer and finds the file, I might end up writing the sequel to One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich instead.