Sunday, November 30, 2008

A Quick Walk

S-- and I walked to a neighbor's home recently. I happened to have the camera in my bag that day, and caught a few uniquely Chinese shots.

As a resident of Shanghai and a purveyor of a mobile phone herein, I am able to ascertain most of the "English" on this sign. But can you?






After posting the piece about the many street workers in Shanghai, I thought I should document one of our own. This cobbler works on this same corner almost every day. I asked him to repair my brown boots, but he correctly told me that they are low quality and beyond repair. He is always busy.


A mobile fruit market. These oranges (possibly Mandarin oranges) have been everywhere for the past month or two, and will continue until just after Chinese New Year. Oranges are a symbol of wealth because there are always plenty of them. And these oranges are easy to peel, generally seedless and super tasty. A real hit in our house!

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Thanksgiving

Today was our official Thanksgiving.

Morgan's family, Becca's family and Erin's family arrived between 4 and 5:00, heavy laden with food. City Shop delivered a roast turkey with a side of gravy in the same time frame. I'd spent the past few days making pies. I bought a few extra plates and wine glasses, we used an odd mix of forks with no spoons, and everyone shared a lovely Thanksgiving.

And I'll admit, it felt like Thanksgiving. The homemade food, the kids running around, the babies screaming, and the warmth of a home made a much more enjoyable Thanksgiving than last year's foray at Moon River Diner. The restaurant Thanksgiving is not worth it - on Thursday this year, we ordered Indian food in ironic unobservance.

The friends Thanksgiving is a close second to family. Sharing each other's traditions and each other's conversations is sweet. Erin's family arrived only a few months ago, and Becca's family will leave in a few weeks. Sharing of those experiences and plans makes for interesting conversation, but sharing a traditional meal with new friends has a sweet potency. The pieces are the same - right down to the green bean casserole - even though our histories vary tremendously. And the conversation around the table as we ate pie directly out of the pie plates could not be created amongst people you've known your whole life.

No doubt this Thanksgiving was better than last. This Thanksgiving, we have much to be thankful for. The friends we have made, and continue to make here in Shanghai are an amazing blessing. We are surrounded by wonderful, interesting and open people and I've formed some wonderfully close friendships. At the end of our Thanksgiving day, I feel happy and content.

But all things considered, I would still choose Thanksgiving on a chilly midwestern day in the family house, smell of turkey cooking all morning, an oven brimming with stuffing and plenty of rolls, and the same people at the table who've been there every year for as long as I can remember. The steady presence of family and those unchanging traditions are certainly worth being thankful for - even when we can't all share the same turkey.

Friday, November 28, 2008

Living the High Life

We live on the tenth floor of our building. Only a guest bedroom wall is shared with another apartment - all other walls have windows and receive the wind's strong lashings. So when I sat in the red chair in the girls' room yesterday, I thought I must be losing my mind as I clearly heard a man singing. A simple tune from a clear voice, although a bit muffled - as if in the next room. I turned nervously, afraid that the singing existed only in my head.

When I turned, I saw feet hanging over the top sill of the window.


A man tied to a building-long rope hung along our window, washing the walls of the building. The girls climbed onto their window seat to watch this action and wave at this amazing man. They remained transfixed until he had dropped out of their range of vision.

Monday, November 24, 2008

The Face of the Working Poor

Shanghai has a sizable expatriate population, with a number of free magazines serving that population. Because I'm a bit of a magazine junkie, I pick up a handful every week and peruse the restaurant reviews and editorials. Most magazines lack the level of journalism to make their stories interesting, but one week I was pleasantly surprised.

That's Shanghai ran a feature story on the man on the street - the local Chinese people who literally work on the street, earn very little money, and keep Shanghai running smoothly. We use quite a few of these vendors ourselves. Everyone does.

I'd love to copy the story here, but I don't think it would be ethical. So follow the link below to a fun piece on "the unsung heroes of the city." And keep in mind the exchange rate - $1 = 6.8 RMB.

Meet Your Man on the Street

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Cold Tootsies

We shared Thanksgiving dinner with about 35 other Americans yesterday. The food was fantastic and the company was quite interesting. I had met a few of the women in the group, but Dave went in blind. The girls played with toys and other children all afternoon, and so Dave and I ended up sitting around the table with a man who works for Cooper Tire, a man who works for Dell Computers, and a man who works for Best Buy. Their experiences varied quite a bit. The Cooper Tire man spends a lot of time at the factory, and had some pretty interesting knowledge about the working and living conditions therein. The Best Buy man has been helping to open new stores in Shanghai, and has faced some interesting opposition to surprising things. Each of these men, Dave included, are one of the only expatriates in their office. Most of them agreed that their offices are too cold, the heat never working properly. The Dell man, a funny man, said Oh, you've got heat in your office? and everyone laughed.

No, seriously. You've got heat in your office? he repeated.

Dave, Best Buy and Cooper Tire all said yes.

Our heat won't go on until January 9th. By government decree, explained Dell. The weather for the last few weeks has been a very damp cold, the type that seeps into your bones and keeps you chilled for hours. They told us we should wear our coats to work.

The forecast for today is damp, dreary and with a high in the upper fifties and a low in the mid-thirties. The temperature in our apartment may not have fallen down into the thirties, but it will certainly not rise into the upper fifties, either. Homes and apartments in Shanghai do not have central heat. Most rooms have a blower on the ceiling - this serves as the air conditioner and the heater, and acts more like a space heater. Each room in our apartment has one. We set it by temperature Celsius, but that seems less related to the actual temperature in the room and more just a fancy way of setting low, medium and high. I turn the Dining Room heater on when I first wake up. At that point, the apartment is quite cold. Within 10 minutes, the Dining Room is comfortably warm and the chill has disappeared from the rest of our space. Within 20 more minutes, the Dining Room will be uncomfortably warm and arterial rooms will be inching toward warm. Two hours of heat is all our apartment needs for the day.

But that heat never reaches the floor.

Warm air certainly rises in China, and slippers are a necessity in our house. I explained in a previous post that my sneakers were stolen, and I bought the one pair that fit me in all of Shanghai. The Asic shoes I bought are quite comfortable, pricier than I would like, and light and airy running shoes. Unfortunately, light and airy running shoes are quite ill-fitted to a damp, cold winter in Shanghai. My feet have not felt warm for days. In our apartment, the floor never feels warm. I'm taking a class at the local university, and the room never even feels warm there. The building feels as if it is meant to be open air - the entire front panel of doors always stand open; the windows at the end of each hallway always stand open; we shut the windows in our classroom upon arrival every morning; we leave the windows in the bathrooms wide open because of the smell. I spend my class wrapped up in my coat.

And my feet freeze.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Fade to Black

My vanity insists that I address the quality of the photo. Were it anyone else blinking and grimacing in the photo, I would not have posted it. But the story is worth sharing, and the friends are worth remembering. So overlook the shiny face on the left, and read for content.
I met them in January. We lived in the same neighborhood, with children the same ages. We enrolled our girls in the same music class. One day after class, we went to the playground. The next week, we shared a picnic on the grass. The picnics became more regular.
We are friends.
I often compare expat life to summer camp. You arrive at camp knowing that you will only be there for 1 week. You need to make friends quickly, and they may as well be close friends. By the end of the week, you're crying as you hug your friends good-bye. How can you go back to life without them?
A more apt comparison might be college. We arrived our freshmen year, and no one in my building knew anyone else. We all felt lost and far from home. We needed friends, and we needed them quickly. We needed them to replace our close friends from home. We needed them to replace our families. We needed them to help us deal with these new and strange surroundings. And we knew that we would only live with them for 4 years before moving on.
Becca, Claire, Anna and I arrived in Shanghai very near the same time. We needed each other, and quickly became a support group. What began as mothers building a safe place for our children turned into three of my closest friends. We carried Claire through her second pregnancy and have enjoyed her little boy. We talked Anna through getting pregnant and just bought presents for her upcoming delivery. We dealt with family crises at home - a grandfather passed away; a marriage broke up; all far, far away. We helped each other through prolonged guests. We barbequed together, celebrated birthdays together, observed holidays together. Most recently, we traveled together. These women are some of my closest friends.
Since I have moved from the neighborhood, we get together every few weeks for a Mums' Night Out, sharing low-quality Mexican food and free margaritas at a sleazy expat bar. This evening was no different. We swapped stories on our husbands' job searches, our plans for Thanksgiving, upcoming birthday parties, our adoption and pregnancy updates. We ate off of each others' plates and shared one large desert. And at the end of the night, we said quick good-byes as I dashed off to grab a passing taxi.
On Sunday, Anna leaves for California. She will deliver her second child in February and they hope to return to Shanghai in late March.
Two weeks later, Claire leaves for Australia. She will be home for Christmas, and will return to Shanghai in January.
One week later, Becca leaves for New Zealand. Her husband's contract ends the day they leave China. He is still seeking the next contract, and so the odds are that they will not return from their holiday.
I fly to Chicago that same day. We will return to Shanghai in early February.
The odds are that this group of women will never be together again - although Becca invited us to her parents' bed and breakfast on a farm in New Zealand for her 40th birthday. The reunion has been set for 3 years from last week.
This is the nature of expatriate life. My closest friends will leave, and so will I. A good-bye is not heartbreaking. We didn't spend the evening reminiscing. We spent it planning S--'s birthday party in December.
I may have cried at the end of summer camp, but I graduated college so full of the future that I have no memory of sadness. And I will miss my friends very much, especially the foursome we have enjoyed this past year. But such is life. At least, such is life in Shanghai.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Building a Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday. I think that the Canadians copy it in spirit, but most people don't bother. So within an international community, Thanksgiving is a nothing holiday. Chinese people don't roast whole turkeys - even if they wanted to, the birds won't fit in the small ovens. The vegetables used in the Thanksgiving were those coming to harvest in the northeastern United States in the fall. Few of those same vegetables grow in China, and so the entire meal comes at a premium.

Certain hotels and restaurants will serve a Thanksgiving meal next Thursday. For about $50USD per person, we could go to a restaurant and enjoy a chef cooked Thanksgiving meal. We took this approach last year, and left feeling deeply dispirited. Thanksgiving is not about eating the correct food. Thanksgiving is about the people who share that food with you, and the more homecooking the better.

So this year, we have invited some of our closest American friends in Shanghai to our home for a Thanksgiving potluck. We have since been invited to a neighbor's home for another Thanksgiving potluck. Here's the rundown:

Turkey:
This one is make or break. Import groceries do sell frozen turkeys this month and next. These will be full-sized Butterball turkeys, imported from the United States. Many people do not have ovens in their homes at all, and most ovens are too small to fit a large bird. The latter is true of our home, so we'll take the easy route. We're purchasing a pre-cooked turkey. He'll be delivered to our hot to our home, with his juices cooked up into gravy on the side.

Stuffing:
Since we're not making the bird, we can't make traditional stuffing, either. The import stores sell Stove Top, but are not carrying it in large portions. Erin is making the stuffing, and she's been buying a box of Stove Top every time she goes to the store.

Green Bean Casserole:
Erin's on the Green Bean Casserole, too. She's been watching for French's Fried Onions every time she picks up a box of Stove Top. No luck. She did a quick internet search to find a replacement, and learned that Green Bean Casserole comes in more than one variety. Who knew that you could prepare Green Beans with anything besides Campbell's Cream of Mushroom and French's Fried Onions?

Cranberries:
I volunteered the cranberries for our neighbor's potluck. It seems that Chinese people don't eat cranberries. Beyond that, it seems that expats don't really eat cranberries either. I was getting nervous, having scanned the frozen, fresh and canned fruit shelves of every import grocer in town. As luck would have it, I scanned those shelves too soon. Yesterday, row upon row of jellied cranberries showed up at the import grocer. And 3 boxes of frozen cranberries. I bought them all.

Sweet Potatoes:
Those have been nixed from our menu. Becca signed up for those, but can't find the traditional orange potatoes we like to candy in the states. The only sweet potatoes around are small - the size of fingerling potatoes. They're yellow on the inside and quite starchy. They're no candied yams, and so will be absent from our table this year.

Rolls:
We've learned that good bread only comes from a friend's oven. Morgan has taught her ayi to bake a loaf of bread for their family once a week. Morgan signed up for the rolls, and I imagine that her ayi will spend next week hard at work kneading and raising those little balls of dough.

Corn:
This one should be simple. They sell it frozen and canned. Can't go wrong.

Pie:
In my family home growing up, Thanksgiving wasn't about the turkey. It was about the pie. My mom made all of the traditional fixings, and she prepared them fine. But she's always fix at least 3 pies - and this for a family of 5. She rolled out her own crusts, made from the big vat of lard she brought from her family farm until I was half grown. Served with real whipped cream or vanilla ice cream, the end of the meal was always the highlight. Taking on the family tradition, I'm making pies for both meals. On the menu - apple pie, pumpkin pie and chocolate creme pie. But I readily admit that I am not my mother. I have never learned to make that perfect, flaky pie crust. After asking around, I discovered a French brand of refrigerated pie crust which passed muster in a trial chocolate creme pie last night. So we've got refrigerated pie crust. We've got chocolate pie filling, made entirely from scratch. We've got plenty of apples, so that one will be simple. All I thought we needed for the pumpkin pie was a can of pie filling. Grabbed one at the store, flipped to the back, and noticed that the recipe calls for pie filling, 2 eggs, and 1 can of evaporated milk.

Nuts.

The man at the import store spoke no English, so I showed him the back of the can. They display quite clearly a neat little picture of a can of Nestle Evaporated Milk.

Mei you, he said. I don't have it.

How can you not have it? I replied. You must have it.

Mei you, he said.

No, this is silly. I retorted. How can you sell the pumpkin pie filling without the evaporated milk? One doesn't work without the other. I may not have been as calm as I sound here.

This young man of amazing patience walked me to the other side of the store, where, in fact, a label reading EVAPORATED MILK sat humbly below an empty shelf. Mei you, he said.

Hmm, I replied. What to do, I thought.

No problem, the man seemed to say. We have loads of milk. He brought me to the UHT milk section - that is, the milk prepared for a long shelf life. You niunai. We have milk.

Oh, no. This is milk. I need evaporated milk. I had certainly regained my composure by this time, as he was so helpful. He made an effort to convince me that the two were the same, but I would not fall for this little trick.

When will you have evaporated milk? I asked. And yes, I did ask in Chinese. He made an extremely long phone call, and returned with a sheet of paper where he had written 11/25. Two days before Thanksgiving, the only import store in town expects a shipment of evaporated milk.

I left shaking my head.

But have no fear. Morgan's (of the homemade rolls) husband is in Japan with the armed forces this week. He will visit the US military commissary tomorrow, and will return to Shanghai this Saturday with 4 cans of evaporated milk.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Pregnancy in China

As we prepared to move to China, I remember having a conversation with someone about living conditions. We had no real knowledge about China, and I remember voicing that I thought that China had abolished its One Child Policy.

I quickly learned that the One Child Policy is not only still on the books, but quite firmly enforced. My facts come from the rumor mill, which is often the best source of information in China. Here's my understanding:
  • An urban family may have one child.
  • An ultrasound may not tell the family the sex of the child, to discourage gender selection.
  • A rural family may have two children, but not within 3 years of each other.
  • If a woman becomes pregnant again, the family must pay a fine.
  • Reports vary on the cost of the fine, from 1 year or your household income, to 3 years salary, or just 60,000 RMB (about 10,000 USD).
  • For those who can not afford the fines, a woman can be forced to have an abortion. This even if she is due the next day.
  • Anyone can report a pregnant family. A snitch earns 100RMB (about 14USD) for each credible report.
  • If a family pays the fine, they have no more trouble. Wealthy families in China do choose to bear two children.
  • If a family manages to carry a child to term without paying the fine, they are faced with a few options. Two of these options I have discussed before: either killing to child, or giving her up for adoption. The last option is to raise the child hukou. This child will have no identity. He or she will be ineligible for a passport, medical assistance or public schools. When they grow up, they will be unable to find legal work or housing. This same consequence occurs when a family moves illegaly to another province - our driver's family lives in his home village because it is the only place his daughter can receive schooling and medical care.
  • Mixed couples are not removed from this law. A Chinese person married to a foreigner may legally have a second child, but a third child can not be born inside China.

The conversation arose because a pregnant German woman married to a Chinese man visited a local hospital for her first child. She did not mention her pregnancy, or discuss it with anyone. But the next day, someone knocked on her door asking that her family consider re-registering because of their recent growth.

Every person in China is required to register with their local housing authority. We have registered. If you stay at our home, we will register you. When we stay at a hotel, they register us. When a baby is born, it is registered with the housing authority. This woman became concerned that they may try to enforce China's One Child Policy on her.

She and her baby are quite safe, but many women and their babies are not. The policy is difficult, because although it is clearly inhumane, it also addresses the very serious problem of overpopulation in China.

I would not run for office in China. This country faces tremendous growth and potential, but also tremendous problems.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Moganshan

I returned from our weekend away feeling refreshed, and able to face another 6 weeks of life in crowded and filthy Shanghai.

Both of my girls returned feeling exhausted, but a bit rosier around the cheeks, having tested their balance on old, rocky staircases and pushed their lungs running around a hilly yard in a higher altitude.

Dave returned feeling dread that he had to go back to the office. He has begun putting out resumes and fielding phone calls, especially for jobs in international development. He's looking primarily in Africa and Asia at this point, although open to other positions. If you have any connections, please email us privately and we'll share more details.

Even through a thicky, rainy haze, Moganshan was beautiful this weekend. The girls and I piled into the car with plenty of gear on Thursday afternoon, expecting to arrive around 6pm. Our friends would beat us to the cabin, and they would have hot pasta on the table and a warm fire in the wood stove. Our driver took a wrong turn and went an hour out of our way, so after a long 5 and a half hours of driving we arrived in the wet, dark night at the bottom of 250 stone stairs. The rain continued, blotting out the light from the moon or the stars, so the girls and I plodded up the wet stairs with no idea of the beauty that surrounded us. The staff at Naked Retreats, where we stayed, were fantastic. An old man from the village carried our luggage on a pole over his shoulders. My phone contact spoke perfect English and Chinese, and directed our driver at multiple different crosses in the road. Finally, one of their staff drove a van down the hill to lead our way back up. I told them that our gas tank was dangerously low after our 2 hour detour, and they promised to rescue us with reserves if the need arose.

We reached the top of the stairs, and saw a warm cottage with a small yard in front. The windows blazed with warm yellow light, evidencing a fire had been started long ago. We walked in, and the air warmed us immediately. The girls and I sat by the fire while our friends piled our plates with warm pasta, fresh fruit and glasses of milk. We filled our bellies and the girls went straight to sleep in a perfectly dark room upstairs.

We all woke Friday morning to a slow rain and a chill in the air. The warmth of the fire hadn't made its way upstairs, so the girls and I dressed quickly and raced down into the common room. The two ayis on staff to serve our house had started a fire in the woodstove hours before, and the room was cozy. Our friends were already down with their little ones - two 2 year olds, and 1 4 month old. We feasted on fresh eggs and local bacon, milk, juice and toast, and piles of fruit, all provided with our payment. The fridge was stocked, and the kitchen was so pleasant. An island in the middle of a common room, so the chef could talk to the other grown-ups and interact with running and playing children. The American concept that the kitchen is the heart of the home applied well to this cottage, and not at all to our home. I was the Friday chef, and enjoyed my time at the stove.

A break in the rain came around 11, so we quickly bundled our little ones and brought them outside to explore. As the Daddies had stayed in Shanghai to finish the work week, we were 3 Mamas to 4 toddlers and an infant. For playing in a warm cabin, our odds were good. For climbing stone stairs in the rain, our toddlers lacked confidence and our numbers were low. The rain began in earnest as we were a few steps away from the house, but we still followed the stone staircase to a very Chinese chicken yard at a barn up the hill. The girls loved running in the rain and chasing the hens, while the moms fretted over muddy fingers and wet hair. Our outting was quick, but gave us a taste of the fun that the outdoors held for our families. We feasted on a warm pot of chili and piping hot corn bread that night, the men meeting us around 9pm, and then everyone slept well in the dark, moonless night.


With families complete, Saturday took on a different flavor. We all shared a large breakfast, and then each family took off in a different direction. We climbed up and down stone stairways through the bamboo forest in search of great panoramas. We found quite a few, and once we had climbed too low, we dug bag into the forest and wandered along a stream until our bellies began growling. Along the stream we worked to keep our shoes dry, watched people harvesting bamboo, and avoided amazingly large spiders with bright yellow bodies hanging right in our path.


After a walk with the girls, we wanted a walk without them. All of the children went down to nap around 2:30, and our friend Jim joined Dave and I on a search for old hotel ruins. Moganshan is an interesting area - perched on a mountaintop, this little village was once a hedonistic getaway for Shanghai's elite. In the early part of the century, expatriates would escape the heat of Shanghai by taking the train to Moganshan, where the temperatures average 7 degrees lower than the city. The small mountain is dotted with European country homes and hotels. But with the turmoil of China in the middle of the century, expatriates expatriated China and the area did not become Chinese. Rather, it stood vacant for decades, only now slowly receiving reinvestment.

Jim, Dave and I headed up the hill to explore the ruins of an old hotel. The small building sat hidden off of a small path, with no road nearby. It perched the top of the hill, and had amazing panoramic views. We only caught glimpses of these views, because although the rain had stopped, Saturday maintained the thick haze of the days before. Having been an easier hike than we imagined, we next headed off to find the old convent. It seems that missionaries as well as wealthy expatriates enjoyed relaxing in old Moganshan. We climbed hundreds of steps, up and down. We passed construction workers with their bamboo scaffolding, their walls full of old rocks, and their concrete laid clumsily and quickly. Jim is an engineer from the Bay Area of California, and knew that these buildings would fall immediately in an earthquake.


We passed old hotels with all of the shutters drawn, old yards now homes to ducks and chickens. We walked through fields of tea, where lean-tos had been created with a stick and an old tarp, straw hats still hanging neatly inside. We walked an amazing number of stairs, got ourselves fairly lost, and became worried as the sun fell in the sky. Without daylight savings time, the falls falls by 5:00 in eastern China. On a dark mountain, we would have been in trouble without flashlights or a good sense of direction. Feeling a bit hurried and nervous, we pushed on through the bamboo forest. We took a left turn, feeling confident that we headed toward our cabin. As the path became less obvious, we became worried again. Jim hurried ahead, and Dave and I sloshed through as mountain springs poured over the stone steps and right through my running shoes.

Suddenly, we reached a clearing. The bamboo forest had been clear-cut for this small field growing low bushes of tea. A shack sat neatly in the middle of the field, and the hill fell away steeply so that we could see for miles. Even though the sun was quickly falling, even though we could not decipher our direction, even though our shoes were wet, we stood and gazed at the view. It was amazing, and made the entire adventure worthwhile.

We soon regained our direction and found our familiar path as the sun began to fall in earnest. It was dark as we climbed the steps to our cabin, and our ayis began grilling an amazing dinner of chicken and pork, burgers and sausage, potatos and corn, and vegetables marinated in simple Chinese sauces. We ate for hours, poured bottles of wine, and enjoyed another warm evening in. Before we sent the girls to bed, we pulled out a special treat. Three marshmallows were placed on skewers and pushed into the flames of the woodstove. The girls watched wide-eyed. Once removed, each marshmallow was squeezed onto a graham cracker with one piece of chocolate. The girls sat and ate their snacks quite seriously, and in complete silence. The s'mores were a hit on the young crowd. After they were all asleep, the adults took our bottles of wine outside and roasted our marshmallows over an open fire under a sky full of stars and a bright moon. This was the camping trip we had all envisioned.

The morning came quickly and with a bright sun that allowed little girls to run around in the yard of the cabin while the adults packed their bags and prepared lunch. The same tottering old man carried our luggage back down the few hundred steps, where our drivers were waiting. We all climbed in and headed down the mountain. We drove in autumn's golden light through an agricultural scene which could have been anywhere, uniquely Chinese by the people hand-scything their fields and the pavilions dotting the landscape with the frequency of gas stations in rural America. I kept my camera in its bag, as I didn't want to lengthen the journey any for our girls. But the orange tinted images of fall in rural China are seared into my mind - the autumn sun shining its late afternoon gold over a large reservoir surrounded by bamboo forest and with a simple pagoda sitting serenly in the center; the men and women working their fields with no machinery, wearing warm sweaters and basking in the sunlight.

For camping, the price was steep (about $1,500USD for a 3-bedroom cabin for 3 nights). For S'mores, the price was outrageous (about $25USD for 1 box of graham crackers, 1 bag of large marshmallows, and a few bars of chocolate). But for a weekend out of the city with our close friends, Naked Retreats and Moganshan were perfect and we are already talking about returning next spring.

Thursday, November 06, 2008

Out Again

We're headed out again - this time with the whole family, and some friends in tow.

Our family is caravaning to Moganshan with 2 other families - good friends with kids the same age as ours. We're looking forward to a wonderful weekend staying at a lodge in a bamboo forest. In my mind, we're doing some crazy upscale camping and all of the people involved are really looking forward to some time far away from the city.

We return on Sunday night, well rested and full of fresh air.

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Midnight Photoshoot


Our hotel room was hot, and we both sleep cold. But more importantly, the baby sleeps cold. Her mom had brought along a warm blanket, and the child sleeps swaddled. In the warm room, the baby couldn't sleep. I called the front desk and asked for help - they blew me off. The baby's mother called the front desk, and spoke sternly in Chinese. A cute little maid knocked on the door 5 minutes later, and she carried a fan.
She set the fan up over the baby bed. She plugged it in, she made sure it worked, and she arranged it in the corner. And then she came over to talk to the baby.
It was 11:30 at night. The baby was nursing - literally, attached to her mother's breast. And the maid came over to talk to her. She leaned right in, and the mother quickly removed her baby from her breast. Once mom made that move, the maid dived right in. She tickled her chin and brushed her face. And then she pulled out her camera.
A photo? she asked sweetly. We figured we owed her so much - she had brought the fan that would allow the baby to sleep through the night. The baby posed, and the maid snapped a picture.
Nope, not so good. She snapped a few more.
Well, the problem is the poor lighting. This young maid moved the baby to the other side of the bed, where she would have more light. She snapped more photos.
Hmm, that light is still poor. She turned on every light in the room. She snapped more photos. Apparently, the light had improved sufficiently. We thought she was done, until she picked up the child and began posing with her.
After 15 minutes of the photo shoot, she left with a cute little bye-bye.
We tucked that baby away to bed, and began to wind down ourselves.
Ten minutes later, and a knock at the door.
Our maid had returned, with an English language newspaper and a handful of chocolate bars as bribery to allow her into the room again. We showed her the sleeping child, half afraid that she would lift her right out of her bed. She just gazed happily at this cute little baby, and then left contentedly.

The Weekend Away

Where we went didn't so much matter. That we went was the point. This past weekend, my friend Morgan and I headed out of town with much less luggage than usual. Everything I needed fit into a small backpack and a camera case. She carried a suitcase and a baby... so she also carried a diaper bag and a baby bed. But between us we left behind 4 children ages 4 and under, and 2 husbands happily consigned to Daddy Duty for the weekend.

Dave and I have met the cliche of our generation, having backpacked through Europe. We lived in Hungary for 5 months and we jumped rickety trains and casino-style ferries all through Eastern Europe. We learned a bit of Hungarian and managed to pick up words and phrases in each town, enough to get by. We relied on our guidebooks and maps to point us in the right direction, and they generally did.

But this style of unplanned travel seemed out of reach for our family in China. First, we travel with two young children, and so our needs have grown immensely. We bring along luggage than we can comfortably carry on our backs. We walk less and taxi more. And we require afternoon naps and slow mornings. Besides these advances in our traveling style, we've found China much more difficult to explore. Our Mandarin - although enough to "get by" in Shanghai - is embarrasingly limited. And we recognize very few characters. Studying a map posted on a street corner in China will not help us at all, and comparing my Lonely Planet map to my surroundings rarely works because I can not read many street signs. For too many reasons, our old style of simple exploring would not work in China.

But this weekend, I left the children and their luggage and their schedules behind. I partnered with a friend who has studied Mandarin diligently for nearly 2 years. I speak enough Mandarin to get by in Shanghai. She speaks and understands enough Mandarin to get by in Ningbo, which made her a wonderful traveling companion.

I left home on Saturday morning at 10:30, headed to Shanghai South Railway Station where we had arranged to meet. The train station is enormous, with multiple floors and most signs written in Chinese characters. We arrived with our tickets in hand, so although the signage was confusing at best, we simply showed our tickets to various official looking folks and were eventually pointed in the right direction. We learned that departures approach the train from the top floor and arrivals enter the train station from a lower floor. We also learned that Chinese train begin re-numbering by class. We rode 1st class in car 1. We walked all the way to the front of the train, and tried to board car 1. We were turned away in Mandarin that neither of us could understand. We walked the length of the train, with each conductor telling us the same information - keep walking. Eventually we found a second car 1 at the end of the train, and this car had fewer seats. This may have been the only difference. Inside, the train felt much like travel through Eastern Europe. The seats were relatively comfortable and the overhead racks held our luggage. But the seat covers looked ancient and rather grimey, and I would not have chosen to sit on the floor. We also learned how to squat on a moving train, as this one had no Western toilets.

Our intention in traveling to Ningbo was to visit Putoshan, a mountain and island covered in Buddhist statues, temples and caves and purportedly beautiful. This guy's webpage is a bit silly, but it shows where we had intended to visit.

We arrived in Ningbo on a rainy afternoon, and after checking into the hotel we only had a few hours of murky daylight left. Our hotel was wonderfully located, an easy 10 minute walk from the sights of town and so we headed out to explore. But our daylight disappeared too quickly and our hunger appeared in full force, so we quickly ditched our touristing efforts and sought out dinner. We rejected a few places because they looked filthy. We rejected a few places because they were empty. We rejected a few places because someone cooked up stinky tofu on the street outside. And we finally settled on our restaurant because they had English on the menu. We're not sure what we ate, but had it not been swimming in grease we would have had no complaints. As it was, the flavor was great. We headed back to the hotel, planning for an early night so that we could head out early to Putuoshan.

Hours of talking and a late morning later, we jumped into a taxi at nearly noon on Sunday. In our faltering Mandarin, we told the drive we wanted to go to Putuoshan. This left the poor man quite confused - taxis can not drive to Putuoshan, as it is a few hours and a river away. We expected this, and asked him to take us to the ferry. What we did not expect is that to reach the ferry, you must first take a bus. We called in a hotel manager to help us translate. He leaned in the window and advised us not to go to Putuoshan. A taxi ride to the bus station, waiting for the next bus, an hour bus ride to the ferry station, waiting for the next ferry, and another hour plus ferry ride to the island would have been a wasted day. He told us to go to Xicou instead.

Reveling in our ability to fly by the seat of our pants, we directed the taxi driver to Xicou and embarked on a really interesting day. The drive out of Ningbo went through factories and warehouses, and eventually into hills and villages. The scenery never became American rural, but quickly became China rural - fields and gardens adjacent to dense piles of grimy tiled housing blocks.

Xikou was a lovely restored village, much akin to Colonial Williamsburg. We could enter a few restored houses and temples, and in 1 hall we walked by various army implements - appropriate, as Xikou is famed as the birthplace of Chiang Kai-Shek, the president of China under the Kuomintang. We breezed through the buildings, watched a trickster balance a bike on his forehead, and tried stinky tofu (not good - but not as bad as Dave described it!)




After an hour or two of exploring this town in the drippy rain, we found a driver to bring us to Xuedou Mountain and Xian Zhang Yan waterfall, which made an astounding drop off of a sheer cliffside into thick haze. We walked a stone path through a canopy of draping trees and bamboo, passing stone Buddhas and hidden pagodas. As the rain slowed and the haze gathered, our walk became more pleasant while the crowds diminished. We reveled in the smells of trees and water, the air empty of the scent of diesel fumes or pee. The hours spent away from crowds fumes, away from the city, made the entire weekend worthwhile.





Luckily, we had asked our driver to wait for us. Because once we exited the forest, the haze was so thick that we could barely see our car. And it took us a moment to notice that his was the only car in the large lot. As we rode back down the mortgage, our eyes avoided the windows as we could rarely see more than a few feet in front of the car. We asked the driver to help us return to Ningbo, and he brought us to a taxi stand in Xikou. A row of old pick-up trucks sat on the side of the road, each with a TAXI sign lit on top of the cab, and we feared that we would be sharing one of those seats for the 45 minute ride back to the hotel. I sought out a bathroom first and found not only one of the cleanest public bathrooms I've used in China, but also that we were in fact dropped at a bus station and that the bus to Ningbo would leave in about 5 minutes.

I emptied my bladder and took one of the last seats on the bus. Quite a few people rode without seats, and many folded out seats in the aisle. Even as a full bus, we still stopped to pick up men standing on the side of the road. We bounced off our seats many times, but rode cheaply and rather comfortably in our seats to Ningbo.

After a fully Chinese day, we headed to Pizza Hut for an unexciting dinner and the slept soundly.

Monday we met the return train at 2:30 in the afternoon, and spent our morning exploring Moon Lake in dry morning weather. The gardens surrounding this lovely, small lake were beautiful and the lack of crowds left of enchanted.


Overall, we enjoyed Ningbo and Xikou, and we loved the quiet of the mountain and waterfalls outside Ningbo. But I reveled in the backpacking attitude we were able to take as we explored China - an adventure well worth doing.

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Tickets In Hand

Family Travel Plans:

Friday, December 19th
Leaving Shanghai at 6:00pm
Arriving in Chicago on the same day at 5:10pm

Saturday, December 27th
Drive from Chicago to St. Louis

Sunday, January 4th
Dave leaves St. Louis at 6:00am
Arriving in Shanghai via Chicago on Monday at 3:05pm

Wednesday, January 21st
Dave leaves Shanghai at 6:00pm
Arriving in St. Louis via Chicago on the same day at 10:10pm

Sunday, January 25th
Drive from St. Louis to Chicago

Saturday, January 31st
Leaving Chicago at 10:35am
Arriving in Shanghai on Sunday at 3:05pm

The drive dates are still rough guides, but the flights have all been purchased. While Dave is in Shanghai, I'm planning to road trip to Kansas City for a few days as well. We hope to see as many of you as possible during our short time in the states!

Saturday, November 01, 2008

Guest Post: Culinary Delights

Since Lynne is without internet access this weekend, I will fill in today and make a guest post regarding one of my favorite topics: food. Since we arrived in Asia, we have had the opportunity to sample many new dishes - most of which we are glad we tried, some of which we love, and a small minority, well, end up exiting our bodies much quicker than they entered...

Today I will give a few highlights of "interesting" foods I have tried (3 of them in the last 2 days). The octupus-looking squid with black gunk squirting out at the hot-pot place in Qingdao would have been on this list, but Lynne covered it already. And I'll leave out a bunch of things I'm pretty well used to by now (cow stomach, pig knuckle, chicken/duck feet, tongue, eel, etc. etc.).

As one more piece of background: I am a "try anything once" type. My coworkers tend to take this as a challenge... "anything?"

1. Stinky Tofu: This is tofu that is marinated to make it smell as bad as humanly possible. There are a number of times in China where we have been walking along the street and were suddenly overcome by a strong odor and assumed we were near an outdoor latrine used by construction workers with a fondness for Mexican food and placed on top of a sulfurous geyser. Nope, just a stinky tofu stand.

The good news: it doesn't taste as bad as it smells.

The bad news: that's about as much as I can say for it. Use lots and lots of chili sauce.

2. Silkworms: Apparently, after a silkworm's "useful life" is done, they get retired to restaurants, where they are dried out and fried. I've got photographic evidence of this one. Again, it wasn't as bad as it sounds (it wasn't slimy or anything) but it sure wasn't good either.



3. Drunken shrimp: In the US, when a dish is called "drunken", it generally refers to a dish that was prepared using beer or other alcoholic beverages. In China, when you are served drunken fish, you take it a bit more literally. The shrimp are, in fact, drunk.

Basic preparation, as far as I can tell, involves mixing bai jiu (Chinese rice wine, worth a separate post of its own) with various sweeteners and other flavors, and then dropping some live shrimp in. Wait until the shrimp get nice and drunk (stop thrashing about so much), and then fish 'em out and munch away.

Luckily for me, my coworker who took me out for this provided a tamer version: they had "marinated" long enough to be pretty well dead (alcohol poisoning?) so they didn't fight too much on the way down. And, to be honest, they tasted fantastic. I'd have these again, but I'm still not sure I'd do it if they were more "loud drunks" than "quiet drunks".

4. Frog: Sichuanese food (sometimes "Szechuan" in the US) is some of my favorite Chinese food. It tends to be spicy, but a different kind of spicy - sort of numbing, due to the special pepper they use. A coworker took me to our favorite nearby Sichuan restaurant, and she said one of their best dishes was the frog. Sure, I thought, no problem. The dish arrived: a fairly typical looking Sichuan dish, with pieces of meat and vegetable floating in a broth covered in Sichuan peppers and other spices. "Try it." I gamely poke in with my chopsticks and grab a piece of meat. Pulling it out, I quickly realize that the butcher did not spend much time on this. It's a full frog, although the head was (mostly) gone.

Many meats in China are served "bone-in" and without much meat on said bone. Chinese people believe the meat right on the bone is the best (on a side note, this makes chicken breast super cheap). Usually you have to really gnaw at the bone to get much of anything, and it's not worth the effort. The frog was an exception. Although these weren't real well-fed frogs, there was enough meat to taste, and it was super tender, falling right off the bone. And with the Sichuan spices - fantastic! Another winner, as long as you're prepared for the "full frog" visuals.

5. Ikizukuri: One of my favorite restaurants in town is a Japanese dive where you can pay RMB 150 (about $22) for all the food, beer, and sake you want. It's worth spending a long time there and filling up on sushi, sashimi, teppanyaki, tempura, okonomi yaki, and other great stuff. Last night I went with my coworkers, and they told me to try the fish that was already on the table. Fish is often served whole in China, so I no longer bat an eyelash at having the fish staring at me. This particular one had it's head and tail held up, and a covering of radish over the middle; on top of the radish were some leaves, with sashimi on the leaves. Sure, I'll try it. Grab a piece, dip it in my wasabi... not too bad.

"Take a closer look. Watch his fins."

The fish was still alive. I decided I had enough of that one. I won't be doing this one again, for both culinary and ethical reasons.

But I did want to get a peek at the chef's handiwork, to see how he managed to keep the fish alive and (sort of) breathing while I ate his innards. After the females at the table excused themselves, Yan tried to move the radishes/leaves to give us a view. But just as he did it, the fish made a lunge for his hand. We quickly passed the plate back to the wait staff without seeing the surgeon's work.

Tomorrow, I'm taking the girls to O'Malley's for a burger and fries. I need a break.