Back to the Olden Days at Old Town

Monday, July 26, 2010

On Sunday Panpan and I ventured off to Old Town. Like every tourist attraction in Shanghai (and China in general), Old Town was PACKED. Despite the strong aversion to crowds that I’ve developed over the past months, I still really like Old Town. I remember really enjoying it the first time I came to Shanghai during high school, as well. There’s something about how modern commerce is juxtaposed against the historic old-fashioned architecture that really embodies today’s Shanghai. (For example, a Starbucks or McDonalds housed in an old style building.)

Old Town

Me & Panpan at Old Town

Old Town

Old Town

Yuyuan Garden (in Old Town). I loved visiting Yuyuan last time we were in Shanghai, but decided not to go this summer because from this line it looks like it was way too crowded to be at all pleasant.

We of course had to go to the famous Nanxiang xiaolongbao restaurant in Old Town. Trying to get a table is quite the ordeal. The first (and possibly the most difficult) step is figuring out which line to wait in. The restaurant has 4 levels: take-out, fast-food style dining area (with only one menu option), a sit-down restaurant, and a more expensive sit-down part. Once you figure out which line belongs to which level and what the difference between the levels is, then comes the wait. And it can be a longggggg wait.
We were in line, but then stepped out of line to join our friends at another section of the restaurant. We were disappointed to find that they were in the section with only one menu option, and even more upset that we’d given up our place in the line we were originally in. Both aggravated with the situation, Panpan and I were getting on each others nerves a bit. Luckily the lady behind us in the original line recognized us and kindly let us resume our place in line. Once we finally got seated and ate the delicious soup-filled dumplings, we felt much better.
The little xiaolongbao did not disappoint. We tried both veggie-filled and crab-filled, plus one of those big buns filled with only soup. That was the highlight: drinking out of the bun from a straw! (photo below)

Food!

Sunday, July 25, 2010

This weekend was both busy and fun. Last week it really hit me that I’m going back home soon, and I realized that time had slipped by and there is still so much I want to do before I go. Panpan and I drafted a list of places we wanted to go before we left, and now we’re slowing crossing them off one by one.
Friday night I made reservations at a delicious Thai place (originally named “Thai Gallery”). After enjoying pad thai and fried rice served in a pineapple, we headed down the street to The Spot. It was weird to be back in the neighborhood that I stayed in for my first couple of weeks in Shanghai. It feels like ages ago, but was only 6 weeks!


Me and recent grad I used to work with for REP!


On Saturday I went back to the fabric market one last time to pick up the last of the clothes I ordered, then took a long metro ride out to the outskirts of Shanghai to go to my boss’s house. She invited the whole HR department over to make dumplings. It was really strange to be back in a pseudo-suburban environment after two months in the big city! (I say pseudo-suburban because it was a gated community clearly going for the suburban feel, but it fell short. The houses were still pretty small, very close together, and completely lacking yard space. Compared to the city proper, though, they were quite sprawling, though.)
I really enjoyed the dumpling making— it was fun to be in a kitchen again! (Ours lacks cookware and smells funny, so we keep the door shut and avoid it at all costs.) My Chinese coworkers were very surprised that I could hold my own folding dumplings. We made them with a Chinese chive, egg, and meat filling, although I preferred the vegetarian ones that were only Chinese chives and eggs. We boiled them like wontons instead of lightly pan-frying them like potstickers. I have to say I actually think that the ones we’ve made at home are better! But… by the time we got to eat them it was way past lunchtime and we were all so hungry that they tasted delicious.

Muslim Street Market

Muslim Street Market

Friday Panpan and I took the day off work so that we could go to a Muslim street market that only happens on Fridays. We went around lunchtime and tried a variety of delicious minority foods. My favorite was this moist rice with bits of carrot mixed in and a zesty lemon taste, served with a chunk of lamb and some really spicy carrot strips. We sat under bright red tents to get out of the scorching hot sun. (Now that the “plump” rainy season has passed, it’s been very sunny this week. The skies have been so blue that it doesn’t even feel like we’re in China!)


Look how blue the sky is!



New friends making lamb kabobs! Super friendly people; very delicious lamb.



Eating the rice/lamb/carrot dish... so good! (don't worry, I'm not sunburned... the redness is from the tent)



Guy in foreground in serving the rice/lamb/carrot dish



dried fruits. questionable sanitary standards, but we bought some dried apricots and delicious golden raisins anyway!


We also took a peek at the mosque (photo below), but we couldn’t go inside. While we were eating a huge stream of people came out of the mosque, so a service must have just ended. They all came and started feasting on all the good food. I haven’t really noticed many Chinese minorities around Shanghai, but at this market they weren’t really ANY Han Chinese people (and only a handful of other tourists). The minority population must just congregate in its own communities.



The mosque

I was shocked at how different these people looked. They totally didn’t look East Asian! A lot of them looked more Turkish (actually, some Turkish tourists sat next to us and they could mostly understand the minority language the stall owners spoke amongst themselves because it’s related to Turkish). Some of the people there even looked like they could pass for Greek/Spanish/Italian!



A guy who looks more Greek than Chinese making dumplings

Internship Improvements

Friday, July 23, 2010

Things at work have been way better over the past couple of weeks! I think that part of this is because I’ve made more friends at work. I got dinner and then stayed up for the World Cup finals with some people from work. For the game we went to O’Malleys, which was absolutely packed! The majority of the crowd was cheering for the Netherlands, so it was a sea of highlighter orange. I didn’t stay for the end, but apparently the minority cheering for Spain went crazy when they won, and all the Dutch fans just sat quietly in shock. It was fun and exciting to see the game, but it got pretty gross and smoky. (I can’t wait to be back home where people can’t smoke inside.) Plus, we were all exhausted the next day and it was not fun to be at work…
Since then, I’ve definitely taken more initiative to reach out to these people and it’s fun to have more friends at the office. Most of the people I’m friends with at work are expats; a lot of the locals aren’t particularly welcoming, to be honest.
The work portion of work has also improved. Given my own difficulty adjusting to living here, I realized that it must be that much harder if you’re staying for a few years, rather than only a few months! I started talking to some of the expats on international assignment (aka I.A.s) about their experiences here, both personally and professionally, and through this was inspired to initiate my own little project. I’ve been interviewing lots of IAs, some single, some married, some with kids; some newly arrived, some leaving soon, etc. During the last week of my internship, I’m going to gather all of the data and do a write up of recommendations for how the company can help mitigate the challenges IAs face when they come work here in Shanghai.
Going to the Toastmasters’ Club at work has also been really interesting. Last week they asked me to give an English training. I chose to focus on the importance of stress/emphasis of syllables. I’ve noticed that sometimes they’ll stress the wrong syllable, and it makes it really hard to understand what they’re trying to say. To help demonstrate how important proper emphasis is, I compared it to tones in Chinese, and said a few sentences in Mandarin with improper tones. They really got a kick out of that :)
This week, I asked if I could try giving one of the speeches… in Chinese! The topic was “学中文怎么样？” (What is it like to study Chinese?). I wrote and memorized the 4-minute speech, but when it came time to present I got so nervous! I couldn’t believe it! My heart was pounding and I was starting to forget parts and have to look at my paper. After getting through the first minute or so, though, I calmed down a bit. By the time I got to the end, where I’d thrown in a few jokes, I was feeling a lot better. Getting some laughs from the audience didn’t hurt either.

For those who can read, here is the speech:
两年以前我开始学中文。学生都觉得中文是最难的语言。这是因为中文跟英文非常不一样。比方说，英文没有声调：是很大的不同！对老外来说， 中文语法也很难，很奇怪！所以，有时候我还会说错了。我会给你们一个例子：如果我问很长的问题，就可能忘记“吗”。
虽然学中文特别难，但是我还喜欢学中文因为这是一个挑战。每天我有一个小时中文课，也有很多作业。一个部分是翻译。有时候， 翻译句子是那么难我受不了！我的朋友问我为什么我要学中文因为中文课太难了， 也花很多时间。我告诉他们中文课也很好玩。
上课的时候我很高兴。我的中文老师们用很幽默的句子练习语法和生词。我的老师都是北京人。所以他们说的话有很多“儿”。我觉得听得不好。别的问题是，在上海有时候我听不懂，因为我习惯只说北京话。
不仅我的老师是很好的，而且在中文课我认识很多新朋友。同学和朋友是一样人是一个很大的好处。我们可以一起学习，一起做作业。但是，最重要的好处是在晚会我们可以用中文聊天。别的人听不懂！不幸哈佛有很多中国人，所以我们不应该用中文说秘密。

Fabric Market; World Financial Center

Thursday, July 22, 2010

This week has been a lot of fun! Last night after work I went to the World Financial Center. The upper floors are the Park Hyatt, and we went to enjoy a live band and a few glasses of free (for ladies) champagne. The band was actually pretty good. They did a bunch of covers of American pop songs (Lady Gaga, Oasis, Justin Timberlake, etc.). I met Panpan, Nancy, and some other girls we met here. Some of my coworkers also came, which was both fun and funny. One of them who joined us has daughters in high school and kind of reminds me of my dad. He was very eager to get out on the dance floor! His moves were definitely from the same era as Dad’s :)


The famous Oriental Pearl TV Tower... this time not from the Bund, but from down the street!


With some co-workers



The singers/band


With friends at the World Financial Center




Tonight I went to the fabric market on my way home from work to pick up some clothes I had made. The (South Bund) fabric market is one of Shanghai’s gems. You can order custom-made clothes and they’re actually very well tailored! (And cheaper than items of the same quality from American department stores… I guess since no money is wasted on advertising/marketing, shipping, retail, etc. they can afford to sell for much less.)
The fabric market is a big three story building filled with row upon row of vendors’ stalls. Most stalls are about the size of a small bedroom and the walls are lined floor to ceiling with fabric, example pieces, and items waiting to be picked up. Here you MUST MUST MUST bargain, or you’ll definitely overpay by upwards of 50%. On my first trip to the fabric market, my first purchase was a modern take on the traditional qipao (those traditional Chinese dresses). I hadn’t really had to bargain during this trip to China yet, so I was a bit out of practice, and definitely overpaid. (You can always tell when you overpay: they accept your counteroffer WAY too quickly and eagerly!) Since then, though, I’ve been on a bargaining roll and doing well.
After you settle on a style/fabric for what you want made, they measure you. Pieces are usually ready a week after you order them, and then you go back and try it on. They hold up a sheet of fabric to shield you from the many passerbys, and then if any further adjustments need to be made you have to come back again in a few days.



Friends in one of the tailor shops at the fabric market



Getting the qipao refitted

My fabric market trip tonight was fun but a bit bumpy. Another Boston-local on international assignment was leaving the office at the same time as me, and insisted on giving me a ride (the IAs all have company cars and drivers). It was much more pleasant than the subway, and it was cool to see the city from above ground. I always take the metro, so I don’t usually get to see Pudong and the rest of Shanghai from the raised ring roads. It’s a great view!
Anyway, as I was arriving, the shops were closing. I didn’t know that the market closed so early! I rushed to pick up my qipao (which had needed adjustments), and then in my haste to pick up a shirt from another stand, I forgot to take the dress with me! I realized this and luckily still had the tailor’s business card and managed to quickly explain (in Chinese) who I was and what I wanted.
One thing I love about the fabric market is that it forces me (unlike most areas of Chinese) to use Chinese. Furthermore, it forces me to make new sentences in Chinese, whereas in restaurants or taxis, for example, it’s more of a set dialogue with less room for improvising. Talking and bargaining with the vendors at the fabric market definitely is good Mandarin practice for me.
On my way out of the market I stopped to look at the jewelry being sold outside on the sidewalks. One of the ladies had the cutest little baby ever, and he kept talking to me. I wonder if she would have sold me the kid (kidding). I ended up buying a couple of statement rings, not just because her boy was adorable, but also because I remember Grammy telling me how stylish it is to wear rings on your index and middle fingers these days :)

Living the Good Life

Our lives here are so rich. The fact that we’re students on tight budgets is trumped by being Westerners. One of my favorite glam hangouts is Vue Bar. It’s on the top of the Grand Hyatt, and named because it is literally the best view in Shanghai (in my humble opinion). It’s on the Puxi side, so you get a great view of both Pudong and the Bund. It’s high, but not TOO high (I’ve heard that views from the highest buildings actually aren’t as good because you’re so high it’s actually hard to see through the smog). I’ll try to get some photos next time I go.
There are so many bars and restaurants here that even the fancy ones have to run special offers to get attention. Browsing on SmartShanghai.com has allowed all of us students enjoy these places, without making us broke!
If foreign students have it good, though, real expats here are like royalty! I’ve talked to a lot of the international assignees (IAs) at my work who were sent here for a few years. They are literally given the royal treatment… they even have private drivers! Hanging out with the recent graduates has given me a glimpse of their rich lives, as well. Granted, their experiences might not be the norm, but let’s just say they’ve done well for themselves. I got together with some of them this week, and ended up being invited to stay for dinner… and then eating a 100USD steak. I told you things here were glamorous!
While the glitz and sophistication of life here can be fun, the juxtaposition of rich and poor is sometimes overwhelming. Having been somewhat sheltered in the suburbs my whole life, I’m not used to seeing wealth and poverty so closely adjacent to my own life, and I have to admit that it makes me feel uncomfortable sometimes, and even guilty.



A Cirque De Solei performance at a black-tie event at the Grand Hyatt - we weren't included in the festivities... we watched from above with the other commoners ;-)



One of the many upscale stores in Shanghai



Me and Nancy at Hof's sharing a post-work glass of wine.

Things that Baffled Me Today (Monday)

*A car stopped for me when I was crossing the street. This is unheard of. Could it be a sign of the apocalypse?
*At work I was going through employee files and was completely stumped when I found two scientists with the exact same name (not just the same pinyin… they were the same characters!), who both worked in the same department and had the same position title. Yikes…
*During my metro commute home, I watched a National Geographic podcast about a weird species of fish. They live in harems of females dominated by one male, but if the male disappears, a female will undergo a transformation… she will become more aggressive and develop male hormones, and within a couple of weeks she transforms into a male and can fertilize the harem’s eggs!

My First Business Trip

Two weekends ago I went on my first business trip! Thursday afternoon I left the office with the rest of the HR department (in total, only 5 of us). We went to the airport to meet our HR counterparts from all of the other China offices, and then were taken by bus to Suzhou. We stayed at a fancy 4-star hotel (which are VERY deluxe in China).
Friday we all went to an all-day conference in the hotel. The conference was a string of presentations made in Mandarin, so I was left sitting there in boredom. I could only pick out a fraction of the words (most were business words beyond my comprehension), and not nearly enough to have much of an idea what they were talking about. Lunch was a very fancy affair, and a nice respite from the conference. The afternoon was filled with more of the same. One thing did pique my interest, however. Since the slides were in English, I could sort of follow the topic of discussion. During the “best practices sharing,” though, I couldn’t figure out what “POO communication” stood for. (Instead it just left me laughing and thinking of Bubba.)
Saturday we had ‘team-building’ excursions to Zhouzhuang and Suzhou. Zhouzhuang is famous for its classic bridges and waterways. It was so beautiful! But it was also incredibly hot and humid (probably the worst I’d yet experienced here), to the point where it was hard to enjoy sightseeing… especially given the throngs of people. Luckily, in the afternoon it cooled down, so visiting Suzhou was much nicer. We visited one of the four famous gardens, the Lion Grove Garden, which holds special appeal for me because it used to be my Grammy’s family’s summer home. It was such a nice estate (and HUGE!). The lakes and rocks (the classic ones with the holes all over them) were really beautiful.
After a boat tour in the evening we returned to the hotel just in time to watch the World Cup semi-finals. I was ecstatic to discover that our hotel suite allowed me to raise the bathroom’s window blinds and watch the came from the comfort of a warm bath! In a country like China, that feels somewhat perpetually dirty, a weekend getaway to a fancy and pristine hotel can be heavenly!



People trying to throw coins into an alter (not sure what you'd call this thing) for good luck in front of a temple.




Zhouzhuang


Me on a bridge in Zhouzhuang


A painting of Obama for sale at Zhouzhuang. Amazing!



In front of the iconic rock at Lion's Grove Garden




A worker clearing weeds from the lake at Lion's Grove



At Lion's Grove Garden


Suzhou night cruise

4th of July

Friday, July 9, 2010

Last Sunday was the Fourth of July, and even on this side of the globe American ex-pats celebrated in style. The Strip (the restaurant owned by some Harvard alums) had a barbeque to celebrate its opening, so Panpan and I went there around noon and spent the day with friends there. The worst of the humidity had, thankfully, passed, so we were able to enjoy the day on the restaurant’s balcony.
The Fourth of July celebration was just one instance among many that make me acutely aware of how separately most expats live from the locals. Although Shanghai is thought to be a very Westernized city, it is only Westernized for the richest few. There are main roads with glitzy storefronts, but one street over will be shack-like homes and hidden poverty.
It is possible (even likely) for many expats to spend years in Shanghai sequestered off in their own little expat world. Although the British and French Concessions are mostly historical relics now, new Expat Concessions seem to have sprung up in their place.
This wasn’t what I had expected, after spending last summer living in an older Chinese city integrated with the local people, and I’ve definitely had to adjust my expectations of my time here. I guess I had been expecting to get more Chinese culture and language than I actually am. (In fact, I could get by perfectly fine without speaking a word of Chinese. And plenty of Shanghai’s inhabitants do just that for YEARS!) Oddly enough, the culture shock for me isn’t China vs. America. Instead, it’s the strangeness of living in a city, especially such a large and cosmopolitan one as Shanghai. It hasn’t been the experience that I’d expected, but it’s been a good one nonetheless.

No More Isolation!

Thursday, July 8, 2010

In my first couple of weeks here, I felt so isolated. Big cities like Shanghai can be incredibly lonely. I’ve never actually lived in a city before, and it was weird to walk around and never see a familiar face.
Now that I moved in with Panpan, things have improved tremendously. It’s still rare to see people I know unless we have prior plans (I can’t say never anymore, because I did randomly run into a friend from school once…), but now I know that when I go home I’ll at least have a friend there. (This just affirms my resolution not to live alone!)
I’ve gotten a good handle on the social side of my time here, now, but work is an ongoing struggle. I simply don’t feel very fulfilled with my internship. I don’t have enough work to keep me busy, which I’ve expressed to my supervisors, but unfortunately it seems that they just don’t have more that I can do, since you need a lots of background knowledge for a lot of what they do. Even when I do have work, oftentimes it’s not work that requires critical thinking or creativity. Hearing about what some of my friends are doing at their internships just increases my frustration. Although I’m so happy for those of them who are having great experiences with their internships (like Alisha and Marina), it definitely makes me jealous!!! I wish I felt that I was learning more and contributing more.

Family in Shanghai

Nanjing Pedestrian Road



A side street off the main pedestrian road



Being celebrities



Doing Tai Chi


A couple of weekends ago, my brother Michael came to Shanghai with a group from his high school. We met up on Nanjing Road and strolled down the pedestrian road, all the while be jostled by the crowd and implored to buy fake watches and purses by the street vendors. We walked all the way down to the Bund, where the group began attracting even more attention from the locals. There must have been Chinese tourists there who were less used to seeing so many foreigners than the Chinese living in Shanghai, because lots of them asked to take photos with me. (I like to kid myself that they only asked because of my radiant beauty, but I have a feeling that had very little to do with it.) We gathered even more of a crowd when my brother’s group started putting on a taichi performance they had learned earlier in their travels.
After joining them for dinner (in one of those restaurants that caters to tour groups), we parted ways. It was really funny to see Michael on his trip. He was in exactly the same place I was when I went on a school trip to China at the end of 11th grade! Seeing their group made me realize how different my experience this summer and last summer have been from the first time I went to China. I’ve come a long way. I’m moderately conversational now, whereas before my vocabulary was limited to “stomach” and “butt.” I’m actually working. I’m not staying in hotels. I’m actually living here (if only for 2 months)! What a strange concept.

Shanghai: An Ivy League Colony

It seems to me as if Shanghai has been taken over by Ivy Leaguers. Although Harvard and the rest of the Ivy League universities are half a world away, I am never lacking the company of its students and alumni. I used to think that the Harvard and Ivy League networks were overly esteemed, and that they weren’t of much importance. Over the past month, however, I’ve found the network of students and alumni to be not only stronger than I imagined, but also more comforting. While each of the eight Ivy League schools has its own personality, there are definitely unifying experiences.
Sometimes this manifests itself very discreetly. For example, my roommate Panpan, an undergrad at Brown, knew exactly what I was talking about when I said “concentration” instead of “major” and also has “shopping week” instead of preregistration for courses.
What has surprised me most is seeing what a small world the Ivy League really is. Any time I meet another undergrad, we are almost certain to have friends and acquaintances in common at each other’s schools.
But, to get back to my original point: I thought that my interaction with other Ivy League students and alumni wouldn’t extend beyond spending time with my friends from school who also happened to be in Shanghai. I keep happening to meet more and more students and alumni, though, and it’s been a pleasure hanging out with them!
A couple of weeks ago, I went with a few friends to a gallery opening for Island6 in the hip modern art section of the city, pretty far off the beaten path. The exhibit was about Time (with a capital T…) – very artsy-fartsy and quite beyond my full comprehension and appreciation. The curator’s brother happened to be a Harvard alum, and there were a bunch of middle-aged Brown and Harvard grads (of course Brown alums would be at the trendy gallery opening ^-^). We ended up having a lot of fun talking to them and hearing all of the interesting things you can end up doing in Shanghai post-grad. (It seems like many alumni end up starting their own companies here.)
Later that weekend, our new friends from the gallery invited us to a pan-Ivy League BBQ, and while there were flashes of interesting conversation, the event on whole made me see why people accuse these schools to be a bit stuffy and dull. It was incredibly humid that day, though, so perhaps that’s why everyone was unanimated…
As much as I enjoy the company of all of these people, and as eager as I am to return to the “Harvard Bubble” in the fall, I can’t help but wonder what the effects of being constantly sheltered in such an Ivy League-dominated environment does to us.



show some respect for the 500 million years of life forms compressed into the plastics you use




Shanghai is the future for 19 time zones

What If...

Monday, July 5, 2010

Every so often, something will make me imagine all of the possible “what ifs.” Meeting my friend Eric’s family last week prompted my most recent “what if” musings. Eric’s aunt and uncle live in Shanghai in a historical old apartment. We were in the neighborhood after dinner one evening and they invited us to stop by for tea. Something about the family was strangely reminiscent of my own. His aunt was a kindhearted lady who was always smiling (and had something to say about everything!); his uncle was a bit more reserved and a big Chinese history buff. Sitting in their living room made me feel like I was in some sort of twilight zone. It was as if I was getting a glimpse of “what if my grandparents didn’t leave Shanghai…”