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I know I've mentioned the American Women's Club of Shanghai (AWCS) and the Huan Ying program of initiating and welcoming new members. What I hadn't mentioned was my low expectations of the group. The AWCS is a social club and I was expecting an older set of women. My Huan Ying group is fairly young -- the youngest member is 24. Aside from one mother of 2, the rest of us have no children. Another woman (she has 1 child) was signed up to join our group, but was unable to attend the Huan Yings. Our group clicked pretty well, which was a really wonderful surprise. It's interesting, and perhaps a bit sad, that it's easier to meet and make friends here in China than back home in the U.S.
Today I was wandering through a wet market in Hong Qiao. Originally I was going to a home store to buy a big container for cat food. I was already in Hong Qiao with my Huan Ying event, so I thought I'd visit this store while I was out there. If you know me even a little bit, then it'll come as no surprise that I got lost. This getting lost was more pathetic than usual as the store was less than a 5 minute walk from the metro stop I had left (I realized this as I was making ready to go home). My intuition told me to turn left though the map suggested that I go right. Which to follow? Map or my intuition? After all these years of my intuition guiding me in the opposite direction I need to go, I should have disregarded it again today. But common sense was never my strong suit. Just ask my sister. Instead, I walked in the opposite direction for blocks. After a while, I just thought that it was further than I had remembered or that it was on some side street I couldn't recall. In a lane between and behind the stores was the entrance to a market of some sort. I couldn't resist.
The market was divided into 2 main areas. One area had produce and the other had fish. Around the perimeter of the produce area were stalls selling various fresh meats. Along edges of the market were corridors, for lack of a better word, lined with stalls selling, in one area, prepared foods such as fried chicken and barbecued meats, in another area, household goods like house shoes, pots, and mats. The smells from the fish market were as you'd expect. Every kind of seafood you could imagine were on display: squid, long silver fish, round fish, fish heads, fish middles, eels, crayfish. People squatting and cleaning fish, letting the innards fall to the floor and then tossing the guts in the general direction of a rubbish pile a few feet away.
Outside were people with buckets, tubs, and bags literally full of live fresh shrimp. Shrimp skittering and hopping out of the buckets. At least I believe it was shrimp. It could also have been small crayfish.
I took a picture of a woman gutting a fish outside. In front of her is what looks to be a cage full of snakes. The woman who is waiting for her fish has a fresh chicken in her shopping bag.
I know that the pictures I choose to display in my blog tell only one part of the story of Shanghai, but it is a part that I find fascinating. Who are the people that work in these shops? The people that provide the goods in the shops? How do the local people here really live? How many of them shop in the modern supermarkets that we expats find so indispensable? I know that it is possible to live here on much less than what we currently spend. But it is hard to give up our comforts.
It's been a couple of months since we've moved here and it's starting to feel like home. At least when I go out, it doesn't feel odd to be surrounded by Chinese-speaking people and Chinese-only signs. We feel pretty well settled in, including Eric's G.I. Joes.
Despite the New Year's and the May Holiday being over, people still light fireworks. I got up at about 11:30 on a Sunday night after hearing the 'pop pop pop' of fireworks going off. I could see the display in the distance from my balcony. My camera isn't very good for night shots so this is all I could imagine. The noise isn't terribly bothersome and I like to watch.
This has been a pretty busy week for me. I've joined the American Women's Club of Shanghai (AWCS) and we've started our Huan Ying (HY) group this past Monday. I met with my HY group for lunch this past Wednesday after an AWCS event in the French Concession area of Shanghai. One of the women in my HY group has actually been in China for 8 years and in Shanghai for 5. Her Mandarin is pretty good. We went to a small local place to eat lunch that Wednesday and Amy, being able to read Mandarin, ordered for the table. The restaurant staff did manage to find an English menu and we discovered that donkey meat was one of the items available on the menu. No, we didn't order donkey meat. Thursday was an afternoon doctor's appointment (routine check up) and an Expat Professional Women of Shanghai meeting. I'm meeting with my HY group again on Monday and I'm looking forward to that.
On one of my many excursions on the metro this past week, I saw something remarkable that I have never before seen. At People's Square, the people waiting to board the metro were organized into 2 lines with an open pathway between for the people getting off the train. People were allowed off the train in an orderly fashion and people then boarded the train, also in an orderly fashion. This is the way it's supposed to be done. There are markers on the floor telling you to do this but that's largely ignored. I haven't seen this happen since. Must be a once-every-70-years sort of event like Halley's Comet.
This is also odd fruit week at our house. I was at Carrefour and I saw a big fruit special display. I bought lychees and rambutan.
I'm learning that the things I had been calling lychees are in fact called longans. In this picture, the fruit to the left are lychees and the red hairy thing to the right I believe are rambutan. I prefer longans over lychees. I haven't cracked open a rambutan yet, but I think they're supposed to taste similar to lychees.
I also bought these red berries. I don't know what they're called but they have a sweet-tart taste that reminds me of the flavor of sweetened cranberry juice.
The berry, when you pull it apart, seems almost fibrous. At the center is a pit. They're about the size of a dollar coin and a deep dark red. I hope I can find more.
Everywhere you go, there always seems to be something cooking. Along the street are tiny restaurants that can't seat more than 20 people and food stalls barely bigger than a closet. Here's my new favorite thing to eat:
Squid on a stick. The person behind the counter skewers several pieces of squid onto a stick and brushes it with some sort of sauce. The skewers of squid are then placed on a barbecue. What you get is deliciously smoky squid with a little bit of heat. This skewer is only 3 RMB (about 30-40 cents, US). This is so far the best thing I've eaten from the street.
Friday again. Another week has gone by in a blur. I don't really know where the time goes. Today I had an interview with a recruiting company who places people with various companies here in Shanghai. The office is across the river in Pudong so I did some recon yesterday to figure out about how much time I needed in order to get there. The office isn't far from a metro station, so that is what I used to get over there. Really not a bad commute during the afternoon hours.
Of course, all that changes with the morning rush hour.
The Shanghai metro has a main north-south artery, which is Line 1. The east-west one is Line 2. Lines 1 and 2 intersect at People's Square, which is undeniably the busiest metro station in Shanghai. I needed to ride Line 1 to People's Square and then transfer to Line 2 and take that to Pudong. Simple, except for the fact that that is the basic plan for a million other people. The metro station near me (Xu Jia Hui) is a fairly busy one and the car was full going to People's Square. At the intermediate stops between Xu Jia Hui and People's Square, it was a struggle for people to exit and to cram themselves on board. Once we reached People's Square, the train literally emptied. There couldn't have been more than a handful of people left on the train. I elbowed my way onto the escalator (take that you pushy old woman with your pointy handbag!) and got swallowed up in the sea of people transferring to Line 2. Once you exit the train, you go up a flight of stairs and through a tunnel in order to get to the Line 2 part of the station. There is a bottleneck at the beginning of the tunnel and at the end. I wanted to take a picture of all the people in the tunnel, but I knew that there would be no way for me to accomplish that without having the camera jostled out of my hands or me being swept unwillingly away with the crowd despite my efforts. So I kept moving. I barely made it onto the Line 2 train. My purse got caught on the door and I had to work to free it. Even though there wasn't any room to move or to breathe, still more people crammed themselves into the already overfilled cars. And there were hundreds of people left who didn't make it onto this train and had to wait for the next one to arrive. To get an idea of how closely packed we were, get out 4 cans of sardines. Open all 4. Lay one can in front of you. Take the contents of a second can and stuff them into the first. Repeat with the third can. Now take the contents of the fourth can and cram them into the first can with all the other sardines. Use as much force as needed to put the lid back onto this can of sardines. That is about how full the car was. You needed a big shoe horn to cram the last 3 men onto the train. I suppose the Chinese should be thankful that they are so slightly built. Maybe they're built like that from cramming onto trains. I don't know.
Emerging from the metro station into Pudong is a bit unsettling. It's hard to believe that this is also Shanghai. Pudong really feels like a different city than the rest of Shanghai. I suppose that is because Pudong was more planned than the Puxi part of Shanghai.
Things went well in my interview and the ride back home was uncrowded and uneventful. I went to Malone's American Cafe (which I think is actually Canadian) for a hamburger and fries. I have been craving a burger for a while now and Malone's is pretty good. I had the 48 RMB (6 USD) lunch special, which included soup and a salad. Don't eat the soup. Tomorrow I think I might get a burrito and salsa. Yes, I think about food frequently. No matter where you walk, there seems to always be something cooking. Or, as Eric might say, it sometimes smells more like something is dying and decaying.
Right now it is late afternoon and I'm feeling a bit tired. Maybe it's from walking all over in heels, which I never wear. I'm trying to rouse myself to get some bread. I know I'll feel more energized if I can get myself moving; it's just that first step that is so hard. Alright. Time to go.
The Chinese Labor holiday is over and we are back to our normal schedules. It feels good to get back into my usual routine. I haven't been getting the best sleep this past week. We love our internet telephone line and being able to keep our old number helps us keep in touch with people back in the U.S. Unfortunately, that also means telemarketers. We have put our number on the National Do Not Call List, but we still get calls. Since our number looks like a normal Georgia telephone number, people don't know we aren't actually in Georgia or even in the U.S. This means that we get telemarketer calls during normal U.S. business hours, which in China means the middle of the night. The worst has been this past week where we got a telephone call at around 2am from an unidentified caller (we have caller ID). Not just once, but for 3 consecutive nights at roughly the same time. One of those mornings, that telemarketing call was followed by a second one from another company a couple of hours later. Bleah. I am a somewhat light sleeper and once I have been woken up, I have a hard time falling back to sleep. The third night, I anticipated an early AM wake up call, so I positioned the telephone in a convenient place. I managed to answer it on the second ring but no one responded on the other end! No one! And then the line went dead. I was so annoyed. An internet search showed that the number belonged to Six Flags and that other people had also been similarly annoyed with a no answer-hangup. We called the number back and left a message to stop calling. So far, so good.
Yesterday, we had Penny, her sister (Li Li), and her sister's son (Dan Dan) over for dinner. Between Eric's Joe collection and our game console, Dan Dan was enjoying himself immensely. In China, it is considered impolite to call your elders by their first name. Instead, you refer to them as 'Aunt' (ā yí)
and 'Uncle' (shū shu). Dan Dan was informed that Eric Shū Shu understood some Mandarin, but he had to speak slowly. Throughout the evening Dan Dan spoke --- very --- slowly --- and --- distinctly to Eric. To me, however, he spoke in his usual rapid Mandarin, forgetting that I know even less Mandarin than Eric. He told me a story about his grandmother and a cat. That is about all I managed to pick up. Li Li saw Mugsy sleeping on the bed and commented on how real our cat looked. For a minute I thought we had the stuffed toy cat out someplace, but then realized that she was referring to Mugs. I patted him to get him to stir a bit and we all laughed hard at the 'real' cat.
Eric had bought a new Snake Eyes back in the U.S. about a year or so ago. These are the new generation Joes. They're about 8-10 inches tall and have been designed to look more like Japanese anime characters. Eric had it in his office back in the U.S. and he brought it with him here. He gave it to Dan Dan. Here, they're looking at all of Snake Eyes' accessories.
We also played Wii games. We bought several new games over the weekend. One of which is called 'Mama Cook Off' and the objective is to prepare meals by chopping, stirring, and cooking items. We both burned our shrimp dishes and neither of us can figure out the proper way to tear lettuce leaves. Another game is called 'Elebits' and you need to find and capture all these little creatures that are bits of electricity (get it?). You can tear up a room in search of these creatures. Eric and I were playing it together and he kept flinging a bookcase around. I think that is the main reason why he likes to play that game.
Dinner was easy to serve since I had prepared much of it in advance. I just needed to warm everything and put some rice in the cooker and that was it. I made a lot of food because I just have no idea how much people can eat, especially a 10-year old active boy. I made pork ribs with a garlicky black bean sauce, roasted chicken legs, meatballs, bok choy, and green beans with garlic. Later on, Eric and Dan Dan were playing with his Joes. It must make no sense to a 10-year old boy why Eric just keeps all these toys to look at.
Today, I went out and bought a few things for the house. Paper towels, cat litter, and the like. I am reminded of my college days when I run my errands. Now, like then, I do not have a car and I use my backpack to schlep stuff home. I put a 10 L bag of cat litter in my backpack today and brought it home on the metro. The package doesn't give weight, but I imagine it weighs about 20 lbs. The metro was crowded today. I was in an already full car when a dozen+ people came out of nowhere and crammed themselves into the car at the last minute. From my limited viewpoint, it appeared that a person got caught temporarily in the doors. I had bought some rolls at the bakery and had to work hard to keep them from being smashed.
Now I'm at home. I've emptied out the last 2 packing boxes and I'm quite pleased with myself. I've put some laundry out on the balcony to dry. I had forgotten how wonderful clothes smell when you've dried them out on a line.
