Let's Get Some Shoes!

After just two daily doses of the Sartorialist, I could no longer resist my overwhelming urge to acquire more artfully arranged pieces of fabric and leather, so I hopped on a cab (likely to be older than I am) and headed for the central shopping district of the purported fashion capital of China. My mission (not only for today but for the rest of China)- the following items:

- Dark brown leather sandals with enough heel to wear with long pants and enough spark to wear with a skirt.
- Summery dresses in orange or seafoam green, both of which go surprisingly well with my skin tone, as I only recently discovered.
- Shirt-dress with fine detail in a not too bland color.
- Interesting tops. I own far too many skirts.
- Red shoes, pointy toed, moderately high hells, preferably with some interesting but !(shiny || chunky) detail.

I've never understood how clothing retailers manage to make a profit during their non-weekend, daytime hours. I see how retailers must stay open during the day, but where do they get their customers when everyone is at work? In America, there exists a sizable supply of idle housewives as potential customers. In China, where the concept of a housewife is even more foreign than the concept of a proper queue when waiting for services, who goes shopping during the day?

Tourists, perhaps? Students, when they're on vacation? It's not even summer vacation here, and there were plenty of student-looking people in the underground shopping center that I first visited. Unsatisfied with most of the offerings there, I headed off to le plus chic et le plus cher department store that I could find in the same plaza.

The place was filled with powdered, painted, and/or plastic women elevated up to 10 cm above the ground fluttering about various vendors. Every time I see a female who exceeds me vertically, I instinctively look down at her shoes and derive, more often than not, a small, smug sense of satisfaction at seeing the source of her simulated supermodel stature. After an afternoon of navigation through such crowds and far too many overzealous salespeople than I cared to count, I settled in the Starbucks of the mall to rest my feet and to jot down snippets of this entry that occurred to me throughout the day.

At Starbucks, I strategically situated myself on a comfortable sofa next to a pair of English-speakers, who seemed to be discussing software. After a few minutes, during which time I saw a familiar looking girl in a white dress and navy hat settle into a seat not too far from me, I went up to one of them and started conversation. It turned out that this duo is the father and twin of a Nigel the Canadian that I had met at English Corner (weekly event at DUT where masses gather to speak English) last Saturday. A short while later, Nigel came back with his mom, and I chatted with the twins over my red bean frappuccino about MIT, Queens College in Canada, and Berkeley.

About an hour into our conversation, I had to use the restroom. Upon getting up and turning around, I realized that the familiar looking girl in the white dress and navy hat was in fact who I thought she looked like when she arrived. I also realized that the familiar looking girl in the white dress and navy hat (Lili, I think her name is) was, in fact, on a date with my teammate Ben. Shit. Ben had mentioned something about meeting her at Starbucks. With so many Starbucks (even in China), what are the chances of us running into each other at the same one? Oops.

After returning from my excursion, I saw that Ben and his lady friend had left. Soon after, I parted ways with my new friends and returned home with my spoils for the day:

- Dark brown leather sandals with enough heel to wear with long pants and enough spark to wear with a skirt.
- Black flat sandals that happened to match my brass rat when I tried them on.
- Turquoise shirt with interesting drape and faux buttons at the front to not require a necklace.
- Navy and gray shirt with horizontal, yes, horizontal stripes.
- Gray shorts with ample pockets that matches above shirt. My first and only pair of shorts in years.

I would have posted pictures had my legs not been horribly mutilated by a gross of gross mosquito bites accumulated over nights of the past fortnight of which at least a dozen are still present and festering. Yes, I realize this is supposedly a photoblog. Go look at some past entries. I've probably bored you enough with this dose of fashion and frivolousness.

Kingdom by the Sea

A (Fake) Photographic* Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, in the fair kingdom of Chinaland, there was a beautiful castle by the sea nestled in the side of a lovely green mountain.

(The castle is actually a seashell museum)

In the beautiful castle nestled in the side of the lovely, green mountain lived the royal family, which had three children. Michael, the oldest, is a master of the elusive art of electronics.

(kind of true... he just got his Masters in EE.
Note the bungee jumping platform in background)

Ben, the second oldest, is generally suspected by the public to be an illegitimate child of the queen as he looks nothing like the other royal children.


However, Ben seems, or perhaps pretends to be, oblivious to his physical differences and is generally a happy, untroubled guy. Because of the heavy censorship in Chinaland, any talks of this controversy in strictly forbidden and is punishable by lifelong imprisonment in the ferris wheel of death.

(actually just an innocent ferris wheel in the amusement park next to the beach)

The youngest child is Princess XX. The king and queen of Chinaland had hoped for a third boy as boys are much more valued in Chinaland than girls. Upon giving birth to a girl, the king and queen were so disgusted and disappointed that they didn't bother giving the unfortunate child a name and angrily slashed not one but two violent X's on the birth certificate form. Despite her unsatisfactory beginning, XX grew up to be reasonably well-adjusted and gets along swimmingly with her two siblings.


Michael, Ben, and XX like to frolic on the beach in their spare time. Whenever they go out, Ben is invariably surrounded by flocks of curious children, no doubt because of his curious appearance. Like in the story of the emperor's new clothes, only the children dare to approach Ben and ask him questions. Fortunately, Ben is a good sport about it.

(there's me sleeping in the background. hehe)

XX, on the other hand, often gets accosted by creepy locals whenever she steps outside. One time at a dance hall, she encountered a man who tried to bite the buttons off her shirt. Whenever she goes to the beach, she tends to attract questionable photographers who often try to hide under their umbrellas.

(Yeah, this guy actually took pictures of me. I threw a pebble at him when he was turned around, and he promptly ran away with his tail between his legs)

This is what one of those furtive photos probably looked like:

(I was reading Lolita)

While at the beach one unfortunate afternoon, they were all attacked by Vinkigs coming from the ocean in colorful boats.

(A "Vinkig" boat ride. I think they meant "Viking")

After a short and not particularly valiant fight, everyone died...

Or did they? Just when the evil Vinkigs were about to chop the heads off our darling royal children, a flying mechanism came and hoisted our heroes away from harm. Oh, the wonders of the Chinaland police. They see all and know all and was able to see that the royal children were in danger.


The flying mechanism took everyone back to the castle, where they lived happily ever after.

FIN

*All photos courtesy of Michael Yeung

Sightseeing, or Rather, Fun with Molesting Statues)

This past Sunday, the Yuanfeng, one of our host professors, took our team sightseeing in Dalian. They tried to show us as many places as they could. As a result, I didn't get to spend as long in some of the places as I would have liked. Some places, we just drove by with only a few words of narration from Yuanfeng. We're definitely going to go back to some of the locations and just hang out for an afternoon one of these weekends.

In any case, we took some pretty pictures. The advantage to going on outings with multiple people is that I get to be in the center of pictures, not just the corner from autopicturetaking:

Xinhai Square, apparently the largest square in all of Asia. It is much more impressive in person and actually quite picturesque. The thing in the sky is a cross between a bike and a parachute. It flies around the sky, much like ET.

A slopey thing. It's difficult to climb to the high edge because you start sliding down. I did not see any rollerbladers/skateboarders exploiting this excellent surface. Maybe it's because there's a bronze-ish thing in the center with some 1000 footprints cast in it, which serves as a nice barrier.

Xinhai Square has a beach next to it. Here are some nice people frolicking at the beach on a pleasant Sunday afternoon. The giant plastic balls are tethered to land and contain small children, who walk on water in them like some unholy amalgamation of Jesus and a hamster.

Dalian loves statues. There are random ones (lots of giraffes and octopi) everywhere. Among them, I have found my new lover, a lovely musician who is just the right height for me. I've always wanted kids with perfect pitch!

After Xinahai Square, we headed to this spot on a mountain with a couple of enormous, grotesquely stylized trees, which turned out not to be real but are actually made from wire framing and painted plaster (best guess).

We then stopped by a pebble beach, where we met a giant turtle and skipped pebbles into the incoming waves.

Due to my dress and shoes, I did not attempt to climb on its head and merely rested (precariously) on its shell.

We walked along the beach and encountered this card playing trio, I mean quartet. 9 out or 10 Chinese people cannot tell which one is the real Ben Charrow in this picture. My best guess is the blond on the left.

Further along the beach is a highly abstract depiction of waves, water droplets, and seagulls. Here's me doing the Asian tourist pose because, after all, I am Asian, and I'm pretty much a tourist.

Semi-unsuccessful attempt at being as cool as Escher.

My secret: I like little boys.

A Laundry List of Unfortunate Events

1. Getting hit on by sketchy bastards: This weekend, we went bar-hopping again. While Ben met some very interesting people (absurdly liberated, chain-smoking, trilingual Chinese girl and her friend who speaks English with a Chinese-French accent), I got hit on by sketchy bastards.

At JD, a dance club we went to at the end of Saturday night, a boy started dancing with me and then proceeded to try to bite the large (fake) buttons off my (fake) Chloe shirt. I instantly ran away only to be accosted by another guy, Number 11.

11 is from Tibet. I don't remember his real name, but half of his initials consisted of the letters S and L. At his high school in Tibet, all the students were referred to by their numbers because the teacher had trouble pronouncing their names. 11 seemed nice (and interesting, though only because he was Tibetan) until he asked to kiss me. When I refused, he started biting my ear, at which point I made up some lame excuse, grabbed Ben (who had, by this point, made even more interesting friends), and went home.

2. Cell phone: Determined to have a better time Saturday night, I ventured out again, this time with Ben and Michael (third team member who had just arrived). Admittedly, I did have a better time at the first bar we went to, Makewei jiuba. Ginger, the absurdly liberated, trilingual, chain-smoker whose company I very much enjoy, had brought along a couple of more of her friends, and I spoke with them for a while before our whole group headed for JD again to dance.

I didn't want to carry a purse on Saturday, and Ben offered to carry a few of my belongings, including my cell phone. When he was paying for the cab to JD, my cell phone fell out of his pocket, and he didn't realize it was gone until the cab had driven away. Ginger called my phone with hers and the cab driver not only demanded money (the one day I didn't bring enough money with me...) but also claimed that he could not bring it back until 5 am. Now, the problem is, the phone actually belong to my grandparents. I had borrowed it for the summer and need to give it back when I go back home. After calming down a bit, I decided just to buy a new phone, not wanting the asshole to profit and not wanting to wait around outside a bar until 5 am...

3. Questionable Food: Sunday morning, I woke up at 1 pm dying of hunger. Because the dining hall was closed by the time I got there, I went across the street to a small eatery where Ben and I had eaten a couple of times before. I first ordered a noodle dish that was unbearably spicy. Unable to finish it (or rather unable to even start it), I decided to order a bowl of fried rice just to get something substantial in my stomach.

My fried rice came, and I immediately found a piece of hair in it. Not wanting to be an asshole (and too hungry to care), I continued eating from the other end of the plate and found another piece of hair within seconds. I had run out of money to buy anything else, so I still kept eating, trying to pick off the rice far away from the two offending spots. After a little while, I discovered a small piece of plastic in my rice, at which point I ran way disgusted and still hungry...

4. I will not elaborate: One of the worst feelings ever is having your hopes raised up for something only to be disappointed.

5. Piano Practice: On my first day here, I figured out where the piano practice rooms were and planned to practice when I got a chance. Last night, I wasn't feeling particularly great and decided to take a walk to the practice rooms to play a bit of piano to divert myself. Too bad the practice rooms were "temporarily closed for repair" as the sign said (according to my bad Chinese reading abilities).

Finally, because no post in a picture blog is complete without a picture (better pictures next post):

Laundry. Note that I used my internet connection cord to create a makeshift clothesline. Internet still works!

ABCDE

A is for Apex

A couple of days ago, Ben (my teammate) and I ventured to climb the mountain next to the school. It's called Niujiao Shan (Bull's Horn Peak), and it has a path with 500 something steps leading to the top. On our way up, we encountered surprisingly old people (still able to climb mountains!) and a frighteningly large bee. All mountain pictures courtesy of Ben:

The mountain as viewed from campus. Note the little pavilion thing at the top.

Two cats that we saw on our way to the mountain.
Ben says they should be named Yin and Yang.

Me heroically climbing the mountain with my brand new knock-off
Converse All Stars that cost 30 Yuan (~5 dollars).

View from top of mountain.
This looks over at the place where we took the first mountain picture.

View from top, other side.

B is for Bar
Tuesday night, Ben and I decided to go explore the nightlife of Dalian. Following the suggestions of a guidebook and the internet, we headed to a certain Makewei jiuba, a.k.a. Dave's Bar. The bar was mostly empty and we ended up playing with the bar cat and chatting with the 19 yr old bartender, who was nice enough to offer us free sunflower seeds to munch on. She told us that the weekend is when the bar comes alive with patrons from all different countries. We're going back tomorrow night. I'm still looking for an expat...

One of the few photographs that I've taken in China that has any artistic merit. I like the contrast between the green Tsingtao beer and the bartender's red shirt. I like contrast between the white kitten and its black tail.

His name is Bush, and apparently, he drinks beer.

Anybody is allowed to write on the walls.
I'm going to bring a marker the next time I go and leave another enigmatic note.
Look, Lily, it's Russian! What does it say?

Matrioshka and foreign bills

Zhongshan Square at night is all lit up full of teenagers playing badminton and kicking feathered hacky sacks.

C is for Class

This Wednesday, Ben and I started teaching a condensed version of 6.001 to a group of about 40 students here. As you can see from the pictures, the class is extremely gender unbalanced. Out of the 40 students, less than 5 are girls. Everybody except one person in the class is a graduate student. One guy is in his late 20's. I think he has a thing for me. He just sent me an email in which he called me a "cutie". For now, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and attribute it to his not to great English abilities...

Left side of the room

Right side of the room. Red shirt guy is in both pictures.

Wednesday night, we gave a lecture on MIT culture. Before the lecture, a couple of girls came up to us and asked whether Scot Frank came with us. She was highly disappointed when we told her that he isn't here. Apparently, Scot Frank has quite a following in China. That girl (Janet) is the leader of the pack. She gets really dreamy every time anyone mentions anything about Scot.

D is for Dining
Usually, Ben and I eat at the cafeteria, where we don't have to pay anything. Unfortunately, the cafeteria's open hours are slightly phase-shifted from our normal eating hours, so sometimes, we go buy our own food across the street. Here, we can buy a bowl of noodles or a large plate of dumplings for just 5 yuan (< $1). Our hosts have also been kind enough to invite us out to eat for a few meals.

Flat shrimp. Apparently a Dalian specialty.
One of our students says he's going to invite us to eat those.

Silkworms in cocoons. They wriggle.
We didn't eat these.

They express energy in kilojoules instead of calories here.

KFC should never be repeatedly written. KFCKFCKFCKFCKFCKFCKFC...

E is for Enigma
Recall the note that I wrote at the Shanghai Museum of Art. Turns out, I got another response from it:

Hello stranger,i am shocked by your "sad melting panda",which makes me find your paper directly among the others.Strangly,it seems that i can feel something u held back behind the words on the paper. Or should i say ,i just find some part of myself on u.I don't know... ...i don't know......what u think,what i want,why i took u paper,why i write this crap to u (in my poor english)... ...May be just because u are a stranger to me,even a stranger doesnot really exist... ...may be just because i like the words-"hello stranger."the first words Natalie Portman said to Jude Law in the movie... ...

Well,please forgive my poor english.

Anyway,bless u and your family fine.

ning

Unfortunately, I'm unlikely to get anymore responses from that note as that girl took it with her. To reinforce my image as an enigmatic figure (HA!), I leave you with an unintentionally interesting picture of me taken in front of a fountain on campus.

Dalian!

After bidding farewell to my family in Shanghai, I hopped on a plane to Dalian, where I will spend the next month with my team as "technical ambassadors" to the Dalian University of Technology on the iLabs project. We will also be teaching a condensed version of 6.001 and 6.002 to some students here.

The plane ride was uneventful. I again missed my opportunity to snap picture of the pretty flight attendants, who wore fancy pencil skirts with stripes in several shades of fuchsia. At the end of the flight, a recorded Chinese announcer in a pleasant female voice told the passengers that China Southern Airlines wished to forever be their friend. The corresponding English announcement merely hoped that the passengers had a good flight.

After brief waiting at the airport, I met up with the DUT people, who took me to my new residence in the building for "foreign specialists". My room is nice enough considering I'm living here for free. Its size is comparable to that of a large room in EC, its cleanliness as well. I have a TV, air conditioning, and slightly unreliable internet through an ethernet cord. I also have my own bathroom with a non-squatting toilet (joy!).

Food is completely covered as well, as long as I eat from their cafeteria. The cafeteria offers a dizzying variety of dishes whose quality is only slightly worse than an average day of home cooking. So far, my meals have come out to around $1.50 each. My one complaint is the lack of napkins anywhere in the cafeteria. Sure, Chinese people eat with chopsticks and very little food gets on the hands, but sometimes, it still happens. Also, many people eat watermelon at the cafeteria. I don't know how anyone can eat slices of watermelon without getting juice on their fingertips. I pretend to myself that everyone washes their hands immediately after eating, but I'm sure that's not really the case...

This morning, I walked around the campus and the surrounding areas for a bit. In an attempt to appear more "Chinese", I had my umbrella out even though it was completely sunny outside because Chinese women always carry umbrellas to block the sun. Even so, I felt like I stood out like a sore thumb. Dalian is much more "Chinese" than Shanghai, or rather, DUT and its surrounding areas are much more Chinese than the commercial districts and tourist attractions of Shanghai. I don't even know how to explain it, but today more than any time in the past week, I felt the huge difference in culture and lifestyle between me and those around me. Perhaps some pictures can explain better than words.

On-campus photos (The actual campus is a lot greener than these photos suggest. I only now realized that I failed to take pictures of the pretty greenery):

A giant statue of Mao. According to the guy who picked me up and gave me a brief tour yesterday, a giant statue of Mao is an essential part of Chinese universities.

The gym (which looks like an exploded Kresge) and stadium. Over to the far right, you can see the building where I'm staying. It's small and orange.

A vegetable garden next to somebody's residence.
I have no idea why there's a vegetable garden on campus.

Some signs with anime characters. They say inspirational things in Chinese.
There are cheesy inspirational signs everywhere. Most of them are white text on red banners reminding students to fendo ("struggle") to achieve and whatnot.

The Daheilou, or "big black building". It houses their version of CSAIL and applied math. Apparently, their computational geometry group is in there.
Note the mountain in the background.

Surrounding area photos:

A street near the student dormitories. It has way far too many different barber shops for any of them to be able to make a nice profit.

A view of the road separating main campus from the student dorms taken from the pedestrian bridge. Note the mountains in the background.

A street full of fruit vendors next to the student dormitories. Apparently, cherries are in season. One of these days (when I remember not to stuff myself silly in the cafeteria), I will buy some and practice tying the stems with my tongue.

In the afternoon, I went swimming in the pool next to my residence, during which time I realized that I cannot swim more than 50 meters without a break to save my life. I flopped around in the water for a little over an hour, swimming several feet at a time. It would have been fun had the water not been so cold and had there been less people. Still, at least I got some exercise, if swimming back and forth 5 meters at a time and gasping for breath every 5 seconds counts as exercise. Speaking of exercise, the students here love exercising. Outside the stadium, there's a big red sign that translates to "10 minutes of exercise a day, 50 years of healthy living" (I might have gotten the numbers wrong. I'll check tomorrow).

The women's locker room at the pool was a lesbian's paradise (if only China had more open lesibians...). I've never seen so many naked women in my life. The locker room had a public shower. No stalls, just a partition of the room with a bunch of shower heads attached to the perimeter walls. For a nation famous for sexual prudishness, these girls were surprisingly comfortable with nudity. Nobody seemed to care at all that everyone was naked. I, on the other hand, did not feel at ease taking a group shower even though my bikini was probably the most revealing bathing suit in the entire pool (most girls wore one-piece suits with a skirt).

No, I did not take pictures of the women's locker room, but here are some miscellaneous photos that might be of interest:

Remember the mountain behind the big black building?
I attempted to climb it until I realized I was wearing plastic sandals. Here's me in the forest going up the mountain. I'm getting pretty adept at auto-photo-taking.

3 wheeled car! These are all over the streets outside of campus.

Magpies. They're called "happiness birds" in English.
Apparently, DUT is full of them.
You can't tell from this picture, but happiness birds are quite large,
bigger than pigeons but skinner.

Interesting road sign.
I almost got hit by a car trying to take this picture in the middle of the street.
No, no, get your mind out of the gutters.

Museums and Music

Wednesday morning, I woke up at 10 (after all but passing out from the few sips of "Shanghai Celebration" the night before) feeling quite the culture vulture. I had had enough of the club scene, no matter how pretentious, and desperately needed a bit of high-brow eye candy. After a quick brunch, I dropped 2 yuan to hop on bus #123 headed for People's Square.

People's Square is a vast garden surrounded by several museums, kind of like the Smithsonian district in DC. The Shanghai Museum is a usual must see but as I had already been there, I skipped it this time for novel attractions.

First stop of the day was the Urban Planning Museum, which briefly made me wish I were course 4 or 11 just so that I could have better appreciated it . Pictures:

The giant, Metropolis-esque statue in the lobby

A miniature model of some buildings from old
with miniature models of people in colorful attire.
If you look closely, the people's heads are kind of too big for their bodies...

A portion of a miniature model of the entirety of Shanghai and surrounding areas, which covers almost an entire floor. I was sorely tempted to jump in and play but refrained for fear of impaling myself on the miniature Pearl of the Orient.

Lets play a game! Find the odd one out (and don't say London because it's pink)!

I had Pocky from a vending machine for a snack. Later, I got bubble tea from a snack stand. Oh my god, I'm so Asian...

Binary tiles on the floor that glowed different patterns of 0's and 1's.
My inner bit-diddler jumped with joy.

This picture would be cool if it weren't so blurry. I liked the effect of reflection and reflection within reflection. I also like my silhouette, who is much more photogenic than I.

After the Urban Planning museum, I walked over to Nanjing xi lu to visit one of the two art museums. For some reason, I completely missed the Museum of Contemporary Art and found myself in front of the Shanghai Art Museum, convenient since I couldn't decide which one I wanted to see more.

Downstairs was an exhibit of revolutionary oil paintings. It's interesting to see images of the red army and communist leaders rendered in traditional western style. The guy who did these has my last name. Maybe we're related.



Upstairs was a lovely exhibit of kitschy Chinese pop art. Some highlights:

A cage full of pillows in the shape of speech bubbles with (what I assumed to be) Chinese internet slang printed on them.

Another picture. It was fun.

Paintings of pretty boy Chinese hipsters.

A piece entitled "Sexy Letter"

The exhibit really liked pandas. Here is a small crowd of dubious-looking ones.

They had this cute exhibit room called "Re-Panda", where they had a box full of differently decorated panda parts and you got to put them together by pinning them on the walls.

F*ing amazing

There was a series of paintings of nymphets with Hello Kitties and Tare Pandas (pa pa xiong mao). It was cute until I noticed that all of them have small lacerations all over.

There was a room playing a creepy film with creepy children and creepily pretty music with paper and a pack of markers where people can draw their own pictures. I stayed there for almost an hour writing the note above. There was a couple in the room who wanted to figure out the song and watched the film at least 5 times to catch the 2 second caption at the end. The girl likes Death Note. We bonded over that.

The note, complete with a melting panda with an injured ear in a puddle of tears...

To my pleasant surprise, somebody actually responded to my note (!)
Here's the text of the email:

Hello spaceman (Please allow me to call you like that. Thats the name occured to me as the moment i read your message left in that space),

I dont know whether you can really receive this mail or i got the wrong mail address.caus i dont have much confidence in my memory. Im glad to be the one among those who have read the message you left there. When i read it, it gave me a feeling that you were really there at that moment. Maybe its funny, but i believe the cross of two different spaces. Anyway i like this test, and want you to know that this test is successful. When you receive this mail, that means that this test has influence among the visitors to some extend. Its fantastic. Thank you.

Besos

Teresa

Nice to know that I have apparently become "Spaceman", a heartthrob of emo Chinese girls. Still, I appreciate that somebody actually wrote back. If only I were and attractive boy. It would have made a lovely story.

I had planned on stopping by JZ club Wednesday evening but after checking their web site, I decided that I cannot miss the performance of JQ Whitcomb's band the following night. I had stumbled across JQ's blog on the Shanghai jazz scene while googling gigs around town and was very curious to hear him play.

After a whole day of unsuccessfully attempting to contact BB to get him to go with me, I ended up going with my aunt instead. JZ was every bit as stylish as a jazz club should be without going over the top. I felt a distinct Oriental flair reminiscent of 1930's Shanghai. The house was pretty packed and the music was brilliant. It was a shame I had to leave after only the first set because my aunt was tired. I would have liked to stay for the whole thing.

Our table with its beaded lamp (real candle inside! Not those crappy LED things!) and my White Russian. The actual atmosphere was not as red as this picture suggests.

The band (trumpet, sax, trombone, guitar, bass, drums). Apologies for the blurry picture.

With this, my Shanghai adventures draw to a close (for now, I will be back for a bit in August). In a couple of hours, I will board a plane to Dalian where I will start working for the summer. Dalian brings beaches and dog meat (local delicacy apparently). It's also the purported fashion capital of China. I'll just be glad for the end of this superparental supervision.

BB, Bund, and Bars

BB is an expat from Australia, whom I met at the cafe in Xintiandi. I had situated myself outside between two tables both with a lone foreigner. One appeared to be a middle aged businessman on the phone speaking very American English. BB was the other and the one with whom I finally got the nerve to strike up conversation.

BB has lived in Shanghai for 3 years and speaks fluent Chinese. Actually, he reads and writes Chinese better than I. After chatting for 3-ish hours, we agreed to meet up the next afternoon.

So yesterday, I bumped heads (Chinese idiom for "met up") with BB on Huaihai lu and we headed off to Taikang lu, a maze of pedestrian alleys full of art studios, boutiques, and foreign-friendly cafes. The studios/galleries displayed works of modern Chinese artists (all still alive). Some of the artists were even present and at work on paintings. Unfortunately, I could not take pictures of the artwork.

The attendants at the galleries were much less annoying than store clerks. Some tried to converse with me and introduced me to the paintings. Much fewer of them tried to speak to BB. The ones who did attempted to speak in English.

After viewing artwork, BB and I settled outside a cafe, whose menu promised "meiwei" (delicious) iced coffee drinks, and discussed cultures of China and Australia.

Pictures from Taikang lu:

A picturesque alleyway full of posters advertising artsy events.

People actually live on this street, as evident from the clothing hanging to dry. In China, almost nobody owns a drier.

BB with his "meiwei" iced coffee drink and my teapot of fruit tea.
He looks slightly like Scot Frank in this picture.
Come to think of it, his Chinese sounds like Scot Frank's.

At 5:30, my grandma called to check on me, at which point BB and I parted ways.

Two hours later, I hopped on a bus to the Bund. I had planned to meet up with Charlie Agoos, another CETI person in Shanghai, to go bar-hopping. He told me to meet him at the Henan lu metro station at 8:30.

My family suggested that I take the bus instead of the train and I ended up arriving at the Bund half an hour early, so I decided to wander around the river and Nanjinglu for a bit. The Bund is absolutely breathtaking at night. Because pictures explain better than words:

River view. Excuse the blurriness. My camera's "night" setting takes long exposures which are easily affected by slight shakes of my tripod-less hands.

Foreign banks, a fountain, and a statue of some famous dead guy.

Nanjing lu pedestrian street rivals Vegas.

At exactly 8:30, I showed up at the Hunan lu metro station, and ended up waiting at the exit for half an hour. It turned out that he had waited for me as well until after 9 by the street corner of Henan lu and Nanjing lu. Miscommunication... I kind of figured.

But since I was already out by the Bund at night with my handy list of Bars, I could not resist going bar-hopping for a little bit, just to take some pictures. First stop of the night: Bar Rouge.

Located on the top floor of some fancy building on the Bund, Bar Rouge is as pretentious as bars get around here. I got on the elevator with a group of guys around my age who were heading for the same place. Turned out that they were recent graduates of UVA and William & Mary in China for vacation. English speakers. Awesome (!) I hung out with them for the rest of the night.

Bar Rouge was full of pleasantly plump, middle aged foreigners nestled in a sea of red, red, and more red. The music was unbearably chic, the bartenders as well. We wanted to get a table, but apparently, that costs 2000 rmb, something that we (unlike the groups of pleasantly plump, middle aged foreigners) were not willing to part with, so we ended up taking a spot at the bar instead. After one ridiculously overpriced drink for each of the guys (and none for me), they decided to go somewhere else less expensive, pretentious, and red.

The bar at Bar Rouge, complete with red Venitian chandeliers, a magnificent view, and a couple of pleasantly plump, middle aged foreigners.

Reflections of the chandeliers on the shiny bar table.

A statue in the lobby of the building where Bar Rouge is housed.

More lobby art. These appear to be enormous sheets of crumpled paper and three mannequins peering at them from across the balcony.

When they decided to leave, I pulled out my handy list of bars on the Bund and suggested I <3 Shanghai, so we headed there next. The place was certainly less pretentious. Slightly seedy, it was full of Americans of all sorts and a pole for pole dancing, which I swung around for a little bit (completely clothed). It took me 15 minutes plus a few sips of my free ladies night "Shanghai Celebration" to realize that everything in the bar was in English.

The kitschy front sign.

My "Shanghai Celebration".

Self explanatory. Note that the Republic of Texas has 68 shots and is ranked 4th.

At 10:30, my new friends decided to take absinthe shots for the "Sovereign State of Northern Virginia". 10 minutes later, I realized that I promised my family I would be home by 11 and bid my new friends farewell.

Fuxing, Facial, and Foreigners

The theme of today is 3f, as opposed to 2t of yesterday. I wonder how long I can keep up with the alliterated titles.

First stop of the day was Fuxing gonyuan, the only French-styled park located in the Luwan district of Shanghai. I had expected to encounter something much like Boston Commons, a mostly quiet space with a sparse sprinkling of lounging lovers and colorfully-clad eccentrics plus some small vendors at the outside street corners.

Fuxing was nothing at all like what I had imagined.

First of all, it was full of people. About 90% of the people present were over the age of 50. 5% looked to be their grandchildren. But Fuxing was not at all an open air nursing home. Lively music emanated from all corners of the park. Clusters of senior citizens gathered around for dance lessons (many of them were surprisingly skilled). Others formed singing circles. Even the ones in wheelchairs energetically chatted with each other. Some pictures of these and other attractions.

A group of dancers. These appear to be swing dancing to the tune of old school Chinese songs built on the pentatonic scale.

Some singers. The poster is for lyrics.

A mini amusement park in the middle of Fuxing.
It was mostly empty, giving it a slightly eerie air.

An electric airplane much like the ones outside US supermarkets. This one played Christmas carols as it rocked up and down in slow motion. Still, the little girl inside seemed to have been enjoying it.

This "I was there" obligatory photo of the day shows the statue of Marx and Engels as Siamese twins. There are a couple of guys under it doing tai chi.

Some naked kid from Greco-Roman mythology surfing on a flying dolphin in the middle of a pool surrounded by flowers and those small white butterflies I used to catch as a kid.

As I was leaving the park, a group of foreign tourists came in. Curious, I followed them for a bit, hoping to figure out what language they spoke. The group of foreign tourists collided with a group of dancers, and a couple of the foreign ladies started dancing with the park dancers. The woman with the white shirt and blue skirt was one of them.

Second, it was completely devoid of anything commercial. No vendors, no solicitors. A restaurant/bar/club stood at one corner of the park, but it seemed to be closed during the day (or at least none of the old people at the park seemed interested in it). Overall, I found the atmosphere of Fuxing refreshing and rather idyllic, a fantastic contrast to the normal hustle and bustle of Shanghai streets.

At around 10:15, I left Fuxing and went on Huaihai lu to shop around. In front of a department store, I got conned into getting a free facial (first facial of my life) while 3 of the facial ladies told me that I was beautiful every 5 minutes while simultaneously lecturing me on the flaws of my skin and how I need to take better care of it. What they said was actually quite valid, at least compared to what I have read in teen beauty magazines and Cosmopolitan, so I ended up buying about $50 worth of products. My mother will be happy that I'm finally starting to take care of my face.

This afternoon, I headed a couple of blocks south of Huaihai lu to Xintiandi, a pedestrian street full of foreign-friendly (and hence overpriced) restaurants, bars, cafes, and boutiques. The place had at least a 1:1 foreigner/Chinese ratio, it might even be more heavily tipped toward the foreigner side. For about half an hour, I awkwardly walked around the place, ridiculously frustrated for I was itching to speak English (or French) to somebody.

There might have been more francophones than anglophones at Xintiandi. I ran into two separate French tours with Chinese guides who spoke fluent but heavily accented French. For a little while, I followed a boy in a striped shirt after I noticed that his guide book said not "China" but "Chine". A few minutes after I stopped tailing him, I came up with a small stalkery scheme to speak to one of the foreigners: "Excusez-moi, est-ce que vous pouvez prendre une photo pour moi? Merci!"

Unfortunately, I stopped running into French people after I came up with the idea. English-speaking people would have worked just as well, but I didn't run into any lone peripatetics

Feeling slightly tired and more than slightly awkward from circling the place 5 or 6 times, I stopped at a coffeehouse to rest and people-watch...

A few pictures for now. Narration to be continued.

Xintiandi architecture sample. This picture really doesn't show much. I guess I just liked the composition. Actually, no, I don't even think the composition is that great.

A better architectural sample. Note the melange of east and west styles
as can be seen in the windows and the columns.

These things were everywhere. They're kind of cute.

A mural next to the pond right outside of Xintiandi. The wor "Mural", related to the word "mur" (wall in French) is really not the appropriate word as this thing is on the ground.

The (incredibly Western. Even the baristas had fake English names on their name tags) coffeehouse that I used as an excuse to talk to strangers.

A note about comments...

I was wondering why so few people I've told to comment actually did until I noticed today that the settings were so that only registered users could comment.

I changed that. Now, there's nothing stopping you! <3

Towers and Tunnels

I want to meet a handsome expatriate and have a week long love affair. I want to wander the streets of Shanghai with my handsome expat, resting in scenic cafes to bilingually braid our life stories over cups of tea. I want to stay out until the wee hours of the morning with my handsome expat, swaying to the sound of sparkling electronica in stylish discotheques...

Unfortunately, I am currently under the watch eyes of my overprotective family in Shanghai, which means no going outside at night. To compensate for the lack of love in my week in Shanghai, I surrounded myself with massively erected towers and scenic tunnels today.

My journey (or rather journée) begins on Fuzhou lu. I had decided last night that I absolutely needed a map of Shanghai and a travel guide to China for the rest of the summer, so I headed off to the City of Books (Shucheng) first thing in the morning.

A building of 8 stories, Shucheng qualifies as the first tower of the day. I got there exactly two minutes before opening time when and there was a substantial crowd waiting to get in. Shanghai people do love their books.

A couple of pictures from two Julys ago:

Chinese children love to read! Perhaps they just like free books.
Like the large bookstores of America, Shucheng encourages its customers to browse.

The lobby of Shucheng. Apparently, it's a popular hangout in the summer time because it's air conditioned. Fortunately, the place was not nearly as packed today probably because it was cloudy and slightly rainy outside.

At Shucheng, I picked up a bilingual map of Shanghai. Afterwards, I wandered the multimedia section for a few minutes, hoping to pick up another priceless shot of inappropriately pornography product placement but could not find any. I guess Shucheng is classy.

After Shucheng, I briefly stopped by the foreign language book store down to the street and bought a guide to China. It just so happened that I arrived there a minute before its opening 9:30. Again, there was a crowd waiting to get in.

Armed with my map and guide, I walked down Fuzhou lu to Waitan (the Bund for you foreigners), where I encountered more towers. Some pictures:

Some foreign banks at Waitan.
Yes, the image is crappy because it was cloudy outside...

Just to prove I was actually there (as if you couldn't tell from the suboptimal quality of the images that I did not steal them from postcards), here is my head obscuring most of the river view. If I had my handsome expat, this picture would not have been improvisationally auto-taken.

I walked along the river for a bit and came across the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel [yes, a tunnel (!)]. Someone had told me about an interesting museum on the opposite of the river that I can get to by way of the BST, so I paid the overpriced fee and got on the ride. The BST is a total tourist trap. They stick you in a cute little pod car, which traverses the tunnel full of seizure-inducing laser pyrotechnics narrated by cryptic one-liners like "heaven and hell" and "meteor lights" every 10 seconds or so.

Some rather unsuccessful attempts to capture the (albeit hokey) brilliance.
The laser light show is much more impressive in person.

On the other side of the tunnel is the Pudong district of Shanghai, home to a myriad of massive towers including the Pearl of the Orient and Jinmao Dasha, the 3rd tallest building in the world where a couple of days ago, a French guy dressed up as Spiderman was seen climbing up the sides while striking Spidey action poses for the Shanghai spectators. He was arrested by the police and will be released in the next couple of days...

I didn't feel like parting with even more money to ascend the Pearl of the Orient, especially not on a cloudy day, so I walked on, eventually stopping at the Shanghai Ocean "Aquarrium":

Shanghai Ocean Aquarrium

A picture of the front of the "aquarrium", where the featured exhibit is of deadly aquatic assassins. Actually, that's the reason why I decided to go in. I could not resist the deliciously devious expression on the orange fish's face.

The aquarium (as spelled in its url) was actually quite spectacular, well worth the 120 yuan entry fee, except for the screaming small children everywhere (my fault for going there on a Sunday). The place is organized as a long, winding path through different climates going from Amazonian tropical to polar to the deep seas. My favorite part was the grand finale, a trip through tunnel-shaped tanks complete with a conveyor belt in the style of airport baggage claims where you can stand and slowly meander under sharks, turtles, and marvelous fish. Some pictures of pretty fish:

I liked the colors of this one. The orange, blue, and yellow was rather striking. The unfortunate thing about aquariums is that I can never use flash due to the glass. The guy at the top is the reflection against the meniscus.

Shark attack!!!!!!! Actually, they're kind of cute. Look, they're cuddling.
Reminds you of something, doesn't it?

Now what on earth are these things? Some Chinese delicacy?
Answer: Shark eggs

These were just beautiful.

After the aquarium, I wandered back the the BST where I spent an hour at a certain Museum of Ancient Chinese Sex Culture (the "interesting" museum) where I amused over pornographic porcelain and other obscene oddities. If there's enough interest, I'll post those pictures here some time (hint: comment!)

Next, I took the BST back to Waitan and stepped across the street to Nanjing lu, the great shopping mecca, where I picked up some food and, of course, snapped more pictures of towers.

That's all for today. Tomorrow, I will explore the French Concession (Luwan district). Despite the name, I am highly unlikely to find colorful concession stands where I can by my very own handsome French expat, but one can only hope...

Statues and Yuppie Supermarket

Usually, 1pm is wakeup time +2h for me. Occasionally, it's wakeup time +1h, sometimes +3h. On weekends, it could even be wakeup time -1h. Today, 1pm was wakeup time +8h.

I'm not used to being awake for so long in the morning. After 8 hours of coding, facebook stalking, attempting (successfully) to bypass the Great Firewall to read wikipedia and livejournal, and attempting (unsuccessfully, due to my inability to explain object oriented programming in Chinese) to teach my 10 yr old cousin Java, I had become thoroughly restless. Thus, I brought along my trusty camera and took a walk around the neighborhood.

The subdistrict where my family lives, "Europe Garden" (not European Garden), is a gated cluster of apartments like wedding cakes. Here's a view from our rear window taken on a sunnier day:

Between the apartments are nice patches of green space full of beautiful stray cats (I saw 10 today on my little walk) and replicas of famous Western statues for added European flair.
Comment if you can identify any of them.




Anyway, back to my stroll. I decided to stop by the supermarket down the street, partly to see if the delicatessen boys from two summers ago, who blew me kisses whenever I walked by, were still there. A few cultural notes about supermarkets in China:
1. There are friendly staff members everywhere- There's a worker in uniform at every corner of the store. They even help you select and weight your vegetables. I think a main motive for this type of overstaffing is to prevent shoplifting.
2. There are pretty girls in ridiculous outfits giving out samples and advertising specific brands.
3. They sell the pornographic DVD's out in the open. Amusingly enough, the adult entertainment shelf of this store was right next to the children's entertainment.

Finally, some pictures:

The delicatessen section. I was slightly self-conscious and took the picture several steps back from where I'd have liked to. I think the guy at the right might have been one of the boys from 2 summers ago, but then again, they all look similar with their mask things on.

Jelly by the kilo. Childhood in a cup.

Girl in a green jumpsuit with white boots promoting GuangMing brand yogart.

Pornography...

... next to some children's CD's...

Open Air Market

After sleeping for a solid 6 hours last night, effectively eradicating jetlag, I woke up at 5 am in the morning to rainy day. Darn. I had hoped to go with my grandparents to the open air market to snap some interesting pictures. Since nobody who reads this could tell the difference, here are some pictures of the same place from a sunnier day two years ago:

Chinese watermelons are smaller and sweeter than American ones.

According to the sign, they're selling at 80 cents per kilo.

Grain stand. I wanted very much to slyly stick my hand in one of them,

a la manniere d'Amelie Poulain.

Fresh meat... tasty!

Zippers? The open air market also have people who sell odds and ends.
The blue was rather striking.

I took this picture because I liked the juxtaposition of the
meat and the vegetables right next to each other.

Tofu.
They almost look like cheese except that there is no cheese in China.

A vegetable vendor.

Frogs! poor frogs...

In the foreground is an old style Chinese house.
In the background are some skyscrapers.
I could say something symbolic and profound here,
but I'll leave that to the reader.