Glamour

When I interviewed for a new job next year, I told Danny if I got it we had to go to a fancy dinner. I was thinking about going to the restaurant at the top of the pearl tower (which we still never went inside) but everyone convinced me it has zero atmosphere and is filled with tourists. Instead we decided to go to M on the Bund. 

The hiring process took a while since my new school never had a foreign art teacher before and we had to make a few changes to the contract they usually gave foreign teachers and have it translated. I was really happy when everything was finalized and I had a job set to teach art again! The only drawback to my new job is it has a much longer commute but I’ll survive. I miss being the art teacher and doing creative things. I can’t wait for next year! 

We ended up getting appetizers and dessert at M Glamour Bar instead of the restaurant since it was completely booked for a private event when we tried to make reservations. The bar was one floor below the restaurant and had a similar view of the Shanghai skyline. I got all dressed up, even though I knew most people there wouldn’t bother. The majority of customers were expats or tourists. Most of them looked like tourists at the end of a long tiring day.  

I thought the food was amazing. The drinks were ridiculously overpriced but decent. They had a whole menu of non-alcoholic drinks since it is China where a lot of people can’t handle liquor. Too bad they don’t do that in the states. The décor was pretty nice, it reminded me of a Steven Starr restaurant in Philly. It was pretty much the fanciest place we have eaten in China. Most Chinese restaurants don’t tend to have much atmosphere. I think we may have to go back there at some point… 

Shanghai Old Street

We finally checked out Shanghai Old Street. It had been on my list of places to see for a while. It is a cute main street with the traditional old fashioned buildings occupied by a bunch of knick-knacky little souvenir shops. At this point it mostly had the same stuff we had already seen elsewhere in our China travels. I bought a set of lion shaped door knockers. I think they are really cool… we’ll see if I ever hang them up. After a bit of shopping we found the food street. It was really crowded and kind of dirty. I wasn’t overly impressed with the lunch I got there but I was able to find some vegetarian foods. I don't think I'm likely to go back there often unless I have out of town guests or I need to find people presents.







 

 

Visitors and Chinese Factories

Last week there were a few visitors from the states. It is always fun to see people from home. First, Jessica, a friend of my friend Iris visited. I had only met her a few times before but she is a really nice girl. It was her first time in China but being from New York and all she was way less awestruck by Shanghai than the last visitors from the states we met.

   

The next  visitor I met was a friend of my parents, Nissen, who has a factory in China and comes out here every now and then. I was really curious to see a Chinese factory, it is such an important part of the culture. They do make just about everything in China and you always hear so much about labor conditions and Chinese factories. I've listened to a few NPR reports about work conditions and I really wanted to see what one was like. 

We met Nissen and his business partner Rotem at the train station in Kunshan, about 20 minutes outside Shanghai. Kunshan is a city of about a million people, a similar population to Philadelphia but there isn't much there besides factories.  Nissen took us to his factory and gave us a quick tour before we went out to lunch. He told Danny all about the electronics parts his company made. I was way more interested in seeing what the workers do and how conditions were for them. I pretty much assumed it would be fairly decent place since he offered to take us around. 

It is a small factory, only around 300 employees. I'm not sure how it compares to other factories in China. He joked that it wasn't exactly Foxconn (the company that makes the parts for almost all our computers and other little gadgets). The NPR article said there were 400,000 employees at Foxconn and they all live in dorms on the company's premises and eat all their meals in the company's cafeterias. 

Nissen's factory didn't have dormitories. He did tell us most employers prefer to have them because it is cheaper for the company than having to give them a housing allowance. They did have a cafeteria though. The factory was clean and looked pretty safe. It had a nice lobby and a board room in front and a few offices for the management. The factory itself was only running a few lines when we visited because it was the weekend. It was still interesting to see the precision with which each worker completed their tasks. He said the workers change lines a lot depending on what they are making. I think that's good because it would be incredibly boring to sit and do the same tedious repetitive task every day. Anyway I look at it, it is not an amazing job, but that is what happens in you are an unskilled laborer in China. Most of the people there just want to earn as much as possible and get lots of overtime pay to send home to their families. Nissen told us it is hard to keep employees from leaving unless you can give them lots of overtime work. Overall it was a really interesting little visit. I saw my first Chinese factory. Nissen is a really nice guy and humored me through all my silly questions. Afterwards we got lunch at an Italian restaurant and chatted a bit. He had a video of my parents and all their friends saying hello to us that he recorded just before his trip. It was really nice seeing someone from home.

 

By random coincidence the week after I saw his factory one of my student's mother organized a trip for us to another factory. This time it was a pharmaceutical company. They talked to the kids about how the process of producing and distributing all the medicines worked. It was all in Chinese but I had one of the kids translate for me. I didn't get to ask all kinds of questions about the workers though, the kids were supposed to be there to learn about math related concepts. The only part of the factory we saw was them putting things in boxes. I'm not allowed to have pictures of either place because they want to keep their technology and the inner workings of the factories secret from competing companies. I think I now feel like I have somewhat gotten the Chinese factory tour experience but I'm still really curious what Foxconn is like.

Online Shopping

One of the most amazing things about living in Shanghai is the speed and convenience of ordering things online. In the states you can order things online of course but on www.360buy.com (China's version of Amazon) you get things the next morning without paying any extra rush order fees. It is pretty crazy. The other day we ordered a blender, a hot plate, a phone cover and speakers at around 9:00 pm and they all arrived the next morning. They were packed and ready to be shipped within an hour, even at night. I think people in China need more vacations...

Passover

For our first passover in Shanghai and our first Passover as a married couple Danny and I made a little seder at home for the first night. Passover is a holiday I've always done at my parents' house, I never made a seder before. It was very last minute, we started planning when I got home from work. It took us about three hours to get ready including buying groceries. We didn't have a Haggadah so we downloaded one from the internet. We couldn't find matzah but we found some corn crackers that tasted like cardboard. I made charoset, instant matzah ball soup, and a makeshift seder plate. I have such a pretty one in storage at home... oh well. The only candles in our house were birthday candles so we lit a P candle for Passover instead of the normal holiday candles. We didn't have time to cook so we ordered in. It was the laziest least traditional seder I ever went to and the whole thing took an hour. It was kind of fun though.


























For the second night we went to a seder from the Liberal Jews group which I slightly helped with organizing. Mostly Arie planned the whole thing and the restaurant, Haya's, took care of all the food including the matzah. I don't think it was very strictly kosher but nobody really cared. There were about 70 people including 14 kids. We had all the traditional foods and a cantor came in from Hong Kong to lead it. It was a pretty nice event. I ended up sitting next to a woman who was an art teacher, kind of random. I'm going to try to help more with planning other events. Being in a foreign country tends to make me want to get closer to traditions I grew up with.

Xi'an

This week was Tomb Sweeping Day. From my understanding it is a holiday dedicated to the upkeep of your relatives’ tombs. Some people have told me it may have something to do with ghosts but I’m not quite sure. The holiday fell on a Wednesday so the Chinese government decided to make it a three day holiday by giving Monday and Tuesday off as well. In order to make up for it they had the whole country work on Saturday and Sunday. I guess since there is not Sabbath (or religion) people don’t have an issue with working on the weekends but it does mean that you work from Monday through Sunday straight through. A poor choice on the part of China in my humble opinion, but that is how it is done here.

At any rate, I had three days off so Danny and I decided to go to Xi’an. If you never heard of Xi'an, (which I hadn't until last year) it is a city in Shaanxi province famous for the Terracotta Warriors. Xi'an is about a two hour flight from Shanghai. The high speed rail going there is still being built, but progress has slowed since there was an accident last year. The regular train, which most Chinese locals use, takes about 12 hours.

I booked a flight on a really cheap Chinese airline and felt slightly nervous that it would be really sketchy. Comically enough the company that owns the airline also happens to own the school where I’m teaching. Since it is a cheap airline they don't include food and you have to pay extra for an assigned seat. Since I wasn't sure what it was like and I wanted to sit with Danny we paid about 10 RMB extra to reserve a seat in advance. The guy at check in looked at us funny as if nobody had ever done that before. It is a local Chinese company and about 90% of the customers were Chinese citizens. I'm pretty sure he thought we are stupid foreigners who just throw money away.

They didn't have a proper gate so we had to take a crowded bus to the stairs to get on the plane. It wasn’t the best airline but it got us there without any problems. We took a bus from the airport to Xi'an.There are a lot of unauthorized cars that offer to take you and they are somewhat sketchy but we found the more official airport shuttle. It took about an hour and was pretty uneventful.

The bus left us right in the center of town. Xi'an is a really tiny walled city. Most of the locals live outside the city walls. The bell tower is in the middle of the city. It is a pretty building, historically a bell tower has been there a long time but it was rebuilt and moved at some point. Overall my impression of Xi'an is it has a lot of amazing historical sights but it is way more third world than Shanghai.







The first thing we noticed as we walked around the town's center is there are food vendors everywhere selling pineapples and wa wa tou (ice cream shaped like a doll's head.)  They also sell these wheat gluten things everywhere covered in really spicy sauce that Danny could not handle. The food in Xi'an is all really spicy. I like it a lot more than the food in Shanghai. My favorite snack there, which is also easy to find in Shanghai was nan gua bing or nan gua qiu a pumpkin pastry.

We stayed at the City Hotel. It was ok, aside from doing the thing where the toilet was built inside the shower which seems to be fairly common in Chinese hotels. The main advantage of the hotel is it was in a great location very close to the city center. We wanted to stay at this place called the Warrior Apartments but it was booked for the first two nights. We switched and stayed there for our last night in Xi'an. In retrospect for a bit more money we should have stayed in the Bell Tower Hotel for the first two nights which is way fancier and not too much more expensive.



After we checked in we headed out to explore a bit and had dinner at an Italian place called Colabo that we looked up online. It was a really good restaurant except in typical Chinese fashion it was inside this really random empty office building. At least it had decent signs directing us to the restaurant.

After dinner we had reservations for a show at the Tang Dynasty theater. They offer dinner shows but there wasn't much I could eat and it was pretty expensive so we did the champagne show which included one drink but no dinner.

It was a very touristy show, hardly any locals were in the audience. The show was pretty good. The main appeals were the beautiful costumes and the scenery. The traditional music and dancing was also pretty cool. The storyline was pretty poorly done. It was supposed to give the history of the Tang dynasty. It skipped around a lot and had a boring voice over in between scenes telling random facts about the dynasty. It would have been better if they just told the story of one emperor rather than trying to fit everything in. Still, the costumes alone were cool enough to make it worth checking out. They had lion dancers and ribbon dancers and traditional instruments like the gu qin, pai xiao, pi pa and er hu.

We took the subway to get to the show. The subway in Xi'an isn't very built up. There are only two lines for the whole city of about 8 million (about double the population of Philly) and they don't get you everywhere you need. The traffic there is really bad and cabs are scarce. Some of our dealings with transportation in Xi'an were pretty scary. The subway was fairly convenient for getting from our hotel to the show though.


After we got back we looked around the city a bit more and checked out the city gates at night.



The next morning we planned to take a trip 40 minutes northeast of the city to visit the Terracotta Warriors. We read online that bus 306 is the best way to go. We took the subway to the closest stop to 306 then we walked for about 40 minutes to get to the station it left from. We saw some of the less touristy parts of the city on the way...

We finally made it to the train station that the 306 departed from. It was crowded with lots of people traveling for the holiday. The line for the 306 had about a thousand people in it. I never saw a line that long in my life. After a brief discussion about the likelihood of making it onto a 306 bus we decided to find a taxi.

Cabs are hard to find and are not regulated in Xi'an. It worked out fine taking a taxi in Beijing to the great wall. In contrast, it was pretty scary taking one to the Terracotta Warriors from Xi'an. I read online some of taxis like to drive you in circles. First off, I have to say we got screwed on the cost and paid 200 RMB (about double what a cab should have cost) to get there. It still is only about $30 total so it wasn't that bad. We are really bad at bargaining. Then, the driver decided to take an extra person with us, which I was really not happy about. The other guy only paid 50 RMB. When we finally started driving the driver stopped after about 10 minutes and pulled over to talk to some other taxi. The other taxi agreed to take us and then the driver told us we had to get out and switch cars. I was really freaked out by the whole process. As the new driver proceeded he kept swerving over to the right lane. I was worried he was looking for more passengers. I later discovered he was avoiding the cameras that photographed speeding cars. When it was time to drop us off he tried to leave us a mile away from the site because there was traffic. We really should have booked an organized tour that caters to foreigners. At any rate, after a very shaky start we got there.

The Terracotta Warriors or Bing ma yong were really cool. They were built around 220 BC at the site of the Qin emperor Qin Shi Huang's tomb to be his servants. The first thing you see when you arrive is a giant statue of Qin Shi Huang in the parking lot.



After waiting in a fairly long line to buy tickets we passed an outdoor food court and a bunch of little souvenir stands before we got to the actual site.












There are three main pits in which the statues were found. Some of the statues were removed and put in cases inside the museum, others are still inside the pits. The museum also had some modern art representing the army. We looked around the museum and all three pits. Since it was a Chinese holiday everywhere we went was incredibly crowded. The statues were amazing and the sheer number of them was pretty awesome.

 

      
 



























They really are trying to build it up to be a major tourist destination. It is a bit kitschy though. There are even replicas you can get your photo taken with, I had to try it. The food outside was really good and it is pretty cheap, although more than in the city. Everything was really spicy. I liked it so much more than the food in Shanghai.






We left somewhat early because we were worried we would get stuck waiting with the giant crowd. We decided not to take the 20 minute ride to see Qin Shi Huang's actual tomb. As we walked out we found a bus to take us back for 10 RMB a person. I didn't mind the ride that much because we both got seats but they filled the bus way beyond a safe capacity. They kept stopping along the way to get more passengers. This is us on the bus before it got crowded. Now picture it with 30 people standing in the aisle.


Once we got back to the city we took another bus into the city center and after a quick rest headed to the Muslim quarter for the night. The Muslim quarter in Xi'an is quite different in aesthetics from anywhere else I've seen in China. Besides the Terracotta Warriors it was the coolest part of Xi'an. The first part we saw had tons of booths filled with souvenirs. The sellers are pretty aggressive and call out to you asking if you want to buy things. It wasn't too different from the Muslim quarter in Jerusalem in that respect.




After a little while we stumbled upon the great mosque. It was an incredibly beautiful and special place. My photos don't quite do it justice.

 

We looked around for a while then we walked back out and tried to do some bargaining to buy a few things. I am an awful bargainer but things there are cheap either way. We got a table runner and a bunch of puzzles and a few other cool nick knacks. It was really cool how everywhere you went you saw something new. It was a lot less exciting when we went back the next day because everything started to look the same.

We also got a really yummy but spicy dinner. In Xi'an, besides being spicy most of the food is made with noodles. In Shanghai most of the food is made with rice. I like the noodles way more than rice.

I was really surprised when we walked out of the Muslim quarter from a different exit that it looked like this.











The next morning we switched hotels to the Warrior Apartments. It was a really cool place but it was very hard to find. It was inside a random residential building down a hallway that looked like this. There were no signs from the outside. We had to call and have them come down to show us the place.















The inside was really cool though. They carved out parts of the wall and had terracotta warriors sticking out of them.  Even in the bathroom terracotta warriors were holding up the sink and brandishing q-tips instead of swords. They had their backs to the toilet though so you didn't feel too weirded out. One of the walls also had paper cuttings of  warriors. The hotel owner wrote a book about the Terracotta Warriors which I bought a copy of.

 
     










We had been debating what to do for the day. At first we planned to see a few sights outside the city wall then I thought it might be cool to go for a day trip to Huashan Mountain. We ended up deciding to just see the sights outside the wall because we were sort of tired and Danny's leg was sore.

We started out by getting a taxi to Shaanxi History Museum. This time we didn't have any problems with the driver and it was just a short trip. At first I wasn't that excited for it because I sort of was a bit disappointed we didn't go hike the mountain but this was seriously one of the coolest museums I've seen.

They have a beautiful collection of artifacts including a few terracotta warriors and one collection of statues that I found almost as impressive as the warriors. There were also two sculptures that I was convinced Maurice Sendak stole his ideas for the wild things from.

          

Next we headed for the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. We had a yummy lunch at a food street nearby. I'm not sure the name of it but it was about a five minute walk from the pagoda.

 











Like a lot of historic sites in China, the area around the Giant Goose Pagoda was built up into a bit of a tourist trap. There was a big park with lots of booths to buy assorted touristy souvenirs. There was also a pretty row of statues that I climbed on. They even were building a monorail, which caused Danny to break into the monorail song from the Simpsons.






I convinced Danny to get our pictures taken at the booth that lets you wear old fashioned costumes. We dressed up like the Tang dynasty emperor and his wife. Everyone stared at us. It was sort of like when we did our wedding photos. A bunch of random people even took our picture.This is the photo we bought from the photographer.



We paid to go into the Big Goose Pagoda. It was two separate fees, one to go inside the area and another to climb to the top. It wasn't really worth it to go to the top in my opinion. It was just another building with a view and it was really overpriced. I guess it is one of those things you don't know unless you try and we would have wondered what was inside if we didn't go up.

For our last stop outside the city walls we tried to check out an area called Tang Paradise that is supposed to have a lot of shows and stuff. We didn't get there until after 5:00 and we were already tired and would have had to pay for the full day's entrance fee so we decided to just head back to the hotel.

We took a rest and then headed back to the Muslim quarter because there were a few more thing I wanted to buy. It wasn't as exciting and novel the second time but it was still pretty cool. I bought an abacus and some magnets and did a terrible job bargaining. Danny got dinner while I shopped.

For our last day we did a guided tour of the city walls. We tried this tour called Urban Adventures which Danny had used when he was in Europe. Apparently the tour wasn't as popular in Xi'an and we were the only ones in the tour group. Our tour guide was really nice and spoke decent English but she didn't give us a ton of facts about the city. She took us to the wall and rented us bikes to bike around the top. I hadn't rode a bike in a really long time and I was actually a bit unsteady at first but got used to it after a few minutes. Now I remember why I loved bikes so much as a kid. It was really fun.

After the bike ride we walked through a shopping street called Shu Yuan Jie and headed to the Forest of Stele museum.



Danny was really impressed with all the carved characters the Forest of Stele museum for the sake of their literary merit. I didn't find them quite as interesting since I can't read Chinese, it may have been more exciting with a guide who knew what sort of stories they told. I did think it was really funny that one character looked like a little kid. Anyone know what character it is?

   

I was way more interested in the drawings carved into stone than the writings. The most interesting one to me was a picture of Confucius. It looked way different than how I pictured him.

The other section had more ornate stonework that I thought was really beautiful. At least me and Danny each found something of interest there.

We walked back to the hotel afterwards and then planned to catch a shuttle to the airport.
This guy in an unmarked car offered to take us to the airport as we were getting in line and since he was leaving right away and the bus would be a bit of a wait. In retrospect this was pretty unsafe but we got there just fine.

I really enjoyed Xi'an, there is a lot of history there and I liked the food and the architecture, but there were some aspects that felt much more third world than Shanghai. I'm starting to feel like we've really seen a lot of China at this point. There are still a lot of places I want to go. We are going to Huangshan mountain at the end of the month. I want to hit a few more water towns. I really want to check out Lhasa, possibly Chengdu, somewhere in Yunnan province, and Urumqi. It would also be really cool to do a longer overnight hike on the great wall. I also want to go to Seoul, Bangkok and Kyoto. It seems like the more places we visit the longer the list gets.