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.

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.

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

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.

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.