Shanghai on Life

So we arrived back home last night from our 11 day Korean vacation! Korea was fantastic, I think it surpassed all of our expectations as a travel destination. Now, it true that maybe our opinions might be a little bit skewed as we are all people who have just lived our first month and China and it being our first time back into a fully developed country…but still! I think Korea is great in any case.

Sandra and I arrived in Seoul last Wednesday night and spent the better part of our first two days eating, sleeping and shopping. We had a bit of sticker shock as prices in Korea are roughly comparable to Canada (maybe a bit less, but it also depends on what you’re buying) and we are in full-blown cheap travel mode and are used to Chinese prices on top of that. But Korea was great because they actually had clothes that were sometimes long enough and big enough for me and there was even a remote possibility of finding big shoes (or at least not be laughed or scoffed at when requesting size 10).  The one strange thing is that in Korea you’re not allowed to try most clothes on before you purchase them. It seemed to be mostly around concerns about make-up coming off on the clothes..very strange! Hardly any store have fitting rooms and you always see people holding things up to themselves in mirrors and sales assistants pulling the sides tight…. that’s as close as you can get to trying it on! So yeah, it was fun to look, but not a lot was purchased in the end.

Korean food is pretty tasty, similar to Chinese food in many respects, but with noticeable differences. With every meal you order in a restaurant you get cold dishes with it, usually involving something pickled and maybe a few varieties of the oh-so-Korean Kimchi.  One thing I really loved was Korean barbecue where you order raw meat, veggies, and whatever and cook it at your table, so delicious! It was also nice to not have food safety as a constant concern for a few days as I am always on guard waiting for a special E-coli surprise in China.

On Friday night our other friend Christian (also German) arrived and then the sightseeing could officially begin! That night we met up with Leon, an old family friend from Canada who is currently teaching English in Seoul. We started off with some Karaoke, a popular pastime in Korea as it seems to be in many Asian countries. I have to say that we had some memorable renditions of CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising,” Enrique Iglesias’ “Hero,” and an impressive finale of “Twist and Shout.” A little known fact about Leon is that he is one mean karaoke performer and I am being absolutely serious! Very impressive. Karaoke was followed by a bar where we met a few of Leon’s fellow teachers and the shooter specials got a little out of hand. The night ended “early” around 4a.m. as a member of our party (not naming any names…but would like to clear both Leon and myself at this point) was feeling a little rough.

The next morning was mostly spent sleeping, resorting to a breakfast of hotdogs, and not feeling particularly chipper. We did however make it to the main Korean royal palace for a walk around the grounds. Very neat architecture and a beautiful natural space in the middle of Seoul. It was a long weekend for Koreans so the palace grounds were packed with happy picnicking families and small children dressed up in traditional Korean dress. I’ve decided that Asia is definitely home to the most adorable children/babies and elderly people, no contest with any other continent I am sure.

The following day we woke up early and went on a tour of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that acts as a neutral buffer zone around the military demarcation line that separates North and South Korea since the end of the Korean War. The tour involved walking through one of the four tunnels dug by North Korea under the DMZ. The tunnels were discovered by South Korea in the 70s and have since been barricaded off and opened to tourists like me :D After being discovered North Korean officials claimed that the tunnels were for coal mining despite the almost purely granite geology…oh that North Korea. After the tunnel we watched a video with a very happy tone (“the DMZ is full of beautiful and rare wildlife” and “all Koreans look forward to a future of reunification when Korea will be a united and prosperous country,” etc), anyhoo it was pretty glossy considering the complicated history and politics, but a nice thought I guess. Next they took us to an observation platform things where you can look at North Korea from afar…haha yeah, kind of lame.. we could have been looking at some South Korean village for all I could tell from that distance. After that we went to Dorasan railway station which was built in 2003 after North and South Korea made an agreement to be connected by rail for commercial goods transport..I guess the station is supposed to be a symbol of improving relations. Overall the tour did not rock my world and only really manages to just reinforce the mysteriousness surrounding North Korea. It is possible to take guided (read: propaganda) tours of North Korea, but they are very expensive and sadly were not even close to being in our budget range.

The next day was reserved for “Everland” the Disneyland of South Korea. But before we set off for Everland we agreed to see a temple in the morning as Sandra was really keen on seeing a Korean temple before we left. So we got up early, took the metro to the appropriate stop and saw across the street an ornate rooftop, so we headed that way assuming it was the temple. We arrived on the temple grounds and had to pay a small admission fee (seemed a bit strange and rather touristic, but well) and so we wandered around snapping pictures as usual. I was not so impressed as it seemed very similar in style and architecture to things we’d seen already (plus I was like a restless child waiting to go to the theme park). Wander, wander, wander..there are many buildings on the grounds but you can’t actually go inside and there are a few doors opened up with velvet ropes across and nobody in the buildings. “Guys, I know this might be a stupid question, but where is the actual temple..and you know, people practicing Buddhism? Does this seem rather palace-y to you?” Sandra makes up some reassuring response about how people probably don’t practice Buddhism here anymore and now it’s just a historical site, blah blah, the building in the middle is the temple, and so on. Finally Christian intervenes and points out that we are actually visiting the same palace we saw two days ago – and it was! Perfect! haha we felt like the most ridiculous tourist on earth! Christian hadn’t said anything because he thought he must be going crazy as neither Sandra or I had noticed or said anything. We had just gone in a different entrance and seen the grounds from another perspective..we just believed so much that it was a different place that we didn’t even notice we were looking at the exact same buildings!  hahaha too good! Anyway, we were running late and didn’t have time to go to the actual temple so we headed off to the amusement park instead (priorities people!).

Everland was pretty good though there were really long waits for rides considering it was a Monday, I guess many Koreans decided to take the Monday off and extend their holiday weekend. Everland is home to the steepest wooden roller coaster in the world, so that was pretty great, but most of the other rides were pretty standard. Everland further reinforced my image of Koreans being the happiest, smiliest people on the planet.  For instance, when you finish riding the big roller coaster everyone claps for the returning riders, whenever the staff aren’t actively working they are making jazz hands (and they don’t even seem to hate it! It’s like they enjoy making jazz hands for a good 50% of their workday) and even non-thrill rides manage to produce an impressive numbers of joyful screams and squeals. The park is largely geared towards families and even with so many small children running around I never heard a single child scream, have a tantrum or even cry – I just don’t get it!

The next day Sandra and Christian woke up early to go the temple we attempted the day before and I opted to sleep in instead (yes, I know, booo bad traveler). That afternoon we flew to Jeju Island, a volcanic island located off the southern tip of Korea (definitely worth a google). Jeju is known as the “Hawaii of Korea” and is a very popular vacation and honeymoon spot of Koreans.  We stayed in a waterfront hostel which was full of young Koreans and the odd Western hippie tourist who had stumbled upon Jeju island and never managed to make it back home (or move out of the hostel for that matter).

Our first day on Jeju was spent seeing the obligatory but also fantastic tourist attractions. These included Mt. Hallsan (the volcano which formed the island originally), walking through giant tubular caves formed by lava flows, and climbing up a coastal volcanic crater “tuff” thingy called Seongsan… difficult to describe what these tuffs look like, so I will leave that one up to google as well if you’re curious…or wait, this is it..  http://english.triptokorea.com/english/UserFiles/Image/Jeju/Premium%20Pakage/Seongsan%20Ilchulbong%20Peak.jpg . Mt. Hallsan, the caves and Seongsan are all UNESCO world heritage sites.

The next day we rented scooters!!! Ooooh it was so great! We managed to rent them without producing any form of driver’s licenses or even providing a credit card. I guess the scooter business is pretty slow on Jeju in the off-season or maybe the lack of a common language expedited the process. Anyway, we scootered all over that island for two days straight, we scootered and we scootered and we scootered and the novelty never wore off.  Jeju is the perfect place for scooters, not very much traffic, beautiful, winding coastal roads and well, you’re on an island so distances are relatively short. We scooted mostly along the coast, surrounded by palm trees, a coast of black volcanic rock cliffs, bright blue ocean, crashing waves and good weather – Lonely Planet eat your heart out!  We scooted through small towns and then back on the coast, seeing all the Korean ladies drying seaweed on the side of the road, scouring the rocks for shellfish, or selling the famous Jeju mandarins in stalls.  It was really great -  50ccs of raw scooter power, the sweet helmet and goggle combo, and fresh ocean air – life doesn’t get better! During those two days we saw a good number of the 10 natural wonders of Jeju, including many waterfalls and I even managed to go swimming in the ocean! The water was still so warm despite pretty overcast weather and the beach was just so sandy and perfect. Koreans on the beach looked at me like I was a bit crazy as almost any local looks at someone swimming in their ocean in October, but by Canadian standards it was one toasty ocean!

We flew back to Seoul from Jeju on Saturday and spent one more night in a different Seoul hostel. The hostel had just been opened two weeks prior by a lovely Korean man, Min, who taught himself English through travel and has been on some of the coolest trips (one year traveling overland through Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Pakistan, India, and China and a road trip through the Western US to visit all the canyons, sleeping in tents and cooking Korean food on gas burners). Anyway, we spent an awesome evening with Min and a young Korean student who works for him (his name escapes me) learning all about Korea and picking up some extra Korean phrases just in time to leave the country.

Overall I was very impressed with Korea. The culture, language and history is strikingly different from our own but yet we found the people to be so welcoming, understanding and curious. We experienced so much kindness as tourists in Korea – bus drivers leaving their routes to take us to the correct stop, numerous “Welcome to Korea”s, free mandarins pressed into our hands by the old women on Jeju, prompt offers to help and give directions whenever we look the slightest bit bewildered, small children practicing their English and peppering us with adorable questions like “what’s your name?” or “how old are you?” We were not a spectacle like we are in China and we caught no flack for not speaking Korean, in fact we got an inappropriate amount of praise for knowing a single phrase.

Visiting Korea shed some light on a lot of the discomforts, communication barriers, and cultural clashes that we experience with more intensity in China..Korea was so easy, clean and friendly, it was hard to not to consider whether we had made the right choice for our exchange country. In the end, we realized that so much of what we loved about Korea was it’s relative similarities to home… so thanks a lot culture shock, you’ve fooled us again, but we found you hiding out in our Korean vacation, giving us a taste of comforts we miss so much.

And we didn’t choose China because it’s comfortable and similar to home, in fact, for most of us it was just the opposite reasoning. So we have to work hard to avoid bitterness when we get shoved on the subway, or yelled at for the 100th time in Chinese, and remember that we are in the throes of culture shock and maybe approaching the point where the disdain for your host country is sometimes greater than the love and all these little annoyances are amplified.

So bring it on China! bring on the miscommunication, dirty squat toilets,  and embarrassing cultural faux pas, I can take it! I still have your dumplings, this awesome city, linguistic breakthroughs, KTV, good friends, and all those lovely people who are interested and welcoming.

That’s it for today, hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving :D Until next time…

Tonight I failed my ultimate adventurous-travel-eating challenge. We were on our way back to hostel and looking to get some food from street vendors. We walked past some older Korean men who were eating what I at first thought was live squid..they caught me staring and invited me over for a closer look. Next thing I knew, one of these “squid” pinched in chopsticks was being waved in my face and they really wanted me to give it a try…turned out to be some kind of worm/larva thingy! so sick looking! all fat and transluscent, ugh! OK, so if it was live squid, i would’ve at least considered it, but the worm was just not happening.  Even in the face of my personal pressures to do and try everything while traveling and the cultural pressure of these adorable Korean men wanting me to just taste the dish, I still backed down. I am ashamed.

Tomorrow morning we are going on a tour of the dimilitarized zone surrounding the North and South Korean border. I still don’t really get what we do..look at North Korea from afar? In any case, I think it will either be really interesting or super lame, so we’ll see!

Anyway, a more comprehensive update of Korea to come, but all in all I can say that I really love this place, like an unexpected amount! Korean people are some of the friendliest, smiliest, sweetest people I have ever encountered in my travels. Yay Korea!

So, I got a call at midnight last night and it’s Simon on the other end, a lovely German friend of mine also on exchange in Shanghai. He tells me that he’s having trouble breathing and he’s quite sure he’s going to pass out any minute, if he stops talking before he makes it to a taxi that I need to call an ambulance. Simon lives alone in a very Chinese neighbourhood, so finding someone who could understand that he needed to go the hospital wasn’t really a realistic possibility. Luckily, Simon made it to a taxi and made it in relatively good time to a private hospital where they speak English…this was largely thanks to some mad googling on our end and the fact that Daniel was home with me at the time and was able to translate the address and directions for the cab driver.

30 minutes later Sandra, Daniel and I arrived at the hospital to meet Simon. It turned out to be a collapsed lung, something Simon had had once before in Germany, but still (as it sounds) a very serious condition. In any case, it was the cleanest, most professional, most impressive hospital I’ve ever been in..all of us could agree on that point.  There was nobody else waiting in the emergency room, Simon saw a very competent and friendly American doctor , had blood work and x-rays right away, and had two English-speaking Chinese nurses tending to him the entire night.

The majority of the last 24 hours have been spent at the hospital.. Simon was moved to a private room which is so much like a hotel room that we’ve decided to take pictures…mood lighting, a fluffy white bathrobe, flat screen TV and DVD player, and even mini toiletries in the bathroom! But of course it all comes at a price..turns out Simon’s bill for his 3 day admittance is 35,000 yuan which is wait for it…..$5,500 Canadian dollars! Can we say ‘hooray’ for travel health insurance?!

Anyway, Simon will be fine, so far his recovery is going perfectly and we are keeping our fingers crossed that he will be released tomorrow. Unfortunately after your lung collapses you’re not allowed to go on planes for awhile (because of pressure changes) which puts a damper on the Korea trip which we’ve already booked flights for..we are now trying to work out plans to take  a ferry instead, so here’s hoping!

Anyway, drama drama in Shanghai!  The moral of the story is to take your travel health insurance seriously. Also, if you live alone in China, you should know your address in case you need to tell a friend where you are because you’re quite certain you’re going to black out (perhaps this last moral is more for Simon than anyone else).

Okay, so this first blog post from China has been a long time coming, but I don’t feel toooo bad about it as Cody and Sayuri are the only people who know the URL as of now :P Special thanks to Cody for setting this guy up after I found out the google blog I started was blocked over here.. it looks very pretty, don’t you think?

Okay, so lets see, I guess I’ve been in China just over two weeks now, but it’s hard to believe it’s only been two weeks – so much stuff has happened! I see things everyday I want to tell you guys about, but given my blogging track record so far, I guess only a fraction of those things I see and  experience will make it on here..but I will try my best!

So, first things first, Shanghai is sweet! I can’t even describe how great this city is! ahhh no really, words can’t describe! But lets start from the beginning..

So, I arrived in Shanghai the on a Saturday evening and took a cab (without hassle) to my new apartment where my roommate Sandra was waiting. The apartment is gorgeous and quite possibly the nicest apartment I will ever live in for the rest of my life (it can only be downhill from here I’m sure). Wood flooring throughout, a balcony with a great city view, nice kitchen (which so far, has barely been used :D), spacious bedrooms, modern furnishings and some nice Chinese artwork. The location is prime as well..We live right in the city and only a 10-15 minute walk from the main campus of our university. The area is called Xujiahui (takes awhile before you can say that one properly to the cab driver), which is a nice area for sure but perhaps a bit TOO full of western comforts ..Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, KFC and Starbucks are within walking distance as well as many mega malls.

My roommate Sandra is from Germany and the two of us seem to have quite a few parallels including going on our first exchanges in the same year (she went to Sidney, BC!), are the same age, doing the same academic program at home (more or less) and in Shanghai, have the same travel goals and roughly similar life goals…the list goes on. Anyhoo, it feels like we’ve known each other for months rather than weeks and despite spending oodles of time together (at school, at home, on the metro, out with friends, etc.) we are still getting along great. Sandra and I  have a third roomie, Daniel (aka “Danny Boy,” “Dan the Man,” and “the Danimal”) a most fabulous gay Shanghainese guy. Dan was born and raised in Shanghai, is 19 years old and studies music at Shanghai Normal University. He speaks great English and is a very willing and helpful translator, tour guide and friend to me and Sandra. It’s Dan’s first time living away from home (his parents live in a suburb of Shanghai) and being a much loved and doted on only child, sometimes Dan needs as much help with his big transition as we do – so we are all getting something out of our little international family! So far life with the roomies is great; we often eat together, shop together, go to the bar together and on occasion, shamefully order McDonald’s together (they deliver in Shanghai! AND you can order in English…it’s bad I know, but if you were here…. you’d probably do it too).

So now, back to the start…after two days in Shanghai of running errands and getting settled in, we went to school on the Monday to register. This was an interesting experience..our first exposure to the disorganization and chaos that is the Jiao Tong exchange program. It was a confusing day full of much misinformation and miscommunication (actually quite a typical day for me in China) but as a bonus we met some other students in out program, and they were/are great. Registration involved turning a corner and getting shot in the head with some laser gun, followed by a thermometer in the armpit, followed by spending an hour of registering wearing a surgical mask and facing demands to go to the hospital as I was suspected of having Swine Flu (joy!). Anyway, after some explanations about being from Canada and not being acclimatized to the Shanghai heat (extremely humid 35+ degree weather) I convinced them to take my temperature after a half hour in some air conditioning…turns out I was right, no fever, and more importantly no flu! After registration Sandra and I went home and booked flights to Guilin, a city in southern China,  to take advantage of our newfound week off school (more on Guilin to come).

That night we were invited to KTV (karaoke) with Sandra’s Mandarin tutor, Amanda. We were told we were going with some “business friends” of hers which turned out to be some old Chinese men! We arrived at a very swanky KTV club where we were taken to a room with elaborate fruit plates, all-you-can-drink brandy and the aforementioned old Chinese men. Nobody spoke English aside from Amanda, but even with a translator the evening proved to be very culturally confusing. After a few minutes of translated small talk, about 7 or 8 gorgeous young Chinese girls, who were dressed to the nines, filed into the room in a line. We were then told that these business associates were now going to choose some girls to “have a drink with them.” A few were chosen, a new line came in and another was chosen…maybe 4 girls total. Following this there was lots of glass clinking and drinking, the girls played dice games and chatted with and sometimes massaged the old men – eally feeling like ‘Babe:Pig in the City’ at this point in the evening! We weren’t sure if the girls were prostitutes and Amanda was also unsure what extent of “services” they provided…There’s a special term for this kind of “cocktail waitress” in Chinese that I forget now, but apparently they are not usually prostitutes? That’s according to Daniel anyway. Sandra and I were told if we wanted to be polite we needed to be drinking or singing (secret third option being flirting with old business men with whom we didn’t speak a common language)…singing it was! and so we sang and sang and sang songs that nobody had heard or could understand, but they seemed happy about it anyway. I never imagined that singing sober karaoke in front of strangers would be my least awkward option in a social situation!  We`re still not sure the real reason we were invited to this evening of awkwardness, but at least it provided us with some insight into a side of Chinese business culture..the kind of stuff they absolutely can’t teach you in a text book!

The following day we left for Guilin which is in an are of China famous for its natural beauty and is a very popular vacation spot for Chinese tourists. We stayed in a hostel and spent four days traveling around the surrounding region. We saw gorgeous rice terraces, visited an apparently traditional village of the Yao minority population (more of a tourist trap, but still quite cool actually), took a river cruise on a bamboo boat, visited some pretty rad caves, and poked around historical sites which we didn’t understand the significance of due to a lack of English translation.  Other highlights included Sandra getting pick pocketed (actually more funny than serious as she lost just a bit of money and nothing else..great ammunition for teasing), improving our Chinese language skills while shopping at night markets (“how much is that one”  and “20 yuan?! no, that’s too expensive”  was about as far as we got), and having our first Chinese full body massage (cost was around $8 CAD for the hour…actually it was more painful than pleasurable, but still a total steal!). But of course my personal favourite had to be becoming a tourist attraction in our own right and having our picture taken by excited Chinese tourists as I guess Westerners are considerably rarer in this area of China and Chinese people typically don’t travel very much or too far…they usually try to do it when you’re not looking, but when you catch them they just keep staring and snapping away. I decided that the least awkward and most fun response was to strike a pose which tended to get a favourable reaction.

Returning from Guilin, we trekked back to school where we were met with more disorganization and administrative shenanigans, but those details are not particularly fun or interesting, so we`ll skip that part!  Looks like I will be taking courses in E-commerce, Compensation Management, Cross-Cultural Management and Networks and Internet..unfortunately, there was no feasible opportunity to take Chinese language for credit, so I will be doing private tutoring along with most of the other exchange students. I can’t quite get the required number of academic hours over here, so the UVic BCom program has requested that I write a book report in addition to my coursework..seems to be a rather grade 7ish type assignment, but I am not complaining! I will write more about school in China later when I get further along.

Recent days have been filled with some great partying in the fine Shanghai night clubs, meeting people, and getting my bearings in Shanghai, at school and our neighbourhood. I’m going to the Rotaract Club of Shanghai’s meeting on Monday and hope to find somewhere that I can play basketball over here (women’s basketball is somewhat of a niche sport over here, but in a city of 20 million + people, it’s not impossible to find I guess). On the weekend we went to the a bar on top of the Hyatt hotel on the Bund (river running through Shanghai)..it was the best urban view I think I`ve ever seen in my life! Drinks were running about $12 CAD, but if you hold on to one for an hour and half they don’t kick you out :P Unable to catch a cab, we took a death-defying scooter ride..part of the true Shanghai experience..we even ended up getting ripped off by the driver in the end which is also part of the true Shanghai experience ;) !

On Sunday, Sandra and I went shopping at a couple of the local markets (the good ones full of knock-offs and people yelling at you), followed by a $5 pedicure (which on second thought was not the best choice sanitation-wise, but what’s done is done! I can already see my mother`s cringing face as she reads this). Today we went to school in the morning only to find we had a three hour break..decided to have a brunch of noodles (actually not an uncommon breakfast food here) with a couple of friends…delicious won ton soup for about 80 cents CAD (Steph be jealous!) followed by another one-hour massage..left with just enough time to return to school! Haha life here is just too awesome and hilarious sometimes! Hopefully more to come about my spoiled Shanghai lifestyle  in future posts.

Anyway, I really have to stop now…this has been a blogging marathon, but at least the important bits are in here.  Oh yeah, and I’m going to Korea in a little over a week! We have a week off for Chinese national day! woohoo!

Hope everybody is well at home, please send me a line and let me know how you’re doing!

Much love from Shanghai,

Amy