About a month ago, walking along the sidewalks of the French Concession, I saw the most beautiful scarab beetle. It was black with metallic gold markings and it too was strolling the sidewalks of the neighborhood. I hope it found a mate and survived to produce its own gorgeous offspring.
Buses in Shanghai are, naturally, bus-shaped: long, rectangular vehicles with rounded corners, rows of windows, and wheels. The local transport also have mirrors that hang down in front on either side of the windshield, rather like large drooping antennae. The other day I saw a bus being towed. With its front end suspended while its hind end remained on the ground, it looked like nothing so much as a tomato hornworm rearing its head.
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Fashion
October 31, 2006 - The season has changed, but aside from the tendency toward a subdued palette, the rules are the same: glitter and frills are in. Shoes (and sandals – it’s still warm most days), belts, purses and clothing are decorated with beads, jewels and sequins. Jeans, skirts, dresses and tops have ruffles, pleats, lace, sheer fabric and asymmetric hems. The white mannequins at Westmend sont très chic. In the hot-dog days of summer it seemed that few women wore high heels, and comfortable-looking flats and sandals were common, along with wedges and kitten heels. Now that high-heeled shoes and boots are more in evidence, I am less envious of those with dainty feet. My size 40 clodhoppers will do for now.
Shanghai sidewalks are filled with attractive young women in nice clothes, known to the general public, or at least to the programmers of Sonic Shanghai, as Shanghai xiaojie. You can recognize the Shanghai xiaojie by her trim figure, stylish hairdo, poise and well-groomed good looks. Sure, there are plenty of jeans, T-shirts (T-xu, in Chinese) and sneakers around, but those are not the women that draw the admiring looks. While underwear stores display imitation body parts in abundance, and Chinese women certainly wear form-fitting clothes and hip-hugging trousers, you seldom see the Chinese bulging out of their clothes. The fashion of tight-fitting maternity wear has yet to catch on in the community here; pregnant women, in contrast to the non-pregnant population, tend to wear loose frumpy dresses reminiscent of the things you made in home ec in high school. The only pregnant women I’ve seen wearing the sausage-casing look have been foreigners.
Of course, some of us draw stares just because we look out of place in this land of straight black hair and slim figures. I think I’ve finally figured out where the middle-aged women are and what they wear. Those who are retired hang out in the parks, practicing ballroom dancing and t’ai chi (taijiquan), or they’re taking care of the beloved grandchild while her parents work to pay for the apartment they bought on the 22nd floor of that high-rise near Zhongshan Park. Uncertain of a woman’s age? If her hair is short and she doesn’t look like an artist, she’s old, at least to the young. Down the street from us, on Nanjing Xi Lu, loose-fitting polyester-looking clothing, of the sort no Shanghai xiaojie would be caught dead in, can be had at a reasonable price from a store called Ice Queen. This season the ice queens have gotten hip: the mannequins sport flared pants instead of summer’s shapeless knee-length skirts. I swear I will never shop at Ice Queen, but I feel the need to bring Julia with me for protection when I enter the neighboring shops that cater to twenty-somethings.
I bought my first pair of Chinese women’s pants – size XL. They were about an inch too long; I guess extra-large Chinese women (equivalent to an American size 6?) are taller than I am. And here I was sure I was only a size L in China. These were cheap pants, however. As with many western brands designed for people over the age of 18, more expensive clothes tend to contain more fabric. I tried on a lovely skirt in a size Large in one of the fancy boutiques, but it was just a wee bit too big. Possibly too fashionable, as well, for an old fart like me.
There are other styles in evidence as well. There are men and women in suits, but many of them are westerners. Older, less shapely women sometimes wear shapeless padded jackets that hark back to the days of Mao. 80's rock star hairdos are popular among the young men, although possibly more common in Tokyo than in Shanghai. Teenage boys, for the most part, don't wear their hair really short; in fact, my Chinese textbook has a dialogue in which a boy tells his mom he wants to keep his hair long. She, of course, says that boys don’t have long hair. She’s wrong. Younger boys, and girls, however, are another story. Baggy jeans are in here, but they aren’t as baggy as in the States, generally not hanging so low as to be in danger of falling off.
In hot weather some men believe in a severe form of climate control that is not necessarily attractive. A picture is worth a thousand words – this has been demonstrated eloquently by Kevin Lee and Olivia Wu in her Shanghai Diary.
And then there are the people who wear their pajamas out on the streets. Apparently some Chinese citizens find this extremely annoying, on a par with traffic noise and the dearth of suitable mates for their grown children. Personally, I find smog and noise much less aesthetically pleasing than pjs in public. Of course, I haven’t mentioned the men in undershirts and shorts on those 37-degree days, but it’s not their fault that they’re not young and pretty.
The other BIG fashion in China is white skin. Pharmacies and beauty supply counters sell skin whiteners, some of which are likely to contain substances you wouldn’t want to take a chance on absorbing through your skin. On hot sunny days some women (and a few men) carry umbrellas to ward off the sun. In the summer women bicycle riders often wear these white cape-like batwings with this lace that covers up their arms – in the name of whiteness. Bill has offered (threatened?) to buy me one for the 7-mile ride from Berkeley to Richmond. For a more articulate discussion of the phenomenon, see Surrender, Dorothy.
And last of all, we have the fashion of Western men and Asian women. I’ve seen almost no couples of the opposite configuration – maybe one in Japan. The women are mostly young and mostly attractive. The men – well, the men are sometimes tall, but sometimes not. Let’s leave it at that.
Shanghai sidewalks are filled with attractive young women in nice clothes, known to the general public, or at least to the programmers of Sonic Shanghai, as Shanghai xiaojie. You can recognize the Shanghai xiaojie by her trim figure, stylish hairdo, poise and well-groomed good looks. Sure, there are plenty of jeans, T-shirts (T-xu, in Chinese) and sneakers around, but those are not the women that draw the admiring looks. While underwear stores display imitation body parts in abundance, and Chinese women certainly wear form-fitting clothes and hip-hugging trousers, you seldom see the Chinese bulging out of their clothes. The fashion of tight-fitting maternity wear has yet to catch on in the community here; pregnant women, in contrast to the non-pregnant population, tend to wear loose frumpy dresses reminiscent of the things you made in home ec in high school. The only pregnant women I’ve seen wearing the sausage-casing look have been foreigners.
Of course, some of us draw stares just because we look out of place in this land of straight black hair and slim figures. I think I’ve finally figured out where the middle-aged women are and what they wear. Those who are retired hang out in the parks, practicing ballroom dancing and t’ai chi (taijiquan), or they’re taking care of the beloved grandchild while her parents work to pay for the apartment they bought on the 22nd floor of that high-rise near Zhongshan Park. Uncertain of a woman’s age? If her hair is short and she doesn’t look like an artist, she’s old, at least to the young. Down the street from us, on Nanjing Xi Lu, loose-fitting polyester-looking clothing, of the sort no Shanghai xiaojie would be caught dead in, can be had at a reasonable price from a store called Ice Queen. This season the ice queens have gotten hip: the mannequins sport flared pants instead of summer’s shapeless knee-length skirts. I swear I will never shop at Ice Queen, but I feel the need to bring Julia with me for protection when I enter the neighboring shops that cater to twenty-somethings.
I bought my first pair of Chinese women’s pants – size XL. They were about an inch too long; I guess extra-large Chinese women (equivalent to an American size 6?) are taller than I am. And here I was sure I was only a size L in China. These were cheap pants, however. As with many western brands designed for people over the age of 18, more expensive clothes tend to contain more fabric. I tried on a lovely skirt in a size Large in one of the fancy boutiques, but it was just a wee bit too big. Possibly too fashionable, as well, for an old fart like me.
There are other styles in evidence as well. There are men and women in suits, but many of them are westerners. Older, less shapely women sometimes wear shapeless padded jackets that hark back to the days of Mao. 80's rock star hairdos are popular among the young men, although possibly more common in Tokyo than in Shanghai. Teenage boys, for the most part, don't wear their hair really short; in fact, my Chinese textbook has a dialogue in which a boy tells his mom he wants to keep his hair long. She, of course, says that boys don’t have long hair. She’s wrong. Younger boys, and girls, however, are another story. Baggy jeans are in here, but they aren’t as baggy as in the States, generally not hanging so low as to be in danger of falling off.
In hot weather some men believe in a severe form of climate control that is not necessarily attractive. A picture is worth a thousand words – this has been demonstrated eloquently by Kevin Lee and Olivia Wu in her Shanghai Diary.
And then there are the people who wear their pajamas out on the streets. Apparently some Chinese citizens find this extremely annoying, on a par with traffic noise and the dearth of suitable mates for their grown children. Personally, I find smog and noise much less aesthetically pleasing than pjs in public. Of course, I haven’t mentioned the men in undershirts and shorts on those 37-degree days, but it’s not their fault that they’re not young and pretty.
The other BIG fashion in China is white skin. Pharmacies and beauty supply counters sell skin whiteners, some of which are likely to contain substances you wouldn’t want to take a chance on absorbing through your skin. On hot sunny days some women (and a few men) carry umbrellas to ward off the sun. In the summer women bicycle riders often wear these white cape-like batwings with this lace that covers up their arms – in the name of whiteness. Bill has offered (threatened?) to buy me one for the 7-mile ride from Berkeley to Richmond. For a more articulate discussion of the phenomenon, see Surrender, Dorothy.
And last of all, we have the fashion of Western men and Asian women. I’ve seen almost no couples of the opposite configuration – maybe one in Japan. The women are mostly young and mostly attractive. The men – well, the men are sometimes tall, but sometimes not. Let’s leave it at that.
Environmental Health in China
Here are a few things I’ve observed and expect to observe again:
- Someone spraying a solvent-based wood finish on a piece of furniture while smoking a cigarette, no respiratory protection. At least he was working outside.
- Workers using jackhammers without hearing protection.
- The ubiquitous 4-story lashed bamboo scaffolding.
- Window washers dangling by cables (I think they’re cables, not ropes) from the tops of many-story high-rises.
- Smoking! Not a big surprise, and it’s not quite as bad as I expected, but still a very popular bad habit. I’ve observed approximately 4 Chinese women smoking; the practice is more popular by far with men. Bill says that noticeably fewer Japanese smoke now than in 1992 – some progress being made somewhere in Asia. An article in PLOS Medicine in July 2006 describes the problem of smuggling cigarettes into China with the complicity of British American Tobacco.
- Motorcycle riders wearing no helmets, or wearing the kind the bikers wear in states with helmet laws, the ones that look like relics of WWI. Some motorcyclists wear the ones that look like equestrian helmets, black velvet with a beanie button on top. Sometimes they even fasten the strap. I once saw a Chinese couple wearing regulation motorcycle helmets – only once. Bicycle helmets are for foreigners.
In the news:
Residents’ love affair with cars continues (China Daily, 10/31/06)
Shanghai residents’ intentions to purchase cars are growing fast despite the soaring price of plates and increasing traffic jams. Not to mention the air pollution!
Fatal accidents blamed on mopeds increase (Shanghai Daily, 10/31/06)
Traffic police are warning moped riders to be more careful as the vehicles have been involved in a growing number of fatal traffic accidents over the past year.
Asia’s vital challenge: Wise use of fresh water (International Herald Tribune, 11/2/06)
. . . The number of people in China alone who do not have access to clean water is nearly as large as those in the same circumstances in all of Africa. . . The starkest example of this came in November 2005 when the toxic chemicals benzene, nitrobenzene and aniline spilled into China’s Songhua River and polluted the Harbin water supply.
Spill cuts water supplies (IHT/NY Times, 11/2/06)
Water supplies to 28,000 people in northern China have been cut after an overturned truck spilled 33 tons of toxic oil into a river, the official Xinhua news agency reported Wednesday.
Hedge funds saddle up for Mongolian mines (IHT/Bloomberg, 11/2/06)
. . . Rapid economic growth, driven by copper and gold mining, is attracting investors willing to tolerate corruption and unpredictable regulation. Fund managers are taking on greater risk in small emerging markets once considered exotic. . . International investment in Mongolia’s mining, tourism and telecommunications industries is fuelling an economy where more than 30% of the 2.5 million people remain nomads. . . Real estate prices should continue to increase by 15% to 25% a year because of a housing shortage, rising incomes and the migration of nomads into Ulan Bator. . .
High levels of lead found in schoolchildren (IHT, 11/6/06)
Forty-seven schoolchildren in eastern China have been found to have excessive lead in their blood, the latest such case to hit the country. Tests on the children in Qili, Fujian Province, by the Disease Prevention and Control Center determined the high lead levels, the official Xinhua news agency reported Saturday. It said one 7-year-old boy was hospitalized for lead poisoning, and that a company, Meiheng Smelting, was the suspected source of the lead.
Coffee Crisis (City Weekend www.cityweekend.com.cn, sometime in October 2006)
How clean is your coffee? According to the Shanghai Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervision, 80 percent of Shanghai’s coffee does not meet standards because of excessive amounts of copper and bacteria. Thank goodness we drink Peet’s!
Every few weeks, it seems, there is a short paragraph describing the latest mine disaster in China. This does not include the chronic diseases contracted by miners as a result of exposures at work.
BEIJING (IHT/Reuters, 11/17/06): All 34 coal miners trapped underground on Sunday in north China after explosives caught fire have been confirmed dead, state media said Thursday, bringing the death toll from two recent accidents to 81. The miners suffocated after more than four tons of illegally stored explosives caught fire at the Nanshan Colliery in Shanxi Province, where a quarter of China’s coal is mined.
Next Tuesday I am invited to attend a presentation entitled “Functional Superfoods and Combating Environmental Pollutants,” 50 rmb per person, limited seating available. It sounds a bit crackpot, but the parents at the international school are the ones who buy produce at the organic store, feed their children (or direct the ayi to feed the children) brown rice instead of white, and sign up to pay to listen to someone tell us how we can overcome the effects of all the pollution in Shanghai’s air, food and water. “SCIS - Hong Qiao PAFA (parents’ association) is delighted to invite parents to attend a special nutrition seminar conducted by a distinguished visiting Speaker from Hong Kong, Denice Wehausen, a U.S.-Licensed Nutritionist currently living and working in Hong Kong. Come learn about the latest research on promoting health and preventing disease from:
• The Power of Superfoods
• Nutrients to Fight Shanghai’s environmental toxins”
Sounds fascinating. I’ll be there.
More later.
Monday, October 30, 2006
Oh, Them Golden Slippers
After 2-1/2 months of wearing terrycloth-and-cardboard hotel slippers in the house in order to keep the floors comparatively clean (and minimize the work the house elf has to do), I splurged and bought a pair of beautiful Chinese slippers. I’d like to buy one in every color, but at 420-450 RMB ($53-57 US), even though it's far less than the export cost, that would be very hard to justify. If you’re interested, take a peek here. I wear size extra-large.
October Holiday
The first week in October is one of 3 holidays in China during which many, if not most, people go someplace. We had planned to go to Beijing (where, it turns out, Tiffany Zhang and her family spent their holiday week), but the word on the street was better get out of China when the Chinese are on the move. So we went to Japan instead.
I hadn’t been homesick since we moved to Shanghai – anxious, perhaps, as well as sick, tired and culture-shocked – but not homesick. Being in Tokyo made me miss the US as nothing in China, not even the squat toilets, had done. I was surprised at how different it was from Shanghai and China. On the other hand, Japanese uses many (most?) of the same characters as Chinese, and some of the few I knew even have the same meanings. Although we know no Japanese, and outside of hotels and friends most people we talked to knew no English, it felt much more familiar and less foreign than if we had not spent almost 2 months in China.
Tokyo, however, seems so much more western than Shanghai in so many ways. Westerners don’t seem to stick out as much, although I suspect I’m more self-conscious in Shanghai as a resident than I was in Tokyo as a tourist. Women come in all sizes and shapes, and middle-aged women seemed much more visible than in Shanghai, at least in our neighborhood. Sure, there are plenty of small Japanese women, but my impression is that in Tokyo the typical woman under 35 isn’t a perfect size zero. And the men aren’t necessarily skinny either – remember, this is the home of sumo (emphasis on the O) wrestlers. Japan is a prosperous country, and memories of hardship are older than the Cultural Revolution. Streets are surely cleaner than in American cities; as in Shanghai, there are always people out cleaning up after the rest of us, but in Shanghai the dust and debris settle back onto the same spots in a minute. In Tokyo you can drink the water and it doesn’t leave a layer of scum on your hair.
Tokyo style is also different from that of the ubiquitous Shanghai xiaojie (see Fashion). Granted, at the time we were in Japan the daytime temperature in Shanghai hadn’t yet dropped below 27 degrees C, but I was struck by the styles worn by young Tokyo women. A short denim skirt, fishnet stockings and tall spike-heeled boots on a slightly chubby young woman is not a look often seen in Shanghai this October. Long shorts with boots were another common sight in both Tokyo and Kyoto. This fashion, I’d like to note, arrived in Shanghai somewhat later, once the temperature dropped below 22 degrees or so.
And then there were the salarymen (and -women). Our hotel in Tokyo was across from the Shinagawa train station and we crossed the street in a sea of people going to and from work or lunch. The men wear black suits and white shirts with unobtrusive ties. There are occasional exceptions in the form of dark gray or navy blue for the suits and light blue shirts. Women in uniform black suits with white blouses were also out in force and it was clear that it was literally a uniform in some cases. This color scheme is not the norm in Kyoto, where some men even wear shirts with patterns and women wear much less black. In China uniforms are common in many types of workplaces, from retail stores to garages to the Shanghai CDC. In Japan many women workers wear aprons rather than a full uniform outfit, but the white collar “uniform” in Tokyo leaves the same impression as actual uniforms elsewhere.
We've all heard that Japanese children spend more time studying than students anywhere else in the world. I can't attest to that fact, but we saw swarms of school children, in uniform, at every local cultural attraction and on every day of the week. Japanese school uniforms consist of skirts or jumpers for the girls, with jackets or middy blouses. The older girls, at least in Tokyo, hike up their skirts so they are very short. Younger boys wear shorts (I assume they change to long pants when the weather gets colder) and older ones wear pants and military-like jackets, mostly in navy blue with white shirts. Chinese school uniforms are much less formal – workout-style pants or even jeans, with polo shirts and usually a red tie or scarf at the collar. High school girls in Tokyo wear loafers with knee socks; school kids in Shanghai wear athletic shoes. We saw girls in their school uniforms on the train in Nagano prefecture on Saturday and Sunday, and this on a holiday weekend. We didn’t see any kids in uniform in Harajuku on Sunday afternoon.
Japan is incredibly expensive, particularly compared to China, although I believe that we could have saved a little money with better planning. We had some really pricy meals in Kyoto because it was dark and rainy and we didn’t know where to go. We also bought some nice gifts that were quite inexpensive by Japanese standards, though not by Chinese. And for those who remember when a foreigner’s first hit of caffeine came out of a can from one of the ubiquitous vending machines, rest assured that coffee culture has come to Japan. Starbucks is here, of course, and Tully’s coffee has a number of outlets in Japan. In Kyoto we frequented Caffe Veloce, across the street from our hotel, although the coffee at the hotel’s breakfast buffet was not half bad. In fact, espresso joints were the places where Japanese prices were often lower than those in Shanghai. This is not necessarily true in fashionable parts of Tokyo, but it did appear to be the case elsewhere.
I was still suffering from the world’s worst cold when we arrived in Tokyo, and it rained almost the entire week we were there. But for the fact that it was fairly warm in both Tokyo and Kyoto, and therefore muggy, it would have been like winter in California. We did have some good weather, though, notably when we returned to Tokyo our last afternoon before leaving, a sunny Indian summer kind of day.
We arrived at Narita Airport from Shanghai at night and barely made the last express train to Tokyo. The next day we got up late, as is our wont on vacation when it's not urgent that we organize ourselves at 6:30 am. Bill did his work for the week by meeting with Sony and some people from Sonic’s Tokyo sales office. At 5:30, after a bit of souvenir shopping, Julia and I met him at the Sony building in the Ginza and at 6:00 we were joined by our friend Mari, who teaches nursing at Tokyo Metropolitan University. She took us to a restaurant that specializes in tofu, which was very good. It’s always a treat to eat with the natives, since they know what and how much to order.
Our second full day we were shepherded around town by Yoshinari, one of the Sonic guys. Our Tokyo tour started with the fish market at 7:30. Yoshinari borrowed his brother’s car to take us around on Sonic’s dime, and they were very generous indeed. He was playing opera arias in the car when he picked us up at the hotel, and told us that he had studied music (he’s a tenor) but gave up the idea of singing professionally. Apparently he’s giving a recital in California in December; maybe Bill will be able to go, given that he’s spending so much time in the states.
Navigating the Tokyo fish market is a bit like crossing the street in Shanghai – you dodge trucks, bicycles, motorized carts and carts pulled by humans. Inside the market we saw fish of all sorts and sizes, live, dead, packaged or laid out. We saw giant hunks of frozen fish being sawed into smaller hunks, and $80 a pound – or was it $800 a pound? – sashimi tuna (that’s wholesale, of course). After wandering through the market and avoiding collisions with moving people, fish, knives and vehicles, we went to a random nearby restaurant and had the best, freshest sushi ever for breakfast.
After the Meiji-jingu shrine, which covers many hectares in the middle of town, we visited the Senso-ji temple, whose entry is preceded by a street of trinket stands. This is where Julia and I spent most of the previous afternoon, buying presents for her friends. When we were done with the temple (and one doesn’t confuse shrines with temples in Japan), we insisted on going to the Tokyo National Museum. Yoshinari said he had never been, and Julia objected on principle, but we bought everyone tickets and spent an hour or so looking around. Then we were off to dinner at Roppongi Hills, a fancy mall in a neighborhood frequented by foreigners. We parked in one of those garages where you drive onto a conveyor and your car is spirited away – possibly compressed and stored on a shelf while you are gone, and later reconstituted so that you can drive off. We had dinner at a restaurant that serves deep-fried everything-on-a-stick. If you like a particular item you are allowed to ask for a repeat; otherwise they just keep bringing different things until you tell them to stop. I fear we were too moderate and stopped eating long before any self-respecting beer-drinking Japanese male would have done, but it was very good and we were pretty full. We all agreed that we like Japanese food, and even the deep-friend everything was lighter than much of the street and restaurant fare in Shanghai.
In Kyoto we saw a few temples and did a lot of walking. Once again we stayed across the street from the train station, which is actually quite convenient. Along with temples, Kyoto seems to be home to a slew of French bakeries. During one of our walks we saw 4 or 5 in a 2-block stretch, and stopped to sample the wares at one of them. The Japanese like the French language, and sprinkle it liberally around on shop and restaurant signs. They appear to have learned the art of French baking as well. The pastries we bought were excellent, much more authentically French than the bakeries in Shanghai.
After Kyoto we took at train to Nagano and from there to Yudanaka, home of the snow monkey park, where you can hike 1.6 kilometers through the forest and pay 450 yen to watch monkeys bathe in the hot springs. Rather than stay at the ryokan in the park, which would have required us to hike about 20 minutes in from the end of the road in the rain, we stayed at a place in town near the train station, with indoor spring-fed hot baths. As ignorant Americans we didn’t take full advantage of the baths, bathing only once a day, and I later learned that I should not have washed off after bathing if I wanted to reap the full benefits of healthful minerals.
Aside from the notable lack of English translations outside of Tokyo and the lack of street signs everywhere, the most annoying thing in Japan was the difficulty finding an ATM that would give us money. Even in Kyoto we had trouble finding ATMs that would take our cards. The guidebooks warn that you need to keep cash handy outside the big cities, but we had been spending so much money and emptying our checking account so rapidly that we arrived in Yudanaka without enough cash to pay for both meals and the hotel. Our host kept telling us that the rain would surely stop, and we should wait to go to the monkey park until then, so we spent a morning in the town of Obuse, home to the Hokusai museum, where, sure enough, it wasn't raining. After several desperate tries, barely willing to spend the money to buy our dear daughter a chestnut ice cream cone, we finally found an ATM at the post office that would allow us to extract some money from our bank account. We were so happy that we went and ate lunch, even though the restaurant did not serve chestnut rice as the hotel owner had informed us, and we were able to afford the train fare back to Yudanaka as well.
The rain was waiting for us back in Yudanaka, but so were the monkeys. The owner of the inn drove us to the trailhead for our trek to see the monkeys and we called him to pick us up when we were done. The hike reminded me of walking in the Berkeley hills with friends in February – mud, rain and a little chilly, but you can stay warm if you are walking uphill. With temperatures above 30 degrees C for over a month, this was the coldest we’d been in a long time. The monkeys were cool, needless to say. See the live monkey cam from the park here.
After our quick trip to visit the monkeys and experience cold wet weather, we took a morning train back to Tokyo and spent our last afternoon in Harajuku, the fashionable shopping area for hip young things. Julia would have been happy to stay in Tokyo after that – it was her kind of place. We visited Kiddieland, the famous toy store, and ate in a basement restaurant called J’s that served pizza. We saw some of the infamous costume girls and watched other people take their pictures. The weather was glorious, and the only problem was that we had to pick up our luggage at Tokyo station before 6 pm, so we couldn’t stay in the neighborhood for dinner. We had a free hotel room near the airport for the night, and managed in our confusion to hop onto a local train to Narita instead of the express. We found the bus to our brand new nondescript in-the-middle-of-nowhere hotel, and, after one last hair wash with clean water, the vacation was over. I hope we get to go back to Japan some day. Next time we're in Kyoto we'll buy a good vegetable knife ("cai dao" en chinois), assuming weapons are still allowed in checked luggage.
I hadn’t been homesick since we moved to Shanghai – anxious, perhaps, as well as sick, tired and culture-shocked – but not homesick. Being in Tokyo made me miss the US as nothing in China, not even the squat toilets, had done. I was surprised at how different it was from Shanghai and China. On the other hand, Japanese uses many (most?) of the same characters as Chinese, and some of the few I knew even have the same meanings. Although we know no Japanese, and outside of hotels and friends most people we talked to knew no English, it felt much more familiar and less foreign than if we had not spent almost 2 months in China.
Tokyo, however, seems so much more western than Shanghai in so many ways. Westerners don’t seem to stick out as much, although I suspect I’m more self-conscious in Shanghai as a resident than I was in Tokyo as a tourist. Women come in all sizes and shapes, and middle-aged women seemed much more visible than in Shanghai, at least in our neighborhood. Sure, there are plenty of small Japanese women, but my impression is that in Tokyo the typical woman under 35 isn’t a perfect size zero. And the men aren’t necessarily skinny either – remember, this is the home of sumo (emphasis on the O) wrestlers. Japan is a prosperous country, and memories of hardship are older than the Cultural Revolution. Streets are surely cleaner than in American cities; as in Shanghai, there are always people out cleaning up after the rest of us, but in Shanghai the dust and debris settle back onto the same spots in a minute. In Tokyo you can drink the water and it doesn’t leave a layer of scum on your hair.
Tokyo style is also different from that of the ubiquitous Shanghai xiaojie (see Fashion). Granted, at the time we were in Japan the daytime temperature in Shanghai hadn’t yet dropped below 27 degrees C, but I was struck by the styles worn by young Tokyo women. A short denim skirt, fishnet stockings and tall spike-heeled boots on a slightly chubby young woman is not a look often seen in Shanghai this October. Long shorts with boots were another common sight in both Tokyo and Kyoto. This fashion, I’d like to note, arrived in Shanghai somewhat later, once the temperature dropped below 22 degrees or so.
And then there were the salarymen (and -women). Our hotel in Tokyo was across from the Shinagawa train station and we crossed the street in a sea of people going to and from work or lunch. The men wear black suits and white shirts with unobtrusive ties. There are occasional exceptions in the form of dark gray or navy blue for the suits and light blue shirts. Women in uniform black suits with white blouses were also out in force and it was clear that it was literally a uniform in some cases. This color scheme is not the norm in Kyoto, where some men even wear shirts with patterns and women wear much less black. In China uniforms are common in many types of workplaces, from retail stores to garages to the Shanghai CDC. In Japan many women workers wear aprons rather than a full uniform outfit, but the white collar “uniform” in Tokyo leaves the same impression as actual uniforms elsewhere.
We've all heard that Japanese children spend more time studying than students anywhere else in the world. I can't attest to that fact, but we saw swarms of school children, in uniform, at every local cultural attraction and on every day of the week. Japanese school uniforms consist of skirts or jumpers for the girls, with jackets or middy blouses. The older girls, at least in Tokyo, hike up their skirts so they are very short. Younger boys wear shorts (I assume they change to long pants when the weather gets colder) and older ones wear pants and military-like jackets, mostly in navy blue with white shirts. Chinese school uniforms are much less formal – workout-style pants or even jeans, with polo shirts and usually a red tie or scarf at the collar. High school girls in Tokyo wear loafers with knee socks; school kids in Shanghai wear athletic shoes. We saw girls in their school uniforms on the train in Nagano prefecture on Saturday and Sunday, and this on a holiday weekend. We didn’t see any kids in uniform in Harajuku on Sunday afternoon.
Japan is incredibly expensive, particularly compared to China, although I believe that we could have saved a little money with better planning. We had some really pricy meals in Kyoto because it was dark and rainy and we didn’t know where to go. We also bought some nice gifts that were quite inexpensive by Japanese standards, though not by Chinese. And for those who remember when a foreigner’s first hit of caffeine came out of a can from one of the ubiquitous vending machines, rest assured that coffee culture has come to Japan. Starbucks is here, of course, and Tully’s coffee has a number of outlets in Japan. In Kyoto we frequented Caffe Veloce, across the street from our hotel, although the coffee at the hotel’s breakfast buffet was not half bad. In fact, espresso joints were the places where Japanese prices were often lower than those in Shanghai. This is not necessarily true in fashionable parts of Tokyo, but it did appear to be the case elsewhere.
I was still suffering from the world’s worst cold when we arrived in Tokyo, and it rained almost the entire week we were there. But for the fact that it was fairly warm in both Tokyo and Kyoto, and therefore muggy, it would have been like winter in California. We did have some good weather, though, notably when we returned to Tokyo our last afternoon before leaving, a sunny Indian summer kind of day.
We arrived at Narita Airport from Shanghai at night and barely made the last express train to Tokyo. The next day we got up late, as is our wont on vacation when it's not urgent that we organize ourselves at 6:30 am. Bill did his work for the week by meeting with Sony and some people from Sonic’s Tokyo sales office. At 5:30, after a bit of souvenir shopping, Julia and I met him at the Sony building in the Ginza and at 6:00 we were joined by our friend Mari, who teaches nursing at Tokyo Metropolitan University. She took us to a restaurant that specializes in tofu, which was very good. It’s always a treat to eat with the natives, since they know what and how much to order.
Our second full day we were shepherded around town by Yoshinari, one of the Sonic guys. Our Tokyo tour started with the fish market at 7:30. Yoshinari borrowed his brother’s car to take us around on Sonic’s dime, and they were very generous indeed. He was playing opera arias in the car when he picked us up at the hotel, and told us that he had studied music (he’s a tenor) but gave up the idea of singing professionally. Apparently he’s giving a recital in California in December; maybe Bill will be able to go, given that he’s spending so much time in the states.
Navigating the Tokyo fish market is a bit like crossing the street in Shanghai – you dodge trucks, bicycles, motorized carts and carts pulled by humans. Inside the market we saw fish of all sorts and sizes, live, dead, packaged or laid out. We saw giant hunks of frozen fish being sawed into smaller hunks, and $80 a pound – or was it $800 a pound? – sashimi tuna (that’s wholesale, of course). After wandering through the market and avoiding collisions with moving people, fish, knives and vehicles, we went to a random nearby restaurant and had the best, freshest sushi ever for breakfast.
After the Meiji-jingu shrine, which covers many hectares in the middle of town, we visited the Senso-ji temple, whose entry is preceded by a street of trinket stands. This is where Julia and I spent most of the previous afternoon, buying presents for her friends. When we were done with the temple (and one doesn’t confuse shrines with temples in Japan), we insisted on going to the Tokyo National Museum. Yoshinari said he had never been, and Julia objected on principle, but we bought everyone tickets and spent an hour or so looking around. Then we were off to dinner at Roppongi Hills, a fancy mall in a neighborhood frequented by foreigners. We parked in one of those garages where you drive onto a conveyor and your car is spirited away – possibly compressed and stored on a shelf while you are gone, and later reconstituted so that you can drive off. We had dinner at a restaurant that serves deep-fried everything-on-a-stick. If you like a particular item you are allowed to ask for a repeat; otherwise they just keep bringing different things until you tell them to stop. I fear we were too moderate and stopped eating long before any self-respecting beer-drinking Japanese male would have done, but it was very good and we were pretty full. We all agreed that we like Japanese food, and even the deep-friend everything was lighter than much of the street and restaurant fare in Shanghai.
In Kyoto we saw a few temples and did a lot of walking. Once again we stayed across the street from the train station, which is actually quite convenient. Along with temples, Kyoto seems to be home to a slew of French bakeries. During one of our walks we saw 4 or 5 in a 2-block stretch, and stopped to sample the wares at one of them. The Japanese like the French language, and sprinkle it liberally around on shop and restaurant signs. They appear to have learned the art of French baking as well. The pastries we bought were excellent, much more authentically French than the bakeries in Shanghai.
After Kyoto we took at train to Nagano and from there to Yudanaka, home of the snow monkey park, where you can hike 1.6 kilometers through the forest and pay 450 yen to watch monkeys bathe in the hot springs. Rather than stay at the ryokan in the park, which would have required us to hike about 20 minutes in from the end of the road in the rain, we stayed at a place in town near the train station, with indoor spring-fed hot baths. As ignorant Americans we didn’t take full advantage of the baths, bathing only once a day, and I later learned that I should not have washed off after bathing if I wanted to reap the full benefits of healthful minerals.
Aside from the notable lack of English translations outside of Tokyo and the lack of street signs everywhere, the most annoying thing in Japan was the difficulty finding an ATM that would give us money. Even in Kyoto we had trouble finding ATMs that would take our cards. The guidebooks warn that you need to keep cash handy outside the big cities, but we had been spending so much money and emptying our checking account so rapidly that we arrived in Yudanaka without enough cash to pay for both meals and the hotel. Our host kept telling us that the rain would surely stop, and we should wait to go to the monkey park until then, so we spent a morning in the town of Obuse, home to the Hokusai museum, where, sure enough, it wasn't raining. After several desperate tries, barely willing to spend the money to buy our dear daughter a chestnut ice cream cone, we finally found an ATM at the post office that would allow us to extract some money from our bank account. We were so happy that we went and ate lunch, even though the restaurant did not serve chestnut rice as the hotel owner had informed us, and we were able to afford the train fare back to Yudanaka as well.
The rain was waiting for us back in Yudanaka, but so were the monkeys. The owner of the inn drove us to the trailhead for our trek to see the monkeys and we called him to pick us up when we were done. The hike reminded me of walking in the Berkeley hills with friends in February – mud, rain and a little chilly, but you can stay warm if you are walking uphill. With temperatures above 30 degrees C for over a month, this was the coldest we’d been in a long time. The monkeys were cool, needless to say. See the live monkey cam from the park here.
After our quick trip to visit the monkeys and experience cold wet weather, we took a morning train back to Tokyo and spent our last afternoon in Harajuku, the fashionable shopping area for hip young things. Julia would have been happy to stay in Tokyo after that – it was her kind of place. We visited Kiddieland, the famous toy store, and ate in a basement restaurant called J’s that served pizza. We saw some of the infamous costume girls and watched other people take their pictures. The weather was glorious, and the only problem was that we had to pick up our luggage at Tokyo station before 6 pm, so we couldn’t stay in the neighborhood for dinner. We had a free hotel room near the airport for the night, and managed in our confusion to hop onto a local train to Narita instead of the express. We found the bus to our brand new nondescript in-the-middle-of-nowhere hotel, and, after one last hair wash with clean water, the vacation was over. I hope we get to go back to Japan some day. Next time we're in Kyoto we'll buy a good vegetable knife ("cai dao" en chinois), assuming weapons are still allowed in checked luggage.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Beauty
I was at Carrefour (Jia le fu) this morning browsing the cosmetic aisles, looking for skin lotion, when I saw a *PROMOTION* sign on a lower shelf displaying small (75-90 g) tubes of hand cream. I couldn't resist, and can you blame me? From now on my hands will only touch SNAKE OIL HAND CREAM from Tayoi. I'll let you know how it works.
Sssssssssss!
Sssssssssss!
Sunday, September 24, 2006
The Outer Limits
9/24/06 – Yesterday we made our first real foray into suburban Shanghai. We’d been way out west and way out east before, when we were looking at schools in April, but we didn’t know where we were going at the time. The birthday invitation directed us to meet at the Xi Jiao Sports Center on Hong Qiao Road, some distance past SCIS, for the bowling portion of the festivities. You never know how long it will take to get anywhere in this town, so I allowed an hour for the taxi ride, and with very little traffic and an experienced cab driver it only took us about 20 minutes. Xi Jiao Sports Center bills itself as “A Country Club In The City,” and its facilities are very nice – a beautiful indoor pool, squash courts, a small bowling alley, nice bathrooms, marble everywhere. While we waited for the birthday girl, the other Julia, and her entourage, we checked out some of the amenities.
I figured that since I was out in this neighborhood I should explore – after all, this is where the majority of SCIS families hang out. I had considered visiting the Shanghai Jewish Center, which advertised that its bakery would be selling bagels, but I didn’t think Rosh Hashanah was the best time to drop in on the Lubavitchers. I took out my map and got directions to the Marriott, one of the local landmarks. It isn’t a long walk, out Hong Qiao Road, past new construction and not-so-new, hotels, a medical center from the book of business cards of favorite expat places, and lots of weeds like those that grow in the eastern U.S. There is demolition going on even here, but the buildings being torn down are more likely 15 than 50. One of the buildings possibly destined for demolition is a low concrete structure with what looks like a mosaic of a Chinese landscape along the building’s front, but on closer scrutiny it turns out to be a picture of a mosaic.
This area is very different from downtown Shanghai. The streets are wide and straight, with bike lanes that are separated from the stream of vehicle traffic by curbs or fences. Out here you see white folks jogging and even riding bikes with the rest of the 2-wheeled traffic. Cars and motorcycles still honk, but there are fewer people for them to honk at. After mohn strudel (at a Hungarian deli) and a bathroom break at the Marriott I walked back in the direction of SCIS to check out some of the streets I’d heard so much about, like Hongmei Lu. This is where the famous pearl market is located and the Hongmei Lu food street, but it turns out that it is actually a restaurant street with a lot of foreign restaurants and cafes – Japanese, Iranian, Indian, American, German, plus the German bakery that the school moms recommend. The bakery has wonderful truffles in dark and white chocolate that are called rum balls but taste like marzipan. They cost about 50 cents apiece and are big enough to share.
Hongmei Road and vicinity are home to 2 big expat grocery stores, but I wasn’t planning to shop, so I left them for another visit. I continued east until I arrived at Gubei Road and the famous Gubei Carrefour. Carrefour is a French import, very popular with Chinese and foreigners alike. This particular branch is known for the amount of shelf space devoted to imported food items. It also carries a wider selection of organic produce, all nicely wrapped in plastic, than the other branches. We needed more drinking glasses, and I ended up doing some grocery shopping after all. I always find it necessary to balance the fact that I am at a place where prices are low and most of what we need is available, with the fact that if I want to walk anywhere I’m going to have to carry all the crap I’ve bought. I prefer not to go toilet paper shopping alone. The Gubei Carrefour wasn’t nearly as crowded as the one that Julia and I visited last weekend, which is near the metro. However, the metro fare plus a one-way cab ride probably cost us more than if we had taken a cab both ways to this one. I’ll probably go back next time I need to do a big ugly supermarket shop by taxi.
There is a problem with all maps of the new parts of Shanghai. Most of the streets weren’t in existence when the maps were drawn, and they were definitely not drawn to scale. I thought I would go to the nearest metro station and hop a train to home. I walked through new fancy apartment complexes with names like Vienna Plaza, Athena Garden and Paris Garden (Ba Li Hua Yuan). I think I found where the Koreans live; 2 buses from the Shanghai Korean School stopped in front of one of the complexes to let out busloads of kids. But it’s still Shanghai, and Shanghai is still China. You still see people riding flatbed bikes carrying 5-gallon bottles of water or produce or stacks of burlap bags. You still smell the sewer when it’s hot, and your shoes still get dirty walking on new sidewalks. I walked down brand new streets, past apartment buildings under construction and apartment buildings fully inhabited with satellite dishes and laundry drying on every balcony. I finally got tired of walking and caught a cab for home. The truffles survived the trip, I am happy to say.
If Gubei was a trek, the trip to the Shanghai Racquet Club and Apartments that night, past Hong Qiao Airport and near the Puxi campus of the Shanghai American School, was an eye-opener. I had a map and the taxi driver knew where he was going, so we had no trouble until we got into the development and had no idea which direction to go. Past the Outer Ring Road, through truck traffic, past a BMW dealership, through smells of burning trash, along a short business street jammed with young Chinese out on Saturday night, past dark landscapes edged with light poles advertising nearby compounds and villas. The expat communities out here have names like Forest Manor, Westwood Green and Rancho Santa Fe. Eventually I started seeing signs for the British International School, so I knew we were in the general vicinity. The cab ride took a little less than an hour and cost a little less than $10. Getting home is never quite as difficult as getting from downtown to the outskirts, but it's about time I learned how to tell the taxi driver to take the Maoming Lu exit off the highway. I can see that it will save us some time and money in the future.
The birthday girl’s parents chose this development because it was convenient to his work out of town; it’s big and full of families, kids, bikes and the rest; and it has a great club house. I can see the appeal, but it would never work for us, in spite of Julia’s burning desire to live near her friends. I would go nuts if I were that far from everything, and Bill wouldn’t be able to get to work. Still, in hindsight, I wish we had chosen a place that had a pool and a gym. Next lifetime.
I figured that since I was out in this neighborhood I should explore – after all, this is where the majority of SCIS families hang out. I had considered visiting the Shanghai Jewish Center, which advertised that its bakery would be selling bagels, but I didn’t think Rosh Hashanah was the best time to drop in on the Lubavitchers. I took out my map and got directions to the Marriott, one of the local landmarks. It isn’t a long walk, out Hong Qiao Road, past new construction and not-so-new, hotels, a medical center from the book of business cards of favorite expat places, and lots of weeds like those that grow in the eastern U.S. There is demolition going on even here, but the buildings being torn down are more likely 15 than 50. One of the buildings possibly destined for demolition is a low concrete structure with what looks like a mosaic of a Chinese landscape along the building’s front, but on closer scrutiny it turns out to be a picture of a mosaic.
This area is very different from downtown Shanghai. The streets are wide and straight, with bike lanes that are separated from the stream of vehicle traffic by curbs or fences. Out here you see white folks jogging and even riding bikes with the rest of the 2-wheeled traffic. Cars and motorcycles still honk, but there are fewer people for them to honk at. After mohn strudel (at a Hungarian deli) and a bathroom break at the Marriott I walked back in the direction of SCIS to check out some of the streets I’d heard so much about, like Hongmei Lu. This is where the famous pearl market is located and the Hongmei Lu food street, but it turns out that it is actually a restaurant street with a lot of foreign restaurants and cafes – Japanese, Iranian, Indian, American, German, plus the German bakery that the school moms recommend. The bakery has wonderful truffles in dark and white chocolate that are called rum balls but taste like marzipan. They cost about 50 cents apiece and are big enough to share.
Hongmei Road and vicinity are home to 2 big expat grocery stores, but I wasn’t planning to shop, so I left them for another visit. I continued east until I arrived at Gubei Road and the famous Gubei Carrefour. Carrefour is a French import, very popular with Chinese and foreigners alike. This particular branch is known for the amount of shelf space devoted to imported food items. It also carries a wider selection of organic produce, all nicely wrapped in plastic, than the other branches. We needed more drinking glasses, and I ended up doing some grocery shopping after all. I always find it necessary to balance the fact that I am at a place where prices are low and most of what we need is available, with the fact that if I want to walk anywhere I’m going to have to carry all the crap I’ve bought. I prefer not to go toilet paper shopping alone. The Gubei Carrefour wasn’t nearly as crowded as the one that Julia and I visited last weekend, which is near the metro. However, the metro fare plus a one-way cab ride probably cost us more than if we had taken a cab both ways to this one. I’ll probably go back next time I need to do a big ugly supermarket shop by taxi.
There is a problem with all maps of the new parts of Shanghai. Most of the streets weren’t in existence when the maps were drawn, and they were definitely not drawn to scale. I thought I would go to the nearest metro station and hop a train to home. I walked through new fancy apartment complexes with names like Vienna Plaza, Athena Garden and Paris Garden (Ba Li Hua Yuan). I think I found where the Koreans live; 2 buses from the Shanghai Korean School stopped in front of one of the complexes to let out busloads of kids. But it’s still Shanghai, and Shanghai is still China. You still see people riding flatbed bikes carrying 5-gallon bottles of water or produce or stacks of burlap bags. You still smell the sewer when it’s hot, and your shoes still get dirty walking on new sidewalks. I walked down brand new streets, past apartment buildings under construction and apartment buildings fully inhabited with satellite dishes and laundry drying on every balcony. I finally got tired of walking and caught a cab for home. The truffles survived the trip, I am happy to say.
If Gubei was a trek, the trip to the Shanghai Racquet Club and Apartments that night, past Hong Qiao Airport and near the Puxi campus of the Shanghai American School, was an eye-opener. I had a map and the taxi driver knew where he was going, so we had no trouble until we got into the development and had no idea which direction to go. Past the Outer Ring Road, through truck traffic, past a BMW dealership, through smells of burning trash, along a short business street jammed with young Chinese out on Saturday night, past dark landscapes edged with light poles advertising nearby compounds and villas. The expat communities out here have names like Forest Manor, Westwood Green and Rancho Santa Fe. Eventually I started seeing signs for the British International School, so I knew we were in the general vicinity. The cab ride took a little less than an hour and cost a little less than $10. Getting home is never quite as difficult as getting from downtown to the outskirts, but it's about time I learned how to tell the taxi driver to take the Maoming Lu exit off the highway. I can see that it will save us some time and money in the future.
The birthday girl’s parents chose this development because it was convenient to his work out of town; it’s big and full of families, kids, bikes and the rest; and it has a great club house. I can see the appeal, but it would never work for us, in spite of Julia’s burning desire to live near her friends. I would go nuts if I were that far from everything, and Bill wouldn’t be able to get to work. Still, in hindsight, I wish we had chosen a place that had a pool and a gym. Next lifetime.
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Technical Difficulties
It looks as if our problem lies with the DVD player, not the discs. Of course, the manual is in Chinese, but it doesn't look as if it contains much information, in any case. Stay tuned . . . or, rather, go out and play. Or read a good book. We're all spending too much time in front of the TV as it is.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
The Neighborhood
9/20/06 - We live on the edge of one of the big tourist hotel and shopping areas in Shanghai, half a block off Nanjing Xi Lu. If you walk west down Nanjing Road you pass restaurants, shops and shopping malls, some Chinese and many American and European. This is where you find your Prada, Escada and Cartier. You can buy a real Rolex here, as opposed to the ones the guys on the corner try to sell you: “Hallo lady, watch!” “Hallo, Rolex!” The brand names you see include Louis Vuitton, Birkenstock, Burberry, Max Mara, Bulgari, Lancôme, Tag Heuer and Esprit. Also Vskonne, Lan Tang, Sparkle, Easy Shop, Urban Shock, Hot Wind, Et Boite and Zara. There are stores selling mobile phones, eyeglasses, flowers, baked goods, candy and treats (one store has its name, I presume, in Chinese over one door and “Childrens Food” over the other), whiskey, cigarettes and jewelry. We have Lei Yun Shang Pharmacy Since 1662, although obviously not in that same building. In the heat of summer, walking by the pharmacy, you get a whiff of ginseng every time the door opens. And then there’s Mickey Mouse’s underwear (Knock knock, who’s there, Mickey Mouse’s underwear), one of a chain of stores selling the Disney children’s underwear collection. We are sad that none of us can fit into them.
Julia’s favorite store, on the corner right near Mickey Mouse, is called Westmend. Not West End or West Bend. This store (it’s part of a chain) has 2 windows holding 4 white featureless mannequins clad in short ruffled clothing in white, black, pink and dark purple or maroon. They change their clothes every few days.
We also have lots of grownup underwear stores.
As you walk along Nanjing Road (yi zhi zou) from our street, about 15 minutes if the sidewalk isn’t too crowded, you get to Shanghai Centre, the center of the wealthy traveler’s universe. Shanghai Centre is home to the Portman Ritz-Carleton (known as the Portman to westerners and Po ta man to the Chinese), an exclusive apartment complex, an office tower, the Shanghai Centre Theater, and a series of shops and businesses, including Haagen Dazs, California Pizza Kitchen, Tony Roma’s, a bank, a tailor, Aeroflot, Turkish Airlines, an expensive grocery store, an expensive Italian restaurant, and an expensive wine and cheese shop (and I do mean expensive – the cheapest cheese is about $7.00 per 100 g, or almost $35.00 per pound). In front on the sidewalk are the designers: Ferragamo, Gucci, Marc Jacobs – they are available for your spending pleasure, at the same prices as anywhere else in the world.
Directly across the street from the Portman is the Shanghai Exhibition Center, an imposing yellow stone building with columns and carved trim. You can see it from the elevated highway going east or west. When we were here in April there was an agricultural show. This August, after we arrived for our stint, there was a show of sex toys. Recently, this month, the center housed the Shanghai Design Biennial.
One thing that amazes me about shopping in Shanghai is the incredible number of upscale shops. Yes, there is only one Fendi boutique within this particular 6-block area, but unlike American cities, where you might find these designers opening their flagship stores downtown to great fanfare, go to another major shopping area in Shanghai and you will find the same stores. I guess with 20 million plus inhabitants and numerous wealthy business travelers and tourists, there are enough potential customers to keep all these places in business. An amusing aspect of the way shops are clustered here is the prevalence of American fast food chains. Every fancy mall and expensive shopping district I’ve seen, with the exception of Xintiandi, has a McDonalds or KFC in amongst the Diors and Armanis. They also may have a fancy café in the center and a market full of imported food items in the basement, but many of them have reasonably-priced Chinese restaurants as well, both fast food and waiter service.
Between our apartment and the Portman there are 3 Starbucks.
Walking down Nanjing Road is an experience. My Chinese class is about 10 minutes past the Portman, although it’s only about 3 blocks further west. The traffic lights are long, and at several intersections we have traffic assistants (and presumably their superiors), in uniform, motioning pedestrians back onto the sidewalk and blowing their whistles at people and bikes that deign to ignore the red lights. The sidewalks on the south side of the street are covered with boards for almost a mile. When we arrived in Shanghai last month some stretches were also covered with green or red outdoor carpeting, perhaps to make the uneven surface seem more hospitable. I wondered why the boards were there, but didn’t learn their purpose until one night when we walked to a restaurant for dinner and found the sidewalks opened up, with workers uncovering pipes underground. Now that I know there is empty space beneath the boards, I see darkness through the gaps, and it makes the walk that much more exciting. It is very common for sidewalks to be dug up in Shanghai. Rain adds to the excitement, when along with wall-to-curb bodies, the air above the sidewalks is full of umbrellas jockeying for position. Mixed in with the shoppers and people going to work or lunch are the people sweeping the sidewalks with twig brooms; the construction workers; the beggars and people with missing limbs; the boys thrusting cards advertising airlines? airport shuttles? in your face (shouldn't they be in school?); the people on bikes carrying enormous stacks of flattened cardboard; the vendors of phone cards, cheap clothing, bead jewelry and assorted odds and ends; and in good weather, street musicians.
We are only 3 blocks from the number 2 subway line at Shimen Yi Lu. When the weather is bad or I am in a hurry, I can take the subway one stop and be at my Chinese class in 15 minutes.
At the other end of our street, on Weihai Lu, we are near the Four Seasons Hotel, which is located a block past the intersection of the two streets forming auto parts row. The blocks and blocks of auto parts start at our corner. Interspersed are small restaurants, food stalls, shops selling whatever, municipal offices and construction sites. Shanghai is full of construction sites. If you don’t turn right on Weihai Road but instead cross the street and continue straight (a dangerous proposition as there is no traffic light here), you walk through Top of City, a large apartment complex consisting of at least 8 high-rise buildings arranged in the shape of a squashed figure-eight with 3 lobes instead of 2. The two circular walkways at either end of the figure-eight surround ornamental plantings and are connected by a bridge that bisects a lagoon. At one end of the bridge is a small sign that says “Do not surmount parapet DANGER!” and shows an icon of a person falling. The water is very shallow, but perhaps that’s what makes surmounting parapet a dangerous proposition. In spite of all the silt and barely submerged grasses, the lagoon is rather attractive, with water lilies and lotus and a red canoe moored near one of the apartment buildings.
Julia wishes we lived at Top of City. On the other hand, she also wishes we lived at the Shanghai Raquet Club, where 2 of her American classmates’ families live. I think our neighborhood is probably more interesting.
On the other side of Top of City is Dagu Lu, a quiet street with a variety of foreign and ethnic restaurants, two competing video stores that offer current American TV programs, a fancy spa (part of a chain that the expat ladies all like), a pet supply store, a produce market, a club of unknown description, and more construction. We wouldn’t buy Julia the complete Gilmore Girls set at the video store, but we bought the complete Pink Panther. Turns out that the DVDs you buy in a store like this aren’t necessarily a lot better than the ones you get on the street even though the packaging is nicer. On the other hand, at around $8 for a box of 6 disks (5 films plus special features), the price is still pretty darn cheap. You get what you pay for.
Julia’s favorite store, on the corner right near Mickey Mouse, is called Westmend. Not West End or West Bend. This store (it’s part of a chain) has 2 windows holding 4 white featureless mannequins clad in short ruffled clothing in white, black, pink and dark purple or maroon. They change their clothes every few days.
We also have lots of grownup underwear stores.
As you walk along Nanjing Road (yi zhi zou) from our street, about 15 minutes if the sidewalk isn’t too crowded, you get to Shanghai Centre, the center of the wealthy traveler’s universe. Shanghai Centre is home to the Portman Ritz-Carleton (known as the Portman to westerners and Po ta man to the Chinese), an exclusive apartment complex, an office tower, the Shanghai Centre Theater, and a series of shops and businesses, including Haagen Dazs, California Pizza Kitchen, Tony Roma’s, a bank, a tailor, Aeroflot, Turkish Airlines, an expensive grocery store, an expensive Italian restaurant, and an expensive wine and cheese shop (and I do mean expensive – the cheapest cheese is about $7.00 per 100 g, or almost $35.00 per pound). In front on the sidewalk are the designers: Ferragamo, Gucci, Marc Jacobs – they are available for your spending pleasure, at the same prices as anywhere else in the world.
Directly across the street from the Portman is the Shanghai Exhibition Center, an imposing yellow stone building with columns and carved trim. You can see it from the elevated highway going east or west. When we were here in April there was an agricultural show. This August, after we arrived for our stint, there was a show of sex toys. Recently, this month, the center housed the Shanghai Design Biennial.
One thing that amazes me about shopping in Shanghai is the incredible number of upscale shops. Yes, there is only one Fendi boutique within this particular 6-block area, but unlike American cities, where you might find these designers opening their flagship stores downtown to great fanfare, go to another major shopping area in Shanghai and you will find the same stores. I guess with 20 million plus inhabitants and numerous wealthy business travelers and tourists, there are enough potential customers to keep all these places in business. An amusing aspect of the way shops are clustered here is the prevalence of American fast food chains. Every fancy mall and expensive shopping district I’ve seen, with the exception of Xintiandi, has a McDonalds or KFC in amongst the Diors and Armanis. They also may have a fancy café in the center and a market full of imported food items in the basement, but many of them have reasonably-priced Chinese restaurants as well, both fast food and waiter service.
Between our apartment and the Portman there are 3 Starbucks.
Walking down Nanjing Road is an experience. My Chinese class is about 10 minutes past the Portman, although it’s only about 3 blocks further west. The traffic lights are long, and at several intersections we have traffic assistants (and presumably their superiors), in uniform, motioning pedestrians back onto the sidewalk and blowing their whistles at people and bikes that deign to ignore the red lights. The sidewalks on the south side of the street are covered with boards for almost a mile. When we arrived in Shanghai last month some stretches were also covered with green or red outdoor carpeting, perhaps to make the uneven surface seem more hospitable. I wondered why the boards were there, but didn’t learn their purpose until one night when we walked to a restaurant for dinner and found the sidewalks opened up, with workers uncovering pipes underground. Now that I know there is empty space beneath the boards, I see darkness through the gaps, and it makes the walk that much more exciting. It is very common for sidewalks to be dug up in Shanghai. Rain adds to the excitement, when along with wall-to-curb bodies, the air above the sidewalks is full of umbrellas jockeying for position. Mixed in with the shoppers and people going to work or lunch are the people sweeping the sidewalks with twig brooms; the construction workers; the beggars and people with missing limbs; the boys thrusting cards advertising airlines? airport shuttles? in your face (shouldn't they be in school?); the people on bikes carrying enormous stacks of flattened cardboard; the vendors of phone cards, cheap clothing, bead jewelry and assorted odds and ends; and in good weather, street musicians.
We are only 3 blocks from the number 2 subway line at Shimen Yi Lu. When the weather is bad or I am in a hurry, I can take the subway one stop and be at my Chinese class in 15 minutes.
At the other end of our street, on Weihai Lu, we are near the Four Seasons Hotel, which is located a block past the intersection of the two streets forming auto parts row. The blocks and blocks of auto parts start at our corner. Interspersed are small restaurants, food stalls, shops selling whatever, municipal offices and construction sites. Shanghai is full of construction sites. If you don’t turn right on Weihai Road but instead cross the street and continue straight (a dangerous proposition as there is no traffic light here), you walk through Top of City, a large apartment complex consisting of at least 8 high-rise buildings arranged in the shape of a squashed figure-eight with 3 lobes instead of 2. The two circular walkways at either end of the figure-eight surround ornamental plantings and are connected by a bridge that bisects a lagoon. At one end of the bridge is a small sign that says “Do not surmount parapet DANGER!” and shows an icon of a person falling. The water is very shallow, but perhaps that’s what makes surmounting parapet a dangerous proposition. In spite of all the silt and barely submerged grasses, the lagoon is rather attractive, with water lilies and lotus and a red canoe moored near one of the apartment buildings.
Julia wishes we lived at Top of City. On the other hand, she also wishes we lived at the Shanghai Raquet Club, where 2 of her American classmates’ families live. I think our neighborhood is probably more interesting.
On the other side of Top of City is Dagu Lu, a quiet street with a variety of foreign and ethnic restaurants, two competing video stores that offer current American TV programs, a fancy spa (part of a chain that the expat ladies all like), a pet supply store, a produce market, a club of unknown description, and more construction. We wouldn’t buy Julia the complete Gilmore Girls set at the video store, but we bought the complete Pink Panther. Turns out that the DVDs you buy in a store like this aren’t necessarily a lot better than the ones you get on the street even though the packaging is nicer. On the other hand, at around $8 for a box of 6 disks (5 films plus special features), the price is still pretty darn cheap. You get what you pay for.
Food (1)
9/20/06 - Sasha “chocolate cake” cookies, named after cousin Sasha, no doubt. Shortening is the second ingredient, after flour. Then sugar, then vegetable oil. Brandy and “edible alcohol” come after “edible salt.” Thank goodness they're edible!
Why I bought them: “Confidence of creating deliciousness. This tastiness can not be carried even by both hands.” Also, “Unique storage technology keep good-flavour longer.”
Date of minimum durability: One year from the date of manufacture
Date of manufacture: Shown on package. Looks as if they were manufactured on September 11, 2006. Too bad we won’t be able to keep them until September 11, 2007 to test their durability.
Why I bought them: “Confidence of creating deliciousness. This tastiness can not be carried even by both hands.” Also, “Unique storage technology keep good-flavour longer.”
Date of minimum durability: One year from the date of manufacture
Date of manufacture: Shown on package. Looks as if they were manufactured on September 11, 2006. Too bad we won’t be able to keep them until September 11, 2007 to test their durability.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
The News
We've started subscribing to the International Herald Tribune, which gives us New York Times news as well as international news focused on Asia. Before our subscription started, we were buying the Shanghai Daily or the China Daily whenever we remembered, and watching CCTV 9, the Chinese English-language TV station, where we saw the bad news on the weather (36 degrees in Shanghai!) several times a day. Now that we have satellite TV we seldom watch Chinese TV, which is a shame. Perhaps when our Mandarin improves I'll give us the assignment to watch Chinese TV 1/2 hour per day, homework permitting.
Since we arrived here I've been reading the business news, something I never spent much time on at home. For one, there's a lot more of it relative to the rest of the paper. For another, the IHT business news is very different from the business section of the SF Chronicle, and conveys considerably more information about economy and society in Asia. We get the IHT from Hong Kong so the emphasis is on Asian news of all sorts, along with the regular news and editorial content. I even read the sports section, something I seldom did at home in the US.
Although I appreciate the chance to read well-written New York Times-style news stories, the Chinese news is both more interesting and more enlightening. Examples from the Shanghai Daily (archives available only to subscribers) of Friday, September 8, 2006:
Expats honored with award - Thirty-eight foreigners, mostly business executives, were awarded the Magnolia Silver Award by the city government yesterday for outstanding contributions to the city's development. But as officials praised the award winners, some recipients suggested the government could do more to improve the local manners as well as the city's business environment. . .
Expo weather under control, bureau says - The Shanghai Meteoriological Bureau said it was taking steps to ensure 2010 World Expo festivities are not dampened by the weather. The Expo, which will take place from May to October, could be hit by the plum rains, soaring summer temperatures or seasonal typhoons, the bureau said. The bureau is planning to control the climate through cloud seeding or cloud removal. . .
Woman appeals grandmother status - . . . Wang wants to prove her son wasn't really married -- a court has already annulled the marriage -- and didn't have a child so she is his sole heir and gets to keep the apartment. . .
In this issue is a full-page opinion piece about coal-bed methane, entitled TAP MINE GAS, with a sidebar stating that "China has the highest number of coalmine accident fatalities in the world, with about 80 percent of casualties attributed to gas explosions, causing direct losses of US$93 million a year." The author believes that investment is the key, and apparently a coal-bed methane power plant is being built in Shanxi province. Let's hope some of that investment is in mine safety. Unfortunately, occupational safety does not receive much attention here.
One of the things I will bring home with me is a file of news articles. There is plenty of environmental news in the English language press. From page A2 of the Monday, September 11, 2006, edition of the Shanghai Daily:
Water source in Hunan tainted by arsenic spill - Nearly 100,000 residents in central China's Yueyang have been warned to stop using their tap water for drinking after a nearby river was contaminated by an arsenic leak from a chemical plant. . .
Safe drinking water targeted - China will tighten pollution controls over the next five years in its campaign to provide safe drinking water to its populous countryside, a top official said yesterday. . .
No doubt there will be more such stories tomorrow. I'd better remember to buy a paper.
Since we arrived here I've been reading the business news, something I never spent much time on at home. For one, there's a lot more of it relative to the rest of the paper. For another, the IHT business news is very different from the business section of the SF Chronicle, and conveys considerably more information about economy and society in Asia. We get the IHT from Hong Kong so the emphasis is on Asian news of all sorts, along with the regular news and editorial content. I even read the sports section, something I seldom did at home in the US.
Although I appreciate the chance to read well-written New York Times-style news stories, the Chinese news is both more interesting and more enlightening. Examples from the Shanghai Daily (archives available only to subscribers) of Friday, September 8, 2006:
Expats honored with award - Thirty-eight foreigners, mostly business executives, were awarded the Magnolia Silver Award by the city government yesterday for outstanding contributions to the city's development. But as officials praised the award winners, some recipients suggested the government could do more to improve the local manners as well as the city's business environment. . .
Expo weather under control, bureau says - The Shanghai Meteoriological Bureau said it was taking steps to ensure 2010 World Expo festivities are not dampened by the weather. The Expo, which will take place from May to October, could be hit by the plum rains, soaring summer temperatures or seasonal typhoons, the bureau said. The bureau is planning to control the climate through cloud seeding or cloud removal. . .
Woman appeals grandmother status - . . . Wang wants to prove her son wasn't really married -- a court has already annulled the marriage -- and didn't have a child so she is his sole heir and gets to keep the apartment. . .
In this issue is a full-page opinion piece about coal-bed methane, entitled TAP MINE GAS, with a sidebar stating that "China has the highest number of coalmine accident fatalities in the world, with about 80 percent of casualties attributed to gas explosions, causing direct losses of US$93 million a year." The author believes that investment is the key, and apparently a coal-bed methane power plant is being built in Shanxi province. Let's hope some of that investment is in mine safety. Unfortunately, occupational safety does not receive much attention here.
One of the things I will bring home with me is a file of news articles. There is plenty of environmental news in the English language press. From page A2 of the Monday, September 11, 2006, edition of the Shanghai Daily:
Water source in Hunan tainted by arsenic spill - Nearly 100,000 residents in central China's Yueyang have been warned to stop using their tap water for drinking after a nearby river was contaminated by an arsenic leak from a chemical plant. . .
Safe drinking water targeted - China will tighten pollution controls over the next five years in its campaign to provide safe drinking water to its populous countryside, a top official said yesterday. . .
No doubt there will be more such stories tomorrow. I'd better remember to buy a paper.
Breakthrough in International Relations
9/13/06 - Hi. It's me, Eloise. I've been writing but not posting because what I wrote wasn't quite done to my liking. But I've been busy lately, and I need to jot down some notes or I'll forget, and those wonderful thoughts will fly out of my head and be gone. Here are some random observations of life - my life, mostly - in Shanghai.
I started a Chinese class about 2 weeks ago. My classmate is a Colombian woman who is married to a Spanish man and graduated from UC Berkeley. She told me that she loved Berkeley, and recently took her husband there, showed him every place she lived and visited all her favorite food spots. She wasn't in class today, but a young American whose parents live here was having a trial class to see if he wants to study at this particular school. I figure him to be just out of college, or maybe taking a break from college. He was cute, and his parents are probably younger than I am. My teacher is named Zhao Pei, Peipei to her friends, and her English name - everyone who deals with foreigners has an English name - is Pallas. Bill says that one of the guys in his office has the English name of Crystal. Most of the women from Shanghai who were part of the visiting scholar program at the CA Dept of Health Services have English names, but the men who were there earlier this year did not. I don't know why that is. I've been playing email tag with one of the women, Sarah (Fu Minjiao). I think we're going to meet on Friday.
A lot of what I do in between Chinese lessons and orientation coffees (more about that in a bit) is shopping. I don't mean shopping for cheap Chinese doodads or exquisite Chinese art, but grocery shopping and shopping for household stuff. We have broken 4 of the 8 Ikea glasses that the landlord provided (actually, our teeny little dishwasher broke most of them), and I have invited He Ping, a Chinese law professor, and her family, over for an American dinner at some later date, and we don't have enough dishes. So I have to buy stuff. Not to mention the fact that when we arrived we bought exactly 2 sets of sheets and 3 pillows, which leaves our prospective guests with nothing but sofa pillows and the teensy electric blanket. I went to Ikea once with Silvia, the real estate assistant, and I hope never to go back there again. It is EXACTLY like Ikea anywhere, and it was not appealing. We bought, or rather, the landlord bought us, a desk and 2 chairs, along with a small rug so the cheap chair wouldn't damage the lovely dark wood floor. But I also got some 39 RMB fleece blankets (I swear they were cheaper in Emeryville), that Sonic will pay for and that we will give away when we return to Berkeley. Bill's team at the office is going to have their pick of junk at New Years.
Anyway, today I had to pick Julia up, because Wednesday is chorus day and there are no buses after the extracurricular activities. So if I leave the house by 2:30 (when I take the subway - 3:00 if I take a cab) I can go to the organic store and to the upscale German deli and meat store a couple of blocks away in the Sheraton Grand Tai Ping Yang Hotel. And it is a grand hotel. When they get you a taxi, the taxi guy gives you a piece of paper on which to write down the number of the driver, in case you want to report him for malfeasance, I suppose.
Julia's vocabulary words in language arts class have the prefix "mal-" this week, but I don't believe malfeasance is among them. However, "malaria" is. Go figure.
You enter the hotel through the automatic doors and head to the fabulous marble stairway to the second floor mezzanine. There a sign directs you to Bauernstube, which is approximately opposite the stairway. But they prefer to direct traffic, just as you enter Bauernstube through one door and exit through another. This is enforced by the uniformed door-opener who holds the door for you as you leave with your goodies. You can also enter through the jewelry and gift store next door, which is what I did when I realized I had left behind my fabulous bargain sheets, bought at a branch of a New York bedding store, one I'd never heard of, in the Parkson's shopping mall across (dui mian) from O Store. So the sign to Bauernstube from the stairs points you in the direction that leads you around past the other shops. The people who work behind the meat and deli counters wear surgical masks, and everyone in the store appears to speak English or German or possibly both. Besides meat and cheese they have good bread, expensive for here, and a bakery where a bag of meringues is about $1.50. Yum. The Germans love this place. All this fabulosity is a 10 to 15-minute walk from Shanghai Community International School, Hongqiao campus, second choice school for American expatriates living in Puxi, that is, the west side of the Huangpu River. The east side, also called the new area, is Pudong. Can you guess what xi and dong mean?
The result of all this shopping is that I didn't really do much today beside saying goodbye to Bill (he's on his way to SFO as I write this), go to Chinese class, buy boring groceries (milk and banana chips), household goods, expensive cold cuts that I probably wouldn't buy at Andronico's, organic vegetables (at least twice the price of the cheap veggies, but still really cheap), meet Julia at school, flag down a taxi, come home, make dinner, eat, do dishes, help Julia with her homework. And here I am at the computer, nerding away. Meanwhile, we now have 2 extra sets of sheets, a new bag of meringues, and we're almost ready for company. Let me know when you're coming and I'll be sure to buy those dishes.
I started a Chinese class about 2 weeks ago. My classmate is a Colombian woman who is married to a Spanish man and graduated from UC Berkeley. She told me that she loved Berkeley, and recently took her husband there, showed him every place she lived and visited all her favorite food spots. She wasn't in class today, but a young American whose parents live here was having a trial class to see if he wants to study at this particular school. I figure him to be just out of college, or maybe taking a break from college. He was cute, and his parents are probably younger than I am. My teacher is named Zhao Pei, Peipei to her friends, and her English name - everyone who deals with foreigners has an English name - is Pallas. Bill says that one of the guys in his office has the English name of Crystal. Most of the women from Shanghai who were part of the visiting scholar program at the CA Dept of Health Services have English names, but the men who were there earlier this year did not. I don't know why that is. I've been playing email tag with one of the women, Sarah (Fu Minjiao). I think we're going to meet on Friday.
A lot of what I do in between Chinese lessons and orientation coffees (more about that in a bit) is shopping. I don't mean shopping for cheap Chinese doodads or exquisite Chinese art, but grocery shopping and shopping for household stuff. We have broken 4 of the 8 Ikea glasses that the landlord provided (actually, our teeny little dishwasher broke most of them), and I have invited He Ping, a Chinese law professor, and her family, over for an American dinner at some later date, and we don't have enough dishes. So I have to buy stuff. Not to mention the fact that when we arrived we bought exactly 2 sets of sheets and 3 pillows, which leaves our prospective guests with nothing but sofa pillows and the teensy electric blanket. I went to Ikea once with Silvia, the real estate assistant, and I hope never to go back there again. It is EXACTLY like Ikea anywhere, and it was not appealing. We bought, or rather, the landlord bought us, a desk and 2 chairs, along with a small rug so the cheap chair wouldn't damage the lovely dark wood floor. But I also got some 39 RMB fleece blankets (I swear they were cheaper in Emeryville), that Sonic will pay for and that we will give away when we return to Berkeley. Bill's team at the office is going to have their pick of junk at New Years.
Anyway, today I had to pick Julia up, because Wednesday is chorus day and there are no buses after the extracurricular activities. So if I leave the house by 2:30 (when I take the subway - 3:00 if I take a cab) I can go to the organic store and to the upscale German deli and meat store a couple of blocks away in the Sheraton Grand Tai Ping Yang Hotel. And it is a grand hotel. When they get you a taxi, the taxi guy gives you a piece of paper on which to write down the number of the driver, in case you want to report him for malfeasance, I suppose.
Julia's vocabulary words in language arts class have the prefix "mal-" this week, but I don't believe malfeasance is among them. However, "malaria" is. Go figure.
You enter the hotel through the automatic doors and head to the fabulous marble stairway to the second floor mezzanine. There a sign directs you to Bauernstube, which is approximately opposite the stairway. But they prefer to direct traffic, just as you enter Bauernstube through one door and exit through another. This is enforced by the uniformed door-opener who holds the door for you as you leave with your goodies. You can also enter through the jewelry and gift store next door, which is what I did when I realized I had left behind my fabulous bargain sheets, bought at a branch of a New York bedding store, one I'd never heard of, in the Parkson's shopping mall across (dui mian) from O Store. So the sign to Bauernstube from the stairs points you in the direction that leads you around past the other shops. The people who work behind the meat and deli counters wear surgical masks, and everyone in the store appears to speak English or German or possibly both. Besides meat and cheese they have good bread, expensive for here, and a bakery where a bag of meringues is about $1.50. Yum. The Germans love this place. All this fabulosity is a 10 to 15-minute walk from Shanghai Community International School, Hongqiao campus, second choice school for American expatriates living in Puxi, that is, the west side of the Huangpu River. The east side, also called the new area, is Pudong. Can you guess what xi and dong mean?
The result of all this shopping is that I didn't really do much today beside saying goodbye to Bill (he's on his way to SFO as I write this), go to Chinese class, buy boring groceries (milk and banana chips), household goods, expensive cold cuts that I probably wouldn't buy at Andronico's, organic vegetables (at least twice the price of the cheap veggies, but still really cheap), meet Julia at school, flag down a taxi, come home, make dinner, eat, do dishes, help Julia with her homework. And here I am at the computer, nerding away. Meanwhile, we now have 2 extra sets of sheets, a new bag of meringues, and we're almost ready for company. Let me know when you're coming and I'll be sure to buy those dishes.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
News Digest
Headlines from "China Scene," short takes from current Chinese media, China Daily, Wednesday, September 6, 2006:
Man falls down, gets 'occupational injury' - Shanghai Morning Post
Residents save foreigner from extortion - Shanghai Labour Daily
Tile pattern livens students' school - Shanghai Morning Post
Much more software talent needed - Xinhua Daily
Baby's swimming lesson nearly turns fatal - Shanghai Evening News
Crane gamble doesn't offset betting losses - www.dzwww.com
Retired soldier honoured as crime-stopper - www.xinhuanet.com
Courses aim to teach women ladyhood - Bandao Metropolitan
Garbage collection 'king' is big charity donor - Dalian Evening News
Trade union honours upstanding elders - www.xinhuanet.com
Drunk driver sleeps through car crash - Inner Mongolian Morning Post
Murder suspect's hideout ends - Liaosheng Evening News
Student returns neglected funds - Hubei Daily
Complaining wife drains magic from marriage - www.xinhuanet.com
Cartoons with Chinese characteristics - Sanxiang Metropolis Daily
Suspected burglar actually after cheating wife - Chongqing Business News
Awning foils man's suicide attempt - Chongqing Business News
Man seeking mother offers reward online - www.xinhuanet.com
Donations help put rural kids through school - www.xinhuanet.com
Man beaten over unwanted call girl - www.xinhuanet.com
Giant expensive lantern to highlight festival - Southern Metropolis News
Woman's tattoo abruptly ends engagement - Guangzhou Daily
Regulation for sterility sufferers draws rebuke - Foshan Daily
Victim's family sues park over deadly bee stings - Guangzhou Daily
Province to deny benefits to lecherous farmers - Southern Metropolis News
Man inexplicably growing younger - Nanguo Metropolis News
Thieving masseuse caught applying for old job - Nanguo Metropolis News
Man falls down, gets 'occupational injury' - Shanghai Morning Post
Residents save foreigner from extortion - Shanghai Labour Daily
Tile pattern livens students' school - Shanghai Morning Post
Much more software talent needed - Xinhua Daily
Baby's swimming lesson nearly turns fatal - Shanghai Evening News
Crane gamble doesn't offset betting losses - www.dzwww.com
Retired soldier honoured as crime-stopper - www.xinhuanet.com
Courses aim to teach women ladyhood - Bandao Metropolitan
Garbage collection 'king' is big charity donor - Dalian Evening News
Trade union honours upstanding elders - www.xinhuanet.com
Drunk driver sleeps through car crash - Inner Mongolian Morning Post
Murder suspect's hideout ends - Liaosheng Evening News
Student returns neglected funds - Hubei Daily
Complaining wife drains magic from marriage - www.xinhuanet.com
Cartoons with Chinese characteristics - Sanxiang Metropolis Daily
Suspected burglar actually after cheating wife - Chongqing Business News
Awning foils man's suicide attempt - Chongqing Business News
Man seeking mother offers reward online - www.xinhuanet.com
Donations help put rural kids through school - www.xinhuanet.com
Man beaten over unwanted call girl - www.xinhuanet.com
Giant expensive lantern to highlight festival - Southern Metropolis News
Woman's tattoo abruptly ends engagement - Guangzhou Daily
Regulation for sterility sufferers draws rebuke - Foshan Daily
Victim's family sues park over deadly bee stings - Guangzhou Daily
Province to deny benefits to lecherous farmers - Southern Metropolis News
Man inexplicably growing younger - Nanguo Metropolis News
Thieving masseuse caught applying for old job - Nanguo Metropolis News
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
East Meets West (2)
Less than 2 blocks from our apartment is something that the tourist map calls the Market of Odd Stone. First you come to a series of shops selling stones, odd and otherwise - fossils, geodes, hunks of water-chiseled limestone, gemstones of various sorts. Then comes the market area. First are plants and gardening supplies. There are tools, hoses, buckets of pebbles, containers of fertilizer, house plants, ornamental plants, pots. After the botanical come the zoological: pets and pet supplies, live creatures destined to become food for bigger creatures, and other odd things. The pets - baby rabbits, parakeets, canaries - are kept in very small cages, actually flat wire boxes. You really hope that they find homes soon before they suffer irreversible mental and physical anguish due to crowding. Then there are the invertebrates - larvae of some sort sticking out of their cocoons (pardon me, entomologists, I know not of what I speak), wriggling arthropods, small fish, crickets. Given the nature of our neighborhood as the gateway to (one of the) upscale shopping areas, it's an interesting study in contrasts.
East Meets West (1)
9/3/06 - Turns out there's an active MIT alumni organization in Shanghai, and Bill found it. This afternoon we went to a barbecue at the home of one of the alums, a lovely house in an older neighborhood known to the tourist guides as the French Concession. Most of the other guests were young, and almost all were native Chinese. Two nearly grown kids, a 17-year-old girl and an older boy, did most of the grilling. There were a few little kids, including a 3-year-old named Julia, and our Julia, smack dab in the middle. Julia informed us early on that she was bored - this was before dinner started - but as more people talked to her and asked her about school and life in Shanghai she relaxed. One couple live in our apartment building, and have offered to help if we need it. It's nice to know that there's someone I can call if I'm totally confused. They both work nearby and he is about to open a wine store in the neighborhood with a group of partners. Perhaps we will offer to share our 1999 Chateauneuf du Pape, so we can find out if the improvised wine rack under the TV is an appropriate place to keep wine in this climate.
Western Culture (2)
9/2/2006 - Tonight we went to a concert of music by Shostakovich played by the Shanghai Symphony at the Shanghai Concert Hall. We realized on the way to catch a cab that we hadn’t figured out how to say concert hall in Chinese, but luckily the address was printed on the tickets. It’s not that far from our apartment, a 11 yuan taxi ride (about $1.40), the first zone fare. We had gotten caught in the rain on our way back to the apartment from dinner, so we weren’t really up for another walk in the dark and wet.
I bought fairly cheap tickets, about $15 each, since I didn’t know what the hall or the orchestra would be like. The concert hall is small, and from the middle of the balcony we had a great view of the orchestra, except for the very back of the first violin section. There were lots of empty seats, so right before the concert started all the people in the back moved down, but we stayed put. I think it would have been too loud if we’d been closer to the stage; the hall is very live, and the music was loud to begin with, lots of brass and crashing of cymbals. The building dates from the 1930's. Apparently it was moved 63 meters in 2003 – they must have built a road through its former spot.
The orchestra is quite good, although I didn't think the violin soloist (the concertmaster, I presume) was up to snuff. They played Shostakovich's Festive Overture, music from The Gadfly (a Soviet film from 1955), and the Symphony no. 9. The Gadfly suite consisted of 12 parts, the first and last of which sounded very Soviet – you could imagine the troops massing and the battleship Potemkin lurching through the water. The program had lots of great wind parts and a gorgeous cello solo. There were a bucket-load of trombones and horns in the Gadfly suite, and the piccolo player was busy for most of the concert. Interestingly, while all the soloists stood up to take a bow at the end of the concert, the piccolo player didn't stand until the conductor returned to the stage during the ovation.
About half the strings were women, but the only woman in the wind section was the piccolo. There was one woman percussionist. Most of the women were wearing a uniform of sorts: a long, long-sleeved, round-necked, shapeless black dress. There were some rebels, particularly among the cellos and bass – different sleeve lengths and necklines and some jewelry. One of the violinists had black lace sleeves. The woman percussionist wore pants and a black shirt. The men wore the usual sort of symphony gear, white tie and black tux. The conductor, Chen Xieyang, is a long-hair - he's bald with a longish wavy fringe. He was appointed resident conductor of the Shanghai Ballet Orchestra in 1965; we theorize that for the first decade or so of his tenure the ballets were only revolutionary. Besides being chairman of the Shanghai Symphonic Music Lovers' Society, he is a member of both the China National Political Consultation Conference and the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the People's Political Conference. That's what I call versatile.
Julia insisted she was bored, but she didn’t complain during the flute and piccolo solos, although she denied that she enjoyed them – in fact, she denied that there were flute and piccolo solos. I'm not sure we're going to take her to any more concerts. She has expressed a desire to see The Lion King, which is playing here, but we'll only go if I'm allowed to whine "I'm bored!" every 10 minutes.
I bought fairly cheap tickets, about $15 each, since I didn’t know what the hall or the orchestra would be like. The concert hall is small, and from the middle of the balcony we had a great view of the orchestra, except for the very back of the first violin section. There were lots of empty seats, so right before the concert started all the people in the back moved down, but we stayed put. I think it would have been too loud if we’d been closer to the stage; the hall is very live, and the music was loud to begin with, lots of brass and crashing of cymbals. The building dates from the 1930's. Apparently it was moved 63 meters in 2003 – they must have built a road through its former spot.
The orchestra is quite good, although I didn't think the violin soloist (the concertmaster, I presume) was up to snuff. They played Shostakovich's Festive Overture, music from The Gadfly (a Soviet film from 1955), and the Symphony no. 9. The Gadfly suite consisted of 12 parts, the first and last of which sounded very Soviet – you could imagine the troops massing and the battleship Potemkin lurching through the water. The program had lots of great wind parts and a gorgeous cello solo. There were a bucket-load of trombones and horns in the Gadfly suite, and the piccolo player was busy for most of the concert. Interestingly, while all the soloists stood up to take a bow at the end of the concert, the piccolo player didn't stand until the conductor returned to the stage during the ovation.
About half the strings were women, but the only woman in the wind section was the piccolo. There was one woman percussionist. Most of the women were wearing a uniform of sorts: a long, long-sleeved, round-necked, shapeless black dress. There were some rebels, particularly among the cellos and bass – different sleeve lengths and necklines and some jewelry. One of the violinists had black lace sleeves. The woman percussionist wore pants and a black shirt. The men wore the usual sort of symphony gear, white tie and black tux. The conductor, Chen Xieyang, is a long-hair - he's bald with a longish wavy fringe. He was appointed resident conductor of the Shanghai Ballet Orchestra in 1965; we theorize that for the first decade or so of his tenure the ballets were only revolutionary. Besides being chairman of the Shanghai Symphonic Music Lovers' Society, he is a member of both the China National Political Consultation Conference and the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the People's Political Conference. That's what I call versatile.
Julia insisted she was bored, but she didn’t complain during the flute and piccolo solos, although she denied that she enjoyed them – in fact, she denied that there were flute and piccolo solos. I'm not sure we're going to take her to any more concerts. She has expressed a desire to see The Lion King, which is playing here, but we'll only go if I'm allowed to whine "I'm bored!" every 10 minutes.
Monday, September 04, 2006
Western Culture (1)
8/31/06 – Today I attended a coffee morning organized by the American Women’s Club of Shanghai at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in Xintiandi. Xiantiandi is the upscale tourist area of Shanghai. It is neat and pleasant and old-looking, with upscale shops and restaurants, as well as a mall containing designer shops, nice restaurants and a cinema that shows American films. It is just down the street from the site of the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, shown with a red star on all the maps. I knew that I needed to meet more people, and this was the obvious place to start – I’m an American woman, after all. The membership year starts September 1, and the dues are only $25, so what could I lose? At the very least I’d have some conversations in English with people whose goal was to do the same.
I had suspected that these would for the most part be wives of multinational executives, and I wasn’t wrong, but they aren’t all wealthy stay-at-homes. Some are retired, some have given up their jobs to live in Shanghai, some are working here, and yes, some are globetrotting moms who move whenever hubby’s career demands it. They aren’t even all American – I met a Swedish woman, a Danish woman, and a Hong Kong Chinese woman who moved here from the bay area and attended UC Berkeley. It does seem as if the families with children live in the suburbs, while those with no kids or grown kids live in town. There was a suggestion, agreed to by the group, that we meet at Starbucks, an American company, on future Thursdays – apparently only people from California know that Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf is based in Los Angeles – since we all have Starbucks stock in our portfolios, don’t we? But hey – I’m from Berkeley and I don’t expect to be like anyone else. And actually I think Starbucks coffee is better.
I had suspected that these would for the most part be wives of multinational executives, and I wasn’t wrong, but they aren’t all wealthy stay-at-homes. Some are retired, some have given up their jobs to live in Shanghai, some are working here, and yes, some are globetrotting moms who move whenever hubby’s career demands it. They aren’t even all American – I met a Swedish woman, a Danish woman, and a Hong Kong Chinese woman who moved here from the bay area and attended UC Berkeley. It does seem as if the families with children live in the suburbs, while those with no kids or grown kids live in town. There was a suggestion, agreed to by the group, that we meet at Starbucks, an American company, on future Thursdays – apparently only people from California know that Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf is based in Los Angeles – since we all have Starbucks stock in our portfolios, don’t we? But hey – I’m from Berkeley and I don’t expect to be like anyone else. And actually I think Starbucks coffee is better.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Traffic - my view
Rules of traffic in Shanghai:
He who gets there first (and is biggest) has the right of way. Buses almost always win; pedestrians usually lose. Nobody, but nobody, stops for pedestrians unless there’s critical mass. Given the millions of people in Shanghai and the hundreds (thousands?) in any given shopping area at any time of day, critical mass is possible, just not likely. Taxis make U turns in the middle of the street all the time, and the rest of the traffic waits because they have no choice. He got there first. People sometimes cross in the middle of the street – they are either brave or stupid.
Pedestrians are never safe, except possibly in parks. If bicycles and motorbikes aren’t allowed on the road, they take to the sidewalk. A pedestrian street is one on which no buses travel. Barriers are no barrier to vehicle traffic, unless the vehicle is truly too big to squeeze between the posts. Many drivers are willing to try.
Nobody stops before turning right. Conversely, it’s always a good idea to make that left turn before the light turns green so that you’ll beat the oncoming traffic. These folks would be very comfortable in Philadelphia. Bikes and motorcycles only stop when confronted by traffic, but they generally operate so as to survive. Bike critical mass is easier to achieve than pedestrian critical mass. Going through a yellow light is de rigeur. Going through a red light is commonplace, but it depends on whether there's a traffic cop at the intersection, or other extenuating circumstance.
Everybody honks – well, almost everybody. Most bicycles only have bells, but buses honk, cabs honk, motorcycles honk. I've heard some pretty anemic horns on motorbikes. Crossing guards and traffic cops blow piercing whistles, usually right next to your ear. Drivers ignore them. At the entrance to Zhongshan Park there’s a guy who blows a whistle whenever anyone steps on the grass. In the subway, the closing of doors is marked by several ear-splitting electronic shrieks, just so you’ll know to hurry in or out. Did I mention the squealing brakes? Noisy place, this.
Apparently some expats think that honking is rude. A northern European, possibly Dutch or Belgian, writing in the Shanghai Daily, opined that, to the contrary, drivers are only trying to make sure you are aware of their presence. If you want to cross the street, he suggested, just don't let the drivers know that you see them and they will let you pass. I don't think I'll try that one just yet, at least not intentionally.
An article in the Shanghai Daily on August 21 headlined "Plate prices set record" stated that in the monthly auction for the privilege of driving a car in Shanghai the average winning price was above 40,000 yuan, or $5000 US. The city auctioned 6,200 license plates in August, 700 more than in July. The auction is designed to limit the number of new cars on the roads, since cars are acquired much more quickly and easily than roads can be built to accommodate them. However, as more people here can afford to buy cars, they will simply factor in the cost of the license plate and traffic will continue to increase.
He who gets there first (and is biggest) has the right of way. Buses almost always win; pedestrians usually lose. Nobody, but nobody, stops for pedestrians unless there’s critical mass. Given the millions of people in Shanghai and the hundreds (thousands?) in any given shopping area at any time of day, critical mass is possible, just not likely. Taxis make U turns in the middle of the street all the time, and the rest of the traffic waits because they have no choice. He got there first. People sometimes cross in the middle of the street – they are either brave or stupid.
Pedestrians are never safe, except possibly in parks. If bicycles and motorbikes aren’t allowed on the road, they take to the sidewalk. A pedestrian street is one on which no buses travel. Barriers are no barrier to vehicle traffic, unless the vehicle is truly too big to squeeze between the posts. Many drivers are willing to try.
Nobody stops before turning right. Conversely, it’s always a good idea to make that left turn before the light turns green so that you’ll beat the oncoming traffic. These folks would be very comfortable in Philadelphia. Bikes and motorcycles only stop when confronted by traffic, but they generally operate so as to survive. Bike critical mass is easier to achieve than pedestrian critical mass. Going through a yellow light is de rigeur. Going through a red light is commonplace, but it depends on whether there's a traffic cop at the intersection, or other extenuating circumstance.
Everybody honks – well, almost everybody. Most bicycles only have bells, but buses honk, cabs honk, motorcycles honk. I've heard some pretty anemic horns on motorbikes. Crossing guards and traffic cops blow piercing whistles, usually right next to your ear. Drivers ignore them. At the entrance to Zhongshan Park there’s a guy who blows a whistle whenever anyone steps on the grass. In the subway, the closing of doors is marked by several ear-splitting electronic shrieks, just so you’ll know to hurry in or out. Did I mention the squealing brakes? Noisy place, this.
Apparently some expats think that honking is rude. A northern European, possibly Dutch or Belgian, writing in the Shanghai Daily, opined that, to the contrary, drivers are only trying to make sure you are aware of their presence. If you want to cross the street, he suggested, just don't let the drivers know that you see them and they will let you pass. I don't think I'll try that one just yet, at least not intentionally.
An article in the Shanghai Daily on August 21 headlined "Plate prices set record" stated that in the monthly auction for the privilege of driving a car in Shanghai the average winning price was above 40,000 yuan, or $5000 US. The city auctioned 6,200 license plates in August, 700 more than in July. The auction is designed to limit the number of new cars on the roads, since cars are acquired much more quickly and easily than roads can be built to accommodate them. However, as more people here can afford to buy cars, they will simply factor in the cost of the license plate and traffic will continue to increase.
Transportation
Many, if not most, of the families at Julia’s school have drivers. Some have their own cars. I wouldn’t drive here if you paid me. The subway is fast, frequent, cheap (40 to 75 cents a ride) and incredibly crowded at rush hour, just like in any other major city. Of course, there aren't many subway routes to choose from, but we chose our apartment partly based on proximity to a subway station so Bill could get to work easily. Buses come in air-conditioned and not, and you pay an extra yuan (12.5 cents) for AC. I am not yet ready to try taking a bus anywhere. The subway stations sell stored-value transit cards that are good on the subway, buses or in taxis. Cab drivers seem to be very honest, but they don’t always know their way around, so we need to be prepared to give directions in words, not just with gestures and map.
One example: on Friday of the second week of school Julia and I were invited to the home of one of her classmates, with whom she’d been corresponding, whose mother is a real estate agent who arranged for our apartment. I had called the mother because Silvia, her assistant, hasn’t been as helpful as we'd hoped, and I guess I sounded so lost that she invited us over. I got to school and there was a group of 4 girls going over to the house. Susanne called me (yes, I have a Chinese cell phone now) and said she had arranged for a car – it turned out to be the driver of the father of one of the girls, and the idea was that we could all manage using the school bus and the car. I wandered off while we were waiting for the car and when I came out the girls were gone (turned out there wouldn’t have been room for me in the car anyway) and the buses were gone, so I had to get a cab.
I managed to flag down a taxi and I had the Susanne's address card, with a map, which I showed it to the driver. After looking at it for a bit he said sorry (in English), and I got out. I got another cab, and he took me somewhere – turned out to be the neighboring complex – and let me out, everyone, including the guards at the complex, insisting that I must be in the right place. Finally the guards got someone who spoke English on the phone, and she told me I was nowhere near the address I wanted (she was wrong). I called Susanne, who said yes, you’re nearby, you can walk. It was a long block (we’re talking the edge of town here, sort of like parts of Florida where they are carving developments out of the swamp), but I discovered that in fact I was in the right place. I eventually deciphered the map on Susanne's card and found their house - Whew! Susanne told me I must never let the taxi driver let me out without taking me where I want to go, but it’s hard when you aren't sure where you're going. The kids, of course, had been there for quite a while and were tucking into waffles and ice cream when I finally arrived.
We had no trouble getting back home by cab. Drivers know the big streets perpendicular to our little street, and they know Shanghai TV. Now if I can only remember to pronounce the names properly . . .
One example: on Friday of the second week of school Julia and I were invited to the home of one of her classmates, with whom she’d been corresponding, whose mother is a real estate agent who arranged for our apartment. I had called the mother because Silvia, her assistant, hasn’t been as helpful as we'd hoped, and I guess I sounded so lost that she invited us over. I got to school and there was a group of 4 girls going over to the house. Susanne called me (yes, I have a Chinese cell phone now) and said she had arranged for a car – it turned out to be the driver of the father of one of the girls, and the idea was that we could all manage using the school bus and the car. I wandered off while we were waiting for the car and when I came out the girls were gone (turned out there wouldn’t have been room for me in the car anyway) and the buses were gone, so I had to get a cab.
I managed to flag down a taxi and I had the Susanne's address card, with a map, which I showed it to the driver. After looking at it for a bit he said sorry (in English), and I got out. I got another cab, and he took me somewhere – turned out to be the neighboring complex – and let me out, everyone, including the guards at the complex, insisting that I must be in the right place. Finally the guards got someone who spoke English on the phone, and she told me I was nowhere near the address I wanted (she was wrong). I called Susanne, who said yes, you’re nearby, you can walk. It was a long block (we’re talking the edge of town here, sort of like parts of Florida where they are carving developments out of the swamp), but I discovered that in fact I was in the right place. I eventually deciphered the map on Susanne's card and found their house - Whew! Susanne told me I must never let the taxi driver let me out without taking me where I want to go, but it’s hard when you aren't sure where you're going. The kids, of course, had been there for quite a while and were tucking into waffles and ice cream when I finally arrived.
We had no trouble getting back home by cab. Drivers know the big streets perpendicular to our little street, and they know Shanghai TV. Now if I can only remember to pronounce the names properly . . .
Our Apartment
Sea of Clouds is a free translation of Yun Hai Yuan, according to Silvia the real estate assistant, which means something like Cloud Sea Garden or Court. I can't seem to find the Yuan character in any of our dictionaries. The landlord told us that the place was built in 2003, or else his family bought the apartment that year. We're on the second floor, which means we can take the stairs, but the elevator is air conditioned. The apartment has a big living room-dining room combination, with a mirrored wall next to the table and a giant TV surrounded by a decorative frame of dark wood that on one side holds a purple vase, as well as a pair of candles that we brought, and on the other side an Ikea clock. The rest of the walls are bare. The floors are dark wood except for the kitchen and bathrooms. The kitchen floor is that infernal grubby white tile, and the bathroom floors are beige marble. The drapes (not curtains) are beige. The décor, in off-white, glass and black, is a mixture of ugly and Ikea, which is apparently par for the course in Chinese furnished apartments (see Imagethief’s blog from 8/17/06, Infernalture). The walls are cream colored with white trim, all in all a pretty neutral place. Julia at least has a colorful comforter cover (no comforter needed yet), but our sheets are white - boring! Obviously, as housekeeper and non-working parent, I need to do some decorating. I'm thinking red fabric. Time to shop!
The kitchen came with an assortment of pots and pans; a few glasses (we've broken 4), plates and large bowls; some spoons and chopsticks and a set of children's cutlery from Ikea; 2 rice cookers (one for the microwave), a toaster and a coffee maker; dishwasher, refrigerator, microwave oven and an assortment of partially-used cleaning supplies. The dishwasher wasn't functioning - the water valve was shut and we couldn't find it to turn it on - but it's so small that the plates don't fit. It's just the right size for demitasse cups (we bought 2) or children's tea sets. We bought some small plates that fit and we run it once in a while when the timing is right. We broke the first of the big plates yesterday - perhaps we will let attrition dictate the size of our dishes as we move toward the miniature.
The washer and dryer live in the hall bathroom (Julia's bathroom, as no guests have yet shown up to claim it as theirs), and are quite small, as one would expect. The beds, alas, are king-sized, and it's not easy to find king sheets in the cheapo stores. King-sized sheets take up the entire washing machine and the comforter covers are too bulky for the dryer. We have a drying rack that came with, and most of our wet laundry goes on it. I have occasionally put the rack out on the balcony, but the floor of the balcony is so dirty that clothes need to be tightly tethered so they won't blow off and need to be rewashed. One sheet takes up almost the entire drying rack. Bill discovered that the inside of the lint trap in the dryer was full of lint but the dryer works much better now, after a more thorough lint removal. Now that Julia has 3 uniform shirts instead of just one to sweat in, laundry is somewhat less crucial. One weird thing, though - after we run the washer, after some undetermined interval, her bathroom smells like a sewer. I poured boiling water down the drains (sink, shower and floor), which caused an ominous "glug glug glug" and only brought out the essential aroma of sewer. It occurs to me that being on the second floor of a 28-story building might not be the best idea, especially in hot, sticky, sewer-smelling summer. Live and learn.
Our bedroom is light and warm with the curtains open, though for the first few days we kept the curtains closed all the time to keep in the air conditioning. As we've gotten more used to the heat we've started allowing light in. Both bedrooms have marble window seats, but we only have enough sofa pillows to outfit one window seat at a time. Julia has used hers for studying and waving at people, although she doesn't look to see if they wave back. Bill tried it and she didn't notice. The office/guest room has a yellow Ikea sofabed that is the most colorful thing in the apartment. There's a small balcony that looks out onto a park in between the two buildings of Shanghai TV. Across the street (it's a pedestrian street, so no buses) in front of the park a series of benches that are always occupied. People sit on them, sleep on them, perch temporarily and then move on. We can see some tall buildings, and of course they are lit up at night, but for a real view we have to skibble up to the 28th floor (actually, we take the elevator) and then we can look out and see highways and trees and buildings as far as the smog will allow.
The kitchen came with an assortment of pots and pans; a few glasses (we've broken 4), plates and large bowls; some spoons and chopsticks and a set of children's cutlery from Ikea; 2 rice cookers (one for the microwave), a toaster and a coffee maker; dishwasher, refrigerator, microwave oven and an assortment of partially-used cleaning supplies. The dishwasher wasn't functioning - the water valve was shut and we couldn't find it to turn it on - but it's so small that the plates don't fit. It's just the right size for demitasse cups (we bought 2) or children's tea sets. We bought some small plates that fit and we run it once in a while when the timing is right. We broke the first of the big plates yesterday - perhaps we will let attrition dictate the size of our dishes as we move toward the miniature.
The washer and dryer live in the hall bathroom (Julia's bathroom, as no guests have yet shown up to claim it as theirs), and are quite small, as one would expect. The beds, alas, are king-sized, and it's not easy to find king sheets in the cheapo stores. King-sized sheets take up the entire washing machine and the comforter covers are too bulky for the dryer. We have a drying rack that came with, and most of our wet laundry goes on it. I have occasionally put the rack out on the balcony, but the floor of the balcony is so dirty that clothes need to be tightly tethered so they won't blow off and need to be rewashed. One sheet takes up almost the entire drying rack. Bill discovered that the inside of the lint trap in the dryer was full of lint but the dryer works much better now, after a more thorough lint removal. Now that Julia has 3 uniform shirts instead of just one to sweat in, laundry is somewhat less crucial. One weird thing, though - after we run the washer, after some undetermined interval, her bathroom smells like a sewer. I poured boiling water down the drains (sink, shower and floor), which caused an ominous "glug glug glug" and only brought out the essential aroma of sewer. It occurs to me that being on the second floor of a 28-story building might not be the best idea, especially in hot, sticky, sewer-smelling summer. Live and learn.
Our bedroom is light and warm with the curtains open, though for the first few days we kept the curtains closed all the time to keep in the air conditioning. As we've gotten more used to the heat we've started allowing light in. Both bedrooms have marble window seats, but we only have enough sofa pillows to outfit one window seat at a time. Julia has used hers for studying and waving at people, although she doesn't look to see if they wave back. Bill tried it and she didn't notice. The office/guest room has a yellow Ikea sofabed that is the most colorful thing in the apartment. There's a small balcony that looks out onto a park in between the two buildings of Shanghai TV. Across the street (it's a pedestrian street, so no buses) in front of the park a series of benches that are always occupied. People sit on them, sleep on them, perch temporarily and then move on. We can see some tall buildings, and of course they are lit up at night, but for a real view we have to skibble up to the 28th floor (actually, we take the elevator) and then we can look out and see highways and trees and buildings as far as the smog will allow.
Getting Settled
8/14/06 – we're here, it's hot, we may have a tenant next month, finally, and Julia celebrated her 12th birthday by throwing up. We crave fruit drinks and air conditioning. Our apartment leaves a few things to be desired but it will do. It's very urban, and the drain in Julia's bathroom smells like a sewer. The tile on the kitchen floor is white and textured to catch dirt. We're wishing we'd gotten something with a pool, but maybe we'll meet people who will invite us to theirs. Tomorrow is open house at Julia's school and I'm trying to figure out how to tell the people downstairs that I need a taxi. Maybe we'll just go out on the street and try to flag one down. We spent about $100 on our first household shopping, but we do need more stuff. We have 3 towels, 2 wash cloths, 2 sets of sheets, one very small electric blanket (courtesy of the landlords), 1/2 inch of dish soap, and an intermittently-functioning water heater, which the landlord, a young guy who went to Dominican College in San Rafael as an undergrad, promises to get fixed. His parents actually own the place, but they must live in some other part of the world.
8/16/06 – First day of school. Julia’s feeling fine, but I’m having an attack of Mao’s revenge. We decided that we would all go in a taxi instead of sending Julia off on her own in the bus, and we thought we had notified the transportation people, but at some ungodly hour the doorbell rang and it was the bus. We ignored it, not having a clue how to respond. Our first cab ride to school, for open house yesterday, was successful and took 25 minutes, although the cab driver stopped in mid-lane and let us out next to a hedge with no way onto the sidewalk but to walk along the street to the end of the shrubbery. This time the driver headed out for Hongqiao Airport about 2 miles past the school, and in Shanghai traffic this is not an insignificant distance. However, after he turned around and made it back to the vicinity of the school, we persuaded him to let us off (on the wrong side of a busy street) and we walked her across the street and into the building in time. We caught a cab coming out of school and took it over to Bill’s office in Pudong, on the other side of the river. The return trip cost about $5 and took maybe 50 minutes. There is a subway station about a 15 minute walk from school if you walk fast, which is hard to do when it’s 36o C, and I envision making the 50 minute trip by metro (one change of train and a walk at either end), to pick Julia up at school on band rehearsal days or when she has other after school activities. That costs about 50 cents. It’s nice that they have bus transportation both ways at regular school hours, but pickup for band, choir, soccer, you name it, is up to Mom.
8/18/06 – Not as hot today, and the breeze is cooler than ambient temperature – what a treat! The narrow streets where the wind doesn’t reach are still hot, though. Now that it seems that Julia’s bus pickup time is 7:20 rather than 7:30, mornings are somewhat rushed, with everyone on a different schedule. Julia’s watch is missing in action, no doubt deposited under something somewhere, so she can’t use its alarm to wake herself up. This is a big apartment, and we have too much stuff, so it’s easy enough to lose things. I lose things in my purse or backpack all the time anyway. In any case, we went downstairs at 7:15 and the bus driver and bus monitor (“ayi”) were already waiting. We’re the first stop, but not the farthest from school. Julia assures me that her friend Caitlin, who lives at the Shanghai Raquet Club, has an hour bus ride. On the other hand, Julia’s bus carries only 5 or 6 kids, leaves our apartment building at 7:20 and school starts at 8:15, so she’s one of the farther-away students in an area where few of the other students live.
Julia has made some friends at school, including one girl, Annie, whom we met at open house, who has a twin brother, Roger. They moved here from Connecticut just a few days ago, and we figure that the father, a chemist, probably works for Procter and Gamble. Julia reports that his daughter says he brought home samples of hair dye and soap. The father is Chinese. Along with Caitlin at the Raquet Club, is another Julia, whose mother emailed us in the spring. She and our Julia have all the same classes. Julia is pretty happy with her classes so far and with the private school scene, although she says music is boring because she already knows everything. She’s been designated the expert on Broadway musicals, although, as she pointed out, she’s only seen two and they weren’t even on Broadway. She finds Mandarin class confusing, but once the different levels of proficiency are separated out and she starts learning, I think she’ll be glad that we signed her up for Mandarin instead of French. She’s also enjoying wearing a uniform to school – who’d have thought? – but we only received one set of uniform pieces and can’t buy more until some time in the near future, maybe next week. Which brings up the subject of laundry, about which more later.
8/16/06 – First day of school. Julia’s feeling fine, but I’m having an attack of Mao’s revenge. We decided that we would all go in a taxi instead of sending Julia off on her own in the bus, and we thought we had notified the transportation people, but at some ungodly hour the doorbell rang and it was the bus. We ignored it, not having a clue how to respond. Our first cab ride to school, for open house yesterday, was successful and took 25 minutes, although the cab driver stopped in mid-lane and let us out next to a hedge with no way onto the sidewalk but to walk along the street to the end of the shrubbery. This time the driver headed out for Hongqiao Airport about 2 miles past the school, and in Shanghai traffic this is not an insignificant distance. However, after he turned around and made it back to the vicinity of the school, we persuaded him to let us off (on the wrong side of a busy street) and we walked her across the street and into the building in time. We caught a cab coming out of school and took it over to Bill’s office in Pudong, on the other side of the river. The return trip cost about $5 and took maybe 50 minutes. There is a subway station about a 15 minute walk from school if you walk fast, which is hard to do when it’s 36o C, and I envision making the 50 minute trip by metro (one change of train and a walk at either end), to pick Julia up at school on band rehearsal days or when she has other after school activities. That costs about 50 cents. It’s nice that they have bus transportation both ways at regular school hours, but pickup for band, choir, soccer, you name it, is up to Mom.
8/18/06 – Not as hot today, and the breeze is cooler than ambient temperature – what a treat! The narrow streets where the wind doesn’t reach are still hot, though. Now that it seems that Julia’s bus pickup time is 7:20 rather than 7:30, mornings are somewhat rushed, with everyone on a different schedule. Julia’s watch is missing in action, no doubt deposited under something somewhere, so she can’t use its alarm to wake herself up. This is a big apartment, and we have too much stuff, so it’s easy enough to lose things. I lose things in my purse or backpack all the time anyway. In any case, we went downstairs at 7:15 and the bus driver and bus monitor (“ayi”) were already waiting. We’re the first stop, but not the farthest from school. Julia assures me that her friend Caitlin, who lives at the Shanghai Raquet Club, has an hour bus ride. On the other hand, Julia’s bus carries only 5 or 6 kids, leaves our apartment building at 7:20 and school starts at 8:15, so she’s one of the farther-away students in an area where few of the other students live.
Julia has made some friends at school, including one girl, Annie, whom we met at open house, who has a twin brother, Roger. They moved here from Connecticut just a few days ago, and we figure that the father, a chemist, probably works for Procter and Gamble. Julia reports that his daughter says he brought home samples of hair dye and soap. The father is Chinese. Along with Caitlin at the Raquet Club, is another Julia, whose mother emailed us in the spring. She and our Julia have all the same classes. Julia is pretty happy with her classes so far and with the private school scene, although she says music is boring because she already knows everything. She’s been designated the expert on Broadway musicals, although, as she pointed out, she’s only seen two and they weren’t even on Broadway. She finds Mandarin class confusing, but once the different levels of proficiency are separated out and she starts learning, I think she’ll be glad that we signed her up for Mandarin instead of French. She’s also enjoying wearing a uniform to school – who’d have thought? – but we only received one set of uniform pieces and can’t buy more until some time in the near future, maybe next week. Which brings up the subject of laundry, about which more later.
Arrival
8/11/06 – We were lucky in several ways. First of all, we managed to leave home and arrive at the SFO with all our luggage (too much – 10 bags in all, ranging from small carry-ons to an extra-large roller case), 2+ hours to spare before our flight. United flight number 857 to Shanghai departed on time. Not only was there no fog, but it was unseasonably hot (remember, this is August in San Francisco) and there we were, carrying jackets and sweatshirts that we didn’t need, that we should have had room to pack. The flight wasn’t nearly full – even the flight attendants were surprised, although Wednesdays are usually their light days on that flight. Arriving in Shanghai at 6:15 p.m. it was just getting dark and not as hot as it could have been. The guys with the car meeting us were astonished at the amount of luggage we had, but c’est la vie. We got to the good old Salvo Hotel, leaving most of our bags downstairs.
This morning we discovered that we had left just in time. Thank goodness we didn’t have to root through our carry-on bags and throw out our toothpaste and conditioner, as people leaving the next day were forced to do. We woke at 7:00 after sleeping well, due, no doubt to prior sleep deprivation, and found blue skies, a scattering of puffy white clouds, and the same view we had from our hotel window in April except no rain this time. We ascended to the Western Restaurant on the 31st floor, where we were seated next to a smoker by a window looking out on the same gorgeous blue sky – atypical for Shanghai at any time of year – with the Huangpu River glistening in the middle distance. The smoker didn’t stay long, and we stuffed ourselves at the breakfast buffet, not knowing when or where we’d eat lunch. The plan was to meet Silvia (not her Chinese name), the real estate assistant, at 10:30 (we suggested 9:00) to go to the apartment.
The remaining hurdles include the fact that Sonic has not yet arranged to pay our rent in RMB rather than dollars, something they readily accomplish for the conduct of business in Shanghai. Bill has been authorized to sign the rental contract but we need to get someone to read the Chines contract to make sure it is the same as the original. I guess we’re pioneers here. By the time we leave, everything will be illuminated.
I want to thank our clean-up crew: M’Ellen, who came first and got us started, which we really needed; Gail and Ellen, who obligingly cleaned, dumped, composted, recycled and took home leftovers; Janis, who loaned us her truck and agreed to keep our car for the duration; and especially Burr, whom we left with the last of the debris and the last of the leftovers, who disposed of our extra garbage, who has agreed to look after our car until Janis can pick it up, and who is going to rent out our house for us, goddess willing. Burr is going to get a REALLY good present.
This morning we discovered that we had left just in time. Thank goodness we didn’t have to root through our carry-on bags and throw out our toothpaste and conditioner, as people leaving the next day were forced to do. We woke at 7:00 after sleeping well, due, no doubt to prior sleep deprivation, and found blue skies, a scattering of puffy white clouds, and the same view we had from our hotel window in April except no rain this time. We ascended to the Western Restaurant on the 31st floor, where we were seated next to a smoker by a window looking out on the same gorgeous blue sky – atypical for Shanghai at any time of year – with the Huangpu River glistening in the middle distance. The smoker didn’t stay long, and we stuffed ourselves at the breakfast buffet, not knowing when or where we’d eat lunch. The plan was to meet Silvia (not her Chinese name), the real estate assistant, at 10:30 (we suggested 9:00) to go to the apartment.
The remaining hurdles include the fact that Sonic has not yet arranged to pay our rent in RMB rather than dollars, something they readily accomplish for the conduct of business in Shanghai. Bill has been authorized to sign the rental contract but we need to get someone to read the Chines contract to make sure it is the same as the original. I guess we’re pioneers here. By the time we leave, everything will be illuminated.
I want to thank our clean-up crew: M’Ellen, who came first and got us started, which we really needed; Gail and Ellen, who obligingly cleaned, dumped, composted, recycled and took home leftovers; Janis, who loaned us her truck and agreed to keep our car for the duration; and especially Burr, whom we left with the last of the debris and the last of the leftovers, who disposed of our extra garbage, who has agreed to look after our car until Janis can pick it up, and who is going to rent out our house for us, goddess willing. Burr is going to get a REALLY good present.
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