Payday

I finally got my first "paycheck." They only pay once a month here. Nobody told me in advance that they pay in cash unless you set up an account at one particular bank where my work is willing to do direct deposit. I had already set up an account at a different bank where I was told they could do direct deposit. Apparently, that was only for 20% of my salary which is paid by the hiring agency so I got the rest in cash.

People don't use checks here at all, it is really weird. Also, the largest bill they have is a 100 yuan note which is worth about $15. I obviously had quite a thick wad of cash. I thought only criminals carry that much cash around but I guess not in China. A lot of people here just use cash. I wonder if people also don't use banks and just hide their money in their mattress or something. No wonder they have this whole weird thing with collecting fapiao (receipts with official tax info that I need to collect for reasons I don't fully understand.) I think everyone gets paid in cash under the table.

I was sort of terrified to carry all the cash around with me. I took a cab home and had Danny walk me directly to the bank.

Yuyuan Garden

On Sunday we finally managed to check out a tourist site. We met my co-worker Karen at Yu Yuan Garden.












We had lunch at a sushi place. It was really cute. All the different sushi rolls came by on a conveyer belt. The food was pretty good. I had some egg and veggie rolls. We found out the place is a chain and there is another one in the shopping mall ten minutes from our place.











Afterwards, we looked around the garden, which was at some point a gift to some government official. The area surrounding it had a bunch of extremely touristy shops.

It was one of the few places in Shanghai I've seen so far that I thought was actually pretty. It had the traditional Chinese architecture and real bamboo growing. If only all of Shanghai was that pretty.

Shanghai Expat Fair

So I've been sort of lazy about trying to do touristy things. Mostly I figure I have two years here and I'll get to things eventually. Over the weekend a few of my co-workers went to the expat fair. We tried to meet them but were sort of slow and got there after they left. We stopped at a restaurant on the way there called Always Cafe where we got a veggie burger and a quesadilla. It was sort of decent. The expat fair wasn't a particularly impressive event anyway. I mostly just collected information about additional health insurance.


Afterwards we tried to go to Jing An Temple. We got there about 15 minutes after it closed. It was really pretty from the outside though.

Shanghai Animation Studio

So at school in the states planning a field trip is usually a big hassle. You need to get permission from a whole bunch of administrators and run around getting a half dozen signatures. Then you had to get students to bring in permission slips and medical forms with emergency contact numbers. I did one trip a year in PG county as a result of how complex the process was. Here the Chinese 5th grade teachers planned it and didn't do any of that. We just hired a bus and that was that. At any rate, our first unit is self expression through film so we went on a trip to Shanghai animation studio. Here are a few pictures.






















It was sort of an interesting place but there was no English at all. A few of the kids translated for me and Paul, the other foreign fifth grade teacher. I mostly knew about animation from prior knowledge anyway but the language barrier was a bit frustrating.

Vegetarian Banquet

Danny's adviser, Lei Hao wanted to take us out to dinner so she found a vegetarian restaurant. We went with Lei, her husband, Juntai - who is also a physics professor at the observatory - and his postdoc, Joe. Juntai drove as we discussed how frightening it is driving in Shanghai. Apparently, it is better here than most other cities in China. Scary.

They knew I was a vegetarian so they took us to a vegetarian restaurant Lei had been to once before. It was a really beautiful restaurant inside of a really dumpy looking building. I am starting to discover that it is often the case in Shanghai that places, even very fancy ones, just don't typically bother to make the outside of buildings look nice.








It is pretty tough to find vegetarian foods in Chinese restaurants. There is a very different concept of what it means to be vegetarian here than at home. The other day at work they gave me shrimp as my vegetarian meal. I really don't understand the logic there.

If people do understand the concept of being vegetarian at all, they think of the Buddhist monk version of vegetarian. The monks are vegetarian because they aren't supposed to hurt living things. They also aren't supposed to take any pleasure in worldly things so vegetarian foods are supposed to be bland. They don't eat onion, garlic, ginger or anything else spicy. So at most restaurants when I say I want something vegetarian they either offer me fish and shrimp or they assume I want something without any flavor.

Anyway, the restaurant that Lei took us to was a vegetarian restaurant that made mock meat. Some of the food was so close to meat that you couldn't tell the difference. It was a really pretty place but it the food was a bit too close to meat for my comfort level. The platters looked really nice though. Each dish came in a unique serving piece and was beautifully displayed.

Bagels!

In case you were wondering where the Jews go in Shanghai, I think we found them all during my quest for bagels. After the Chinese banquet meal I was in need of comfort food on Sunday. We tried Shaghai's new bagel place Egghead Bagels for breakfast. The bagels were a little softer and more doughy than real NY bagels but better than nothing. There were mostly westerners in the bagel shop, I got a feeling a lot of them were Jewish. One table was speaking Hebrew.











We wandered around for a while and headed towards the older more established bagel shop. The street with the bagel shop also had an authentic looking Indian place that and a few other restaurants that looked promising.


We walked though People's Square and saw lots of elderly people hanging out with personal ads for their children and grandchildren. Danny translated one for me. It was pretty funny.




We bought a dozen bagels and cream cheese at Haya's. The bagels there were slightly better but still a bit too soft. I think they will taste ok if we toast them. We still haven't gotten a toaster oven...

Teachers' Day!

I have been settling in to the start of the school year. If I didn't already say so, my students are adorable and I'm enjoying getting to know them. Schools here are run a bit differently than at home. There is a bit of a clash between the way that some of the Chinese teachers and the foreign teachers do things which can be stressful at times.

At the end of the first full week of school was teachers' day. It is a national holiday here. A few of my students brought me flowers. They are so sweet.

After work all the teachers went to a banquet dinner. They had it at a Howard Johnson's an hour and a half away from our school. I wasn't expecting much out of the banquet food. I've been to a Chinese banquet before and it is basically a lot of scary looking meat with faces. I got something vegetarian brought to me but I still wasn't a huge fan of it.

During the dinner there were a lot of speeches and skits in Chinese. The teachers from our department had to do a little skit and we were required to stay after work and practice for it almost every day for the first week of school. I have to say our skit was pretty lame but so were the others. One skit involved a bunch of guys dressing in drag... not sure what it had to do with teachers' day. Mostly everyone had too much free beer to notice the skits very much. I had a decent time chatting with my co-workers. The best part of the banquet was we each got a red envelope with small cash gift inside.

























After dinner some of the teachers sang karaoke in a hotel board room. It was mildly entertaining but I only stayed for a short time.


I went to the hotel restaurant with a few people and bought some pizza just before closing time. The Chinese have a habit of putting some very unusual toppings on their pizza. My first week here I ordered a garden pizza. It came with kiwi and assorted fruits, in addition to cheese and tomato sauce. This time I requested no corn or other unusual toppings before they made it. It tasted ok.

Most of the teachers stayed over night at the hotel since they offered to put us up for free. In the morning we thought we were going straight back after breakfast. They announced during dinner (in Chinese) that we would be going to a museum. Fortunately, Karen translated for me so it wasn't a total surprise to me, but some people had no idea.

We went to the China Maritime Museum. It was sort of a cool place but a lot of the foreign teachers (myself included) were slightly annoyed that nobody told us the schedule beforehand.











They had a movie included in the museum that they said was 4D. I never heard of a 4D movie before so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Basically it was a 3D movie where your chair shook when a lot of action occurred, water sprayed you when it rained onscreen and little bursts of air blew on you if it was windy. It was actually pretty cool. It was dubbed in Chinese, but it was mostly an action film so I got the gist of it.


After the museum, all the western teachers assumed we were going home so we got back on the bus. They then proceeded to stop for another Chinese banquet meal. It was at a pretty place with lots of plants. I didn't bother requesting anything vegetarian, I just had soda and figured I'd eat whenever I got home. My friend Michelle who did try the food ended up with food poisoning and felt ill the whole week afterwards.

The whole thing was sort of nice but would have been a lot more pleasant if we had some sort of communication about how the day was going to go. I thought I'd be home by ten or eleven so I could spend the day with Danny. Instead we got back at four. The Chinese teachers were more of the mentality that we should just go along with whatever because the boss says so. It is funny, I had a different understanding of how a communist country works. A lot of the western teachers looked fairly annoyed by the end of the trip. It was sort of a cultural learning experience.

Teaching Shanghai Manners

I think I already made a few references to the fact that a lot of the people in Shanghai are really rude. To be fair, in Shanghai they just have a different set of cultural norms than at home but it just seems unpleasant from an American perspective.

They throw garbage everywhere. They scream and fight with each other in the supermarket because someone bumped someone else. The shove their way in front of a crowded elevator so the people inside can’t get out. They don’t consider it poor manners to pick their noses, spit, burp or urinate in public.

I saw an elderly guy peeing in the bushes the other day in broad daylight while I waited for a bus. In New York sometimes it happens at 2 am when people are drunk but not in broad daylight when people are around. Some people from work have had taxi drivers who told them to wait a minute while they got out to pee on the street by their car.

Yesterday one of my Chinese co-workers was picking her nose during a meeting and she noticed me looking at her and kept right on going. Even if the etiquette rules are just different here, I’m skeeved out a lot of the time.

Shanghai is filthy in a lot of ways as a result of the people’s habits. The stores and supermarkets (except the fancy ones marketed to expats) are filthy. And the drivers here are frightening… way worse than New York.

For some bizarre reason Danny is sure he can teach drivers proper manners. As we are walking along if a car cuts us off Danny will smack their car as they drive past to let them know what a jerk they are being. I’ve seen him do it in Philly and New York two or three times. Here it seems to occur once or twice per ten minute walk. It always makes me nervous when he does it and I worry he’ll piss someone off.

Last night he proved it was a bad idea when he tapped the car of this guy who nearly ran us over. The guy stopped abruptly on the side of the road and began chasing Danny yelling in Chinese and trying to punch him. Danny held him off with one hand (cause he wasn’t a very big guy) and Danny was fine. I, on the other hand, was completely freaked out and made Danny promise never to do that to a car ever again.

I think it is incidents like this that cause a lot of expats I have met to talk about Shanghai locals in a way that is quite disparaging. At times it really borders on sounding racist. I don't know about other parts of Asia but the culture of America and other western nations just leads to a better quality of life than in Shanghai. In the states and Europe things just feel cleaner and safer. Try as Danny might, you just can’t teach Shanghai manners.

Adjusting and Sightseeing

I am starting to feel a bit more settled here. Our apartment mostly feels like home. We still need to buy a toaster oven and a few other items.

I know how to get to work and to the shopping malls with Coldstone and Beard Papas. I sort of like the way they do street signs here. Danny pointed out that they put the street plus the street one block in each direction on the signs. This is really useful because each block is ridiculously long, way longer than Avenues in Manhattan.


I found a few restaurants I'm ok with. I was really happy about Element Fresh. It has English speaking waiters, sells salad, sandwiches and pastas and delivers.

City Shop has all the imported groceries I need at incredibly high prices. They have McDonalds and KFC everywhere... too bad I don't eat them.











I got through the first two days of class. Work has some challenges but I think it will be ok.









I had my physical for getting my work visa. My first experience of dealing with health care in China was sort of scary. They didn't speak that much English and put you through a series of medical tests without telling you what was going on. I got really freaked out when they gave me a needle because they didn't warn me at all and it didn't seem very clean there compared to the doctors at home. Danny is doing his physical right now while I'm sitting in his office writing this. Our internet at home is still really spotty. We finally set up google voice though so now people from home should be able to call me on my old cell phone number from the states. It is a 12 hour time difference though so flip am pm if you want to get in touch.

It still feels really busy and things haven't quite calmed down yet but we have finally had time to try a little bit of sightseeing. We went to West Nanjing Road, the Bund and got a nice view of the Oriental Pearl tower. West Nanjing Road is supposed to be the busiest shopping street in the world, it reminds me a lot of Times Square. Similarly I don't think I'll go there often. The Bund is next to Nanjing Road. It is the area where a bunch of Europeans invaded and built western style buildings.















We found a store near our place that sold Hello Kitty products exclusively. It was quite frightening.














Apparently in Shanghai for some reason they call bras "body pops". I'm not sure if it was just this store but I found it creepy. I may not be able to buy any underwear here ever. Good thing I'll be home in January.














Things here just don't seem as clean as at home. People seem to have different concepts of hygiene. They have a giant work force so they clean things often but it still just seems dirty.

They also seem to have different rules about zoning and construction. We went to this one store to buy a phone and when we got there we thought it was closed because it looked like it was under construction. The whole first floor was just covered in rubble but they had a working escalator and upstairs was a cell phone store. I'm scared of how may safety violations we walked through to go to the store. I guess we survived though so whatever.












I'm not sure if homelessness is as prevalent here as in the states but we see beggars occasionally. It is weird that they look cleaner than the ones at home. We also frequently see people just sitting down and charging their cell phones in the subway.



I'm starting to get a bit more of feel for the city. Locals here are really loud and pushy. I know New Yorkers have a bad reputation but here seems way more intense. People are still really nice though, if you talk to them when they aren't trying to commute. It is the weekend thankfully so I think soon I'll go out and try to explore the city a bit more. I'm ordering lunch from Element Fresh first.