Shanghai on Life

It’s snowing!

So, good Christmassy times in Shanghai kicked off last week with a Tiger Beer Santa Claus pub crawl.  For $15 you got a decently elaborate blue Santa suit,  transportation, and of course, all you can drink Tiger Beer. They had a couple of buses plus about 8 motorcycles with sidecars that people could take turns riding in. Fortunately for me, there wasn’t much competition to get myself in a sidecar as it was freezing cold out, and what a great scene! whizzing around downtown Shanghai in a sidecar in my santa suit! I have to say I was a little bitter that I was forced into the Mrs. Claus version of the suit which involved a skirt and even worse, no beard! Don’t worry though, I managed to score myself a beard by the end of the night, obviously making myself irresistible to all of the gentleman in the bars!

On Wednesday night we went to see the Shanghai Ballet’s Nutcracker. Now, I don’t know much about ballet, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say it wasn’t the best ballet performance of all time, but then again, you really just go to the nutcracker for the atmosphere anyway. If this experience is culturally representative, it appears that it’s perfectly okay to chat through theatre performances in China. I actually really enjoyed this because I tend to get a bit restless during ballets and other such things and really liked being about to make my little jokey comments at a normal whisper and not even feel guilty about it! Also, a woman’s phone went off behind us with a rather comical and loud ring tone…so we’re already having a laugh about it, and then she picks it up  and proceeds to have a conversation! This and other similar scenarios (one guy actually dialed someone and started talking) occurred throughout the performance, so it wasn’t even a really an isolated incident.

On Christmas eve a group of about 20 of us went out for a very nice dinner of all-you-can-eat (and drink) Japanese Teppanyaki. Following dinner we went to Christmas mass at an international Catholic Church. After the service we went to a friend’s apartment to drink this German “glühwein” which was followed by clubbing. So in the end it was a very unconventional (but pleasant!) Christmas Eve for me with the mixture of Japanese food, church-going, and bar hopping, but it was as enjoyable as possible under the circumstances of being away for Christmas.

On Christmas morning we rolled out of bed and headed over to another friend’s apartment for a Christmas lunch and hanging around. Some of the French guys provided the French-themed lunch and I ate too much in keeping up with at least one Christmas tradition :D We had a secret Santa gift exchange for which I gave a hot water bottle of sorts that you can plug in and it had an awesome Chinese cartoon lamb all over it saying some nonsense thing in English…I have to admit, I actually really wanted it for myself. Had a nice skype with the family back home and was pleased to see Steph’s Christmas tree costume had arrived. It’s nice to see that things remain “normal” even in my absence.

That evening I hung around the apartment with Danny Boy, Sandra, and Sandra’s boyfriend who is visiting from Germany (also Daniel). We exchanged gifts and ate a delicious Christmas dinner of home-cooked Kraft Dinner (lovingly air-mailed in time for Christmas by my mom, thanks mom!) and spicy chicken wings from McDonald’s. I know it sounds dismal, but actually it was kind of funny and perfect. Sandra was especially excited about the Kraft dinner as she got hooked on it during her exchange in Canada and happens to be in that very small minority of Europeans who has tried it and actually likes the stuff.  Later on the guys came over and we watched “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” (classic stuff) and played cards.

Now I’m back to my old lifestyle of avoiding my minimal schoolwork and taking it easy. The main difference now is that I have a massive hoard of chocolate to add to my daily comforts thanks to Christmas gifts and the lovely Christmas care-package sent by mom and dad.

Hope everyone had a nice holiday, thinking of you all lots during this time. Less than a month before Cody and Jen arrive and only a few months until I’m back home, unreal! Merry Christmas everybody!

Today it was 11 degrees, clear and sunny in Shanghai – I love these Chinese winters :D Is anyone else aware that it’s December the middle of December? Christmas is next Friday! I just don’t know when Christmas stopped being an awesome waiting game of advent-calendar dedication to sneaking up on you…I guess it was probably around the time when formalized winter exams started.

Now, I know I said I was planning to ignore Christmas but apparently I just can’t really help myself (mother’s daughter). I’m listening to Aaron Neville’s Soulful Christmas (totally classic, eh Steph?) as I write this and more Christmas music torrents are downloading. I even bought myself a tacky Santa Claus garland and some twinkly lights for the mantle…but I think I’m going to stop now.  Unconventional Christmas plans are taking shape and will involve some strange mixture of German and Chinese activities (as usual in Shanghai) and then some new Christmas traditions which simply don’t exist in any culture.

The past weeks have been relatively quiet with the usual schoolwork, usual activities, so no complaints here.  School is winding down, or winding up depending on how you look at it. Final projects and exams are looming without the benefit of a Christmas break, but still the academic stress pales in comparison to UVic, so I’m sure I’ll survive.  I am scheduled to have class on Christmas day but our prof told me and Simon (the only international students in the class) that he would cancel the class for us. Maybe he’s sympathetic as he taught in the States for many years, or maybe he just likes an excuse to take the days off, but either way I’m happy about it!

Recently, I discovered reasonably priced bowling in Shanghai. I went with competitive-edge-Simon and perfect-form-Hoyoung so I wasn’t really expecting much in terms of personal performance. But would you believe I scored 163 in the second game?! Yeah, I don’t know what that means either, but I do know I had four strikes in a row followed by a spare :D ahhh it was so hilarious, these kind of things just make my life! But anyhoo, I’m pretty sure that I will never bowl that well ever again. Simon was bitter because I started on my streak after my embarrassing performance in the first game, he thought he should be nice and teach  me how to hold the ball properly – muahahaha! big mistake!

Post-bowling we hit the attached arcade for a quick and abysmal DDR dance-off between me and Simon. Afterwards  Hoyoung hopped on and blew us away – I have never seen someone look so cool when they’re dancing, let alone on a DDR machine! Being the poster-boy of Asian-modesty, Hoyoung insisted that he wasn’t that good. A few days later when it came up in conversation at school it came out that Hoyoung is the 4th place national champ of DDR in Korea!! hahaha! Keep in mind that this  is a very impressive feat in Asia where DDR and arcade video games are about 100x more popular than at home.

Following bowling we went to (the other) Simon’s German-Carnival-themed birthday party. I went as a pumpkin dressed in a full-body jumpsuit get-up (complete with pumpkin stem hat) purchased from what I’m sure is that only costume shop in Shanghai. There was a lot of beer drinking and jumping, singing and linking arms to carnival music. Though I obviously didn’t know the words in German I just shouted along incomprehensibly anyway. Danny boy went as a woman and managed to make it the entire evening wearing Sandra’s heels, actually pretty impressive! Simon went as an “emo” kid who couldn’t manage to get his eyeliner off the next day and permanently weirded out his Chinese tutor – boys with eyeliner is especially socially unacceptable in China.

Continuing with the German holiday theme, last week we went to a German Christmas market hosted by Paulaner’s, the German pub in Shanghai. The atmosphere was amazing, I really felt like I could’ve been in Germany! Even the Germans agreed it felt pretty authentic, citing that there was even the disadvantage of German-style prices :D We drank some holiday “glühwein,” a warm, spiced wine drink, which apparently they have everywhere in Europe under various funny sounding names (glögg in Sweden!).

My life as a foreigner in Shanghai has recently become complete after our relatively recent discovery and obsession with the Shanghai fabric markets, the favourite of all expats and exchange students. Fabric markets are basically large, dingy, crowded malls full of local tailors. Pretty much anything you can imagine or print off the Internet, you can have made there. It’s great, some times a bit risky, but mostly just addictive. Custom cashmere (or sometimes just “cashmere”) coat for $80 anyone? Tailor-made suit for $85 or jeans for $25. Anyway, the fabric markets are great, an especially convenient option for those of us living as Amazon women in this country.

I’ve recently joined a dodgeball team in Shanghai, and I know what you’re thinking and the answer is that you’re right, Chinese people don’t really play dodgeball. One of the girls from my basketball team invited me to play with her as one of her American colleagues organizes the league whose members are composed mostly of expats. It’s reasonably fun aside from those overly-competitive American guys who are taking dodgeball just a weeee bit too seriously (and by a weeeee bit, I mean WAY too seriously!). I haven’t played much dodgeball in the recent past, but I’ve come to the conclusion that this is a terrifying “sport” to play with grown men. I think I’m going to have to start pumping iron to work on my dodgeball arm.

On Saturday our basketball team played the Shanghai team of the Women’s Chinese Basketball Association! Pretty cool opportunity to play with a professional basketball team in your host country on exchange, I have to say! Needless to say, they were very good, not WMBA good, but impressive nonetheless. The whole event was a very Chinese in my opinion…there was a long introduction, many speeches delivered in a carefully planned order, gifts were exchanged, with pleasantries and ceremonies taking over an hour before the game. The game was short and casual, they went easy on us and even mixed their coaches into their roster. In a serious game they would have slaughtered us, but this would just never happen in China, this concept of “saving face” is so strong, I think this would be considered about 10x more inappropriate than it would be even at home.

Last night the gang went for dinner at Hooters with our Chinese classmates. The restaurant was maybe not the most appropriate of choices to represent western culture, but it was entertaining nonetheless. The Hooters girls dance around to the YMCA and sing songs in Shanghai!!…I’ve never been to Hooters before but I’m pretty sure they don’t usually do that, do they?

That’s it! Merry Christmas everyone if I don’t manage to post before then! :D