Xin Jiang

Tomorrow we are leaving for Xin Jiang autonomous region. It's one of those places that I'm unclear of what China's actual jurisdiction is there, like Tibet or Hong Kong or Macau. Anyway, Xin Jiang is in the far northwest of China, over by Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kyrgyztan, Uzbekistan, and all of those other Stans.

So don't be worried if I don't update for a week or so. If I don't update for a month or so, assume that I'm caught in the middle of a border dispute somewhere in middle Asia.

$0.0025

The two most commonly used coins in day-to-day purchases in Shanghai are one kuai and five mao. If a kuai were a dollar, a mao would be a dime. Since there is no sales tax here, an item at the store costs exactly what the price tag says, and an item at the market costs exactly what you talk the seller down to. To my great relief, Chinese shopkeepers have not yet discovered the wonderful little trick of subtracting a miniscule amount of money from the actual price to make a nice, round, 5 kuai into a ridiculous 4.99. So most things sold in convenience stores are priced in increments of five mao. Very handy, since there just so happens to be a 5 mao coin.

But it’s not always that easy. Every once in a while you get these items that fall somewhere between these nice 5 mao increments. So when I pay 2 1-kuai coins and one 5-mao coin for a bottle of coke that’s 2.3 kuai (actually kind of expensive, but whatever, I’m thirsty), I get two of these annoying little 1-mao coins in return. Now remember, this is Chinese currency, so it’s worth one eighth of the American counterpart. So when we talk about the difference between 2 kuai and 2 kuai 5 mao, it’s the the difference between 25 cents and 31 cents. I realize that it probably makes a difference to the shopkeeper who sells 50 of these bottles of coke a day and has to feed his family on the extra revenue he gets by charging the extra 3 mao, but I’m an American damnit, and those worthless little mao coins are annoying.

And it doesn’t stop there. The Chinese equivalent to the one-cent increment is the fen, worth one eighth of a cent. As far as I’ve seen, the one-fen coins are no longer in circulation; I haven’t seen one of them, or come across a price tag with a one-fen increment. In fact, I don’t remember seeing a price tag with anything more specific than a one-mao increment. But somewhere along the line, I managed to pick up two of these two-fen coins. Do the math, and one of these handy little pieces works out to be worth .0025 American dollars. Now think about how many of them you would need to buy a gumball.

On the other end of the spectrum, the highest denomination of paper money printed is the 100. So if you take any significant amount of money out of the bank, you end up carrying a fat wad of cash 20 bills thick. Also worth mentioning: the smallest denomination of paper money is 1 mao. No comment.

Anyway, instead of carrying the one mao coins around, I started a piggy bank with an empty water bottle. But this evening I asked myself, “What are you going to do at the end of the term when its time to go home and you have a water bottle full of one-mao coins?” A bottle of Tsingtao beer at the C-store downstairs costs 3.20 kuai. I have 38 mao coins. I think I’ll go have a beer.

Suzhou

Yesterday we went to Suzhou for the day. It’s a smaller city about an hour and a half train ride from Shanghai, nicknamed “Venice of the East”. Maybe we didn’t go to the right neighborhoods, but the city we found wasn’t much like Venice at all. It felt just like any other neighborhood in Shanghai, except for the fact that the people in Suzhou are a little less worldly, which means more staring, and more “Herro!”

After buying our train ticket for the return trip to Shanghai, the first site we visited was a 5-story pagoda. It would have been really cool, except it was having repairs done, so the entire building was wrapped in scaffolding, and there was a blue construction fence around the base. Entrance was still 25 kuai.

Next was one of the gardens that Suzhou is known for. The taxi driver dropped us off and we walked down a quaint little alley, almost like the streets of the “classic Chinese village” tourist attraction we visited before. After turning one or two corners, the street noise died out and I heard something that I haven’t heard in over three weeks: nothing. It wasn’t perfect silence, but it was quiet. And it was amazing.

We found the garden itself to be very similar to the one that we went to in Shanghai, but I was fine with that, because they’re so cool to be in. As long as there aren’t too many other tourists, the place gives you a perfect feeling of peace and relaxation. Everything you see is appealing and interesting to look at, but in the least engaging way. We waited for the tour groups and loud Chinese to leave, and just sat on the rocks by the pond for a while, enjoying the fresh breeze and tranquility.


Alice by the pond.


There are always tour groups at any site like the gardens or pagodas. The tour guides carry small flags so that they can be seen and followed by their patrons everywhere they go. Sometimes they use megaphones, but usually not. At places like the pagoda or the gardens, they will pass out stickers for the tourists to wear on their shirts, in case there was any question about who was included in their tour. All they need are name tags (which I think I might have seen as well) and the buddy system, and they could be right back in the third grade. The tour groups are always either Chinese families or retirees from the former British Empire, but never a mix of the two. Luckily for us yesterday, they adhere to a strict itinerary, so it didn’t take long for the tour guide to lead the charge out of the garden and on to the next site.

The loud Chinese that I referred to took a little bit longer to leave, and took the form of two Little Emperors. The term “Little Emperors” refers to the young boys of China. As a side effect of the One Child policy, nearly everybody in China is an only child. Go figure. With this comes the tendency of parents to spoil their pride and joy, a behavior that is especially prevalent with those parents that are lucky enough to have boys, which are still heavily favored over girls. The end result of all of this is little boys whose parents take them to beautiful and historic gardens and then look the other way while the boys run around screaming, yelling, and pouring orange soda in the pond.

On the other side of the same coin, Chinese teenagers (boys especially, of course) are pushed very hard by their parents to succeed. I don’t think I blogged about it before, but last weekend Professor Ferry took us to her friend’s house to make dumplings and celebrate the mid-autumn festival. The man was very good-natured, and an extremely generous host at that. He had a 16 year old son who wasn’t much different than any American 16 year old. You could tell that they had as good a relationship as any father and son, but some of the criticisms he had for his son were downright mean by our standards. Imagine a father telling his American 16 year old son in front of five college students that he hadn’t spent enough time on his homework. Or, perhaps the most embarrassing thing that he could possibly come up with, asking why he hadn’t shown very much interest in girls yet. I’d hate to hear what he says when they don’t have company, and he tells the boy what he really thinks.

Anyway, back to Suzhou. After the garden, we walked around town for a bit, had bad coffee at an expensive shop with painfully slow service, had dinner, and then headed back to the train station.

The trains are about how you would expect a Chinese train to be, full of a lot of people. If the seats on the train were considered to be economy class (which is a fair assumption, since the tickets are 13¥, about $1.60) regular seats on an Amtrak would be a step or two above first class. The leg room is about the same as a normal train, but you have to share it with the person that sits in the seat facing you. On the way to Suzhou, a salesman came into the car with a crate full of socks. He did his whole salesman’s spiel, complete with demonstration of the sock’s jaw-dropping quality and strength, and moved on to the next car. I thought he was pretty good, but nobody bought the socks. Maybe it was because they got on the train to get to Suzhou, and were just not prepared to buy socks. Besides that, the first train ride was uneventful and uncomfortable. The train back was better in both respects. There were fewer people, the car was not a double-decker, and the windows opened, which all combined to make it feel a lot less stuffy. Alice and I sat next to and befriended a young Chinese couple. Toward the end of the ride, I shared my iPod with the girl, who was curious about American music. She decided it was just OK. Nora and Tara found seats in the next car, and from what I hear, had a much more interesting time. They could barely tell us about it without bursting into laughter, so I don’t really know what exactly happened, you’ll have to read Nora’s blog for the story. Something about chickens and a stow-away child… I don’t know.

That’s all for now, I hope this update has been as useful for your procrastination as it has been for mine.

Oriental Pearl Tower and Knock-Off Market

Last night we ate in the revolving restaurant at the top or the Pearl Tower. It was pretty cool, but exactly as you might expect it to be, and therefore not really worth writing about.

Today, after morning classes, we went to the knock-off market; an entire maze of small shops and vendors, all selling “name brand” goods. North Face, Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, Oakley, Rolex, and of course anything that could fall under the category of “Hello! Shoes Bags DVD!” Of course there were the regulars, shouting these things from their booths and pointing at the merchandise as you pass and pretend not to see (wearing sunglasses really helps), as well as the guys that stand in the middle of the alleys and tell you to follow them to the shoes bags DVD. There were a few more foreigners than usual here, and at one point I overheard a woman say, “It’s like I have ‘sucker’ written in bold on my forehead.” I wanted to tell her that she had it written on every square inch of her white skin, but decided she would figure it out eventually. Some of the sellers knew a new word that I had not heard them use before. Two or three times during my wanderings I would hear, “Sex DVD. Very cheap. You like? Sex.” Nice.

While we were there, a thunderstorm came through. Usually, when it rains here, it doesn’t really rain. It feels more like the air gets so saturated with moisture that it actually turns into water for 20-30 seconds, then right back into really humid air again. But today, it actually rained. A good, driving, thunder-and-lightning rain. It’s nice to have somewhat chill air for once. Also, it was cool watching all the vendors rushing around to buckle down before the rain came.




During the rain we took refuge in a McDonalds. Don’t worry, it’s essentially the same except for a few things: a slightly altered menu, smaller portions, and (here’s the good one) employees in the dining area to clear your table for you when you’re done. They wouldn’t let Tara take her tray to the garbage. Nothing like an unlimited supply of cheap labor.

Jews and Japanese

Nora and I just ate dinner with a very upbeat and energetic Japanese girl. We exchanged the regular information, where we live, how long we’re here, etc. Part of our conversation:

Her: “Why did you want to come to China?”
Me: “Umm, the economy, I guess.”
“The economy?”
“Yeah, I want to make money here.”
“Ohhhh the economy! Are you Jewish?!”

Apparently Japanese people are very interested in Jews. She said they identify with our (when I say ‘our’ here, I’m talking about every Jew except for myself) work ethic. She asked what Jewish people thought of Japanese, but I couldn’t remember ever having a conversation about Japan in Sunday school, so I couldn’t give a good answer.



In other news, there’s a big picture of Niagara Falls hanging on the wall in the cafeteria. As if it’s some distant, exotic place. Ha.

Skype

Skype is amazing. It’s basically a free phone call to anywhere in the world, as long as you have a computer with internet access and a microphone. If you have a laptop, you probably have a microphone and don’t even know it. I mostly use it to talk to Caitlin in France, and just talked to about half of my fraternity brothers at Union as they all huddled around my roommate’s computer. It makes me feel almost like I’m in the house hangin’ out with them.

Let me know if you set it up and want to chat. I’ll almost always be in the mood if I'm online.

Life in Shanghai

An ornamental lion in a shop, for lack of a better picture:





I’ve made it through the first week of classes. Each language class lasts for an hour and forty minutes, most of which is recitation and repetition. I have two language classes a day on average, plus the Silk Road course organized by Union that meets twice a week. We have the same classmates for all of the language classes. My class consists of myself, two other Americans, two students from France (both very good at Chinese), and 6 or 7 Koreans. Nora said she has a North Korean in her class who shoots her dirty looks, as freedom-hating citizens of the ‘Axis of Evil’ generally will. The Koreans in my class have been very friendly, so I’m assuming they’re all from South Korea.
The classroom is tiny, and so are the desks. It looks sort of like the inner-city school districts that have to put classrooms in broom closets. But it works alright.
Students stay in the same classroom for all of our language classes, while the teachers move. We have three different classes, which are supposed to be reading, writing, listening, and speaking in some sort of combination. But so far there hasn’t been any difference between the three except that there is a different teacher for each. All three of my teachers are young Chinese women no older than 30, probably as young as 20. None of them are especially great at English, which doesn’t really matter since they hardly ever speak it in class anyway. The teaching style is different from Proffessor Ferry’s, but it works. I can’t tell if it’s just because we only had 3-4 hours a week at Union, while we have closer to 25 here, but I’m learning Chinese.

I’m getting more and more accustomed to the food every day. A few notes about Chinese food:
1. It is nothing like American Chinese food. Except for the rice and chopsticks.
2. They put meat in everything. I love having little bits of pork in my green beans for an added flavor (it motivates me to eat veggies), but it makes things a little tricky for vegetarians. Sometimes the servers don’t really understand the concept of being vegetarian, since it just doesn’t happen in China.
3. Everybody shares every dish at the table. The more people you go out with, the more dishes you can order, the more variety you’ll have, and the better chance that there will be something you like.
4. More often than not, beer comes in 640mL bottles. And since tapwater is not drinkable, it’s not uncommon for restaurants to just not have water, just like a place in the states may not have root beer.
5. Chinese are a lot less picky about what parts of animals they will eat. Sometimes it seems like they just took the whole pig, chicken, cow, or iguana (hey, it could be… there’s no way of telling) threw it in the grinder, cooked, and served. As a result, meat dishes are sometimes more fat and bone than actual meat. Luckily for me (I dislike fat to the point that it makes me gag), it’s not considered rude to spit food back out onto your plate.
6. Professor Ferry orders the weirdest dishes on the menu. Never judge a restaurant by what she orders (because I know everybody that reads this will someday be eating in a restaurant in Shanghai with Professor Ferry). Last night we revisited the restaurant she took us to on our first night in Shanghai because it had English menus. With Professor Ferry ordering the food, we didn’t like it. With us ordering on our own, it was the best meal we’ve had since arriving (except perhaps the Pizza Hut we just got back from). It’s really nice to have a western meal every once in a while. Not that I especially dislike the Chinese food, but every once in a while you just want to sit down and have a meal without having to make an adventure of it.
Probably my favorite place to eat is still the cafeteria on campus, just because it has such a genuine communist feel. You jostle your way through the pushy crowd to get to the counter, point at the dishes you want, and the people behind the counter slop the food onto a metal tray for you. After telling them how many liang (portion of rice) you want, swipe your card, grab two generic wooden chopsticks from the bin and sit down. Throughout the meal, if it’s crowded enough, a loud, hi-frequency megaphone blasts a repetitive message in Chinese telling people that their special order food is ready. Nothing like pushy lines, food on metal trays, and repetitive megaphones to make you feel like a true socialist.

Everything here is so ridiculously cheap, it feels almost like you’d be stupid not to buy everything you see. When 100 kuai is little more than 12 dollars, it feels like monopoly money. It’s going to take a lot of self-control not to overspend here. DVDs, 12 kuai? I’ll take 15! And so on. Last week I bought an abacus. It’s really cool and authentic looking, but what the hell am I gonna do with an abacus? Professor Ferry encourages us to buy stuff and sell it off in the states for a profit. It’s amazing how coming to a communist country can turn you into such a capitalist. Anybody want a pearl necklace? I can get you one at a price…

Tara’s boyfriend Patrick is visiting this week. I offered to help Tara (whose Chinese knowledge is still limited to “ni hao ma”) go to pick him up at the airport on the condition that we would take the bullet train back. So we did. Pudong international airport is at the very far edge of the new development zone, about an hour from the city center. In the master plan the Chinese have in mind for Shanghai, Pudong will be the largest airport hub in Asia, about 4 times larger than it already is. As Professor Ferry warned us, the bullet train goes from the airport to essentially nowhere. The only difference is that this nowhere is about a 45 minute cab ride closer to the city than the nowhere that the airport was built on. Of course by the time you buy tickets, wait for the train, take the 8-minute ride, get off, and find a cab to the place you actually want to go, it probably takes just as long as just getting a cab in the first place. But at the rate that Shanghai is growing, the end point will probably be indistinguishable from downtown anyway. And besides, it’s a bullet train. Flying on a cushion of air at 500kph around wide banked corners… how could you resist? It was even cooler than it sounds.
When we got to the end of the train, we expected a struggle to find a cab. Instead we found cab drivers in a struggle to find passengers. We came down the stairs where the cabs were, and two drivers were waiting there for us. They both started talking to us. When we started to go with one, a smaller, older man, the other man started talking to us again. The older driver slammed his fist on his car and spat out some extremely angry-sounding Chinese at the other. The other shot back, and the first (keep in mind this is the little old one) took off his glasses and ran at the other, pushing him hard. The physical confrontation attracted a worried looking crowd of more cab drivers as the three of us backed away slowly. An opportunistic young driver approached us and we snuck off into his cab. I told Tara and Patrick to get in quickly, before the two original drivers saw us and started another fight, and our new driver seemed to understand me, nodding nervously at me. He ended up ripping us off for the cab ride back to school, for which he wanted to charge us 200 kuai. After I told him that the ride from the school to the airport was only 140, he agreed on 130, but it was still a rip off considering the ride was less than half as long.

I just stood outside on my balcony and watched the fireworks for the moon festival. Nice.

Time to get into a routine...

Classes have started. Almost 30 hours of class per week (ouch). On the plus side, my Chinese should improve by leaps and bounds from now on, which should make my daily life a lot easier. Now if I could only make the crowds go away…

In other news, Tara’s bike seat broke, so when we went out to dinner last night, she rode side-saddle on the back of mine. How very Chinese.

Villagers, Students, and Europeans

Yesterday we got out of the city. I didn’t even think it was possible. We had to drive for an hour before I really felt like we were in open space, but it was definitely the outskirts. And it was amazing. If there’s one thing this trip has already taught me about myself, it’s that I am not a city person. I’ve had suspicions before, but never having spent more than a few days in the heart of any city larger than Schenectady, I didn’t really know until now. Dirty air, dirty streets, traffic, noise, and crowds do not agree with me. But worst of all, the city makes me claustrophobic. Yeah, I think it’s weird, too. But it does. Being out from under the shadow of the high-rises for eight hours has really rejuvenated me. Or maybe it’s just because I’m no longer feeling any of the symptoms that have come and gone over the course of the past week and a half.

The reason we took the long drive was to observe village life in a typical Chinese village. We drove out to a fairly busy town; busy enough that we began to wonder why we had left Shanghai, as the streets and people looked just like the neighborhoods we walked through on Wednesday. After pulling into a large parking lot with many tour buses, we paid admission to the village and went to have a look at real Chinese villagers doing real Chinese village things.






So it wasn’t exactly a real village. But it sort of was. It was real in the sense that there were real people living there, living their own lives in their own homes. But then again, most real villages don’t advertise and charge admission to tourists to come and observe. The houses and shops were all of traditional Qing dynasty architecture, with clean, pleasant-smelling streets in between. The pharmacy and post office were both in full operation for the villagers, with informational displays set up for the tourists. It was all very peaceful and charming; a very impressive piece of propaganda.

Nearby the village is a place called University City, our next stop. Due to the economic boom in China, more and more students are getting higher education, so like everything else here, the universities are expanding at an alarming rate. The schools in the center of the city, however, don’t have any room to expand, so the government created University City on the farmland outside the city. The universities were given the land for free to build satellite campuses on, and they just built this place out of nothing. The buildings are all big and impressive, like a brand new Princeton or Harvard. But being so new, the place hasn’t really grown into itself yet, like a brand new housing development that has no large trees or signs of inhabitants. We walked around two of the campuses, one of which had architecture to match each department. The English department building had English architecture, the French department had French architecture, and so on.

When classes got out, the campus came alive with students and the military training began. After the Tiananmen Square incident it was decided that students needed to be reminded how to follow their government’s orders better, so they were required to do a year military service with school. It has since been reduced to a mere two weeks military training for new freshmen. As we walked around campus, “YI! ER! SAN! SI!” echoed from every direction as the students, male and female alike, learned to march in step.

In honor of Nora’s 21st birthday, we went out last night. A Swiss student we met told us about Bar Rouge, a bar in the European influence area of downtown that we visited last week for the boat tour. At the entrance to the bar, a European man was collecting the 50 kuai cover charge. He spoke in a sort of avante garde French accent:
“One?”
“Yeah”
(He looks me up and down… I’m wearing an untucked button-down shirt from the gap, my good pair of jeans, and Birkenstocks.)
“Ok, next time no [something something] shoes.”
…so that’s the kind of place Bar Rouge was. I walked up the stairs and through the door, and one single word threw itself into my head: Eurotrash.

Bar Rouge was half inside and half out, with the same view of downtown Shanghai that we had from the boat, plus seven stories of elevation. The drinks were good, but expensive. Most of the conversation was in English or any other European language, almost anything but Chinese. Nora and I had a conversation with a British man in a French bar in a Chinese city. Insane.

Reverse

Sometime yesterday the we had a short discussion about car accidents, during which Professor Ferry told us about her two near-fatal experiences. She mentioned that she had heard somewhere that if you relax and don’t tense up during an accident, you are less likely to be seriously injured. Today I found myself trying as hard as I could to apply that theory.

Don’t worry, there was no accident. It happened like this: As you probably have already guessed, we were in a cab (Prof. Ferry, Nora, and I). On the highway. The cab driver, clearly not sure of the best route, signaled right to get off the highway, then turned off the signal, then turned it back on again, started veering right, then back left, and finally back right again. We were in the lane for the off ramp. He started to slow down, examining the signs carefully, as he and Professor Ferry speak back and forth. The car slowed to a stop. At this point, we’re about a car and a half’s length onto the off ramp. Thinking for a few agonizing seconds, the cab driver now realizes that the highway is in fact the best way to go, and puts the car in REVERSE. Professor Ferry, in a very impressively calm voice, says, “Well I’ve never done this before…” For a few terrifying moments I looked out the back window at the oncoming traffic. Then I remembered our previous conversation about near-fatal car accidents: I had to relax if I was going to be hit by that van doing 60mph and still have use of my arms and legs a year later. I turned around to face forward, and concentrated hard on relaxing every muscle in my body.

Surviving

Yesterday I felt pretty crappy. I woke up with cold symptoms and had a headache all day. I drank two liters of water and had vitamin C drops all day, and today I feel a little better. Due to this sickness, I didn’t do much yesterday. Roy and I had our placement exam, which was uneventful, and after that we had our second class on the Silk Road.

The first three weeks of the Silk Road class are lectures by Professor Zhang, from Fudan. She’s less than fluent in English, so it’s kind of a struggle. Language classes start on Monday and will be 8-12 in the morning. Ouch.

Blind masseurs and friendly cabbies

The final entry about wednesday:

Somehow (I forget) we ended up back in high society again, at another pedestrian court with cafes and bars aimed at tourists and expats. We sat down for tea, after which Professor Ferry left the five of us to ourselves. We decided to go for massages... by blind men. A little weird at first, but a good massage. After the massage, we went to a bar/cafe/restaraunt. Whatever it was, it had goldfish in the tables. We didn't find anything particularly appealing on the menu, so we just ordered drinks. A gin and tonic in China is still a gin and tonic.



The cab driver on the ride home was an aggressive driver, even by Shanghai standards. I tried to shut it out by turning around and talking to Tara and Alice in the back seat, but between the motion, the gin on my empty stomach, and the constant uneasiness that I have felt in my stomach since arriving here (still getting used to the food), I had to turn back around from time to time and witness the insane driving to avoid carsickness. Tara, having fully enjoyed her Long Island iced tea, showed off her Chinese speaking skills to the driver, "Ni hao ma! Ni hao ma!" She also knows "wo ai ni," but had sense enough not to tell the driver that she loved him. We had fun demonstrating our somewhat basic skills in each other's languages, and the driver commented that the girls were very American. Perpetuating the foreign stereotype of Americans as loud, crazy, and intrusive, all over Shanghai... all in a day's work.

Pesky American tourists and their cameras...

Right down the street from this polished tourist area is a dirty but life-filled suburban (I guess it's sort of like the suburbs) area. It reminded me of times at home when I'd be driving around downtown Rochester looking for The Spot coffee shop, take a wrong turn, and immediately finding myself in the heart of the projects. Except here I wasn't so afraid of being shot and stripped of all my valuables. It was a much friendlier low-class neighborhood. Or was it middle class? It's hard to tell in developing China.

The streets here weren't as busy as others in the city, but still so full of life that all I wanted to do was stop and take pictures of everything and everyone. But it's hard to take pictures when everybody's looking at you, and I imagine it's a little intrusive to have foreigners walking through your neighborhood and snapping photos of everything they see. So what I ended up doing was keeping my camera on the action photo setting and holding it at my side, pointing and shooting in the direction of things that I found interesting, hoping that the picture would come out alright. Most of them are pretty crooked and off-center, but I did manage to catch a few good ones. Nora was a little more assertive about her pictures, so she probably has some better shots, but she also got caught red-handed by this group of guys sitting out on the corner.



This is the masterpiece of my collection from yesterday. The man was playing guitar and singing for the others (pretty well, too), when he spotted Nora framing up a picture. Stopping abruptly in mid-note, he immediately called her out. Also wanting to catch a picture of this genuine piece of Chinese life, I already had my camera pointed in that direction, and was able to covertly capture the moment holding the camera at my side. The man rushed over to her speaking quickly in Chinese, gesturing toward the camera and rubbing his fingers together, suggesting that she pay him for the picture. His friends all sat there laughing hysterically as Nora frantically said the only Chinese she knew that was appropriate for the situation, "Bu hao, bu hao!" Luckily, the man was only joking and eventually allowed Nora and her camera to pass through in peace.

A few more blocks walking through the neighborhood, and we arrived at a beautiful Daoist temple, all in the traditional Chinese architecture, with beautiful carvings and statues. Yet another one of those places a point-and-shoot camera doesn't capture very well. We looked around, burned some incense, and moved on.

More Capitalism

The next stop on Wednesday morning was a touristy shopping area right outside the garden. All of the shops and buildings were of that same traditional Chinese construction like the garden itself, and the shops were similar to those of Nanjing road, but with more of the "classic chinese" items that tourists (myself included) love to buy. Jewelry, fancy chopsticks, figurines carved from jade and mahogany, etc.



After lunch we had an hour or so to explore and practice our haggling skills. Mine still need some refining. I think maybe I'm too lazy or too nice to really get into it. I also don't like that I have to pretend to be disinterested in what I'm looking at, regardless of how cool it really is. But I still can't complain about the prices.

Feng Shui

I'm going to split up yesterday's adventure into three or four seperate entries, so I can stop in the middle if I have to. Also, I can put more pictures up this way.

Yesterday morning started off in a traditional Chinese garden. There's really not much to say about it... it was just plain beautiful. As with everything else here, it was hard to capture through a camera lens, so don't judge it by this picture alone. Check out Nora's pictures to get a better idea of the place.



Feng Shui (fung-shway) is good stuff, I highly reccomend it for the design of anybody's living space. Also, use beautiful dark Chinese wood, perfectly laid stones, and meticulously groomed plants. It really makes things look and feel nice.

Shanghai by Boat

Downtown Shanghai

Sorry for the lack of updates recently, I didn't get around to it. Today was an extremely long day, so for now I'll just talk about yesterday, and hopefully tomorrow morning I'll write about today's adventures.

Yesterday's highlight was the visit to the international occupation districts and the boat tour up and down the river around the bend through downtown. During Europe's age of imperialism, they had districts of influence in Shanghai (and any other major city in the east) where they lived and carried out all of the usual western discriminatory practices, excluding Chinese from certain compounds within the borders of their own country. For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, this area was basically the downtown area of Shanghai. However, in an effort to take the focus of the European influence in these parts of town, the Chinese are building all of their flashy new skyscrapers on the other side of the river.

And as you can see from the picture, they have done very well in achieving the desired effect. In a recent trip to Toronto's SkyDome, my mother and I were mildly overwhelmed by the large, brightly colored TV screens that flashed advertisements from every angle. Once again, we can take this somewhat familiar element of life at home, multiply it by about 10,000, and maybe then get a decent idea of Shanghai. The entire facade shines and flashes at you from across the river. Brightly lit tour boats share the water with ocean-going barges whose lights are nearly invisible next to the rest of the city. The lights on the Pearl Tower flashe different colors and dance around the structure, while advertisements scroll across jumbo screens along the river's shore (hard to see in the picture). And then there's the building-size TV screen. The building on the far right is a TV screen. Well, it's a building too, but it doesn't just have plain colored lights on it. It plays Coca-Cola commercials to the entire city.

Skyscrapers are traditionally built to offset tremendously high property costs. By building a 100-story building, you can turn 1 acre of land into 100 acres of floor space. This is how a place like New York City comes to exist, with many extremely tall buildings standing in close proximity to each other. But here, there are relatively few extremely high buildings, and they are pretty well spread out. The most impressive structures in Shanghai were built mainly for the fact that the city is modernizing, and modern cities have to have impressive structures. The Pearl Tower was built because Shanghai didn't have any buildings like the CN tower, Sears tower, Golden Gate Bridge that immediately achieve recognition and affiliation with a great city. The city planners are putting on a really big and expensive sound and light show to convince the world that Shanghai is for real.

Registering at Fudan

Today we stood in line. That's all. Oh, we ate lunch, too. That was pretty cool.

In other news, the grass here is different. Nora says its because it grows in the opposite direction.

Adderless

Nanjing Road


There it is. That picture almost comes close to illustrating Nanjing Road. Also, there's another story I forgot to tell. After I bought my shoes, I was walking around by myself for a little bit, since the others abandoned me while I was in the shoe store. I was approached by another Chinese guy around my age, maybe a little younger. To my relief, he wasn't selling anything:

"Hallo. I have a question. A-D-D-I-E-S. How you say?"
"A-D-D-I-E-S?" (I thought for a moment he was trying to spell adidas)
"No, A-D-D-I-E-S."
I gave him a puzzled look. He pulled out his cell phone, and spelled it out on the screen. ADDRESS.
"Ohhhhhh... ADDRESS"
"Aderless?"
"Add-dress"
"Addless."
"Address."
"Addrress."
Close enough. He said thanks and walked away. An hour later, I hear someone behind me shouting:
"Addrress! Addrress!"
I gave him a thumbs up. "Hao le!"

Construction & Capitalism

Sleeping construction workers in downtown Shanghai.


Today we went downtown to the commercial district. The first stop was the Shanghai Planning and Development museum, a bunch of high-tech videos and scale-models depicting a perfect and clean city; the way Shanghai will be in the future. It's hard to tell how much was propaganda, but it was definitely optomistic. The centerpiece of the museum was a full model of the city itself, about 60x40 feet, giving another illustration of just how huge this place is. Since arriving here, I have yet to see a view that isn't entirely of the city. I'm starting to wonder if there is actually countryside in China. And everywhere where you go, there is construction. It's impossible to have your eyes open in the city and not see construction (no exaggeration). Millions of migrant workers move from the countryside to come and work in the cities, most of them it seems are in construction. They usually live on-site. At one point in the late 90s, the newly-developing Pu Dong region of Shanghai was home to 1/5 of all of the world's construstion cranes. That's one part, of one city, of one country in the world. One out of five cranes. You get the picture. Lots of bamboo scaffolding.

After the lunch we went to Nanjing Road, a pedestrian street with shops and vendors galore and (you guessed it) thousands upon thousands of people. I'm not going to post a picture of it because I didn't get any that come close to doing it justice. Just think capitalism. My crowning achievment of the day was buying a pair of shoes, and speaking Chinese through the entire 15-minute experience. The women that worked in the shop were extremely eager to please, bringing out any kind of shoe I even looked like I was pretending to see out of the corner of my eye before I could say "bu yao". After I told them that I liked one but it was too big, then too small, they rushed to find an insole that made it just right. They complimented me on my english and I gave them the 150 kuai the shoes were marked at, not wanting to try to bargain and jeopardize something that had gone so incredibly well. Waiting for me at exit of the shop were guys probably about my age, holding out magazine ads promising "Shoes. DVDs." I tried to convince them that I already had bought shoes (hence the box), but they persisted. There were a lot of these kind of people. I never bothered to follow them to the promised land of "Shoes, DVDs, Sunaglass. Cheap." Though I did break my sunaglass. I'll have to find one of them next time. We were approached by people with surprisingly good english a few times, inviting us to their art exhibition. When we said we had to go because we were meeting somebody (true 1 out of 3 times), they said it would only take two minutes. Must have been a short exhibit.

I paid extra close attention to where we were going on the journey home through the subway (much more crowded this time) so that hopefully I'll be able to get back to Nanjing road on my own if I want.

Attack of the killer bicycle kitten

We found this stray cat prowling around when we brought our newly borrowed bikes back to the dorm. It almost attacked Nora and Tara. Or maybe it was politely asking for food... hard to tell.

The Chinese are really on to something with this bicycle thing... maybe it will catch on in America as gas prices rise.

And once again a walk through Shanghai bombards the senses with sights, sounds, and SMELLS.

We changed some money, I'll probably go back to the Bank of China tomorrow to open an account so i can get an ATM card. And then buy everything. Cheapest. Goods. Ever. Example: 500mL bottle of coke: 1.50 yuan.

It was a long afternoon.

Jackie Chan

Yesterday afternoon I decided to take a little nap. I went to at about 3pm, expecting to wake up in an hour or 2. Four hours later I was still out like a light, while Professor Ferry banged on my door to wake me up for the Jackie Chan concert. I guess I'm still a little jet lagged.

The other two Union classmates on this trip arrived yesterday, Alice was on the same United flight that Nora, Tara and I took only it was one day later. Roy, on the other hand, flew from New York to Dubai, and Dubai to Shanghai. Dubai is in the United Arab Emirates, by the way. What? You don't....? Oh, yeah... the UAE is by Saudi Arabia. I think that's the long way around. Anyway, the two of them were there when I finally woke up last night, and we all went to Shanghai stadium for the concert. Professor Ferry seems to think I know Chinese, since when we take cabs (we have to take two since there are 6 of us) she gives me the money to handle and deal with the cab driver. I've done alright so far.

We took cabs to the subway station, and the subway to the stadium. The subway is nice. Much nicer than New York, probably even better than Boston and DC. It's strange how some things here are space-age and others still in the 19th century. Everybody has cell phones. And hand wash their clothes. There are men on bicycles with loads piled 10 feet high on a trailer riding through the streets, while a bullet train turns a 45 minute drive to the airport into an 8 minute cruise. And so on.

When we got to the stadium we waited outside the gate to meet up with Professor Ferry's friend, Claire. And we were promptly bombarded by street vendors selling posters, binoculars, little blinky-light pins, glo-sticks and more. The more observant and educated ones shouted "Hallo!" as they shoved their merchandise into our face, and held up fingers showing how many kuai. The most expensive item that I saw were the binoculars, at 10 kuai (1 dollar = 8 kuai/yuan/renminbi). My favorite vendor approached Roy and I with a poster of the Chinese diva that was to perform and pointed at her chest. I gave an understanding grin and politely said "bu yao"... "don't want".

The concert was big, as imagined. But everybody stayed seated the entire time, and never got too excited. Pop concerts in China are more of a family outing, sort of like a baseball game in the states. There's a lot of talking and raffles between songs, and the performers play just as many slow songs as they do high-energy hits. Claire bought a pair of binoculars, and it became clear why they were so cheap. They were blurry to the point where it was hard to tell if it was a better view with or without them, and I'm suspicious that turning the eypieces didn't actually adjust the focus. Since I was half asleep when we left I didn't think to bring my camera. I didn't think we would be able to bring it in to the concert anyway, but as it turns out, security at Chinese concerts just stands and looks intimidating, instead of frisking each and every person to come into the show.

There were two minor scares on the cab ride home. The first was about half way through the ride, when the driver started speaking on his cell phone. Since it was dark, I couldn't see that he was on the phone, and since I've only taken a year of Chinese, I couldn't understand what he was saying. So I thought he was talking to me. Eventually I decided he wasn't, but not before spitting out a few Chinese phrases that I do know, which probably seemed odd to the driver who was trying to have a conversation on his cell phone. The second was toward the end, when i realized that Professor Ferry only gave me 40 kuai, and the meter was at 50 something. But Alice came to the rescue with 20 that she had brought from home, and the cab driver accepted 60 instead of 64.

When we enter the dorm, we are supposed to show the doorman our room keys. Tara had forgotten hers. I did my best to explain the situation, and did pretty well, I think. Although they were a little suspicious of the fact that Tara didn't know her own name (her Chinese name). Ridiculous as it is that somebody might forget their own name, it's understandable in Tara's case. Having never spoken a word of Chinese in her life, the two times that she had heard her Chinese name, it sounded just like any other two Chinese words, so it was in one ear and out the other. After five minutes or so, I was able to convince them, or they just gave up and let us go. We got back to our rooms around 11, but since I had taken such a heavy nap in the afternoon. I didn't go to bed until 2:30. Once again, at 6:30 this morning I was wide awake and ready to go.

By the way, the timestamp on these entries are still at US Eastern time, so when I post, it's actually 12 hours ahead of when the entry says.

Quick update

So I can update here, but I can't actually look at my blog. So if I repeat something I already said, or things look sloppy, that's why. I just put some pictures up (I think) from our walk around campus this morning. Breakfast was interesting. Rice porridge and some other dishes I didnt recognize and didn't like much. One of them I can only describe as pickled green beans.

The weather is hot and extremely muggy, and every once in a while depending on where you are, you'll get a strong smell of the river (at least I think it's the river). It smells about how it looks... brown. But it's not too bad. More settling in and shopping today.

Jet lag isn't too bad... but I was fully awake at 6:30 this morning, which is extremely abnormal.

The US Open is on TV.

Typical building entrance

Posters on campus

Mao

24 hours of daylight

Today started yesterday. At 6am eastern US time the sun rose. At 7pm a day later in Shanghai, it set. The 24 hours in between was travel. The plane ride was very long and uneventful, and it was overcast (undercast) most of the way, so there wasn't much to look at. But in Shanghai, there is too much to look at. In a word, Shanghai is insane. So many sights, sounds, and smells attack you at once that all you can do is stare and keep looking around. And everything is moving. Fast.

The taxi ride from the airport to the Fudan campus is 45 minutes of white-knuckle driving. Think Boston driving plus bikes, mopeds, and pedestrians, all of whom seem to have the right of way at the same time. Minus seatbelts. One incident sums it up: our driver takes us through an intersection at about 30 miles an hour, threading the needle between two groups of pedestrians in the crosswalk. On each side of the van, no more than 2 feet away are one or two bicycles. Other cars are also going through the intersection on the road perpendicular to us, slowing down about as much as our driver did. Nobody seems upset or even surprised by the fact that there were just about 15 narrowly avoided accidents inside of a second and a half. I look back at the intersection, looking for something to explain what just happened. I saw no signs, and no traffic lights. That explains it.

Since Nora, Tara, and I arrived a day earlier than the school expected us to, we're staying in a hotel on the edge of campus tonight, and moving into the foreign students dorms tomorrow. I have a double hotel room and a bathroom to myself. The Chinese students across the street sleep 7 per dorm room. More on that later... probably.

Anyway, Professor Ferry picked us up at the airport, took us to the hotel, and out to dinner. Next week will be mostly exploration and settling in... buying whatever we'll need and so on. I spoke Chinese to a real chinese person: "this one is mine," pointing to my suitcase, and he understood.

I think that will be all for now. I didn't take any pictures yet... a little too much for today. The city is dimly lit where Fudan is anyway. Tomorrow maybe there will be pictures.