I am happy to report that after all the adventures buying a tree, baking and seeing what Christmas does not look like in China, in the end, we had a really wonderful Christmas and I got over my homesickness.
About two weeks before Christmas we hosted our first party here in China. We had about 25-30 friends over for drinks and dessert and it was truly a wonderful time. We were able to look around and see that in our 5 months here we have indeed made some great friends. And having them all together to celebrate the season felt just like home.
For Christmas eve, we had our British friends Emma and Graeme and their kids and Emma's parents (who are visiting) to our house for dinner. It was just like our own families to have a boisterous bunch sitting 'round the table talking, eating, laughing, drinking and telling stories of Christmas past. And then we did the traditional parental thing of staying up way too late wrapping Santa's gifts and filling stockings.
Christmas morning was fabulous, with two bright-eyed little girls climbing on our bed asking if they could open their presents! Joe and I had to chuckle a little bit at the journey the toys they received had before coming to our house. Surely they traveled as much as Santa did. They were made in China, exported to the US, distributed to stores, purchased and wrapped in the US, taken to the post office and then sent back to China, through customs, and then finally to our house! But oh what happy little girls who opened those gifts!
And of course, Christmas day would not be complete without a dinner. This year we went to Sarah & Andy's house for a proper Christmas dinner, with turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, and all the fixings. And in case you didn't read my earlier post about my friend Sarah who told me where to find a proper Christmas tree, it was to that same Jewish friend's house that we went for a marvelous Christmas dinner. Only in China...
CHEERS!
Friday, December 28, 2007
The holidays in China-part 4: Strange Moments
There have been many things that struck me as strange throughout the month of December, and I'm going to try to give you a glimpse of them. Forgive how disjointed the post will probably seem!
Gigi's preschool (local Chinese school) had a Christmas tree, decorated and with fake presents underneath it, in the foyer of the school. And for the 2 weeks before Christmas every morning they were playing Christmas music over the speaker system. And we're not talking about "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", we're talking "Hark the Herald Angels Sing". If statistics play out correctly, only 12 of the children in Gigi's preschool of 200 are Christian, and they probably aren't even public about it.
Olivia's school (International school with American curriculum), on the other hand, had a winter concert without a single Christmas song in it.
Christmas decorations appearing in Shanghai shopping areas about 2 weeks before Christmas. If you could classify them as "Christmas" decorations. How about a pink tree with purple and red and blue decorations? Or a soaring 20 foot tree (still planted in a pot) with the size of ornaments you would put on your own 5 foot tree? (couldn't actually see the ornaments until you got up close to it.) Or fake packages under the trees wrapped in paper that resembles Valentine's Day, with pink and red hearts all over it? Or a huge 15 foot sign in front of the Chanel counter at a department store saying Merry Xmas (and literally using Xmas). Or my favorite, a Christmas tree in the mall with a sign across it's middle saying "Happy Uniglo Christmas", Uniglo is a clothing store in the mall.
Walking through Carrefour (big grocery store near my house) and hearing over the speakers the tune for Silent Night. As I listened I realized it was in Chinese and I thought to myself, well, that's cool. And a few minutes later I was listening to a Chinese rendition of the song Jingle Bells. But it sounded odd, so I stopped and listened more closely. Even though the rest of the song was in Chinese, the chorus was being sung as "Ding dong bells, Ding dong bells, ding dong all the way." Huh.
My Chinese tutor, Jessie, telling me that she had Christmas presents for the girls, but she wanted me to hide them until Christmas morning. "Why?" I asked. "So they don't open them of course!" she replied. I showed her the packages already under our tree and explained that the kids would leave them there until Christmas morning. She was totally disbelieving, she asked how I got them to leave them alone. I told her that's part of the excitement of Christmas morning, all the kids know you have to wait until that morning to open all your presents. "No! Really?" she exclaimed, "Chinese children would never wait, they would open the presents anyway!"
Explaining to Jessie that presents belong UNDER the Christmas tree, not IN the tree. Her blushing when she realized that's why her presents and ornaments kept falling out of the tree. By the way, Jessie is not Christian and does not believe in God, but thinks Christmas is a great holiday when she and her husband and some friends exchange gifts.
Discovering that if you buy a roll of Christmas wrapping paper at a local Chinese store, the piece of wrapping paper you get is 2 feet by 2 feet, not even big enough for a regular shirt box.
And last, but not least, laying in bed at night and hearing ornaments fall off our tree, followed by the sound of hundreds of needles plink-plinking down to the floor. For despite all our best efforts, our potted Christmas tree started dying about 2 days after it came to our house. On Christmas morning there were actually brown branches that had no needles left on them because the ornaments had slid down the branch, taking all the dry dead needles with them on the way. Oh what a Charlie Brown tree we have, but it's made for some fun memories!
Gigi's preschool (local Chinese school) had a Christmas tree, decorated and with fake presents underneath it, in the foyer of the school. And for the 2 weeks before Christmas every morning they were playing Christmas music over the speaker system. And we're not talking about "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", we're talking "Hark the Herald Angels Sing". If statistics play out correctly, only 12 of the children in Gigi's preschool of 200 are Christian, and they probably aren't even public about it.
Olivia's school (International school with American curriculum), on the other hand, had a winter concert without a single Christmas song in it.
Christmas decorations appearing in Shanghai shopping areas about 2 weeks before Christmas. If you could classify them as "Christmas" decorations. How about a pink tree with purple and red and blue decorations? Or a soaring 20 foot tree (still planted in a pot) with the size of ornaments you would put on your own 5 foot tree? (couldn't actually see the ornaments until you got up close to it.) Or fake packages under the trees wrapped in paper that resembles Valentine's Day, with pink and red hearts all over it? Or a huge 15 foot sign in front of the Chanel counter at a department store saying Merry Xmas (and literally using Xmas). Or my favorite, a Christmas tree in the mall with a sign across it's middle saying "Happy Uniglo Christmas", Uniglo is a clothing store in the mall.
Walking through Carrefour (big grocery store near my house) and hearing over the speakers the tune for Silent Night. As I listened I realized it was in Chinese and I thought to myself, well, that's cool. And a few minutes later I was listening to a Chinese rendition of the song Jingle Bells. But it sounded odd, so I stopped and listened more closely. Even though the rest of the song was in Chinese, the chorus was being sung as "Ding dong bells, Ding dong bells, ding dong all the way." Huh.
My Chinese tutor, Jessie, telling me that she had Christmas presents for the girls, but she wanted me to hide them until Christmas morning. "Why?" I asked. "So they don't open them of course!" she replied. I showed her the packages already under our tree and explained that the kids would leave them there until Christmas morning. She was totally disbelieving, she asked how I got them to leave them alone. I told her that's part of the excitement of Christmas morning, all the kids know you have to wait until that morning to open all your presents. "No! Really?" she exclaimed, "Chinese children would never wait, they would open the presents anyway!"
Explaining to Jessie that presents belong UNDER the Christmas tree, not IN the tree. Her blushing when she realized that's why her presents and ornaments kept falling out of the tree. By the way, Jessie is not Christian and does not believe in God, but thinks Christmas is a great holiday when she and her husband and some friends exchange gifts.
Discovering that if you buy a roll of Christmas wrapping paper at a local Chinese store, the piece of wrapping paper you get is 2 feet by 2 feet, not even big enough for a regular shirt box.
And last, but not least, laying in bed at night and hearing ornaments fall off our tree, followed by the sound of hundreds of needles plink-plinking down to the floor. For despite all our best efforts, our potted Christmas tree started dying about 2 days after it came to our house. On Christmas morning there were actually brown branches that had no needles left on them because the ornaments had slid down the branch, taking all the dry dead needles with them on the way. Oh what a Charlie Brown tree we have, but it's made for some fun memories!
The holidays in China-part 3: baking Christmas cookies
My next quest after successfully finding the Christmas tree was to find the ingredients to make my Christmas cookies. I significantly pared down the list to 4 different kinds of cookies and trooped off to the store. Oh my God. It took me 4 different stores over 2 days to get all the ingredients, and I had to pay $8 USD for a can of Cream of Tartar! And that was just the beginning of my adventure. Baking cookies in China takes more than the ingredients for the cookies, it also takes a laptop computer, an oven thermometer, and a brain!
The first cookies I set out to make were peanut butter with Hershey kisses. Gigi & Olivia helped out by taking the wrappers off the kisses for me, although at one point Gigi was also helping by biting the pointy top off the kiss to "make it look prettier mama." Anyway, early on in the recipe I realized that I needed to convert the 1/2 cup of butter the recipe calls for to ounces, because the sticks of butter here are imported from New Zealand or France and they have ounce markings on the side. So the laptop comes into the kitchen and I google "convert cups to ounces" and wait, and wait, and wait. And finally realize that our wireless doesn't work in the kitchen. Out to the family room, google again, and find out how many ounces I need. Great, cookies dough gets made and then I wait another 25 minutes for the oven to get pre-heated. All in all, it takes my very small oven (half the size of ones in America) 40 minutes to pre-heat to 350 degrees F. Go figure. Anyway, cookies come out and are flatter than usual but taste great so the baking continues.
Next are the sugar cookies, and these are fun because the girls are going to ice and decorate them. Nothing about these cookies is very complex, except in China where the only type of lemon extract I could find came in these little vials instead of bottles. It's a German brand, and each little vial was .5 ounce of extract. (These little vials look like the sample perfumes you get in department stores.) When I bought them I didn't think a thing of it. But when I popped the plastic lid off and tried to pour it into the teaspoon, the liquid would not come out. Finally I realized that there was a bubble in there and it was moving to the top and creating a seal every time I tried to pour. OK, so I get out a knife to try to pop the bubble, too fat, won't fit in there. I scrounge up a paper clip and unbend it. I stick it in and it goes right through the bubble but the seal doesn't break. Is this a bad joke? I ram the paper clip up and down and still the bubble remains. What is the trick to getting this lemon extract out of here? Then I decide it must be this particular vial, so I open another one. Same story, can't get the stupid liquid to come out. I am so frustrated that I shake it up and down and of course drops of lemon extract come out. So I shake these little vials with all my might and manage to get a teaspoon worth of extract by shaking individual drops out of 3 separate vials. I still don't know how the hell you're supposed to get liquid to pour from those vials but I got my teaspoon! Once the lemon extract is in, the rest of the cookie dough is made without incident.
But every batch of these sugar cookies comes out different, the first ones are burnt after 6 minutes in the oven, the next ones are crispy on the edges and gooey in the middle after 8 minutes. I know the temperature is steady because I have the oven thermometer in there, so what is going on? I have no idea, but I HAVE to get at least 24 good cookies because I am taking them to Olivia's class the next day for a decorating project. I end up making 2 batches (probably 72 cookies in all) and hand pick out the best looking 24, even though they are slightly darker than they should be. I taste them and they seem alright, if a little lemony.
The next evening I make the snickerdoodles, which are the reason I bought the $8 cream of tarter. I make about 4 dozen of these and set them to cool. The next morning Joe says to me politely, "did you taste those snickerdoodles?" Uh oh. I taste them and they are awful, and rock hard. Totally inedible and have to go in the trash, but even after re-reading the recipe to see if I did anything wrong, I don't know why.
Later the same week, I am making a cheesecake and I get out a stick of butter. One thing I have failed to mention about buying imported food in China is that it all has a big sticker on it with all the Chinese import information. And they always put the sticker over the instructions on the box, or the nutritional information. Seriously, it never fails. Never once have I seen one of these import stickers covering up the bottom of the box, and never once has the sticker come off the box or wrapper without ripping it. Many times I have looked up baking directions on the betty crocker website for a box of brownies or a cake mix. Thank God for the internet. Anyway, the point of me telling you about the annoying import stickers is that the stick of butter I got out for the cheesecake crust had the import sticker placed crookedly on wrapper. For the first time ever I could clearly see the ounce markings on the wrapper. And to my horror, I realized that some of the markings I had been using to measure out ounces were really the top of the number 1. But usually the wrapper covers up the oz. next to the number 1, so I thought it was another marking line! And so, ladies and gentleman, the mystery of the underbaked, overbaked, and rock-hard cookies is solved. I was using approximately HALF the butter my recipes called for in all my cookie baking. Remember at the beginning when I said baking cookies in China requires a brain???
The first cookies I set out to make were peanut butter with Hershey kisses. Gigi & Olivia helped out by taking the wrappers off the kisses for me, although at one point Gigi was also helping by biting the pointy top off the kiss to "make it look prettier mama." Anyway, early on in the recipe I realized that I needed to convert the 1/2 cup of butter the recipe calls for to ounces, because the sticks of butter here are imported from New Zealand or France and they have ounce markings on the side. So the laptop comes into the kitchen and I google "convert cups to ounces" and wait, and wait, and wait. And finally realize that our wireless doesn't work in the kitchen. Out to the family room, google again, and find out how many ounces I need. Great, cookies dough gets made and then I wait another 25 minutes for the oven to get pre-heated. All in all, it takes my very small oven (half the size of ones in America) 40 minutes to pre-heat to 350 degrees F. Go figure. Anyway, cookies come out and are flatter than usual but taste great so the baking continues.
Next are the sugar cookies, and these are fun because the girls are going to ice and decorate them. Nothing about these cookies is very complex, except in China where the only type of lemon extract I could find came in these little vials instead of bottles. It's a German brand, and each little vial was .5 ounce of extract. (These little vials look like the sample perfumes you get in department stores.) When I bought them I didn't think a thing of it. But when I popped the plastic lid off and tried to pour it into the teaspoon, the liquid would not come out. Finally I realized that there was a bubble in there and it was moving to the top and creating a seal every time I tried to pour. OK, so I get out a knife to try to pop the bubble, too fat, won't fit in there. I scrounge up a paper clip and unbend it. I stick it in and it goes right through the bubble but the seal doesn't break. Is this a bad joke? I ram the paper clip up and down and still the bubble remains. What is the trick to getting this lemon extract out of here? Then I decide it must be this particular vial, so I open another one. Same story, can't get the stupid liquid to come out. I am so frustrated that I shake it up and down and of course drops of lemon extract come out. So I shake these little vials with all my might and manage to get a teaspoon worth of extract by shaking individual drops out of 3 separate vials. I still don't know how the hell you're supposed to get liquid to pour from those vials but I got my teaspoon! Once the lemon extract is in, the rest of the cookie dough is made without incident.
But every batch of these sugar cookies comes out different, the first ones are burnt after 6 minutes in the oven, the next ones are crispy on the edges and gooey in the middle after 8 minutes. I know the temperature is steady because I have the oven thermometer in there, so what is going on? I have no idea, but I HAVE to get at least 24 good cookies because I am taking them to Olivia's class the next day for a decorating project. I end up making 2 batches (probably 72 cookies in all) and hand pick out the best looking 24, even though they are slightly darker than they should be. I taste them and they seem alright, if a little lemony.
The next evening I make the snickerdoodles, which are the reason I bought the $8 cream of tarter. I make about 4 dozen of these and set them to cool. The next morning Joe says to me politely, "did you taste those snickerdoodles?" Uh oh. I taste them and they are awful, and rock hard. Totally inedible and have to go in the trash, but even after re-reading the recipe to see if I did anything wrong, I don't know why.
Later the same week, I am making a cheesecake and I get out a stick of butter. One thing I have failed to mention about buying imported food in China is that it all has a big sticker on it with all the Chinese import information. And they always put the sticker over the instructions on the box, or the nutritional information. Seriously, it never fails. Never once have I seen one of these import stickers covering up the bottom of the box, and never once has the sticker come off the box or wrapper without ripping it. Many times I have looked up baking directions on the betty crocker website for a box of brownies or a cake mix. Thank God for the internet. Anyway, the point of me telling you about the annoying import stickers is that the stick of butter I got out for the cheesecake crust had the import sticker placed crookedly on wrapper. For the first time ever I could clearly see the ounce markings on the wrapper. And to my horror, I realized that some of the markings I had been using to measure out ounces were really the top of the number 1. But usually the wrapper covers up the oz. next to the number 1, so I thought it was another marking line! And so, ladies and gentleman, the mystery of the underbaked, overbaked, and rock-hard cookies is solved. I was using approximately HALF the butter my recipes called for in all my cookie baking. Remember at the beginning when I said baking cookies in China requires a brain???
The holidays in China-part 2: Finding a tree
So, about a week after Thanksgiving when I acknowledged that I was truly depressed about not being in the States for the holidays, I resolved that the way to feel better would be to get a Christmas tree and buy decorations for our house. You see, when we packed for 2 years in China, I was not thinking about holidays, I was thinking about what we needed for everyday living. I brought 12 bottles of Children's Tylenol, and a boatload of my contact solution, but not Christmas tree ornaments!
Our first quest was for a Christmas tree. We heard that the flower market has Christmas trees, so off we went. Flower markets here have live flowers and plants, as well as fake flowers and plants, and decorative items for purchase. Seemed reasonable. Well, being from Oregon and LOVING the fragrant 7 foot Noble fir tree that we tromp out to the farm and cut down every year, we were not willing to settle for the bush-like evergreens that had been trimmed into the shape of a Christmas tree. Plus, the limbs and needles were so soft that we didn't think ornaments would stay on them. Strike 1.
Next I hear from other friends that a company called Villa Lifestyles usually gets trees in from Denmark every Christmas. I find their email address and contact them. Nope, not this year. Strike 2.
Next, I mention to my friend Sarah, who's Jewish, that we have struck out looking for our Christmas tree. And she says, "Oh, I got mine at the florist in Xintiandi, they had a whole bunch." Uh, thanks. I was struck at that moment that this is such a great description of the expat community in Shanghai. Everybody helping everybody else out, and your key piece of information often coming from the most unlikely source!
So off I trooped to the florist. Sure enough, about 25 trees leaned up against the outside of the shop all wrapped in rope. There was no examining these trees from every angle and making sure there wasn't a "bad" side to the tree. There was only determining the right height, and then deciding if we wanted them to plant the tree or cut it off above the root-ball. Yes, that's right, these Christmas trees still had the root-ball intact. Since we have no Christmas tree stand and my Jewish friend didn't know where to get one of those, I opted for them to plant the tree in a....red bucket. Luckily, the first purchase I had made for the holiday season was a silk tree skirt that some enterprising ex-pat had made and was selling at the Shanghai Expat Association coffee. I hoped it would cover the bucket adequately!
Joe was on a business trip to Taiwan, and I happily reported to him that night that I had found a "proper" Christmas tree and it would be delivered the next day.
And it was, bucket and all. I untied the rope and let the branches down, and discovered that indeed our tree had a very bad side. One side was missing the branches about 1/3 of the way up the tree. Luckily the tree was going against the wall, so I turned it until the hole was against the wall. When I came back around front I realized that the tree was noticeably crooked. Since the tree was planted, I figured the only thing to do was re-plant it, but not by myself. So that night I had to report to Joe that our tree had a distinctly bad side, was crooked, and might be sparse enough to be described as a Charlie Brown tree. To which he says, "and how much did we pay for this 'proper' Christmas tree?" Um, not quite $100USD. Oh, and did I mention that it does not smell AT ALL? One of the best things about Christmas trees is how they make your whole house smell like a pine forest for weeks. There is nothing better than opening the door to your house and smelling pine. But, in fact, in China, even the proper Christmas trees have no scent to them whatsoever. Sigh.
Joe arrived home from his business trip and I greeted him with the news that the only way to fix the crooked tree was to re-plant it. Being Joe, he said "there's got to be another way." And please feel free to read that as "there's got to be an EASIER way." In the end, his solution was to stick a book under one side of the bucket. And when that tilted it too far to the other side, he stuck a stack of napkins under the other side! Over all this we placed the lovely tree skirt and said a quick prayer that the whole thing wouldn't come toppling down.
Our first quest was for a Christmas tree. We heard that the flower market has Christmas trees, so off we went. Flower markets here have live flowers and plants, as well as fake flowers and plants, and decorative items for purchase. Seemed reasonable. Well, being from Oregon and LOVING the fragrant 7 foot Noble fir tree that we tromp out to the farm and cut down every year, we were not willing to settle for the bush-like evergreens that had been trimmed into the shape of a Christmas tree. Plus, the limbs and needles were so soft that we didn't think ornaments would stay on them. Strike 1.
Next I hear from other friends that a company called Villa Lifestyles usually gets trees in from Denmark every Christmas. I find their email address and contact them. Nope, not this year. Strike 2.
Next, I mention to my friend Sarah, who's Jewish, that we have struck out looking for our Christmas tree. And she says, "Oh, I got mine at the florist in Xintiandi, they had a whole bunch." Uh, thanks. I was struck at that moment that this is such a great description of the expat community in Shanghai. Everybody helping everybody else out, and your key piece of information often coming from the most unlikely source!
So off I trooped to the florist. Sure enough, about 25 trees leaned up against the outside of the shop all wrapped in rope. There was no examining these trees from every angle and making sure there wasn't a "bad" side to the tree. There was only determining the right height, and then deciding if we wanted them to plant the tree or cut it off above the root-ball. Yes, that's right, these Christmas trees still had the root-ball intact. Since we have no Christmas tree stand and my Jewish friend didn't know where to get one of those, I opted for them to plant the tree in a....red bucket. Luckily, the first purchase I had made for the holiday season was a silk tree skirt that some enterprising ex-pat had made and was selling at the Shanghai Expat Association coffee. I hoped it would cover the bucket adequately!
Joe was on a business trip to Taiwan, and I happily reported to him that night that I had found a "proper" Christmas tree and it would be delivered the next day.
And it was, bucket and all. I untied the rope and let the branches down, and discovered that indeed our tree had a very bad side. One side was missing the branches about 1/3 of the way up the tree. Luckily the tree was going against the wall, so I turned it until the hole was against the wall. When I came back around front I realized that the tree was noticeably crooked. Since the tree was planted, I figured the only thing to do was re-plant it, but not by myself. So that night I had to report to Joe that our tree had a distinctly bad side, was crooked, and might be sparse enough to be described as a Charlie Brown tree. To which he says, "and how much did we pay for this 'proper' Christmas tree?" Um, not quite $100USD. Oh, and did I mention that it does not smell AT ALL? One of the best things about Christmas trees is how they make your whole house smell like a pine forest for weeks. There is nothing better than opening the door to your house and smelling pine. But, in fact, in China, even the proper Christmas trees have no scent to them whatsoever. Sigh.
Joe arrived home from his business trip and I greeted him with the news that the only way to fix the crooked tree was to re-plant it. Being Joe, he said "there's got to be another way." And please feel free to read that as "there's got to be an EASIER way." In the end, his solution was to stick a book under one side of the bucket. And when that tilted it too far to the other side, he stuck a stack of napkins under the other side! Over all this we placed the lovely tree skirt and said a quick prayer that the whole thing wouldn't come toppling down.
The holidays in China-part 1: Thanksgiving
For many of you reading this blog, your holiday season in America starts the day after Thanksgiving when Christmas trees, lights, music, and seasonal sales go on in full force. Until I moved to China, I had no idea how much I relied on the day after Thanksgiving to jump-start my own holiday spirit!
To start at the beginning of the season, we were very fortunate to celebrate Thanksgiving here in China with our American friends. We went to Tom & Donna Rampone's house, and with 3 other couples and 5 kids, we feasted on turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and apple pie. We all studiously ignored the fact that we were celebrating on Friday instead of Thursday, that the turkey had to be cooked at a local butcher shop because none of our ovens are big enough, and that the turkey cost $100 USD! As I have often said, you can find anything you want in Shanghai, it just depends on what you are willing to pay for it!
But as mentioned above, in America the day after Thanksgiving usually looks very different than the day before due to decorations. Here in China, of course, there is no Thanksgiving. And decorations don't go up, there are no lights in trees lining downtown shopping streets. There are no giant Christmas trees in Pioneer Square, there are no carols playing over the loudspeaker in the grocery store.
About three days after Thanksgiving, the absence of holiday decorations combined with the onset of homesickness made me truly sad. We've been told by friends, and read in books that the first wave of homesickness/depression hits at the 3 month mark. Joe's hit early at 2 months, mine kicked in full-force at the end of month 4, just after Thanksgiving. Suddenly I was pining for the things that drive me crazy at home - like K103 playing all Christmas music from Thanksgiving day until Christmas day, and cheesy TV ads showing unexpected people returning home for the holidays, and decorations in every single store and restaurant, and Christmas movies on TV - even the really bad ones on the Lifetime Channel! I missed how easily accessible Christmas is at home.
So I started thinking, if you don't have the retail industry driving Christmas, what is the actual "start" of the Christmas season? If you are Christian, it is the advent season. Our family goes to church in the States, but I have honestly never paid attention to the advent calendar because of everything else going on! But this is a good segue into church in Shanghai.
There are 2 churches in Pudong (the east side of Shanghai where we live). One is a Catholic church and the other a non-denominational protestant church. We had been to the protestant church only once before, and we returned at the beginning of December in order to celebrate the Christmas season. This church is clearly trying to be something to everyone, and the result is a very odd mix of traditional and contemporary songs, pieces and parts of Lutheran, Baptist, and Presbyterian services. The first time we went it annoyed me to no end because it felt so disjointed (oh, and because there was a guest minister preaching who mentioned, during the sermon, that his book was for sale in the lobby and that he would sign it for you personally when you purchased it!). But when we went during December, I loved this church because they replaced all those odd disjointed pieces with EVERY Christmas song known to man! It was my only source of Christmas music besides what we downloaded from iTunes.
There is something truly unique and special about singing Christmas songs with 300 other people in a church in China. Especially when you realize that outside the walls of the church where you are standing, Christianity, even a belief in God, is a rarity. As we stood in church singing carols, I felt incredibly blessed to be from a country where I can choose my religion, and where religion and a hope for better things, and a ridiculous craving for happy endings is all part of who we are. I didn't really know how much I loved that about my own country and culture until I moved to China.
To start at the beginning of the season, we were very fortunate to celebrate Thanksgiving here in China with our American friends. We went to Tom & Donna Rampone's house, and with 3 other couples and 5 kids, we feasted on turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and apple pie. We all studiously ignored the fact that we were celebrating on Friday instead of Thursday, that the turkey had to be cooked at a local butcher shop because none of our ovens are big enough, and that the turkey cost $100 USD! As I have often said, you can find anything you want in Shanghai, it just depends on what you are willing to pay for it!
But as mentioned above, in America the day after Thanksgiving usually looks very different than the day before due to decorations. Here in China, of course, there is no Thanksgiving. And decorations don't go up, there are no lights in trees lining downtown shopping streets. There are no giant Christmas trees in Pioneer Square, there are no carols playing over the loudspeaker in the grocery store.
About three days after Thanksgiving, the absence of holiday decorations combined with the onset of homesickness made me truly sad. We've been told by friends, and read in books that the first wave of homesickness/depression hits at the 3 month mark. Joe's hit early at 2 months, mine kicked in full-force at the end of month 4, just after Thanksgiving. Suddenly I was pining for the things that drive me crazy at home - like K103 playing all Christmas music from Thanksgiving day until Christmas day, and cheesy TV ads showing unexpected people returning home for the holidays, and decorations in every single store and restaurant, and Christmas movies on TV - even the really bad ones on the Lifetime Channel! I missed how easily accessible Christmas is at home.
So I started thinking, if you don't have the retail industry driving Christmas, what is the actual "start" of the Christmas season? If you are Christian, it is the advent season. Our family goes to church in the States, but I have honestly never paid attention to the advent calendar because of everything else going on! But this is a good segue into church in Shanghai.
There are 2 churches in Pudong (the east side of Shanghai where we live). One is a Catholic church and the other a non-denominational protestant church. We had been to the protestant church only once before, and we returned at the beginning of December in order to celebrate the Christmas season. This church is clearly trying to be something to everyone, and the result is a very odd mix of traditional and contemporary songs, pieces and parts of Lutheran, Baptist, and Presbyterian services. The first time we went it annoyed me to no end because it felt so disjointed (oh, and because there was a guest minister preaching who mentioned, during the sermon, that his book was for sale in the lobby and that he would sign it for you personally when you purchased it!). But when we went during December, I loved this church because they replaced all those odd disjointed pieces with EVERY Christmas song known to man! It was my only source of Christmas music besides what we downloaded from iTunes.
There is something truly unique and special about singing Christmas songs with 300 other people in a church in China. Especially when you realize that outside the walls of the church where you are standing, Christianity, even a belief in God, is a rarity. As we stood in church singing carols, I felt incredibly blessed to be from a country where I can choose my religion, and where religion and a hope for better things, and a ridiculous craving for happy endings is all part of who we are. I didn't really know how much I loved that about my own country and culture until I moved to China.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Shanghai is China, but wears a western disguise
Sunday Joe and I took a tour of one city block in Shanghai and it was the most enlightening thing we've done so far. For the most part, when you are walking or driving around Shanghai it feels like any growing, international city. It even feels like it could be a western city, except the asian architecture, but even that has had a lot of western influence for the last 150 years.
But on Sunday, we signed up for a tour with a local Shanghainese photographer. We started the tour at the Four Seasons Hotel, and GangFeng (the photographer) informed us that we were going on the tour in the block across the street. He told us that the entire block would be torn down by the end of the year. When we looked across the street, all we saw was a row of shops. But following GangFeng, we went between two shops down an alley and discovered that behind the shops is an entire neighborhood. We walked through this neighborhood of shikumen houses which is on the verge of destruction. A little history on the destruction:
A developer has purchased the entire city block. The people who live in these houses do not own them, they were moved there in 1949/1950 by the government, they pay rent to the government. Communism in China was a peasant movement at its beginning and the wealthy lost their homes as they were claimed by the government and then given to peasants and the poor to even things out. And many houses were built specifically for the peasants. So in 1949 many families moved into these Shikumen houses and it was literally a gift because before that they had nothing. Now in 2007, these same families still live here, sometimes 8-10 people living in a single house, depending on what the younger generations have been able to do.
The houses are ~350 square feet each, and made of cement and brick. Most do not have toilets or showers. They have portable toilets (bucket with a lid), and they take showers at a local public bathhouse. Kitchens consist of a hotplate and a wok and 50 years of grease from stirfrying coats the walls. Creative families have constructed a loft to create another "room". There are two windows in the whole house, so as we walked through these houses, my overwhelming feeling was one of darkness, dampness and cold.
Now that the developer is buying the block, all these people have to be moved out of their homes. But since they don't technically own them, there is a huge three-way negotiation between the developer, the government and the people. Our tour guide said that the people are calling this a "once in a thousand year event". For these people, this is their one opportunity to get a new home or a lump sum of cash that could propel them into a whole different situation. For the developer, they have to get everyone out as fast as they can so they can get started because they only have 50 years to make their money back. Why only 50 years? Because the land and buildings revert back to the government after 50 years! The tour guide tells us that everybody involved, developer, people & government believe it's a win-win-win situation. The only people upset about these shikumen houses being torn down is the tourists. The tourists think they should preserve their history, but the Shanghainese think they should have somewhere to live!
This tour, more than anything I've seen or read so far, brought home to me how China is a place where things happen TO people. And I come from a culture where people MAKE things happen for themselves, and we place incredible value on the ability to make things happen. It's the first time I really encountered what communism can look like in this modern city. Most of the time I can't tell this is a communist country at all, there is so much enterprise in this bustling city.
The poverty in this little neighborhood was so striking that I became a little numb to it at the end of the three hours. And as Joe and I reflected on the tour I wondered if things look any different in the tenements and slums of major US cities. Do they? I don't know because I've never really been a tourist in my own country...
But on Sunday, we signed up for a tour with a local Shanghainese photographer. We started the tour at the Four Seasons Hotel, and GangFeng (the photographer) informed us that we were going on the tour in the block across the street. He told us that the entire block would be torn down by the end of the year. When we looked across the street, all we saw was a row of shops. But following GangFeng, we went between two shops down an alley and discovered that behind the shops is an entire neighborhood. We walked through this neighborhood of shikumen houses which is on the verge of destruction. A little history on the destruction:
A developer has purchased the entire city block. The people who live in these houses do not own them, they were moved there in 1949/1950 by the government, they pay rent to the government. Communism in China was a peasant movement at its beginning and the wealthy lost their homes as they were claimed by the government and then given to peasants and the poor to even things out. And many houses were built specifically for the peasants. So in 1949 many families moved into these Shikumen houses and it was literally a gift because before that they had nothing. Now in 2007, these same families still live here, sometimes 8-10 people living in a single house, depending on what the younger generations have been able to do.
The houses are ~350 square feet each, and made of cement and brick. Most do not have toilets or showers. They have portable toilets (bucket with a lid), and they take showers at a local public bathhouse. Kitchens consist of a hotplate and a wok and 50 years of grease from stirfrying coats the walls. Creative families have constructed a loft to create another "room". There are two windows in the whole house, so as we walked through these houses, my overwhelming feeling was one of darkness, dampness and cold.
Now that the developer is buying the block, all these people have to be moved out of their homes. But since they don't technically own them, there is a huge three-way negotiation between the developer, the government and the people. Our tour guide said that the people are calling this a "once in a thousand year event". For these people, this is their one opportunity to get a new home or a lump sum of cash that could propel them into a whole different situation. For the developer, they have to get everyone out as fast as they can so they can get started because they only have 50 years to make their money back. Why only 50 years? Because the land and buildings revert back to the government after 50 years! The tour guide tells us that everybody involved, developer, people & government believe it's a win-win-win situation. The only people upset about these shikumen houses being torn down is the tourists. The tourists think they should preserve their history, but the Shanghainese think they should have somewhere to live!
This tour, more than anything I've seen or read so far, brought home to me how China is a place where things happen TO people. And I come from a culture where people MAKE things happen for themselves, and we place incredible value on the ability to make things happen. It's the first time I really encountered what communism can look like in this modern city. Most of the time I can't tell this is a communist country at all, there is so much enterprise in this bustling city.
The poverty in this little neighborhood was so striking that I became a little numb to it at the end of the three hours. And as Joe and I reflected on the tour I wondered if things look any different in the tenements and slums of major US cities. Do they? I don't know because I've never really been a tourist in my own country...
Monday, November 19, 2007
Classes you can't sign up for at home
Today I got an email from the American Women's Club Shanghai (I joined last week). It said: Hi Ladies, We have a special treat! Carol from Shokay will be presenting a class on
“Designing your Own Yak Down Present”.
Honestly, I laughed for 10 minutes when I read the title of the class. It's not only the Chinglish signs and brochures that you see here that make you guffaw, sometimes it's the messages from your fellow ex-pats that send you off the deep end. :)
Cheers.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Who, exactly, is in charge here?
It has been a very odd thing to get used to having someone in my house with me all the time (my ayi), but on the other hand it has been so great that I have someone to leave Gigi with when I need to dash out to pick up Olivia, go on a field trip, or trek 45 minutes across town to get to the very good German meat market. But one thing that is not working so well is ayi's inability to be the boss of Gigi. This is definitely a case where east meets west.
In China today, it seems children are given whatever they want, and they are basically placated in whatever way necessary so that they never cry. Seriously, they consider it a huge failing if children are crying and will basically give in to whatever children want so they don't cry. I have seen this at Gigi's school when teachers give the kids candy if they are crying or upset, just to get them to stop crying! And I am increasing experiencing it with our ayi, Xiao Chen. Gigi gets away with so much because Xiao Chen doesn't want her to cry. We have had several instances:
Once ayi took Gigi to the playroom and I explained, in Chinese, that we needed to leave at 4:00 to go to friends' house. At 4:10 they were still not back at the apartment so I went to find them. When I asked Xiao Chen why she didn't come back, she said "I tell Gigi it's time to go, but she say 'no ayi!'." That time I just let it go because I wasn't really sure what to say.
Then a few days ago I got out of the shower and went to find Gigi. She had a green hand and green all around her mouth. I asked her what she had and she showed me the Skittle in her mouth. I asked where she got it..."ayi give it to me and change my diaper." Translation: ayi could not get Gigi to agree to a diaper change so she bribed her with Skittles! Candy at 9:00 in the morning!
And then today. I left for a field trip at Olivia's school about 8:15. Gigi was finishing watching the end of a Dora movie. I told both Gigi and ayi that when the one Dora movie was over, she was done watching. I came home at 11:00 and Gigi was STILL sitting on my bed watching Dora. I totally lost it. I yanked the DVD player off the bed and put it away, causing Gigi to scream and cry in frustration. Then I looked at Xiao Chen and said "why is she watching a movie?" Her answer: "I tell Gigi no more movie and she say 'no ayi' and she cry so I say OK." AYYYYYYYY! Seriously! I told Xiao Chen in English AND Chinglish that she was the boss of Gigi, that Gigi is 2 years old and she cannot make her own decisions, and that 3 hours of TV is very bad for her. Then I typed it all into Babelfish and translated it to English to hopefully make sure she understood.
I am totally baffled by a society where children have such respect for their elders, yet are given everything they want. How does that work? Do we have it all wrong putting our kids in time-out and letting them cry when they don't get their way? I know for sure it makes Xiao Chen totally bonkers when I put either of the girls in time-out. I've had to tell her a couple different times not to get the girls out of time-out! It's just such a different way of looking at raising children. And somehow I think that the ayi believes they are here to help, not to be the mom or the disciplinarian. But if that's the case, then I can't leave Gigi with Xiao Chen for very long. I am really struggling with how to navigate this relationship. I am asking my ayi to discipline my children in the same way I do, yet this is asking her to do things that go against her nature and her culture. But if she doesn't, what kind of little monster will I have on my hands when I return to the US in 2 years?
Speaking of that little monster, Joe told me I had to blog about the latest two incidences with her, even though they are very embarrassing to me. Yesterday morning when I had my weekly case of the runs (yes, even when we're careful and prepare food correctly and buy it at reputable places, we all seem to get the runs at least once a week.) Anyway, Gigi comes in the bathroom and asks "Mama have diarrhea?" I say, "well, a little." And in answer to this she starts singing a song, made up entirely of the word diarrhea, over and over again. She sings it the whole way to the door, and down the elevator and while I put her in her seat on my bike. I didn't say anything because I thought she'd get tired of it, which she did once she saw me putting on my very fashionable rain poncho designed to cover my entire bike. (yes, yes, I am truly one of the people now.) Anyway, we got to school and as I get her out of the bike seat I hear her start up the diarrhea song again. When I ask her to stop, she says with a two dimple grin "but it's a good song, right Mama?" No, not so much. My only hope is that no one in her classroom knew that particular English word...
The second Gigi incident was about a week ago, again on my bike on the way to Gigi's school. Gig's school is in a housing compound, and like most of the compounds at the main gate there is one of the yellow arms that goes up and down as a security guard waves you in. I have no idea who doesn't get to come in because I never see the arm down. Until I was riding in one day and the arm started to come down. I was a little surprised and I ducked my head and pedaled faster, but alas, not fast enough. The gate came down right on top of Gigi's head! Thank goodness she was wearing a helmet!!! She was fine, just a little scared, but the guard was laughing hysterically, which I really did not appreciate. Of course when we rode to school the next time, Gigi observes as we ride through the gate, "It not hit me this time Mama!" She now watches that yellow arm very carefully, as well she should since her Mama doesn't always make the wisest decisions.
In China today, it seems children are given whatever they want, and they are basically placated in whatever way necessary so that they never cry. Seriously, they consider it a huge failing if children are crying and will basically give in to whatever children want so they don't cry. I have seen this at Gigi's school when teachers give the kids candy if they are crying or upset, just to get them to stop crying! And I am increasing experiencing it with our ayi, Xiao Chen. Gigi gets away with so much because Xiao Chen doesn't want her to cry. We have had several instances:
Once ayi took Gigi to the playroom and I explained, in Chinese, that we needed to leave at 4:00 to go to friends' house. At 4:10 they were still not back at the apartment so I went to find them. When I asked Xiao Chen why she didn't come back, she said "I tell Gigi it's time to go, but she say 'no ayi!'." That time I just let it go because I wasn't really sure what to say.
Then a few days ago I got out of the shower and went to find Gigi. She had a green hand and green all around her mouth. I asked her what she had and she showed me the Skittle in her mouth. I asked where she got it..."ayi give it to me and change my diaper." Translation: ayi could not get Gigi to agree to a diaper change so she bribed her with Skittles! Candy at 9:00 in the morning!
And then today. I left for a field trip at Olivia's school about 8:15. Gigi was finishing watching the end of a Dora movie. I told both Gigi and ayi that when the one Dora movie was over, she was done watching. I came home at 11:00 and Gigi was STILL sitting on my bed watching Dora. I totally lost it. I yanked the DVD player off the bed and put it away, causing Gigi to scream and cry in frustration. Then I looked at Xiao Chen and said "why is she watching a movie?" Her answer: "I tell Gigi no more movie and she say 'no ayi' and she cry so I say OK." AYYYYYYYY! Seriously! I told Xiao Chen in English AND Chinglish that she was the boss of Gigi, that Gigi is 2 years old and she cannot make her own decisions, and that 3 hours of TV is very bad for her. Then I typed it all into Babelfish and translated it to English to hopefully make sure she understood.
I am totally baffled by a society where children have such respect for their elders, yet are given everything they want. How does that work? Do we have it all wrong putting our kids in time-out and letting them cry when they don't get their way? I know for sure it makes Xiao Chen totally bonkers when I put either of the girls in time-out. I've had to tell her a couple different times not to get the girls out of time-out! It's just such a different way of looking at raising children. And somehow I think that the ayi believes they are here to help, not to be the mom or the disciplinarian. But if that's the case, then I can't leave Gigi with Xiao Chen for very long. I am really struggling with how to navigate this relationship. I am asking my ayi to discipline my children in the same way I do, yet this is asking her to do things that go against her nature and her culture. But if she doesn't, what kind of little monster will I have on my hands when I return to the US in 2 years?
Speaking of that little monster, Joe told me I had to blog about the latest two incidences with her, even though they are very embarrassing to me. Yesterday morning when I had my weekly case of the runs (yes, even when we're careful and prepare food correctly and buy it at reputable places, we all seem to get the runs at least once a week.) Anyway, Gigi comes in the bathroom and asks "Mama have diarrhea?" I say, "well, a little." And in answer to this she starts singing a song, made up entirely of the word diarrhea, over and over again. She sings it the whole way to the door, and down the elevator and while I put her in her seat on my bike. I didn't say anything because I thought she'd get tired of it, which she did once she saw me putting on my very fashionable rain poncho designed to cover my entire bike. (yes, yes, I am truly one of the people now.) Anyway, we got to school and as I get her out of the bike seat I hear her start up the diarrhea song again. When I ask her to stop, she says with a two dimple grin "but it's a good song, right Mama?" No, not so much. My only hope is that no one in her classroom knew that particular English word...
The second Gigi incident was about a week ago, again on my bike on the way to Gigi's school. Gig's school is in a housing compound, and like most of the compounds at the main gate there is one of the yellow arms that goes up and down as a security guard waves you in. I have no idea who doesn't get to come in because I never see the arm down. Until I was riding in one day and the arm started to come down. I was a little surprised and I ducked my head and pedaled faster, but alas, not fast enough. The gate came down right on top of Gigi's head! Thank goodness she was wearing a helmet!!! She was fine, just a little scared, but the guard was laughing hysterically, which I really did not appreciate. Of course when we rode to school the next time, Gigi observes as we ride through the gate, "It not hit me this time Mama!" She now watches that yellow arm very carefully, as well she should since her Mama doesn't always make the wisest decisions.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Transportation-why do I think about this so much?
I have never truly thought about transportation before, I have almost always had a car and when I needed to get somewhere I put the keys in, started it up and off I went. If the distance was too far I took a plane. That was the sum total of my thinking.
Now I find that I spend an inordinate amount of time every day thinking about what kind of transportation I need or want. First there is the strange situation of having a driver. Truly the driver and car are Joe's, but after Daniel (our driver) has taken Joe to work he comes back and I can use him to go about town until about 4:00 when he has to head back out to pick up Joe. But when Joe is out of town on a business trip I can use him as much as I need, he is more or less at my disposal. Hence the problem. He wants and needs overtime work to make as much money as possible. I want and need to ride my bike and walk as much as possible so that I don't become the only ex-pat to gain weight instead of lose it in China! So then I have this constant internal debate in my head about should I use Daniel to drive over to the market, which is literally 4 blocks away, so that he gets the extra time and makes more money? Or should I ride my bike and do what's right for me? What's my obligation to my driver and his ability to make a decent living? BTW - I heard the alarming fact on television a couple weeks ago that the minimum wage in Shanghai 840RMB/month, which is roughly $120/month. Even with the cost of food very cheap for locals, that seems a minuscule amount of money to live on in a city as expensive as Shanghai. I feel a heavy obligation to help my driver make as much money as he can.
So that's the situation with the driver. Then there is the rare time when we don't have our driver, for instance yesterday when he asked for the day off, which we gladly gave him. We wanted to go to a Halloween party at Olivia's school, which is a 25 minute drive away. So we all pile into a taxi. No seatbelts, and a driver who truly believes the objective is to get there as fast as possible and has no hesitation about swerving around trucks, passing on the right on the shoulder, and generally scaring the piss out of westerners. Really, how often do I want to put my kids into a taxi? Not often.
And then there is the traditional mode of transportation, biking. I have mentioned before that I often take Gigi to preschool on my bike in the morning. Unlike many Chinese kids, she sits in a child seat on the back of my bike and wears a helmet. Many kids simply perch on the rack above the back wheel, siting sideways and holding onto their parent or grandparent. And I have only ever seen a handful of helmets on people here, and they were riding mopeds. Anyway, the other day I decided to take note of everything I saw and experienced on my bike on the way home so you could get a sense of using a bike as a mode of transportation. Here goes:
As I pulled out of the compound where Gigi's school is, there is a large lot with construction. The men were sitting on the corner taking a break. As I rode by one yelled out "hullo!". I turned and waved and yelled "Ni hao". This brought on hoots and hollers and laughter from all 15 of the men sitting there.
I rode along in the bike lane with many other people since it was rush hour. While there may not be any old cars in Shanghai, there are LOTS of old bikes. Many rusty and held together by wire. But people who ride bikes in Shanghai all seem to go the same speed, and I rarely see a bike with gears. It's slow-and-steady wins the race around here.
As I'm peddling along a see a man peeing on the side of the road at the wall.
Then I pass a man on a 3 wheel bike who has styrofoam stacked behind him easily 10 feet high and 7-8 feet across, held together by no more than 3 ropes. This is a totally common site in Shanghai, with styrofoam, garbage bags, empty water jugs, etc.
Next, on the sidewalk is what I call the bike drive-thru breakfast. There is a woman with a cart that has a half a barrel drum turned over. Somehow she heats this surface, because on top of the barrel drum she cooks what looks like a huge omelet/crepe concoction. It's eggs, meat, onions, garlic, etc, but spread very thin like a crepe. When it is cooked, she folds it over and over into a sandwich looking thing, puts it in a plastic bag tied at the top, and hands it to the gentleman waiting on his bike. He either ties the bag to his handlebars, or takes the omelette/crepe out and eats it while he rides his bike. A side note-pretty much anything you do in your car on the way to work, people do on their bikes on the way to work, including carpooling, eating breakfast, listening to music, talking on a cell phone, etc.
I continue on through an intersection where I stop literally in the middle with about 30 other people, and then continue on after the row of cars turning left is finished. People are dressed in anything from nice suits to jeans and t-shirts.
As I'm riding along, a gentleman, probably late 30's, rides up next to me and says "hello". Now, as you may remember from earlier posts, I am not the steadiest or best bike rider, although I am getting better. So I turned and smiled and said "ni hao", and then quickly looked back ahead to where I was riding. We are riding in a group of people so concentration is essential for me, and he asks me, in English "going to work?" In Chinglish (some chinese words, some english words), I tell him "no, i take daughter to school. I go home." He smiles and says "Where are you from?" I tell him "meigua (America)" and he grins at me. "You teach English here?" More Chinglish..."no, wo tai tai" which roughly means "no, I am a mrs." Then he says to me "oh, you don't need money?" In all English now, "Uh, I have to turn here." and off I rode down my street. It is a precarious thing to be polite to your country's hosts, but at the same time not want to really engage in a conversation while riding on a bike and trying to recall the little Chinese you do know! And really, he was starting to ask some personal questions!
Last, but not least, I am proud to say that I am no longer a "metro" virgin. Last week I took the subway for the first time and found it to be a clean, very efficient mode of transportation. One I would want to use often if the closest stop wasn't a 15 minute taxi ride away.
Alas, the choices of transportation are many, but the constant thinking about which one I have to use at which time is tiring!
Now I find that I spend an inordinate amount of time every day thinking about what kind of transportation I need or want. First there is the strange situation of having a driver. Truly the driver and car are Joe's, but after Daniel (our driver) has taken Joe to work he comes back and I can use him to go about town until about 4:00 when he has to head back out to pick up Joe. But when Joe is out of town on a business trip I can use him as much as I need, he is more or less at my disposal. Hence the problem. He wants and needs overtime work to make as much money as possible. I want and need to ride my bike and walk as much as possible so that I don't become the only ex-pat to gain weight instead of lose it in China! So then I have this constant internal debate in my head about should I use Daniel to drive over to the market, which is literally 4 blocks away, so that he gets the extra time and makes more money? Or should I ride my bike and do what's right for me? What's my obligation to my driver and his ability to make a decent living? BTW - I heard the alarming fact on television a couple weeks ago that the minimum wage in Shanghai 840RMB/month, which is roughly $120/month. Even with the cost of food very cheap for locals, that seems a minuscule amount of money to live on in a city as expensive as Shanghai. I feel a heavy obligation to help my driver make as much money as he can.
So that's the situation with the driver. Then there is the rare time when we don't have our driver, for instance yesterday when he asked for the day off, which we gladly gave him. We wanted to go to a Halloween party at Olivia's school, which is a 25 minute drive away. So we all pile into a taxi. No seatbelts, and a driver who truly believes the objective is to get there as fast as possible and has no hesitation about swerving around trucks, passing on the right on the shoulder, and generally scaring the piss out of westerners. Really, how often do I want to put my kids into a taxi? Not often.
And then there is the traditional mode of transportation, biking. I have mentioned before that I often take Gigi to preschool on my bike in the morning. Unlike many Chinese kids, she sits in a child seat on the back of my bike and wears a helmet. Many kids simply perch on the rack above the back wheel, siting sideways and holding onto their parent or grandparent. And I have only ever seen a handful of helmets on people here, and they were riding mopeds. Anyway, the other day I decided to take note of everything I saw and experienced on my bike on the way home so you could get a sense of using a bike as a mode of transportation. Here goes:
As I pulled out of the compound where Gigi's school is, there is a large lot with construction. The men were sitting on the corner taking a break. As I rode by one yelled out "hullo!". I turned and waved and yelled "Ni hao". This brought on hoots and hollers and laughter from all 15 of the men sitting there.
I rode along in the bike lane with many other people since it was rush hour. While there may not be any old cars in Shanghai, there are LOTS of old bikes. Many rusty and held together by wire. But people who ride bikes in Shanghai all seem to go the same speed, and I rarely see a bike with gears. It's slow-and-steady wins the race around here.
As I'm peddling along a see a man peeing on the side of the road at the wall.
Then I pass a man on a 3 wheel bike who has styrofoam stacked behind him easily 10 feet high and 7-8 feet across, held together by no more than 3 ropes. This is a totally common site in Shanghai, with styrofoam, garbage bags, empty water jugs, etc.
Next, on the sidewalk is what I call the bike drive-thru breakfast. There is a woman with a cart that has a half a barrel drum turned over. Somehow she heats this surface, because on top of the barrel drum she cooks what looks like a huge omelet/crepe concoction. It's eggs, meat, onions, garlic, etc, but spread very thin like a crepe. When it is cooked, she folds it over and over into a sandwich looking thing, puts it in a plastic bag tied at the top, and hands it to the gentleman waiting on his bike. He either ties the bag to his handlebars, or takes the omelette/crepe out and eats it while he rides his bike. A side note-pretty much anything you do in your car on the way to work, people do on their bikes on the way to work, including carpooling, eating breakfast, listening to music, talking on a cell phone, etc.
I continue on through an intersection where I stop literally in the middle with about 30 other people, and then continue on after the row of cars turning left is finished. People are dressed in anything from nice suits to jeans and t-shirts.
As I'm riding along, a gentleman, probably late 30's, rides up next to me and says "hello". Now, as you may remember from earlier posts, I am not the steadiest or best bike rider, although I am getting better. So I turned and smiled and said "ni hao", and then quickly looked back ahead to where I was riding. We are riding in a group of people so concentration is essential for me, and he asks me, in English "going to work?" In Chinglish (some chinese words, some english words), I tell him "no, i take daughter to school. I go home." He smiles and says "Where are you from?" I tell him "meigua (America)" and he grins at me. "You teach English here?" More Chinglish..."no, wo tai tai" which roughly means "no, I am a mrs." Then he says to me "oh, you don't need money?" In all English now, "Uh, I have to turn here." and off I rode down my street. It is a precarious thing to be polite to your country's hosts, but at the same time not want to really engage in a conversation while riding on a bike and trying to recall the little Chinese you do know! And really, he was starting to ask some personal questions!
Last, but not least, I am proud to say that I am no longer a "metro" virgin. Last week I took the subway for the first time and found it to be a clean, very efficient mode of transportation. One I would want to use often if the closest stop wasn't a 15 minute taxi ride away.
Alas, the choices of transportation are many, but the constant thinking about which one I have to use at which time is tiring!
Halloween in China
Several people have asked if there is Halloween in China and the answer is "no" if you are Chinese but "yes" if you live in an expat community. But even in the expat communities it is considered a very American thing to dress up and go trick-or-treating. Our British friends said they took a walk around their neighborhood last week to look at the Halloween decorations and Graham (the husband) said "What are we doing? This is an American tradition, why are we partaking in this?" I guess we are influencing those around us wherever we are, whether that is good or bad I truly do not know.
My Chinese tutor, Jessie, had a funny reaction to the decorations at our house. We don't have much up, just a pumpkin candle and a friendly looking spider hanging outside the door. When she arrived at the house for my lesson she said "Oh, is this for your evil festival?" That cracked me up! Everything in a China is a "festival" instead of a holiday. And I guess technically it is an evil festival when you think of all the sugar that gets into kids this time of year!
When she walked into the apartment, she saw the glow-in-the-dark skeleton hanging on the girls' bedroom door. She widened her eyes comically and said "Oh! Chinese people would never do that!" Of course she is referring to feng shui and the management of chi. As I am learning slowly, the Chinese take their spirits and traditions very seriously. Feng shui seems to be a bit of a trend in the US, but here it is truly ingrained in society. People take the positioning of their homes, rooms, etc, every seriously. And lucky numbers take on a whole different meaning in a country where everyone has the same lucky number. For instance, since 8 is a very lucky number, some streets have multiple #8 buildings. And the government actually has to try to actively manage how many people are giving birth in the month of August (8th month). Since couples are only allowed one baby, they are (understandably so) going to try to have it in a lucky month!
Someone at a recent ex-pat event made the comment to me that it makes sense that the Chinese are so superstitious because their traditions/superstitions are the one thing that has stayed constant through so many centuries of turmoil and change.
Anyway, back to Halloween. I asked Jessie if the Chinese have anything similar to Halloween and she said yes, and told me what it was called, which roughly translates in English to be "Ogre Festival". And it was just last week. It is a day when supposedly the ogres come out and they mess with people, but people cannot really see them or anticipate what they are going to do, so the Chinese stay in their houses to be safe from the ogres. They leave work early, and go home and stay there. At home they hang a red lantern in front of their front door and burn incense inside to keep the ogres away. It is a festival for which they stay home so no harm will come to them. Sounds good to me!
My Chinese tutor, Jessie, had a funny reaction to the decorations at our house. We don't have much up, just a pumpkin candle and a friendly looking spider hanging outside the door. When she arrived at the house for my lesson she said "Oh, is this for your evil festival?" That cracked me up! Everything in a China is a "festival" instead of a holiday. And I guess technically it is an evil festival when you think of all the sugar that gets into kids this time of year!
When she walked into the apartment, she saw the glow-in-the-dark skeleton hanging on the girls' bedroom door. She widened her eyes comically and said "Oh! Chinese people would never do that!" Of course she is referring to feng shui and the management of chi. As I am learning slowly, the Chinese take their spirits and traditions very seriously. Feng shui seems to be a bit of a trend in the US, but here it is truly ingrained in society. People take the positioning of their homes, rooms, etc, every seriously. And lucky numbers take on a whole different meaning in a country where everyone has the same lucky number. For instance, since 8 is a very lucky number, some streets have multiple #8 buildings. And the government actually has to try to actively manage how many people are giving birth in the month of August (8th month). Since couples are only allowed one baby, they are (understandably so) going to try to have it in a lucky month!
Someone at a recent ex-pat event made the comment to me that it makes sense that the Chinese are so superstitious because their traditions/superstitions are the one thing that has stayed constant through so many centuries of turmoil and change.
Anyway, back to Halloween. I asked Jessie if the Chinese have anything similar to Halloween and she said yes, and told me what it was called, which roughly translates in English to be "Ogre Festival". And it was just last week. It is a day when supposedly the ogres come out and they mess with people, but people cannot really see them or anticipate what they are going to do, so the Chinese stay in their houses to be safe from the ogres. They leave work early, and go home and stay there. At home they hang a red lantern in front of their front door and burn incense inside to keep the ogres away. It is a festival for which they stay home so no harm will come to them. Sounds good to me!
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Progress in the kids adjusting
Forgot to mention in my last blog (5 minutes ago) that this week was the first week that Olivia has not asked to go home to Oregon. This is a milestone, and I feel that it is a sign of two things:
1 is that I am finally getting back a little of my patience and therefore not the raging witch I've been since we arrived. I can actually calmly threaten my children with timeouts, instead of yelling at them through clenched teeth. Olivia no longer feels the need to go back to Oregon where "nice mommy" lives.
2 is that the weather has finally cooled down a little bit (hangs out about 80 degrees) so that we can enjoy being outdoors. In all the times we've asked her why she wants to go home to Oregon, her answer has always been "it's too hot in China". I honestly think that her first impression of China, stepping out of the airport into stifling 105 degree weather, made such an impact that it will be with her forever, no matter how cold it gets here. But at least that's no longer the issue.
So we are all slowly but surely adjusting. I'm regaining some patience and consistency in my parenting, the kids are eating, sleeping, and playing in a much more regular way, and Joe and I are attempting to implement date night so that we can keep track of our divergent experiences in China.
Wahoo, we're making progess. Thank goodness!
1 is that I am finally getting back a little of my patience and therefore not the raging witch I've been since we arrived. I can actually calmly threaten my children with timeouts, instead of yelling at them through clenched teeth. Olivia no longer feels the need to go back to Oregon where "nice mommy" lives.
2 is that the weather has finally cooled down a little bit (hangs out about 80 degrees) so that we can enjoy being outdoors. In all the times we've asked her why she wants to go home to Oregon, her answer has always been "it's too hot in China". I honestly think that her first impression of China, stepping out of the airport into stifling 105 degree weather, made such an impact that it will be with her forever, no matter how cold it gets here. But at least that's no longer the issue.
So we are all slowly but surely adjusting. I'm regaining some patience and consistency in my parenting, the kids are eating, sleeping, and playing in a much more regular way, and Joe and I are attempting to implement date night so that we can keep track of our divergent experiences in China.
Wahoo, we're making progess. Thank goodness!
OK, I hear you!
Apparently the fact that I've fallen off the blogging bandwagon for the two weeks is a problem because I'm getting emails asking for more blog posts! This is a good thing in my mind, because it means more than my mom is reading my blog. :)
So, it's been a crazy two weeks. It's hard to explain the way time just flies by here in China. You can't figure out how getting your kids to school and going to the grocery store can take up an entire day, but it does.
I think the last time I posted a blog was right before typhoon WIPHA, or maybe right after, but I can't be sure because I can't read my own blog. Anyway, the happy ending to the "I missed my opportunity to see the US Women's soccer team play because I'm a wimp" saga is that Joe got us tickets to the final matches of the US women's world cup last Sunday and it was awesome. We watched the US team soundly beat Norway (in the #3, #4 game) and the first half of the final match between Germany and Brazil. We left at halftime due to babysitting constraints, but managed to sell our tickets on the way out for 100RMB, which was enough to pay for the babysitter. All in all an excellent date night!
Ironically, as I'm writing this blog another typhoon is forecasted to hit Shanghai tonight and it is blowing and raining to beat the band.
This last week was the National Holiday in China. This is roughly equivalent to our 4th of July, it celebrates the founding of the People's Republic of China (by Mao in 1949), and it seems the way people celebrate in China is the same as the States: lots of people off work, fireworks and celebrations, and sales in all the stores. (Why do stores do that, by the way? What does Independence Day or National Holiday have to do with buying a t-shirt for 40% off?)
So here is an interesting thing about the holiday and time off. The holiday is officially 3 days (Mon-Tu-Wed), but in order to give people a full week off, businesses tell their employees to work the weekend before. And this extends to all businesses, and the government and the public schools. I was so surprised to get a notice saying that Gigi's school would be open on Sat & Sun before National Holiday week, but it makes sense if the parents are required to work they need the normal place to take their kids. Anyway, I can't imagine any company in the US saying "in order to get a full week off you need to work this weekend". We just take the 2 days of vacation to make it a complete week. It's just a different system.
Joe and I didn't feel up to traveling for the holiday (we just got here 8 weeks ago!), so we planned a week of events around Shanghai that would allow us to see the city and still keep the kids happy. And boy did we experience Shanghai, right along with the 18 million other people that live here. Holy cow. Many Chinese travel domestically during this holiday, so that meant that many non-Shanghainese were in town. No big deal, except people outside of Shanghai have seen even less foreigners than people in town and so our family with two curly-headed blond & red-hair kids becomes a moving exhibit wherever we go. People are stopping us and asking to take pictures of the girls, or with the girls, or with their kid. I swear every Chinese person knows the phrase "excuse me, may I take your picture?" in English.
I've finally hit upon a solution to this that seems to work for everyone, which to ask each of the girls if they want to have their picture taken. Typically Olivia says no and hides behind me and Gigi shrugs and says OK and then mugs for the camera. And if they both say no then I tell the Chinese people politely "not today", and it seems to work. I talk to the girls about making new Chinese friends and practicing their Chinese, but I think most times all they are thinking is "why can't we just sit here and have a snack without people lining up to take pictures and touch us?" Or wait, maybe I'm just projecting onto them because half the time that's what I'm thinking! It's not even close to the same scale, but I have a profound new respect for celebrities who can't go anywhere without people staring and following.
Monday we went to the Wild Animal Park, which is really a zoo and a wild animal park. As with most things in China, there were things that were great and things that disturbed. In the great category, the animals are really close and they don't have nearly the same amount of plexiglass and bars between people and animals. On the disturbing side, without a barricade some people seem compelled to throw food and trash in at the animals. (the apes think this is a game and throw the stuff back at the crowd and clap!) On both the great AND disturbing side, you could ride an elephant, camel, pony or zebra at the zoo. On the funny side, in the animal kindergarten (baby animals) there was a whole section with dogs: golden retrievers, beagles, pugs, and an alaskan husky. Olivia's comment: "Why are there dogs in the zoo? That's silly!" Dogs are a rarity here, unless you live in an ex-pat compound, where they abound.
Tuesday we headed out to the Science & Technology Museum without Joe, who got really really sick on Monday night. I was mentally geared up for tracking two kids in a crowd for the morning, but even I had second thoughts when I saw the 25 tour buses outside the back entrance to the museum. It took us 25 minutes, multiple elbows and a lot of stink-eye to stand in line and get our tickets. (Lining up is not preferred by Chinese, they would rather just pretend to be oblivious and walk to the front of the line, or worse yet be belligerent and cut right in front of you.) But we finally got tickets and the museum was great! The kids enjoyed the exhibits and I spent the entire time marveling at the sheer number of people that fit into the museum. Another good/bad thing about China is that you can bring your own food into anyplace and eat it anyplace. The bad thing is that lots of people leave their trash wherever they ate their food, but overall it's so nice not to have to go outside to eat your own food or buy overpriced bad food.
Wednesday we took it easy and went to some friends' house, luckily they have a great pool because the temp soared to 90 degrees. That night we went to a fireworks and music display at Century Park. Fabulous! Chinese really know how to do fireworks, which they should since they invented them. The entire show (1 hour) looked like the grand finale looks in the US! And it was coordinated with music. We really had fun, and ate our first bucket of KFC since we arrived, it's very popular here, there are KFCs here like there are Starbucks at home. Well, not quite that many, but close. We all enjoyed the picnic we had around the lake with fireworks exploding above our heads.
Thursday we headed out of Shanghai for 1.5 hours to a water town called Tongli. Ironically, when we pulled into the tourist parking lot our friends' driver says casually "there are better water towns, you should go to yadda yadda yadda." Thanks dude, could have used that advice 1.5 hours ago! There are dozens of watertowns on the outskirts of Shanghai, very picturesque villages built on canals. This one was very busy with tourists but not too commercialized. A ride on a gondola-type boat revealed that many people still wash their dishes and clothes in the canal. I swear, these people must have stomachs of iron, because this water is REALLY not clean.
Friday we found a furniture store that has great stuff, and also makes custom pieces. We designed a 25-cubby bookcase, which should be here in a couple weeks and cost us $300. A little research on the web tells us a similar piece in the States would set us back about $800, so we're feeling good about our first piece of Chinese furniture!
Saturday and Sunday our friend Jean was in town, she's here on a business trip. Yeah! It's so exciting to have visitors. I don't know why it's so monumental, but it is. I guess maybe because it means we haven't been forgotten. We used her arrival as an excuse to do a bunch of tourist stuff that we hadn't managed to get to yet. Which was good because I finally feel like I'm seeing some of the city, but bad because 18 million other people were doing the same thing.
This brings me to to an interesting aspect of my ex-pat experience. Since the week after we arrived, I have felt this incredible pressure to go out and explore and experience and really "live" in China. And I'm sure it's all in my head, and nothing intentional from friends and family, but questions like "what's the most interesting thing you've seen, what will you miss the most when you come home, and have you eaten anything you can't identify?" make me feel like I have to do everything immediately. And so I started planning things for every Sat and Sun. But Joe is working really hard and is stressed and he wants to spend the weekend relaxing and rejuvenating, and there is nothing relaxing about the Yu Garden with 25 thousand other people in it with you. :P So I feel pressure to get out and see the city, he wants to relax, and the kids just want to watch movies and eat snacks (gotta love being 2 and 4). We seriously have to figure out the right balance so we can enjoy the incredible, crazy city we live in, but come away from the experience sane and still married. It's a challenge of ex-pat life that I never even considered before we arrived.
One final note, I am trying to post some pictures to the blog, but I find it very hard to do without a preview feature or the ability to see the blog. I'll keep trying...stay tuned.
So, it's been a crazy two weeks. It's hard to explain the way time just flies by here in China. You can't figure out how getting your kids to school and going to the grocery store can take up an entire day, but it does.
I think the last time I posted a blog was right before typhoon WIPHA, or maybe right after, but I can't be sure because I can't read my own blog. Anyway, the happy ending to the "I missed my opportunity to see the US Women's soccer team play because I'm a wimp" saga is that Joe got us tickets to the final matches of the US women's world cup last Sunday and it was awesome. We watched the US team soundly beat Norway (in the #3, #4 game) and the first half of the final match between Germany and Brazil. We left at halftime due to babysitting constraints, but managed to sell our tickets on the way out for 100RMB, which was enough to pay for the babysitter. All in all an excellent date night!
Ironically, as I'm writing this blog another typhoon is forecasted to hit Shanghai tonight and it is blowing and raining to beat the band.
This last week was the National Holiday in China. This is roughly equivalent to our 4th of July, it celebrates the founding of the People's Republic of China (by Mao in 1949), and it seems the way people celebrate in China is the same as the States: lots of people off work, fireworks and celebrations, and sales in all the stores. (Why do stores do that, by the way? What does Independence Day or National Holiday have to do with buying a t-shirt for 40% off?)
So here is an interesting thing about the holiday and time off. The holiday is officially 3 days (Mon-Tu-Wed), but in order to give people a full week off, businesses tell their employees to work the weekend before. And this extends to all businesses, and the government and the public schools. I was so surprised to get a notice saying that Gigi's school would be open on Sat & Sun before National Holiday week, but it makes sense if the parents are required to work they need the normal place to take their kids. Anyway, I can't imagine any company in the US saying "in order to get a full week off you need to work this weekend". We just take the 2 days of vacation to make it a complete week. It's just a different system.
Joe and I didn't feel up to traveling for the holiday (we just got here 8 weeks ago!), so we planned a week of events around Shanghai that would allow us to see the city and still keep the kids happy. And boy did we experience Shanghai, right along with the 18 million other people that live here. Holy cow. Many Chinese travel domestically during this holiday, so that meant that many non-Shanghainese were in town. No big deal, except people outside of Shanghai have seen even less foreigners than people in town and so our family with two curly-headed blond & red-hair kids becomes a moving exhibit wherever we go. People are stopping us and asking to take pictures of the girls, or with the girls, or with their kid. I swear every Chinese person knows the phrase "excuse me, may I take your picture?" in English.
I've finally hit upon a solution to this that seems to work for everyone, which to ask each of the girls if they want to have their picture taken. Typically Olivia says no and hides behind me and Gigi shrugs and says OK and then mugs for the camera. And if they both say no then I tell the Chinese people politely "not today", and it seems to work. I talk to the girls about making new Chinese friends and practicing their Chinese, but I think most times all they are thinking is "why can't we just sit here and have a snack without people lining up to take pictures and touch us?" Or wait, maybe I'm just projecting onto them because half the time that's what I'm thinking! It's not even close to the same scale, but I have a profound new respect for celebrities who can't go anywhere without people staring and following.
Monday we went to the Wild Animal Park, which is really a zoo and a wild animal park. As with most things in China, there were things that were great and things that disturbed. In the great category, the animals are really close and they don't have nearly the same amount of plexiglass and bars between people and animals. On the disturbing side, without a barricade some people seem compelled to throw food and trash in at the animals. (the apes think this is a game and throw the stuff back at the crowd and clap!) On both the great AND disturbing side, you could ride an elephant, camel, pony or zebra at the zoo. On the funny side, in the animal kindergarten (baby animals) there was a whole section with dogs: golden retrievers, beagles, pugs, and an alaskan husky. Olivia's comment: "Why are there dogs in the zoo? That's silly!" Dogs are a rarity here, unless you live in an ex-pat compound, where they abound.
Tuesday we headed out to the Science & Technology Museum without Joe, who got really really sick on Monday night. I was mentally geared up for tracking two kids in a crowd for the morning, but even I had second thoughts when I saw the 25 tour buses outside the back entrance to the museum. It took us 25 minutes, multiple elbows and a lot of stink-eye to stand in line and get our tickets. (Lining up is not preferred by Chinese, they would rather just pretend to be oblivious and walk to the front of the line, or worse yet be belligerent and cut right in front of you.) But we finally got tickets and the museum was great! The kids enjoyed the exhibits and I spent the entire time marveling at the sheer number of people that fit into the museum. Another good/bad thing about China is that you can bring your own food into anyplace and eat it anyplace. The bad thing is that lots of people leave their trash wherever they ate their food, but overall it's so nice not to have to go outside to eat your own food or buy overpriced bad food.
Wednesday we took it easy and went to some friends' house, luckily they have a great pool because the temp soared to 90 degrees. That night we went to a fireworks and music display at Century Park. Fabulous! Chinese really know how to do fireworks, which they should since they invented them. The entire show (1 hour) looked like the grand finale looks in the US! And it was coordinated with music. We really had fun, and ate our first bucket of KFC since we arrived, it's very popular here, there are KFCs here like there are Starbucks at home. Well, not quite that many, but close. We all enjoyed the picnic we had around the lake with fireworks exploding above our heads.
Thursday we headed out of Shanghai for 1.5 hours to a water town called Tongli. Ironically, when we pulled into the tourist parking lot our friends' driver says casually "there are better water towns, you should go to yadda yadda yadda." Thanks dude, could have used that advice 1.5 hours ago! There are dozens of watertowns on the outskirts of Shanghai, very picturesque villages built on canals. This one was very busy with tourists but not too commercialized. A ride on a gondola-type boat revealed that many people still wash their dishes and clothes in the canal. I swear, these people must have stomachs of iron, because this water is REALLY not clean.
Friday we found a furniture store that has great stuff, and also makes custom pieces. We designed a 25-cubby bookcase, which should be here in a couple weeks and cost us $300. A little research on the web tells us a similar piece in the States would set us back about $800, so we're feeling good about our first piece of Chinese furniture!
Saturday and Sunday our friend Jean was in town, she's here on a business trip. Yeah! It's so exciting to have visitors. I don't know why it's so monumental, but it is. I guess maybe because it means we haven't been forgotten. We used her arrival as an excuse to do a bunch of tourist stuff that we hadn't managed to get to yet. Which was good because I finally feel like I'm seeing some of the city, but bad because 18 million other people were doing the same thing.
This brings me to to an interesting aspect of my ex-pat experience. Since the week after we arrived, I have felt this incredible pressure to go out and explore and experience and really "live" in China. And I'm sure it's all in my head, and nothing intentional from friends and family, but questions like "what's the most interesting thing you've seen, what will you miss the most when you come home, and have you eaten anything you can't identify?" make me feel like I have to do everything immediately. And so I started planning things for every Sat and Sun. But Joe is working really hard and is stressed and he wants to spend the weekend relaxing and rejuvenating, and there is nothing relaxing about the Yu Garden with 25 thousand other people in it with you. :P So I feel pressure to get out and see the city, he wants to relax, and the kids just want to watch movies and eat snacks (gotta love being 2 and 4). We seriously have to figure out the right balance so we can enjoy the incredible, crazy city we live in, but come away from the experience sane and still married. It's a challenge of ex-pat life that I never even considered before we arrived.
One final note, I am trying to post some pictures to the blog, but I find it very hard to do without a preview feature or the ability to see the blog. I'll keep trying...stay tuned.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Typhoon Wimper and bizarre music encounters
The typhoon that was headed to Shanghai, and that caused me to sacrifice going to a US Women's Soccer team World Cup match, made landfall south of Shanghai and then managed to go west around Shanghai before curving back out east to the city north of Shanghai before it petered out. For all of you wondering how we survived our first typhoon, the answer is thankfully "very well".
We got lots of rain and wind, but nothing like predicted. Unfortunately for the city south of Shanghai they had to evacuate 2 million people as they got the worst of it.
This weekend has been a series of bizarre musical encounters. On Friday I went to the assembly at Olivia's school, which is for the lower school/grade school. At these assemblies one grade hosts and one grade does some kind of performance and they give out awards. The music teacher announced that the 4th grade class would do a song for us, and they had printed on signs the refrain that they wanted us to sing along with them. The refrain was "Take me home country roads, to the place I belong. West Virgina, Mountain Mama take me home, country roads." I couldn't believe the class was singing this John Denver song about West Virginia, to an audience of 70-80% Europeans! Then I'm listening to the words and there is a line that goes something like "...life is old here, older than the trees" and I could not help but bursting out in laughter. Here are these 4th graders from all over the world singing about how old the trees are in West Virginia, while they stand in a country that has documented history of THOUSANDS of years. It was too much for me.
Saturday night Joe and I went out with friends for drinks and some clubbing. We were in the French Concession, an old part of Shanghai developed by the French and we started at the Paulner, a German restaurant. We go in and there is a Phillapino band playing. Not unusual in Shanghai, they are great singers. But we all looked at each other and cracked up when they played "La Bamba" and sang in Spanish. A very international experience this is turning out to be! But the night got more interesting. We left the Paulner to go to a bar called "Malone's" which our friends claimed had a great band. We got there and to our friends' horror the regular band was not there and in their place was a Phillapino band dressed in 50s attire (flipped bouffant hairdos, poodleskirts and all) and singing oldies tunes from the 50s and 60s. OK, well this wasn't as odd because it was an American bar, but still classic.
So we hit the next bar. The singers were decent, and we were having a good time dancing. But the most obvious form of entertainment was watching the "working girls" arrive. Now, we all know that I'm not exactly a clubbing kind of girl most of the time, but I've been out and about in Portland and I swear it is not as easy to pick out the working girls in Portland as it is here. It's shocking, really, they seem to arrive in groups of 5-6 and they literally make a bee-line for the white guys. But everybody's dancing and having a good time. Until a scantily clad woman hopped up on the bar and that's when Joe and I notice the poles up and down the bar. Hmmm. When I expressed shock that there would be pole dancing at what seems like a typical bar, our friends said "welcome to Asia, this is totally normal." Hmmm. I'm getting all sorts of different educations in Shanghai!
We got lots of rain and wind, but nothing like predicted. Unfortunately for the city south of Shanghai they had to evacuate 2 million people as they got the worst of it.
This weekend has been a series of bizarre musical encounters. On Friday I went to the assembly at Olivia's school, which is for the lower school/grade school. At these assemblies one grade hosts and one grade does some kind of performance and they give out awards. The music teacher announced that the 4th grade class would do a song for us, and they had printed on signs the refrain that they wanted us to sing along with them. The refrain was "Take me home country roads, to the place I belong. West Virgina, Mountain Mama take me home, country roads." I couldn't believe the class was singing this John Denver song about West Virginia, to an audience of 70-80% Europeans! Then I'm listening to the words and there is a line that goes something like "...life is old here, older than the trees" and I could not help but bursting out in laughter. Here are these 4th graders from all over the world singing about how old the trees are in West Virginia, while they stand in a country that has documented history of THOUSANDS of years. It was too much for me.
Saturday night Joe and I went out with friends for drinks and some clubbing. We were in the French Concession, an old part of Shanghai developed by the French and we started at the Paulner, a German restaurant. We go in and there is a Phillapino band playing. Not unusual in Shanghai, they are great singers. But we all looked at each other and cracked up when they played "La Bamba" and sang in Spanish. A very international experience this is turning out to be! But the night got more interesting. We left the Paulner to go to a bar called "Malone's" which our friends claimed had a great band. We got there and to our friends' horror the regular band was not there and in their place was a Phillapino band dressed in 50s attire (flipped bouffant hairdos, poodleskirts and all) and singing oldies tunes from the 50s and 60s. OK, well this wasn't as odd because it was an American bar, but still classic.
So we hit the next bar. The singers were decent, and we were having a good time dancing. But the most obvious form of entertainment was watching the "working girls" arrive. Now, we all know that I'm not exactly a clubbing kind of girl most of the time, but I've been out and about in Portland and I swear it is not as easy to pick out the working girls in Portland as it is here. It's shocking, really, they seem to arrive in groups of 5-6 and they literally make a bee-line for the white guys. But everybody's dancing and having a good time. Until a scantily clad woman hopped up on the bar and that's when Joe and I notice the poles up and down the bar. Hmmm. When I expressed shock that there would be pole dancing at what seems like a typical bar, our friends said "welcome to Asia, this is totally normal." Hmmm. I'm getting all sorts of different educations in Shanghai!
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Typhoon? Hmm, that wasn't part of the criteria
Tonight I am feeling like a total schmuck. The adventurous spirit that made me jump at the opportunity to move halfway across the world has deserted me in the face of a typhoon.
The first I heard that a typhoon was heading to Shanghai, was an email yesterday that Joe forwarded me from Intel's International SOS travel alert system. I honestly didn't think much of it because the travel alert said not to cancel travel plans to China. Today it's been pouring down rain and while I was out shopping my friend Jessica called and asked if I knew that school was canceled tomorrow. In fact all the international schools are closing tomorrow. That gave me pause, made me think that maybe this was pretty serious. I called another friend for some recommendations about moon cakes (more about that later) and she asked me if I had candles, flashlights, water, etc. She also told me to bring all our patio furniture in, and pull our blinds closed in case a window shatters. OK - that made me freak out a little bit so I got up on the web and looked at the English newspaper website because that's pretty much the only source of info we can get. (Nothing on TV that's in English is local, and nothing on the radio is in English.) It said that typhoon Mipha had been upgraded to a super typhoon, that it was supposed to make landfall at midnight tonight, and that 200,000 people had been evacuated from low-lying parts of Shanghai. Oh, and this could potentially be the worst typhoon to make landfall in Shanghai in the last 10 years.
You know, normally this is a total no-brainer. There's a weather warning in effect and you stay in and have a movie marathon or whatever.
But Joe and I had tickets to see the US Women's soccer team play a World Cup match against Nigeria in Shanghai tonight at 8:00. We had both been looking forward to this since we got the tickets a week after we arrived. And now I'm looking at this severe weather warning that the typhoon will make landfall at midnight tonight, and
two tickets to see the US Women's soccer team.
After a brief discussion with Joe I decided I didn't want to take the chance of being away from the kids if the typhoon struck. What if the weather was really bad and we had trouble getting home? I also didn't think it was a good idea to be out in an open-air stadium in the rain and wind. But these are all big "ifs" because how accurate are these weather predications. Is it like home where there is a "storm watch" for days and then nothing actually happens? Joe said the typhoon wasn't supposed to hit until late night or tomorrow and that he was really looking forward to the game. As is usual in these situations, I take a very conservative approach and Joe takes a much less conservative approach. So off he went to the game and I stayed home with the kids. At the time of kick-off (8:00) I looked outside and it was raining, but nothing else. I was so disappointed with myself, and a little embarrassed. Where is my sense of adventure, why am I sitting at home blogging when I could be watching a World Cup soccer match??? Ah, you win some and you lose some I guess.
The first I heard that a typhoon was heading to Shanghai, was an email yesterday that Joe forwarded me from Intel's International SOS travel alert system. I honestly didn't think much of it because the travel alert said not to cancel travel plans to China. Today it's been pouring down rain and while I was out shopping my friend Jessica called and asked if I knew that school was canceled tomorrow. In fact all the international schools are closing tomorrow. That gave me pause, made me think that maybe this was pretty serious. I called another friend for some recommendations about moon cakes (more about that later) and she asked me if I had candles, flashlights, water, etc. She also told me to bring all our patio furniture in, and pull our blinds closed in case a window shatters. OK - that made me freak out a little bit so I got up on the web and looked at the English newspaper website because that's pretty much the only source of info we can get. (Nothing on TV that's in English is local, and nothing on the radio is in English.) It said that typhoon Mipha had been upgraded to a super typhoon, that it was supposed to make landfall at midnight tonight, and that 200,000 people had been evacuated from low-lying parts of Shanghai. Oh, and this could potentially be the worst typhoon to make landfall in Shanghai in the last 10 years.
You know, normally this is a total no-brainer. There's a weather warning in effect and you stay in and have a movie marathon or whatever.
But Joe and I had tickets to see the US Women's soccer team play a World Cup match against Nigeria in Shanghai tonight at 8:00. We had both been looking forward to this since we got the tickets a week after we arrived. And now I'm looking at this severe weather warning that the typhoon will make landfall at midnight tonight, and
two tickets to see the US Women's soccer team.
After a brief discussion with Joe I decided I didn't want to take the chance of being away from the kids if the typhoon struck. What if the weather was really bad and we had trouble getting home? I also didn't think it was a good idea to be out in an open-air stadium in the rain and wind. But these are all big "ifs" because how accurate are these weather predications. Is it like home where there is a "storm watch" for days and then nothing actually happens? Joe said the typhoon wasn't supposed to hit until late night or tomorrow and that he was really looking forward to the game. As is usual in these situations, I take a very conservative approach and Joe takes a much less conservative approach. So off he went to the game and I stayed home with the kids. At the time of kick-off (8:00) I looked outside and it was raining, but nothing else. I was so disappointed with myself, and a little embarrassed. Where is my sense of adventure, why am I sitting at home blogging when I could be watching a World Cup soccer match??? Ah, you win some and you lose some I guess.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Wow, this week flew by, and it was eventful! First and foremost, on Wednesday our shipment of stuff finally arrived from the US!!! It was pretty much like Christmas because I couldn't remember what the heck I packed in these boxes 2 months ago. Although, it turns out that we packed about 40 boxes full of stuff for our kids and about 3 boxes of stuff for us. :( One of the things that we have been looking forward to was getting our DVD player from the US so we could watch some TV series and movies that we brought from the US. (The movies we buy in the US don't work in the local Chinese DVD players, only US DVD players.) We plugged our DVD player into a transformer and then got it hooked up to the TV and working. We put a movie in for the girls, but a few minutes later we paused it to eat lunch. When we finished lunch (maybe 15 minutes) I returned to the DVD player to un-pause it and smelled something burning. The transformer melted and stopped working and the 240 volts went straight into the DVD player and fried it!
This leads me to a quick conversation about the quality control on goods in China - it is NOT good. I think everything they reject to export due to quality reasons stays here in China. The first iron I bought had about 4 features and only one worked (the heat!). The Q-tips I bought have very little cotton on the tips of them (ouch!) and the first time I used one the cotton came off in my ear! I had to use tweezers to get it out. The light bulbs burn out fast. The computer monitor Joe bought had a VGA cable that didn't work and the first set of computer speakers we bought had such a loud "bass enhancement" that we couldn't actually hear the words in the song. In the US, not only is the quality control better, but it's a normal thing to take goods back if they don't work like you expected. Here, it is incredibly difficult to take something back. Not only do I have a language barrier, but I would have also had to have the foresight to get a special fa pio (government receipt) when I bought the item. This requires a whole different counter and different line. If I don't have this special receipt, I cannot attempt to return something. So needless to say, we have learned to ask around about local brands before we buy and NEVER buy what is on "promotion".
On Wednesday night the family went for an evening bike ride. We went in a new direction and discovered an entire streets of shops that we hadn't seen before. So on Thursday morning after I dropped Gigi off at preschool on my bike I decided to find this street. I was fairly certain how to get there, but somewhere I either missed a turn or took a wrong turn and ended up hopelessly lost. And here's what I learned about being lost on a bicycle: unlike being lost in a car, you get thirsty and very tired while you're trying to find your way out! I had to stop and get a bottle of water at one point. I got so turned around that I finally had to backtrack my entire route to the school and go home from there. A trip that usually takes me 20 minutes took me 1 hour and 20 minutes. I need to keep a map of Pudong in my purse!
By Thursday afternoon we had unpacked most of our stuff and I said to Joe that in a weird way I already missed the kind of minimalist life we had been living. We don't "need" all the junk we packed, we only need about 1/3 of it to live comfortably. (that 1/3 being the kitchen stuff and the books and games for the kids.) I am realizing how much we have bought into the "accumulation of stuff" in the US. Of course, if everyone in the US didn't buy all this stuff, 80% of China would probably be unemployed. It really is a small world these days.
Saturday night Joe and I had our first night out on the town without the kids, a real date night. We decided to go to a classic mediterranean restaurant on the Bund. The Bund is the street along the waterfront of the Huang Pu river. The river divides the Puxi and Pudong sides of the city, Pudong being the newly developed part of the city in the last 10 years. On the Bund are many beautiful old buildings constructed around 1900 by many countries of the world (Russia, Englad, France, Germany, etc.) They light these buildings up at night and it's a beautiful site. I commented to Joe that it's amazing that 100 years ago all these countries and companies were saying "we've got to be in China" the same way countries and companies are doing that today. Joe pointed out the difference being that 100 years ago everyone was trying to get goods and resources OUT of China, and today everyone is trying to get goods INTO China to be sold to the Chinese people. Anyway, the Bund is a tourist area, but nice none-the-less. So we went to dinner at a restaurant with a great view of the river and the Bund, and great food. Then we went for Chinese foot massages and finally ended up at a bar with a terrace overlooking the river and the Pudong side. It was a great night and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. At last we feel we are starting to be able to get out and see the city a little bit.
The first week of October is a national holiday here, so everyone is off work. We didn't plan far enough ahead to be going anywhere, so we'll be staying here in Shanghai with the 18 million Chinese people also on holiday. We are planning outings for each day so that we take advantage of the city, but we keep hearing from friends that we'll lucky to see or do anything because it'll be so packed. Oh well, I figure that's the authentic experience then, is it not? Hopefully this will be the only holiday we actually spend in Shanghai, I am eager to get out into other parts of China to see some of its beauty, and non-city living. Particularly Beijing since I am in the middle of a fascinating book that is the true story of 3 generations of a family in the last 100 years in China. I have learned more from this book than any Chinese history course I could have taken, it's absolutely captivating.
This leads me to a quick conversation about the quality control on goods in China - it is NOT good. I think everything they reject to export due to quality reasons stays here in China. The first iron I bought had about 4 features and only one worked (the heat!). The Q-tips I bought have very little cotton on the tips of them (ouch!) and the first time I used one the cotton came off in my ear! I had to use tweezers to get it out. The light bulbs burn out fast. The computer monitor Joe bought had a VGA cable that didn't work and the first set of computer speakers we bought had such a loud "bass enhancement" that we couldn't actually hear the words in the song. In the US, not only is the quality control better, but it's a normal thing to take goods back if they don't work like you expected. Here, it is incredibly difficult to take something back. Not only do I have a language barrier, but I would have also had to have the foresight to get a special fa pio (government receipt) when I bought the item. This requires a whole different counter and different line. If I don't have this special receipt, I cannot attempt to return something. So needless to say, we have learned to ask around about local brands before we buy and NEVER buy what is on "promotion".
On Wednesday night the family went for an evening bike ride. We went in a new direction and discovered an entire streets of shops that we hadn't seen before. So on Thursday morning after I dropped Gigi off at preschool on my bike I decided to find this street. I was fairly certain how to get there, but somewhere I either missed a turn or took a wrong turn and ended up hopelessly lost. And here's what I learned about being lost on a bicycle: unlike being lost in a car, you get thirsty and very tired while you're trying to find your way out! I had to stop and get a bottle of water at one point. I got so turned around that I finally had to backtrack my entire route to the school and go home from there. A trip that usually takes me 20 minutes took me 1 hour and 20 minutes. I need to keep a map of Pudong in my purse!
By Thursday afternoon we had unpacked most of our stuff and I said to Joe that in a weird way I already missed the kind of minimalist life we had been living. We don't "need" all the junk we packed, we only need about 1/3 of it to live comfortably. (that 1/3 being the kitchen stuff and the books and games for the kids.) I am realizing how much we have bought into the "accumulation of stuff" in the US. Of course, if everyone in the US didn't buy all this stuff, 80% of China would probably be unemployed. It really is a small world these days.
Saturday night Joe and I had our first night out on the town without the kids, a real date night. We decided to go to a classic mediterranean restaurant on the Bund. The Bund is the street along the waterfront of the Huang Pu river. The river divides the Puxi and Pudong sides of the city, Pudong being the newly developed part of the city in the last 10 years. On the Bund are many beautiful old buildings constructed around 1900 by many countries of the world (Russia, Englad, France, Germany, etc.) They light these buildings up at night and it's a beautiful site. I commented to Joe that it's amazing that 100 years ago all these countries and companies were saying "we've got to be in China" the same way countries and companies are doing that today. Joe pointed out the difference being that 100 years ago everyone was trying to get goods and resources OUT of China, and today everyone is trying to get goods INTO China to be sold to the Chinese people. Anyway, the Bund is a tourist area, but nice none-the-less. So we went to dinner at a restaurant with a great view of the river and the Bund, and great food. Then we went for Chinese foot massages and finally ended up at a bar with a terrace overlooking the river and the Pudong side. It was a great night and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. At last we feel we are starting to be able to get out and see the city a little bit.
The first week of October is a national holiday here, so everyone is off work. We didn't plan far enough ahead to be going anywhere, so we'll be staying here in Shanghai with the 18 million Chinese people also on holiday. We are planning outings for each day so that we take advantage of the city, but we keep hearing from friends that we'll lucky to see or do anything because it'll be so packed. Oh well, I figure that's the authentic experience then, is it not? Hopefully this will be the only holiday we actually spend in Shanghai, I am eager to get out into other parts of China to see some of its beauty, and non-city living. Particularly Beijing since I am in the middle of a fascinating book that is the true story of 3 generations of a family in the last 100 years in China. I have learned more from this book than any Chinese history course I could have taken, it's absolutely captivating.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Chinese food
So we made it to a "real" Chinese restaurant on Saturday night. And we think it's actually a pretty decent one because it came recommended by a few Chinese people and we were the only white people in the restaurant (except for the business men having dinners) and there was a wedding banquet going on. Not bad, we decided, clearly not an expat place. And lucky for us there were pictures on the menu!
So here are the two differences between American Chinese food and real Chinese food. The first is that in America we disguise our food so you can't really tell where it came from. It's just in perfect little squares. Here, there is no disguising it. If it is chicken, it still looks like chicken when it comes to the table (i.e. bones and wings, and not just the big bones, all the little bones that are in the wing). If it is fish, the whole thing is there on the plate, head, tail, fins, bones. There is no doubt about what animal you are eating.
The second thing is that my mouth and hands are not talented enough to eat real Chinese food! Large pieces of chicken or fish come on the plate and they can't be cut up with chopsticks. And they are not supposed to be cut up. You're supposed to put the whole piece in your mouth, get the meat off the bones, and then spit the bones out when you're done. Do you have any idea how hard that is for an untrained mouth? Chinese people put entire chicken wings in their mouth and chew and magically spit out the bones! It's a sight to behold. And it's also a skill I just do not have. I am going to have to practice this a lot to be able to eat real Chinese food.
And the last big difference is that rice and noodle come as the last dish of the dinner here. Rice and noodles are considered the "filler". They are what you eat if you are still hungry after everything else is eaten. So for my kids, who are kind of waiting for the noodles & rice during the entire meal, this is a bit challenging. I'm going to have to learn to ask for rice at the beginning of the meal, which will be difficult because it's considered fairly rude to ask for it then. Luckily there are some vegetables they can eat with soup spoons before the rice and noodles finally arrive.
All in all it was a tasty, if not frustrating, meal. And I can finally say "yes, we have eaten real Chinese food." :)
So here are the two differences between American Chinese food and real Chinese food. The first is that in America we disguise our food so you can't really tell where it came from. It's just in perfect little squares. Here, there is no disguising it. If it is chicken, it still looks like chicken when it comes to the table (i.e. bones and wings, and not just the big bones, all the little bones that are in the wing). If it is fish, the whole thing is there on the plate, head, tail, fins, bones. There is no doubt about what animal you are eating.
The second thing is that my mouth and hands are not talented enough to eat real Chinese food! Large pieces of chicken or fish come on the plate and they can't be cut up with chopsticks. And they are not supposed to be cut up. You're supposed to put the whole piece in your mouth, get the meat off the bones, and then spit the bones out when you're done. Do you have any idea how hard that is for an untrained mouth? Chinese people put entire chicken wings in their mouth and chew and magically spit out the bones! It's a sight to behold. And it's also a skill I just do not have. I am going to have to practice this a lot to be able to eat real Chinese food.
And the last big difference is that rice and noodle come as the last dish of the dinner here. Rice and noodles are considered the "filler". They are what you eat if you are still hungry after everything else is eaten. So for my kids, who are kind of waiting for the noodles & rice during the entire meal, this is a bit challenging. I'm going to have to learn to ask for rice at the beginning of the meal, which will be difficult because it's considered fairly rude to ask for it then. Luckily there are some vegetables they can eat with soup spoons before the rice and noodles finally arrive.
All in all it was a tasty, if not frustrating, meal. And I can finally say "yes, we have eaten real Chinese food." :)
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Shrimp flakes anyone?
Wow, it’s amazing how a week can go by and in that time I’ve managed to do nothing and everything. That’s the best possible description of what it’s like for us in China right now!
Gigi started at the Chinese preschool. When we got in the car to go, she was so excited she said to Daniel (driver) “I go to preschool today!” She ran into her classroom without a backward glance. That is a child that clearly needs friends her own age and more toys/activities than we have in our house right now! But after 2 hours, she had a meltdown and no matter what I did I could not console her, so we called it a day. My guess is that the unknown friends, teachers & ayi, the different language and the different food all finally got to her. (And potentially she finally realized how ugly her uniform is.) She’s just young enough that she can scream and cry when she gets overwhelmed, whereas the rest of us have to just buck up and retreat into our house with a DVD from the corner “store”. ☺
Yesterday I was feeling quite good about myself because I managed to do the weekly grocery shopping in a fairly efficient way. I had to go to two different stores, but I actually got everything on my list. This is a major breakthrough, because up to this point I’ve been going to the grocery about every other day because either I’ve forgotten something, couldn’t find it or they are out of what I need. I learned quickly that if you find what you need, buy at least two of them because stores do not stay stocked of anything except rice and instant noodles.
But my good feelings evaporated today when I decided to try a new recipe and went to the store for a simple jar of honey. I know that there is an entire section of some aisle with honey, I’ve seen it! After 30 minutes of trudging up and down every aisle, I found myself standing in the chips and cookie aisle, trying to figure out who to call to ask where the hell the honey is in Carrefour. And that’s the most frustrating part of being here right now…I do not yet have the language skills to ask the simple question “where is the honey?” So that means I have to figure it out on my own by looking, observing, and playing charades. Thus my comment that I spend the day doing everything and nothing! (By the way, Chinese lessons are actually going fairly well, but my mouth still does not form these sounds accurately! And I haven’t learned any useful phrases yet, basically I can say: hello, my name is, I am American, how much is it, I want, I no want! All things that start a conversation, but then immediately stop when I cannot understand the response!!!)
Anyway, I’m standing in the chips and cookies aisle and my gaze falls on a bag of Shrimp Flakes. Seriously? Yep, Shrimp Flakes. Unless you’ve been here, it’s hard to imagine how many things they flavor with shrimp. Chips, noodles, candies, baked goods!
I wonder what flavor it is that Chinese people who come to the US think is gross? Not that I think shrimp flavor is gross, just that I think it belongs to shrimp, not chips!
So I have two confessions to make. The first is that we are clearly not as tough as the Chinese people. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but the Chinese like HARD beds. We have a king size bed which is literally a wood frame with a wood slab on top, covered in cotton. It was a problem for Joe from day one. We got a foam pad to put on top which worked for me, but Joe wasn’t sleeping at all. And then I finally realized that maybe the reason I kept waking up in the middle of the night with one of my arms or hands asleep was because of the wood bed! So we gave in and tracked down a Serta mattress factory and paid a ridiculous amount of money for a “western style” mattress. Our driver, who helped us with the transaction, sat on our bed at the factory and grimaced. For the 20th time we heard “Chinese people like hard beds”. What can I say, we like our creature comforts! Now we have to figure out what the heck to do with an extra king size mattress. We wonder, what is the Chinese equivalent to Goodwill?
My second confession is that we have officially been here for a month and have not eaten out at a “real” Chinese restaurant. Can you believe it? It sounds so pitiful when I write it down! We ate out constantly the first two weeks we were here, but we focused on western style restaurants that had kids menus and baby seats to ease the transition. When we finally got settled into the apartment, we were sick of going to restaurants and have been eating at home ever since, especially since we have ayi to cook for us 3 nights/week. Geez, it seriously sounds like I’m making excuses for this doesn’t it? That doesn’t make it any less pitiful! I am making it my mission for our family to go out for real Chinese food this weekend. Despite the fact that we can’t read anything on the menus, and that if we ask for an English menu it will probably have different prices on it. It will be an adventure. Stay tuned.
By the way, a sincere thanks for all the people who have sent emails and encouragement after reading my blog. We have good days and bad days in China as we continue to settle in, but hearing from friends and family back home really makes my day! And it inspires me to make time to write my blog!
Cheers!
Gigi started at the Chinese preschool. When we got in the car to go, she was so excited she said to Daniel (driver) “I go to preschool today!” She ran into her classroom without a backward glance. That is a child that clearly needs friends her own age and more toys/activities than we have in our house right now! But after 2 hours, she had a meltdown and no matter what I did I could not console her, so we called it a day. My guess is that the unknown friends, teachers & ayi, the different language and the different food all finally got to her. (And potentially she finally realized how ugly her uniform is.) She’s just young enough that she can scream and cry when she gets overwhelmed, whereas the rest of us have to just buck up and retreat into our house with a DVD from the corner “store”. ☺
Yesterday I was feeling quite good about myself because I managed to do the weekly grocery shopping in a fairly efficient way. I had to go to two different stores, but I actually got everything on my list. This is a major breakthrough, because up to this point I’ve been going to the grocery about every other day because either I’ve forgotten something, couldn’t find it or they are out of what I need. I learned quickly that if you find what you need, buy at least two of them because stores do not stay stocked of anything except rice and instant noodles.
But my good feelings evaporated today when I decided to try a new recipe and went to the store for a simple jar of honey. I know that there is an entire section of some aisle with honey, I’ve seen it! After 30 minutes of trudging up and down every aisle, I found myself standing in the chips and cookie aisle, trying to figure out who to call to ask where the hell the honey is in Carrefour. And that’s the most frustrating part of being here right now…I do not yet have the language skills to ask the simple question “where is the honey?” So that means I have to figure it out on my own by looking, observing, and playing charades. Thus my comment that I spend the day doing everything and nothing! (By the way, Chinese lessons are actually going fairly well, but my mouth still does not form these sounds accurately! And I haven’t learned any useful phrases yet, basically I can say: hello, my name is, I am American, how much is it, I want, I no want! All things that start a conversation, but then immediately stop when I cannot understand the response!!!)
Anyway, I’m standing in the chips and cookies aisle and my gaze falls on a bag of Shrimp Flakes. Seriously? Yep, Shrimp Flakes. Unless you’ve been here, it’s hard to imagine how many things they flavor with shrimp. Chips, noodles, candies, baked goods!
I wonder what flavor it is that Chinese people who come to the US think is gross? Not that I think shrimp flavor is gross, just that I think it belongs to shrimp, not chips!
So I have two confessions to make. The first is that we are clearly not as tough as the Chinese people. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but the Chinese like HARD beds. We have a king size bed which is literally a wood frame with a wood slab on top, covered in cotton. It was a problem for Joe from day one. We got a foam pad to put on top which worked for me, but Joe wasn’t sleeping at all. And then I finally realized that maybe the reason I kept waking up in the middle of the night with one of my arms or hands asleep was because of the wood bed! So we gave in and tracked down a Serta mattress factory and paid a ridiculous amount of money for a “western style” mattress. Our driver, who helped us with the transaction, sat on our bed at the factory and grimaced. For the 20th time we heard “Chinese people like hard beds”. What can I say, we like our creature comforts! Now we have to figure out what the heck to do with an extra king size mattress. We wonder, what is the Chinese equivalent to Goodwill?
My second confession is that we have officially been here for a month and have not eaten out at a “real” Chinese restaurant. Can you believe it? It sounds so pitiful when I write it down! We ate out constantly the first two weeks we were here, but we focused on western style restaurants that had kids menus and baby seats to ease the transition. When we finally got settled into the apartment, we were sick of going to restaurants and have been eating at home ever since, especially since we have ayi to cook for us 3 nights/week. Geez, it seriously sounds like I’m making excuses for this doesn’t it? That doesn’t make it any less pitiful! I am making it my mission for our family to go out for real Chinese food this weekend. Despite the fact that we can’t read anything on the menus, and that if we ask for an English menu it will probably have different prices on it. It will be an adventure. Stay tuned.
By the way, a sincere thanks for all the people who have sent emails and encouragement after reading my blog. We have good days and bad days in China as we continue to settle in, but hearing from friends and family back home really makes my day! And it inspires me to make time to write my blog!
Cheers!
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Volunteering at Livi's school & first Ayi babysitting
After the high of finding Gigi a preschool, I had a rude awakening at the first “class moms” meeting I had at Olivia’s school. A note came home asking for parents who wanted to be involved in the Pre-K class. So I had two new experiences at once. The first was leaving Gigi with Ayi for the first time. Whenever I am around she refuses to let Ayi hold her or even come near her, so I didn’t imagine this was going to go well. When I told Gigi I was going to a meeting at Olivia’s school during her naptime and Ayi would stay with her, she objected, loudly, but it had to happen sometime. She went down for her nap and I took a taxi to the school, which is about 25 minutes away, or 45 minutes if it’s pouring rain like it is today. Anyway, a ~30 minute taxi ride for $6 USD. Not bad!
The second experience was the "class moms" meeting. There were 6 moms meeting with Ms. Katie, Olivia’s pre-K 4 teacher.
Ms. Katie printed up a little agenda to talk about what kind of help she wanted/needed in the classroom, which as a recovering Intel person, I totally appreciated. But then 3 of the moms just launched into what they had done in previous years and started talking about all this stuff that was totally foreign to me. For instance, what exactly is a “room mom” and what are the responsibilities? After 5 minutes of discussing if the room mom should be one person or several people, I had to give up and say “what IS a room mom?” Wow, did that get the looks from the other moms. So much so that I felt compelled to say “Well, I’ve only been here 3 weeks and this is our first year at this school, so I need a little information.” At this point the ladies attempted to explain what a room mom was, but digressed back into how fun the cultural parties were last year. Luckily Ms. Katie stepped in and explained it so I was less lost.
As the conversation progressed, two things became clear: 1) These 3 women have older kids in the school and have had Ms. Katie as their children’s teacher before, and 2) they are not the kind of ex-pats I’ve run into so far who go out of their way to explain how things work. Luckily, Jessica (aka Robert’s mom) arrived late and came in and asked a few questions, making it obvious that this was her family’s first year at the school as well. I felt instant kinship for her and think we may have inadvertently just formed our own clique. And, you might be wondering, what about the 6th mom? Well, she was also first time student at the school, and is from America but does not speak very good English. I had a really hard time understanding her, but I did finally get that her name is Tiger. She was silent during the entire meeting, so we’ll have to see where she ends up on the mom spectrum. Hmmm.
So the amount of time that the parents are expected to be in the classroom is pretty amazing. There is reading time, scribing time (for journals and artwork), cultural learning lessons, arts & crafts, and holiday parties. It seemed clear that the expectation was 3-4 hours in the classroom each week for each mom. I was blown away, but then again, I’ve never done this before! The 3 moms from the clique all live in the housing compound that the school is within, so they can obviously pop over to the school anytime. Jessica and I both live ~30 minutes away so we’ll have to strategize on when and how to get to school for all this volunteering.
One of the things that I was most looking forward to about coming to China and not working was the chance to get involved in the schools. Now I find that I am totally intimidated by these moms! Although I do have one thing going for me, and that’s how I took notes during this meeting (once a program manager, always a program manager!) Ms. Katie looked at my notes at the end of the meeting and took them off and made copies for all the other moms. Guess I did something right!
Anyway, Jessica and I volunteered for the project to have 16 pillows made for all the students for rest-time. This means we’re headed to the fabric market! I will be absolutely no help in this endeavor since I have a total of 10 Chinese words, but Jessica says she has been to the fabric market a lot and I’ve been wanting to go there, so I basically jumped on her wagon (or minivan as the case may be).
Everyone says the fabric market is quite extraordinary, and is also the place where you can get any type of clothing made. Shanghai is known for its excellent tailors. I doubt the really good ones hang out at the fabric market, but I think if I can just find some pretty good ones, that will do for the kind of clothes I want to have made at first.
It seems that I might want to have a couple dresses or skirts made. Jessica warned me that if I plan to get involved with the American Women’s Club Shanghai, I should be ready to wear my high heels and dress clothes, and be sure to wear my best jewelry. Her assessment was that it was a bunch of women socializing and comparing the kind of ex-pat deal they got and establishing how well-off they were. I am really hoping that Jessica’s assessment is a off because it looks from their website like the AWCS has a ton of activities (tours, lectures, classes, etc) that I would like to take advantage of. And I really really don’t want to get caught up in some kind of materialistic show & tell with a bunch of other women. What I want is a network of people who are like-minded and interested in learning and seeing Shanghai and China. We’ll see I guess.
When I got home, Gigi and Ayi were in the Clubhouse playroom having a great time. Clearly she is happy with Ayi when I’m not around. So my afternoon was a mixed bag, good that Gigi can happily stay with Ayi, and bad that I’m intimidated by a bunch of moms I’ve never met before today.
Oh my goodness, I almost forgot to tell you how incredible it is to have a fulltime ayi who is also a good cook!!! Xiao Chen starting working on Monday and has cooked for us the last two nights, and it’s positively yummy. Her stir fry is very good, and she can just seemingly throw stuff together from my refrigerator and have it come out tasting great. I actually enjoy vegetables when cooked this way!!! And another great thing is that she cooks normal-people portions, not the American super-size portions. If we’re still hungry at the end of the meal, we could always fill up on rice, which is typically what Chinese do. Actually, portion size is great everywhere here. There are smaller Snickers bars, and miniature bags of Skittles. It’s a blessing to buy something and not think “OK, half of this would be normal, so I’ll buy it and put half away for another time.” Because I never do that, my will-power is non-existent. I like having smaller portion sizes imposed on me! But having someone to cook for you is everything it’s cracked up to be. If I ever win the lottery in the US, I’m hiring a cook. Although, I guess I could argue that we did win the lottery when we took this deal to live in China.
One last quick story before I go tonight: Many of you know my “man-size plate” dilemma. We have plates in the US that we got at Pottery Barn, and these plates are huge (basically the size of chargers). At our first apartment they didn’t fit in the dishwasher, at our first house they didn’t fit in the cupboards, and at our second house they made it into the dishwasher but still not into the cupboards. When packing for China, I refused to bring these huge plates, reasoning that if they didn’t fit in a cupboard in the States, they certainly weren’t going to fit into a cupboard in China! So we get here and I make a trip to Ikea to buy a set of dishes. I am very excited about my new dishes and I bring them home and wouldn’t you know it, the dinner plates don’t fit in the dishwasher! I clearly pissed off the plate gods at some point and am being punished for it. Either that or there is some plate size conspiracy that I didn’t get the memo on.
The second experience was the "class moms" meeting. There were 6 moms meeting with Ms. Katie, Olivia’s pre-K 4 teacher.
Ms. Katie printed up a little agenda to talk about what kind of help she wanted/needed in the classroom, which as a recovering Intel person, I totally appreciated. But then 3 of the moms just launched into what they had done in previous years and started talking about all this stuff that was totally foreign to me. For instance, what exactly is a “room mom” and what are the responsibilities? After 5 minutes of discussing if the room mom should be one person or several people, I had to give up and say “what IS a room mom?” Wow, did that get the looks from the other moms. So much so that I felt compelled to say “Well, I’ve only been here 3 weeks and this is our first year at this school, so I need a little information.” At this point the ladies attempted to explain what a room mom was, but digressed back into how fun the cultural parties were last year. Luckily Ms. Katie stepped in and explained it so I was less lost.
As the conversation progressed, two things became clear: 1) These 3 women have older kids in the school and have had Ms. Katie as their children’s teacher before, and 2) they are not the kind of ex-pats I’ve run into so far who go out of their way to explain how things work. Luckily, Jessica (aka Robert’s mom) arrived late and came in and asked a few questions, making it obvious that this was her family’s first year at the school as well. I felt instant kinship for her and think we may have inadvertently just formed our own clique. And, you might be wondering, what about the 6th mom? Well, she was also first time student at the school, and is from America but does not speak very good English. I had a really hard time understanding her, but I did finally get that her name is Tiger. She was silent during the entire meeting, so we’ll have to see where she ends up on the mom spectrum. Hmmm.
So the amount of time that the parents are expected to be in the classroom is pretty amazing. There is reading time, scribing time (for journals and artwork), cultural learning lessons, arts & crafts, and holiday parties. It seemed clear that the expectation was 3-4 hours in the classroom each week for each mom. I was blown away, but then again, I’ve never done this before! The 3 moms from the clique all live in the housing compound that the school is within, so they can obviously pop over to the school anytime. Jessica and I both live ~30 minutes away so we’ll have to strategize on when and how to get to school for all this volunteering.
One of the things that I was most looking forward to about coming to China and not working was the chance to get involved in the schools. Now I find that I am totally intimidated by these moms! Although I do have one thing going for me, and that’s how I took notes during this meeting (once a program manager, always a program manager!) Ms. Katie looked at my notes at the end of the meeting and took them off and made copies for all the other moms. Guess I did something right!
Anyway, Jessica and I volunteered for the project to have 16 pillows made for all the students for rest-time. This means we’re headed to the fabric market! I will be absolutely no help in this endeavor since I have a total of 10 Chinese words, but Jessica says she has been to the fabric market a lot and I’ve been wanting to go there, so I basically jumped on her wagon (or minivan as the case may be).
Everyone says the fabric market is quite extraordinary, and is also the place where you can get any type of clothing made. Shanghai is known for its excellent tailors. I doubt the really good ones hang out at the fabric market, but I think if I can just find some pretty good ones, that will do for the kind of clothes I want to have made at first.
It seems that I might want to have a couple dresses or skirts made. Jessica warned me that if I plan to get involved with the American Women’s Club Shanghai, I should be ready to wear my high heels and dress clothes, and be sure to wear my best jewelry. Her assessment was that it was a bunch of women socializing and comparing the kind of ex-pat deal they got and establishing how well-off they were. I am really hoping that Jessica’s assessment is a off because it looks from their website like the AWCS has a ton of activities (tours, lectures, classes, etc) that I would like to take advantage of. And I really really don’t want to get caught up in some kind of materialistic show & tell with a bunch of other women. What I want is a network of people who are like-minded and interested in learning and seeing Shanghai and China. We’ll see I guess.
When I got home, Gigi and Ayi were in the Clubhouse playroom having a great time. Clearly she is happy with Ayi when I’m not around. So my afternoon was a mixed bag, good that Gigi can happily stay with Ayi, and bad that I’m intimidated by a bunch of moms I’ve never met before today.
Oh my goodness, I almost forgot to tell you how incredible it is to have a fulltime ayi who is also a good cook!!! Xiao Chen starting working on Monday and has cooked for us the last two nights, and it’s positively yummy. Her stir fry is very good, and she can just seemingly throw stuff together from my refrigerator and have it come out tasting great. I actually enjoy vegetables when cooked this way!!! And another great thing is that she cooks normal-people portions, not the American super-size portions. If we’re still hungry at the end of the meal, we could always fill up on rice, which is typically what Chinese do. Actually, portion size is great everywhere here. There are smaller Snickers bars, and miniature bags of Skittles. It’s a blessing to buy something and not think “OK, half of this would be normal, so I’ll buy it and put half away for another time.” Because I never do that, my will-power is non-existent. I like having smaller portion sizes imposed on me! But having someone to cook for you is everything it’s cracked up to be. If I ever win the lottery in the US, I’m hiring a cook. Although, I guess I could argue that we did win the lottery when we took this deal to live in China.
One last quick story before I go tonight: Many of you know my “man-size plate” dilemma. We have plates in the US that we got at Pottery Barn, and these plates are huge (basically the size of chargers). At our first apartment they didn’t fit in the dishwasher, at our first house they didn’t fit in the cupboards, and at our second house they made it into the dishwasher but still not into the cupboards. When packing for China, I refused to bring these huge plates, reasoning that if they didn’t fit in a cupboard in the States, they certainly weren’t going to fit into a cupboard in China! So we get here and I make a trip to Ikea to buy a set of dishes. I am very excited about my new dishes and I bring them home and wouldn’t you know it, the dinner plates don’t fit in the dishwasher! I clearly pissed off the plate gods at some point and am being punished for it. Either that or there is some plate size conspiracy that I didn’t get the memo on.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Chinese pre-school & Mandarin
I did it! I found Gigi a Chinese pre-school that she can attend for a very reasonable price. I heard from Melissa, that wonderful woman who gave us her ayi, that there was a Chinese pre-school a few blocks away. I got our driver to take us to the pre-school, and it was definitely more than a 'few blocks' but I went in to visit anyway. I was very impressed with the spaciousness, the cleanliness, and the number of the students vs. number of teachers. And the most amazing of all (for me), the admissions officer I talked to spoke English!!! I was not expecting that at all and was geared up for a really complex game of charades and had my English/Mandarin dictionary with me. But she spoke beautiful English and we are going to put Gigi into the preschool 3 days/week for 3 hours. It should be just the right amount of socialization and language exposure for her. And the right amount of exercise for me! I will have to take her to school on my bike, which I estimate will take me about 30 minutes to get there and 30 minutes back. It'll be fine until it starts raining and gets cold. We'll see how many taxis I end up taking then! Gigi is so excited to start school that she asks me every time we get in the car if we are going to her school. :) This is definitely a good move for us.
So two really exciting things for me in the last few days. I'm biking every day. When Olivia started school last Wednesday I decided that after getting her on the bus, Gigi and I would go for a bike ride for some exercise. The first day I headed out (memorizing every street name as I went by because I'm still totally disoriented here) and got on a very quiet road for about 20 minutes. Then it dead-ended into another road, so I took a right (again memorizing the street name!). Oh My Goodness! This road was a very busy road and I suddenly realized that I was riding on it at rush-hour. Rush-hour applies to cars and bikes alike. All roads in Pudong have a bike lane that is the same width as a regular lane of traffic, and it is totally packed with bikes at that time of the morning. I'm getting better on the bike, but I'm still a bit wobbly if there's anything tricky to navigate. And being in a pack of people and trying not to hit anyone makes me really wobbly! Add to the pack of bikers the electric bikes and the mopeds beep-beeping their way through the pack and you had me totally nervous. (And did I forget to mention that Gigi likes to randomly pull my shirt up from the back?) But I got the hang of it after a few blocks and started to kind of enjoy riding along with the masses. When I realized I needed to turn around, I actually successfully crossed the street at an intersection. But when I got back to the road that I originally turned from, I needed to cross the street twice to get to the opposite corner. Well....in China, there is no sense in going across the street one way, waiting for the light to change and then crossing the other street to get to the opposite corner. Nope! The efficient thing to do is to ride across the intersection at a diagonal, with traffic from two streets having a turn signal at the same time. Riding a bike in China might be one of the few places I would say "just do what everyone else does" is the right thing to do. And my philosophy for getting across this huge intersection diagonally was to get in the middle of the pack and stay with everybody. If you are out in front or lagging behind, you have to fight one-on-one with the cars who are trying to turn. And you do NOT have the right of way as a biker. The only people with less of a right-of-way are pedestrians! I made it across the intersection in the pack without falling down or crying and got back on my quiet street to head home. That was my first day, and every day Gigi and I have taken a ride in a different direction. I'm getting much more savvy at it, but I still look all around me all the time, which shows what a novice I am because you never catch a Chinese person craning their neck around to see if they are about to get hit from behind by someone turning into them!
Here's an odd thing about cars in Shanghai. You never see old clunkers, it seems that all the cars are fairly new (oldest is maybe 8-10 years old). People getting cars in China is really on the rise. We saw a guy pulling out of a station and the seats still had the wrap on them and our driver just shook his head. When I said "new car?", he said "many new drivers in Shanghai now" and gave this big gusty sigh. He has been a driver for 5 years, so I imagine he's seen the good, bad & ugly.
Speaking of our driver, I had my very first real conversation with Daniel. It's a very odd thing sitting in a back seat and having someone drive you around. What kind of relationship are you supposed to have with a driver? Should we try to get to know him or should we keep our distance? We have a mini-van and the kids are in the very back seat, so I sit directly in front of them, which leaves Daniel in front by himself. And his English is pretty limited to things having to do with driving (where we're going, time, fast, slow, etc.) And I don't know how much he really understands, because I think often people can understand more than they can speak. Yet it seems a shame not to try to get to know someone who we end up spending a fair amount of time with. Anyway, I found myself in the car with Daniel without the kids a few days ago. I hopped into the front seat for a change and as we're riding along he asks me where we are from in US. I say "Portland, Oregon" but then have to explain how it's just north of California, which quickly establishes where we are from. California does have its uses for us Oregonians. :) But after that, Daniel and I were able to have a real conversation about various things, even though there were long long pauses and lots of hand gesturing to complete the conversation. I felt somehow that it was a break-through. Maybe we could end up being friends with our driver, maybe he could grow to enjoy our family? Who knows, but I'm hopeful.
As you know, I have been very frustrated with my inability to speak Mandarin and therefore communicate with people around me. Smiling and gesturing only gets you so far. Well, today begins the remedy for this, I hope! I had my very first Mandarin lesson. Sheesh. I can't remember when my brain and mouth worked so hard, and not in the way you think! Seriously, when's the last time I had to really concentrate and try to learn something new? It's been a while. (Not as long as riding a bike, but still a while!). And the sounds that I am expected to make with my mouth are just not possible in some cases! I have no idea how my tutor, Jessie, could sit through this lesson without cracking up. She would pronounce a letter for me, I would hear her, and then I would imitate it. HA! The crazy sounds that came out of my mouth while I tried to imitate!!! Even I was surprised by what came out. I just could not make my mouth make the same sounds that hers did. She went over and over it with me and I eventually started to get some of them. But there are 57 different sounds that I have to figure out. About 75% of them are sounds that we have in English, but the sound does not correlate with the letter like we would think. For example: i in Mandarin sounds like ee in English, and u sounds like oo, and ai sounds like "I" in English. It's maddening to try to remember what the English letters sound like in Mandarin! And that doesn't even touch the other 25% that are sounds that we English speakers can't pronounce. BUT! I learned some new useful phrases and my tutor called me "clever". :) I am totally intimidated about trying to learn this language, but on the other hand, this is pretty much the hobby I've been looking for! I have to stop shopping at some point. :)
Cheers!
So two really exciting things for me in the last few days. I'm biking every day. When Olivia started school last Wednesday I decided that after getting her on the bus, Gigi and I would go for a bike ride for some exercise. The first day I headed out (memorizing every street name as I went by because I'm still totally disoriented here) and got on a very quiet road for about 20 minutes. Then it dead-ended into another road, so I took a right (again memorizing the street name!). Oh My Goodness! This road was a very busy road and I suddenly realized that I was riding on it at rush-hour. Rush-hour applies to cars and bikes alike. All roads in Pudong have a bike lane that is the same width as a regular lane of traffic, and it is totally packed with bikes at that time of the morning. I'm getting better on the bike, but I'm still a bit wobbly if there's anything tricky to navigate. And being in a pack of people and trying not to hit anyone makes me really wobbly! Add to the pack of bikers the electric bikes and the mopeds beep-beeping their way through the pack and you had me totally nervous. (And did I forget to mention that Gigi likes to randomly pull my shirt up from the back?) But I got the hang of it after a few blocks and started to kind of enjoy riding along with the masses. When I realized I needed to turn around, I actually successfully crossed the street at an intersection. But when I got back to the road that I originally turned from, I needed to cross the street twice to get to the opposite corner. Well....in China, there is no sense in going across the street one way, waiting for the light to change and then crossing the other street to get to the opposite corner. Nope! The efficient thing to do is to ride across the intersection at a diagonal, with traffic from two streets having a turn signal at the same time. Riding a bike in China might be one of the few places I would say "just do what everyone else does" is the right thing to do. And my philosophy for getting across this huge intersection diagonally was to get in the middle of the pack and stay with everybody. If you are out in front or lagging behind, you have to fight one-on-one with the cars who are trying to turn. And you do NOT have the right of way as a biker. The only people with less of a right-of-way are pedestrians! I made it across the intersection in the pack without falling down or crying and got back on my quiet street to head home. That was my first day, and every day Gigi and I have taken a ride in a different direction. I'm getting much more savvy at it, but I still look all around me all the time, which shows what a novice I am because you never catch a Chinese person craning their neck around to see if they are about to get hit from behind by someone turning into them!
Here's an odd thing about cars in Shanghai. You never see old clunkers, it seems that all the cars are fairly new (oldest is maybe 8-10 years old). People getting cars in China is really on the rise. We saw a guy pulling out of a station and the seats still had the wrap on them and our driver just shook his head. When I said "new car?", he said "many new drivers in Shanghai now" and gave this big gusty sigh. He has been a driver for 5 years, so I imagine he's seen the good, bad & ugly.
Speaking of our driver, I had my very first real conversation with Daniel. It's a very odd thing sitting in a back seat and having someone drive you around. What kind of relationship are you supposed to have with a driver? Should we try to get to know him or should we keep our distance? We have a mini-van and the kids are in the very back seat, so I sit directly in front of them, which leaves Daniel in front by himself. And his English is pretty limited to things having to do with driving (where we're going, time, fast, slow, etc.) And I don't know how much he really understands, because I think often people can understand more than they can speak. Yet it seems a shame not to try to get to know someone who we end up spending a fair amount of time with. Anyway, I found myself in the car with Daniel without the kids a few days ago. I hopped into the front seat for a change and as we're riding along he asks me where we are from in US. I say "Portland, Oregon" but then have to explain how it's just north of California, which quickly establishes where we are from. California does have its uses for us Oregonians. :) But after that, Daniel and I were able to have a real conversation about various things, even though there were long long pauses and lots of hand gesturing to complete the conversation. I felt somehow that it was a break-through. Maybe we could end up being friends with our driver, maybe he could grow to enjoy our family? Who knows, but I'm hopeful.
As you know, I have been very frustrated with my inability to speak Mandarin and therefore communicate with people around me. Smiling and gesturing only gets you so far. Well, today begins the remedy for this, I hope! I had my very first Mandarin lesson. Sheesh. I can't remember when my brain and mouth worked so hard, and not in the way you think! Seriously, when's the last time I had to really concentrate and try to learn something new? It's been a while. (Not as long as riding a bike, but still a while!). And the sounds that I am expected to make with my mouth are just not possible in some cases! I have no idea how my tutor, Jessie, could sit through this lesson without cracking up. She would pronounce a letter for me, I would hear her, and then I would imitate it. HA! The crazy sounds that came out of my mouth while I tried to imitate!!! Even I was surprised by what came out. I just could not make my mouth make the same sounds that hers did. She went over and over it with me and I eventually started to get some of them. But there are 57 different sounds that I have to figure out. About 75% of them are sounds that we have in English, but the sound does not correlate with the letter like we would think. For example: i in Mandarin sounds like ee in English, and u sounds like oo, and ai sounds like "I" in English. It's maddening to try to remember what the English letters sound like in Mandarin! And that doesn't even touch the other 25% that are sounds that we English speakers can't pronounce. BUT! I learned some new useful phrases and my tutor called me "clever". :) I am totally intimidated about trying to learn this language, but on the other hand, this is pretty much the hobby I've been looking for! I have to stop shopping at some point. :)
Cheers!
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Shopping amateur
Well, Gigi and I survived our first day together! Of course, the problem is that I might have created a shopping monster in the meantime. Gigi and I met our friends (Donna and her college-age daughter and roommate who are visiting from the States) and went to the "fake market" this morning. OK, wow. This was not just 20 stalls, this was more like hundreds of stalls of clothes, purses, sunglasses, toys, shoes, and watches. I'm sure there were other things as well, but I quit seeing after a while. I mean, this place was jam-packed with stuff, and all the shopkeepers sitting outside their shops talking/yelling at you as you walk by trying to get your attention. It's a lot to handle! But fortunately, if you are me and you have no ethics you just use your very cute baby and say things like "don't yell, you're scaring her" and they immediately become very nice. They still try to get you to come into their shop, but they do it in a nicer way. They love the babies over here!
But let me tell you, for anyone who knows their purses and sunglasses (which I do not) they would be in heaven here. Even I could tell that some of these knock-offs are really great quality. Some are really cheap, but others are actually real leather. If my friend Shelly is reading this blog, you are going to love this when you come visit. It's better than the designer shoe outlets in Italy a few years ago!
When you go into these shops you look at the bags on the shelves. But if you know what to ask for, they either take you to the row of "good bags" in the back, or they open up the suitcases they have for sale and take out the higher quality bags. And all the good wallets are in the drawers, not on display in the case. It's quite a system and I'm glad that I went with Donna and Tracie, who had spent the entire day there yesterday and figured a bunch of this stuff out!
But, of course, the real "deals" to be had here are by bargaining. And I suck at bargaining. After a few negotiations I just want to tell them what I'm willing to pay and be done with it. But they want to give me their "new friend's price", their "first customer of the day price", or their "pretty lady price". And they keep asking me what's my "maximum" price. Ugh, luckily I am not so attached to any of these bags that I can't walk away. But I did learn the valuable lesson that if I'm interested in more than one thing in the shop, they are willing to bargain a lot more. I never could tell which item they were making the money on though.
Tracie & her friend Stephanie studied magazines on the way over here and knew exactly what they were looking for and what the cool bags and wallets were. And they were super bargainers, I was impressed. In fact Stephanie bargained a woman down on a bag that she decided she didn't want, so I bought! That was clearly my easiest best purchase of the day.
But the reason I say that I might have created a monster with Gigi is that every time we went by a shop with any shoes, she would point to exactly the pair in her size and say "Gigi's shoes". It got so bad that I had to buy her a little Dora purse and let her empty my purse into hers to distract her from the "Gigi shoes". Although I have to admit that the girl has taste, she kept picking out these totally cute pink and white Puma shoes. In the end, she settled for me buying her a pair of Crocs for a whopping $5!
By the way, today was also significant because Ms. Olivia made it to and from school on the bus all by herself today. She arrived home at the appointed time, on the right bus, looking very happy and sweaty. She said her day was great and she talked up a storm about her new teacher.
But let me tell you, for anyone who knows their purses and sunglasses (which I do not) they would be in heaven here. Even I could tell that some of these knock-offs are really great quality. Some are really cheap, but others are actually real leather. If my friend Shelly is reading this blog, you are going to love this when you come visit. It's better than the designer shoe outlets in Italy a few years ago!
When you go into these shops you look at the bags on the shelves. But if you know what to ask for, they either take you to the row of "good bags" in the back, or they open up the suitcases they have for sale and take out the higher quality bags. And all the good wallets are in the drawers, not on display in the case. It's quite a system and I'm glad that I went with Donna and Tracie, who had spent the entire day there yesterday and figured a bunch of this stuff out!
But, of course, the real "deals" to be had here are by bargaining. And I suck at bargaining. After a few negotiations I just want to tell them what I'm willing to pay and be done with it. But they want to give me their "new friend's price", their "first customer of the day price", or their "pretty lady price". And they keep asking me what's my "maximum" price. Ugh, luckily I am not so attached to any of these bags that I can't walk away. But I did learn the valuable lesson that if I'm interested in more than one thing in the shop, they are willing to bargain a lot more. I never could tell which item they were making the money on though.
Tracie & her friend Stephanie studied magazines on the way over here and knew exactly what they were looking for and what the cool bags and wallets were. And they were super bargainers, I was impressed. In fact Stephanie bargained a woman down on a bag that she decided she didn't want, so I bought! That was clearly my easiest best purchase of the day.
But the reason I say that I might have created a monster with Gigi is that every time we went by a shop with any shoes, she would point to exactly the pair in her size and say "Gigi's shoes". It got so bad that I had to buy her a little Dora purse and let her empty my purse into hers to distract her from the "Gigi shoes". Although I have to admit that the girl has taste, she kept picking out these totally cute pink and white Puma shoes. In the end, she settled for me buying her a pair of Crocs for a whopping $5!
By the way, today was also significant because Ms. Olivia made it to and from school on the bus all by herself today. She arrived home at the appointed time, on the right bus, looking very happy and sweaty. She said her day was great and she talked up a storm about her new teacher.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
A dilemma with chicken
So, I 've tried about 6 different grocery stores now and have a fairly good handle on the import section, the meat section and the produce sections at each of these stores. And I definitely have favorite sections, unfortunately they are all at different stores! But yesterday I finally found a grocery store that has the big bins of raw chicken (see previous post re: bins o' chicken) in a refrigerated case. This to me is a huge improvement. And since my family would like to eat chicken again sometime and I can't put it off forever, I put a plastic bag on my hand and braved it, pulling 3 chicken legs out of the bin. Note - I said chicken legs, not chicken FEET - that's a whole different bin! I may never be brave enough for that, and I KNOW I'll never know how to cook them. (On a side note, while I was pulling chicken out of the bin my kids finally noticed the tanks with live fish swimming in them. Olivia asked why the fish were there and I totally wimped out and said it was kind of like a mini-aquarium for people to look at while they shop. How lame am I???)
Back to my chicken dilemma. I got the chicken out of the bin, and even though it was refrigerated I clearly need to wash this chicken because who knows how many bare hands have been in that bin. And the tap-water is not potable, but you can use it with a drop of dishwashing liquid to wash vegetables and fruit, so should I use the tap-water to wash the chicken? Seems like the tap-water by itself isn't a good idea, but if I put the normal drop of dishwashing liquid in the water and wash the chicken, is my chicken going to taste soapy? Ugh, that sounds really gross. Or do I use the bottled water to wash it and forget about the fact that we're going through this bottled water at an alarming rate and the guys who deliver it to the apartment know me by name now?
At least for today I was saved by my own short-sightedness. Once again, I planned a meal for which I did not have the right equipment - no broiler pan for the one and only chicken recipe I have memorized. Yes, you guessed it, both the broiler pan and the rest of my recipes and cookbooks are in the famed shipment from the US. Which, by the way, is IN the country. It's so close I can almost feel my towels and sheets! Now if we could just get the moving company copies of our passports, residence permits, work permit and probably Olivia's right hand, we would only be one more week away from getting all our stuff.
Tomorrow is a big day for us. Olivia starts pre-school at an international school. That in itself is not such a big deal because she's been in preschool for the last 1.5 years. But this time she's putting on a school uniform and riding a schoolbus all by herself to school. She's excited about the bus ride, I'm traumatized. But every parent and teacher I've talked to said they all get used to it really fast and there is an ayi on the bus to look after the little kids. Like I said, Olivia is excited. But I tell you what, I could really get behind this whole uniform thing. They are basic, inexpensive and totally solve any morning hassles about what to wear.
The other reason tomorrow is a big day is that I'm finally going to the Fake Market. The famed fake market recently moved and is now located in the #2 subway station. :) Before we left for China I really needed a new purse and a new watch. But knowing I was coming to China, I refused to buy either of these items full-price in the States. And tomorrow I finally get to see what kind of bargains I can find. Maybe this doesn't sound all that exciting to you, but to me it's the first time I'm going shopping for something that's not going to be used in my kitchen, bathroom, or office. I'm also looking forward to only having one child with grabby hands in tow instead of two.
Speaking of the one child that I will have left at home, Gigi and I are going to go visit a Chinese preschool tomorrow or the next day. I am not adjusting very well to being a stay-at-home Mom (read that to say I have been short-tempered, unimaginative, snappy and downright crabby). And today at the school orientation for Olivia, the way that Gigi jumped right in and starting playing with the toys and interacting with the kids told me that she is yearning for more stimulation than I'm giving her right now. Rumor has it that there is a good Chinese preschool a few blocks away that does a 2 hour program every day and is fairly inexpensive. Plus it would be a fast-track for her language exposure. I know we've only been here for 2.5 weeks, but I am seriously struggling with being a full-time mom, I just don't think I'm cut out for it. I'm not capable of being consistent, and pleasant, all day long! So we'll see what the Chinese preschool looks like and maybe Gigi and I will both win with this solution.
On a very happy note, we have met another family who lives one floor above us who has a little girl, Shuen, who is 4 years old. The mom, Ai Chen, seems as eager as I am for playdates for the girls and adult conversation. Her older kids are in school already but her 4 year old daughter doesn't start school for another 2 weeks. She is in a Chinese pre-school as well, so we may take a look at that school too. I am looking forward to getting to know Ai Chen and Shuen, and hopefully making friends. They are from Singapore originally, but lived in Vancouver Canada for the last 8 years. They have been here a year and she has volunteered to help me in any way I need, which will probably be soon since it turns out she speaks and reads and writes Mandarin!
One of the things that struck me tonight, as I was buying some fresh flowers, is why being an ex-pat in China is considered such a sweet gig. It's not that living in China is cheap, it's really not that cheap for us. We don't buy food at the street stalls or the wet markets, so it's not dirt cheap. And the furniture and goods they have for sale are about equivalent in price and sometimes much worse on quality. (The quality control on goods in China is horrible.) And the apartment we live in is outrageously expensive by American standards. Our mortgage in the US is about 30% of the rent for this place.
But it's the fact that you can indulge in luxuries here that we can't get in the US. Or, it's not that we can't get them in the US, it's that only the really rich have them. For instance, having an Ayi, someone who comes to my house every weekday and cleans and cooks and nannies, for about $300USD/month. And having a driver. And buying fresh flowers every week. And getting massages. These are not things that we could ever afford in the US, but here they are inexpensive, and it seems to be part of the expectation of the ex-pat community to hire ayis and drivers. I think that's what people mean when they talk about what a sweet deal this is. I hope that when we finally return to the States, we think it was a sweet deal for that, but also for all that we were exposed to and all that we learned.
Seems like tonight I did a lot of rambling in my blog (blambling?), but it's just been that kind of day, with my mind wandering from subject to subject with no clear destination!
Back to my chicken dilemma. I got the chicken out of the bin, and even though it was refrigerated I clearly need to wash this chicken because who knows how many bare hands have been in that bin. And the tap-water is not potable, but you can use it with a drop of dishwashing liquid to wash vegetables and fruit, so should I use the tap-water to wash the chicken? Seems like the tap-water by itself isn't a good idea, but if I put the normal drop of dishwashing liquid in the water and wash the chicken, is my chicken going to taste soapy? Ugh, that sounds really gross. Or do I use the bottled water to wash it and forget about the fact that we're going through this bottled water at an alarming rate and the guys who deliver it to the apartment know me by name now?
At least for today I was saved by my own short-sightedness. Once again, I planned a meal for which I did not have the right equipment - no broiler pan for the one and only chicken recipe I have memorized. Yes, you guessed it, both the broiler pan and the rest of my recipes and cookbooks are in the famed shipment from the US. Which, by the way, is IN the country. It's so close I can almost feel my towels and sheets! Now if we could just get the moving company copies of our passports, residence permits, work permit and probably Olivia's right hand, we would only be one more week away from getting all our stuff.
Tomorrow is a big day for us. Olivia starts pre-school at an international school. That in itself is not such a big deal because she's been in preschool for the last 1.5 years. But this time she's putting on a school uniform and riding a schoolbus all by herself to school. She's excited about the bus ride, I'm traumatized. But every parent and teacher I've talked to said they all get used to it really fast and there is an ayi on the bus to look after the little kids. Like I said, Olivia is excited. But I tell you what, I could really get behind this whole uniform thing. They are basic, inexpensive and totally solve any morning hassles about what to wear.
The other reason tomorrow is a big day is that I'm finally going to the Fake Market. The famed fake market recently moved and is now located in the #2 subway station. :) Before we left for China I really needed a new purse and a new watch. But knowing I was coming to China, I refused to buy either of these items full-price in the States. And tomorrow I finally get to see what kind of bargains I can find. Maybe this doesn't sound all that exciting to you, but to me it's the first time I'm going shopping for something that's not going to be used in my kitchen, bathroom, or office. I'm also looking forward to only having one child with grabby hands in tow instead of two.
Speaking of the one child that I will have left at home, Gigi and I are going to go visit a Chinese preschool tomorrow or the next day. I am not adjusting very well to being a stay-at-home Mom (read that to say I have been short-tempered, unimaginative, snappy and downright crabby). And today at the school orientation for Olivia, the way that Gigi jumped right in and starting playing with the toys and interacting with the kids told me that she is yearning for more stimulation than I'm giving her right now. Rumor has it that there is a good Chinese preschool a few blocks away that does a 2 hour program every day and is fairly inexpensive. Plus it would be a fast-track for her language exposure. I know we've only been here for 2.5 weeks, but I am seriously struggling with being a full-time mom, I just don't think I'm cut out for it. I'm not capable of being consistent, and pleasant, all day long! So we'll see what the Chinese preschool looks like and maybe Gigi and I will both win with this solution.
On a very happy note, we have met another family who lives one floor above us who has a little girl, Shuen, who is 4 years old. The mom, Ai Chen, seems as eager as I am for playdates for the girls and adult conversation. Her older kids are in school already but her 4 year old daughter doesn't start school for another 2 weeks. She is in a Chinese pre-school as well, so we may take a look at that school too. I am looking forward to getting to know Ai Chen and Shuen, and hopefully making friends. They are from Singapore originally, but lived in Vancouver Canada for the last 8 years. They have been here a year and she has volunteered to help me in any way I need, which will probably be soon since it turns out she speaks and reads and writes Mandarin!
One of the things that struck me tonight, as I was buying some fresh flowers, is why being an ex-pat in China is considered such a sweet gig. It's not that living in China is cheap, it's really not that cheap for us. We don't buy food at the street stalls or the wet markets, so it's not dirt cheap. And the furniture and goods they have for sale are about equivalent in price and sometimes much worse on quality. (The quality control on goods in China is horrible.) And the apartment we live in is outrageously expensive by American standards. Our mortgage in the US is about 30% of the rent for this place.
But it's the fact that you can indulge in luxuries here that we can't get in the US. Or, it's not that we can't get them in the US, it's that only the really rich have them. For instance, having an Ayi, someone who comes to my house every weekday and cleans and cooks and nannies, for about $300USD/month. And having a driver. And buying fresh flowers every week. And getting massages. These are not things that we could ever afford in the US, but here they are inexpensive, and it seems to be part of the expectation of the ex-pat community to hire ayis and drivers. I think that's what people mean when they talk about what a sweet deal this is. I hope that when we finally return to the States, we think it was a sweet deal for that, but also for all that we were exposed to and all that we learned.
Seems like tonight I did a lot of rambling in my blog (blambling?), but it's just been that kind of day, with my mind wandering from subject to subject with no clear destination!
Monday, August 20, 2007
I miss tap-water
I really miss tap-water that I can use. I can't tell you how many times I have filled up a pot, or a glass of water, and then remembered that I can't use the water that comes out of the tap. Fresh, smell-free, clear, potable water is something I definitely took for granted in Oregon!
We are having great weather here, although it's the result of horrible weather for Taiwan and southern China. It turns out that typhoons in the southern part of China and Taiwan cause heavy winds up the coast of China. Here in Shanghai, we are seeing blue skies for the first time since we've been here. These high winds clear out some of the smog and I hear from other expats that typhoon season is the only time of year that the skies clear up like this. Unfortunately, it does nothing for the heat and humidity, we're still in the 90s every day with insane humidity.
I seriously need a hobby to occupy my evenings. Without decent TV or anything besides a Shanghai tourist book to read, I need help! On our TV we get 10 channels in English, but half of them are news, 2 of them are sports (cricket, soccer, rugby, anyone?), and then we have HBO, Cinemax, and StarWorld (which is on season 2 of Sex in the City), but they are all the Asia version, which means the movies are really really old.
Joe, who has been investigating ways to get ESPN since the day we arrived, got us a satellite dish last week. It gets ESPN, but the intermittent service is bound to cause him a serious meltdown the first time he really really wants to see a game. :)
Did I mention that we have run out of band-aids in 2.5 weeks? I have two little girls who would generally (OK, definitely) be classified as prissy and I have probably only used a band-aid on either one of them twice in 4 years. But since we have been here I have used an entire box of band-aids on Gigi! She has fallen down and cracked her chin open, tripped over her sister at a party and split open her bottom lip, and fallen down while running down a driveway to greet Daniel (our driver) and split open both her top and bottom lips and got a bloody nose! It's nerve-racking every time she walks on concrete! I'm hoping this is a phase and part of this adjustment and we'll soon quit bleeding!
We are having great weather here, although it's the result of horrible weather for Taiwan and southern China. It turns out that typhoons in the southern part of China and Taiwan cause heavy winds up the coast of China. Here in Shanghai, we are seeing blue skies for the first time since we've been here. These high winds clear out some of the smog and I hear from other expats that typhoon season is the only time of year that the skies clear up like this. Unfortunately, it does nothing for the heat and humidity, we're still in the 90s every day with insane humidity.
I seriously need a hobby to occupy my evenings. Without decent TV or anything besides a Shanghai tourist book to read, I need help! On our TV we get 10 channels in English, but half of them are news, 2 of them are sports (cricket, soccer, rugby, anyone?), and then we have HBO, Cinemax, and StarWorld (which is on season 2 of Sex in the City), but they are all the Asia version, which means the movies are really really old.
Joe, who has been investigating ways to get ESPN since the day we arrived, got us a satellite dish last week. It gets ESPN, but the intermittent service is bound to cause him a serious meltdown the first time he really really wants to see a game. :)
Did I mention that we have run out of band-aids in 2.5 weeks? I have two little girls who would generally (OK, definitely) be classified as prissy and I have probably only used a band-aid on either one of them twice in 4 years. But since we have been here I have used an entire box of band-aids on Gigi! She has fallen down and cracked her chin open, tripped over her sister at a party and split open her bottom lip, and fallen down while running down a driveway to greet Daniel (our driver) and split open both her top and bottom lips and got a bloody nose! It's nerve-racking every time she walks on concrete! I'm hoping this is a phase and part of this adjustment and we'll soon quit bleeding!
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