Shanghai on Life

Greetings to my loyal audience! It’s been awhile now, but that Korea post really took it out of me I have to say. Life is still chugging along here in Shanghai. It is still warm and we’ve hardly seen any of this rain that people keep talking about, so I could get used to this! Don’t get too jealous though because I’m looking forward to a winter of sub-zero temperatures and no central heating :( After discovering our lack of central heating (and whining about it), Daniel suggested that I might consider wearing a sweater when I feel cold – a harsh slap in the face for an ex-Power-Smart rep..how far I’ve fallen already.

Last weekend I went on a day trip to a nearby city, Suzhou, with my friends Christian and Simon. Suzhou is known for its beautiful gardens and a history full of silk trading and prosperity. Wikipedia taught me that Suzhou is one of Victoria’s four sister cities, a little random but interesting fact. The day was fun and relaxed; we rented some rusty and rickety bicycles for $5 and biked our ways to some of these famed gardens, lunch and a temple. When we arrived back at the train station we found out it would be 3 hours before the next train and even that one only had “standing room only” tickets left. The Germans filled this wait time with beer (so cliché) and, eventually, seeing how many crackers they could fit in their mouth at one time (I may have encouraged this behaviour). I, on the other hand, managed to entertain myself with a Vogue magazine that I couldn’t read and a few too many games of solitaire. Not feeling like standing for 50 minutes on the train, we spent the ride home wedged into an empty luggage compartment and managed to catch quite a few stares…now not just the white people on the train but the white people inappropriately sandwiched between their suitcases on the train.

I have recently set about on a mission to make more Chinese friends. I have been hanging out quite a bit with a girl names Joy who is my age and studying accounting at Donghua University in Shanghai. She is in many ways typical Chinese…only child (with parents who worry too much) from Hunan province, came to Shanghai to study and obtain her Shanghai residence permit, loves KTV, table tennis, etc.). Joy speaks English quite well and had recently decided she wanted to expand her horizons (and improve her English) by meeting some foreign friends.  Last Thursday we went for lunch, shopping and a dose of education at the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition and the Shanghai Museum. The exhibition has some neat exhibits about the history of Shanghai as a city, a floor dedicated to the upcoming World Expo (starting this May in Shanghai FYI), and (what everyone comes for) a miniature scale model of the city of Shanghai – very cool! I managed to find my neighbourhood but couldn’t locate our apartment building exactly.  The Shanghai museum was also very cool, a manageable amount of artifacts for one afternoon…calligraphy, jade, ancient currency, furniture, traditional paintings, etc. Joy’s father is a Professor who teaches ancient Chinese history (a subject she also takes personal interest in), so she had many insights which made the museum a lot more interesting. I have also begun a language exchange arrangement with another Chinese girl, Jasmine, who works and lives in my neighbourhood. Jasmine has a variety of projects she works on professionally, one of which includes a corporate social responsibility consulting project targeted at real estate development firms in Shanghai. When we meet I usually help her with fine tuning the English translations of her business plan or whatever else and she helps me with Mandarin.  It’s nice to get some free help and actually I enjoy working  on her stuff as well (CSR upstart initiatives in Chinese real estate development anyone? Cue nerdy business student drooling!).

Last weekend Sandra went to Xian (home of the famed Terracotta Army) to meet with one of her friends from school in Germany who is currently on exchange in Hong Kong. Sandra’s friend was traveling with five of her friends she met in Hong Kong and one of them happened to be Canadian. One question leads to another and this girl asks Sandra if she knows a Canadian Amy in Shanghai. “Like my roommate Amy?”.. So out of the oodles of universities in Hong Kong and the hundreds of exchange students at their university, it just so happened that Sandra’s friend, Nina, befriended my friend from UVic BCom and former co-worker, Lily. We didn’t realize that they were friends and in fact, both of them had planned to visit and stay with us in Shanghai together but we were in Korea at the time so couldn’t play host..all the while we never figured out that they were coming together and it wasn’t just a coincidence! aaahhhh small world-ness strikes again!

Other highlights in recent weeks have included being taken to dinner (along with Andy, the other BCom exchanger from UVic) with a bigwig from UVic Business International Programs who happened to be in Shanghai on business. A very nice and easy going guy, it was good to see a familiar face..also a passionate advocate of international exchange (Japan changed his life once upon a time), we get along just fine. But lets not forget, we got treated to some seriously awesome (and fancy) Chinese cuisine – lotus root stuffed with sticky rice, sichuan tofu, the coolest looking tea I’ve ever drank in my life, the list goes on. Last Thursday we watched our friend Simon (not lung Simon, another Simon) play trombone with “one of the best youth orchestras in the world” who he usually plays with in Germany.  I guess they are good enough to have all-expense paid trips to China, so I think it’s actually true…they were here for a week touring around with their last stop being in Shanghai, so not a bad deal! The concert was free and ended up being packed with locals who just went crazy for this German orchestra which was really nice to see. There was all this clapping to the beat, swaying, whooping and hollering, and a final standing ovation…it gave you those cross-cultural warm and fuzzies. On a side-note, some members of the orchestra returned to Germany with H1N1 which is apparently creating newsworthy quarantine and investigation hell for both the German and Chinese Governments…..78 people hitting different cities every night for a week makes it a bit difficult to narrow down the origin.

The basketball season has finally started up over here and I went to check out the team on Sunday night. I wasn’t able to play with them as I am sick at the moment (I may as well admit it as my mom has already busted me blowing my nose on skype), but the team looks great and I’m quite certain I will get a chance to play with them! I made it to a Rotaract meeting for the first time last night and it was also positive. The Shanghai club is a little more formal and a little older than our club at home, but everyone was very friendly and they are currently working on some impressive projects, so I’m hoping to stick with it.

I’ve been in Shanghai for two months already! This realization comes with pretty mixed emotions…less than three months to go until Jen, Cody and (hopefully) Sarah arrive for our grand tour around Southeast Asia (hooray!), but at the same time I feel like things are really getting started here, it’s already half way done :( On the bright side, it’s my birthday on Sunday, woohoo!

The first half of this post sat in the “drafts” folder for a little too long, so if time lines seem messed up, it’s because they are.  But anyhoo, this past weekend a group of eight of us went to Huangshan or “the Yellow Mountains”  where we saw some very famous Chinese scenery action! Anyway, more on Huangshan to come!

Hope everyone is well in fine, apologies to those of you who diligently check for updates..more posts are on the way :D

-amy