Hey friends!!
Sorry I'm just now getting around to updating this thing, but as Fish so helpfully pointed out after I left for China, blogspot is indeed blocked here. Fortunately Peter has VPN so I can access blocked sites through the internet in Hong Kong. However, everything on my blog was showing up in Cantonese characters so it was really guess and check on how to write a new post.
ANYWAYS, this is my second and 1/2 day in Shanghai. I left NYC on Sunday at 11am and landed in Shanghai at 3pm, meaning a 13 hour difference. I only slept for one hour on the flight which kind of sucked but I still managed to stay awake and somewhat coherent until 8:30pm here in China. Which meant I was up until 7:30am NYC time which I'm pretty proud about considering I'm a girl who likes her sleep.
So the first night I walked around people's square and east Nanjing road (sort of similar to times square). Yesterday, I wandered around the less developed area of Shanghai right behind Peter's apartment, got a Chinese massage (which was incredible) and walked around the French concession. Today, I plan to visit the Shanghai museum and will be going to lunch with several Shanghainese who plan to order us some more unique Chinese foods. So that's a rundown of what I've been up to so far.
I have really been enjoying seeing what kind of food and snacks are available here. It's definitely been an adjustment as I've had pork (or what I believe to be pork) dumplings at every meal since I've been here. Also, if you're a vegetarian you'll definitely have a rough time as there are quantities of meat tossed into everything. I've also found it interesting that when you order water in a restaurant, it is served to you warm and in a hot glass. So that was pretty different.
So the weather here is supposed to be in the lower 40s and raining all week. so the weather has been kind of a disappointment. However, fortunately, when they say rain here, for the most part it just means extreme mist, which is way more manageable than rain but I go into the day with zero expectation of looking decent at the end of the day.
I've also been picking up more words and phrases in mandarin since I've been here. I can count to 100 and am able to say things like "not interested thank you". "how much does this cost", "excuse me", "what?", "good bye", "I don't understand", etc. I have actually made a couple of purchases all in mandarin and directed a cab yesterday on where to go with good enough pronunciation that he actually understood me. I'm trying to pick up a few more phrases and words every day. It would be really nice to be a bit more self sufficient.
So a few interesting observations here. Almost everyone gets around via bike, electric bike or mopeds. You see a lot of families piled onto one moped moving around. Also, unlike NYC, there is very little respect for pedestrians. Vehicles can turn right on red here, so even if you have a walk sign, you have to be careful not to get barreled over by a city bus. Even bicycles and mopeds might run you over on the sidewalk so you've always got to be on your toes.
Also, the spitting thing. One of my biggest pet peeves is spitting in public and it's multiplied by 100 here as opposed to NYC. I don't even see it that often as I'm constantly hearing the sound of spitting. Just something I'll have to get more accustomed to I suppose.
Also, one of the trademarks of Shanghai and something I've found to be really interesting is the stark contrast between developed areas right next to the poorer/older areas of shanghai. For example, you might see a high end retail jewelry store while across the street is a noodle shack where cabbies will pull over for a quick bite to eat with people laundry hanging above it. The build up is happening so fast here that it really seems somewhat haphazard.
Ok, well gotta run, I would have liked to put up some pictures but it's gonna take me a little while to figure out how to do it with everything being in cantonese. I'll try to keep everyone updated as best I can but we'll see how it goes since the site is blocked! Hope everyone's doing well!
KO
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That's funny about the spitting thing...I remember reading an article about what China was doing to prepare its citizens for the world attention that was to be brought on by the Olympics in Beijing, and it was talking about all the advice they were giving to the public about what would be expected by western patrons. Chief among the things the government was trying to get them to do was to stop spitting as much in public. Also among the items were the concept of lines as well as the personal space issues and letting people off of trains before getting on. They also had a huge clean-up campaign for the not-really-very-accurate-at-all English translations on billboards, some of which were pretty funny. Seems like you've seen many of things quite a bit up close already!
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