Nicholas Quirke was starting the weekend with a traditional  Chinese breakfast on 28 March 2020 of porridge; rice with mushroom and greens, fermented and marinaded tofu, jianbing and youtiao. It seemed a strange Mixture of food. Sweet, sour and plain, but it was very tasty. A sunny Saturday and their plans included setting up a bank card for Nicholas and visiting an area he’d had in his sights for a while known as 789 Art Zone. Every journey began with hopping on a bike and though it was a chilly morning he still felt the buzz of cycling in the brilliant sunshine to the subway station. The visit to the bank was not successful and it seemed like getting a debit card in China might be beyond the realms of reason. They reached 789 Art Zone and there was a lot to see, despite many of the establishments and galleries being shut, though he did have some fun wandering round a vintage shop toy shop. There were still very few people about and the cafes that were open must have been operating at a loss and desperate For business. Nicholas was introduced to bubble tea, a strawberry and jasmine, which was tasty but strange. Though there were several Vegan restaurants in the area but none were open to dine in and the closest that was open was in Guomao so they took a Didi To Vegan hut where the hostess, Sister Curry, met them on the street to bring them to Restaurant. It was a great space and the food was amazing, She had perfected a recipe to make fried egg which really was extraordinarily good. It was a long time since he had one, but the yolk could almost have been the real thing . She was very talkative and it turned out she was also in the film business as producer and screenwriter. They exchanged WeChat addresses and it felt good to have made a new friend, even though she conversed only in Chinese. She had a lot to say to Peng who laughed a lot and seemed to enjoy the conversation. Once they had left he heard the full story and, ‘Sister Curry’ was, what his friend Peter Lindeck would call, ‘Bat Shit Crazy’, One of her beliefs was that ET’s lived in and controlled Buckingham Palace and the Queen and that westerners drank the blood of young children, for longevity and also that the Corona Virus is man made. As he had sat there smiling and listening to the unintelligible words of what he thought was going top be positive and useful , its was unintelligible bullshit being spoken. They went for a walk along the river bank where he spotted a man, who appeared to be out with his daughter, armed with a rifle! They found a gelato for a chocolate and a mango sorbet and then visited a traditional patisserie that was founded in 1911, where Peng’s eccentric behaviour of examining the contents of every product in the store, to check for dairy, alarmed him and the staff. But there were numerous Vegan items that he was able to buy, to fuel his sweet tooth. At home they enjoyed the cakes and tea and then spent the evening watching a weird and intense Spanish horror, ‘The Platform’ which was a savage and brilliant analysis of society. Exhausted by all the strangeness and the day it was time to draw the blinds.