I woke up this morning feeling great as I had finally had my first full night of sleep. After showering and eating a quick breakfast I rushed off to a Survival Crash course in Chinese language. In this class a handful of Chinese Students from ECNU taught me and my fellow beginers some very basic and very useful Chinese phrases, such as:
Where is the bathroom? - ce suo zai na
I'm sorry - dui buqi
Thankyou - xie xie
My name is - wo de ming zi shi....
Of course, the words all have tonal variances (4 tones - up, down, flat, and down up) making them much more hard to pronounce then to type. Though it was hard, i feel like my first little lesson was an overall success.
After the crash course, we met up with our program advisor, Andrew Field, and explored Shanghai for the remainder ofthe afternoon. Andrew is an awesome guy; in his own words he is 38 going on 20 and he proved it with flying colors today. Our destinations were Xin Tian Di (where I had dinner the other night) and another area called Tianzifang, and we made use of public transportation to get there- both bus and metro. Xin Tian Di and Tianzifang are both old converted parts of what is known as the French concession, an area that in the late 1800's/early 1900's was politically and economically dominated by French traders. The French concession still maintains a distinct European influence today and many ex-pats frequent the area. In recent past, the Chinese government decided that the historical French concession should take on a new economic purpose and sought to create a hip sheik shopping and eating district throughout. Though Xin Tian Di and Tianzifang share a similar past, and ultimately similar future the manner that the Chinese government delt with them differs greatly. In Xin Tian Di, the Chinese government decided to tear down historic French concession buildings and rebuild with their rubble - they hired the architects of Faneuil Hall in Boston to take on this project. In doing this however the displaced all of the residents of Xin Tian Di, a topic that is still a sore subject for many Chinese. In the Tianzifang area the Chinese left the historic buildings standing and allowed the residents to remain, however they did add many shops, bars and restaurants in the lower levels. After exploring Tianzifang for a while, our program director and a handful of people in the group stumbled upon a thai restaurant with an impressive cocktail menu- needless to say we missed our bus back to campus and soon learned that Andrew Field is “one of us”.
Below are some pictures from Xin Tian Di, Tianzifang as well as some other random shots from the city. Enjoy!
Part of the city
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Xin Tian Di
Fountain in Xin Tian Di
Cool Bar in Xin Tian Di
Jake and I at the communist museum
More Xin Tian Di
Alley in Tianzifang
Another cool alley in Tianzifang.JPG)
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