RATATAT!!!

RATATAT

On Thursday night I saw Ratatat here in Shanghai! They played at a place called Zhi Jiang Dream Factory, which is an old French Concession factory converted into music venue. It was completely jam packed with people (literally 200 or so over capacity) of which majority were ex-patriot's or college students. The show was incredible, and even the warm up act, a local chinese band, got the crowd going. I managed to push my way up to about the second row from the stage, and though I got drenched in sweat and abused by the mosh pit it was completely worth it. Not much else I can say to describe the concert, i'll let the pictures speak for themselves (I have great video too, but can't upload it because of the block on blogger).

After the show we went to a night club called Sky Lounge- which though trendy, was still silly and Chinese. The music was a mixture of gangster rap and bad 90's pop - I may or may not have danced on stage to the YMCA........


Today, Friday, we went on another field trip with our program director. This time on a walking tour of the French Concession, an area which I have mentioned in past posts. We explored some back alley neighborhoods, historic homes, and even an art gallery or two. To make the afternoon more interesting, our director brought along a friend, an architect/artist/photographer living in Shanghai, who gave us somewhat of a photopraphy assignment while we were out. The friend (whose name I forget), is working on a photography project of Shanghai. For this project he wanders around the city taking pictures, however before doing so places an arbitrary but strict set of guildlines on himself, for example: while out, he photographs the nearest person to every 6th red door he sees. In a nutshell, his reason/theory for doing this is that you get a more uniform and less arbitrary sense of the city through a series of photographs that all follow the same rule. Our assignment was to do just this; give ourselves an arbirtray rule for photography in the French concession and stick to it. My rule was that whenever the group stopped I would photograph the closest address number, it was kind of silly but I actually came out with some incredible pictures.

Still a tourist

It's getting ever closer to the end of my stay in Shanghai and so this past weekend I crammed in a few of the last touristy things here that I hadn't yet done.

On Friday, my program director, who doubles as my modern Chinese history teacher took my class on a field trip down to the historic Bund section of Shanghai. The Bund, is a water front section of Shanghai that during the late 1800's and early 1900's was part of Shanghai's international settlement. British and American merchants set up communities on and around the Bund (similar to the French communities in the French concession) that enjoyed extra-territoriality and ultimately great economic development. To this day the architecture of the Bund still resembles a European city much more than a Chinese one.

Though I have been down to the Bund countless times to hit the bar scene, it was very interesting go during the day, and even more so to go with a historian who had much insight on the history and architecture of the area. One notable Bund sight that we visited was the Astor House Hotel, established in 1846, it was well known for its luxurious accomodations and and its marvelous ball room which housed social events for the wealthy western Shanghai elites.

On Saturday my roommate and I visited the Yu Yuan Gardens in old town Shanghai, and afterwards ate soup dumplings at one of the most famous Shanghai dumpling houses. Though the garden was beautiful, it was a miserably humid so we didn't spend as much time there as I would have liked.

Sunday I spent the entire day working on a research paper, so I never got around to posting.... Also, having to navigate proxy servers to gain access to and post on my blog is quite a pain.

Ballroom


Yu Yuan Garden


More of the Garden

Access Denied

I've been doing a lot this weekend, even despite the heavy finals workload.... I'll post a full update about everything on Sunday night (Sunday morning for yall).

Thought I should note though, I will no longer be able to upload pictures and even posting entries will be a bit difficult. It seems that The Great Fire Wall of China has blocked access to blogger.com so i'll have to use proxy servers to post.... Pretty annoying especially considering I was trying to write more in my last few weeks here!

Thinking Chinese -

Sooooo, I was reading an article in the New York Times today and the jist of it was this:

"While the United States is still debating whether to build a more efficient kind of coal-fired power plant that uses extremely hot steam, China has begun building such plants at a rate of one a month."

This basically sums up everything that I have come to learn about the Chinese government as opposed to ours. While the U.S. is busy arguing, and figuring out how to not offend people, China is busy getting things done. Here are a few other examples:

Swine Flu comes to China- within hours the man who has brought it here is quarantined, as are 286 staff and guests from the hotel he is staying at, everyone from his flight (and their families), and just for good measure every Mexican person in China.... Result- there is 1 known case of swine flu in China.

Approaching the Beijing olympics, athletes express concerns over pollution in the city. The Chinese government tells millions of people - "sorry man, you can't drive today, or sorry man your factory has to stop producing" (not actually what they said- but similar) . Result, Beijing air quality was acceptable, and still is much better than in years previous.
(With the approach of the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, it will be interesting to see what steps the government takes to clean up the pollution in my lovely city).


Granted, all this comes at the expense of some citizens rights.....but i'm not going to pass judgement. It seems to be working pretty damn well for China.




http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/world/asia/11coal.html?_r=1

Happy Mothers Day

Happy Mothers day! (i'll skype you later when you're awake)

China seems to have skipped spring this year and gone straight to summer. It is brutally hot here, a little over 30 degrees celcius (about 90 degrees F), with humidity at about 35%. Also, the effects of the air pollution here are much worse when it is hot; the sky is brown with a hint of blue, and every breath you take seems heavier than the last. I'm doing whatever I can to avoid being outside, which right now includes doing research for a paper about the Jewish diaspora communities of Shanghai in the 1930's and 40's (as you can tell, I reallllly do not want to be oustide).

A few notes from the weekend:

This past week I discovered the pirated DVD stand outside of the back gate of my university. I was a little late on this discovery, which may actually be for the best, because almost every night of this week I have bought a movie or TV series to watch instead of doing homework....
As the intellectual property laws in China are not very stringent, street vendors can get away with selling burned copies of movies, computer programs (such as windows), and music. And it's not all old stuff either- they have all of the latest blockbusters months before they hit dvd in the US (I recently watched The Reader and Taken, and i'm thinking about buying Slum dog millionaire). I'm not sure about the legality of bringing the dvd's back into the U.S., but for the time being i'm really enjoying having them.

Dont think i've mentioned this yet - but over the past few weeks I have made a few trips to the Shanghai fabric market to have custom clothes made. It's an incredible and addicting place: A three story building filled with near a hundred shops, and tons of tourists. In each shop, the tailors have gigantic rolls of patterned fabrics, and examples of their work- everything from shirts to cashmere coats. Once you pick a fabric you like and tell the tailor what you want he begins to measure you, while being measured you viciously bargain over the price with one of the tailor's helpers (which are generally cute college aged Chinese girls who speak a little english). The whole experience was a little overwhelming at first, but once I picked up my perfectly customed clothes I was immediately hooked; every time that I have gone back to pick up something, I have ended up buying something else.

To all of my friends who asked me to buy you something there, i'm sorry but it would be near impossible for me to do. There's generally enough confusion between me and the tailors even when i'm having clothes made for myself, sorry!

A day late....

Today is Cinco de Mayo!!

A day that celebrates Mexican heritage and the defeat of the French in 1862 (it is not, as is commonly believed Mexican independence day). Cinco de Mayo is also a day which holds absolutely no significance to Chinese people what-so-ever. Yesterday however, May 4th, is one of the most historically important days to the people of China; unsuprisingly, my blog entry about it is a day late.....

In 1919, following the end of World War I, the European nations ratified the Treaty of Versailles. As most people know, WWI and this resulting treaty had serious implications for the geopolitical makeup of Europe, however it also sent shockwaves through China. In this treaty, Germany was forced to give up it's territorial holdings in China. However, instead of being returned to China, control of the German holdings were instead given to Japan. This lead to mass public outrage and increased nationalism amongst the Chinese people, ultimately taking form in mass protests known as The May 4th Movement. This movement is very significant to the people of China as it marked a movement away from traditional Chinese values, towards increased Chinese nationalism and it further marked the first mass political movement of the common people. This year's May 4th was particularly important as it marked the 90th anniversary of this movement (again... i'm embarrassed that i'm a day late).

On the topic of anniversarys-
Eerily big political events in China tend to happen in years that end in 9:
1919- May 4th Movement
1949- Founding of the Communist party
1959- The Chinese Liberation of Tibet....
1989- ___________ (Fill in the blank)

As you can see, this year has many significant anniversaries in store, which has lead to much speculation amongst China scholars about what the year would bring; this is for two reasons:
1. Big political events tend to happen in China on years that end in 9.
2. Big political events tend to happen on anniversarys of other events in China.
Though there has been a lot of speculation, as far as I can tell, May 4th came and went without a hitch.



Completely unrelated to yesterday's anniversary....

I have a job in China! I am now a paid english tutor. My pupil is a 25 year old Chinese guy, who works for an economic think tank here in Shanghai. His english is actually incredible; he has a large vocabulary, good grasp of the grammar and also has good pronunciation (this is great considering my grammar and vocabulary would probably be detrimental to him). He was however looking to practice his conversational skills with a native english speaker that has similar interests- mostly politics, international relations, and sports. The two of us get together once a week and discuss current events, politics and cultural differences between China and the US. It is literally the best job ever, i'm being paid to learn about China by talking to a Chinese person (and an incredibly smart and insightful person at that).

One other unrelated note:

*Bought concert tickets today to see one of my favorite bands, Ratatat, here in Shanghai on May 21. Not only were the tickets dirt cheap (about $10), but they were delivered to me in class by a motorcylce courier- I love cheap labor.

Spring Break China '09!

Let me start by apologizing. Its been a long time since my last post, and even before that my entries had been growing less and less frequent. This is not because my stay in China has become any less interesting or incredible, rather i've assimilated (as well as I can atleast). The day to day activities, interactions, conversations, and observations that once struck me as so very foreign, are now much more common place.

This being said, I have reached the home stretch of my stay in Shanghai. In my remaining 4 weeks here, I am going to make a concerted effort to write on my blog as much as I did in the first 4 weeks. I'll start this promise off below with a full length post (and pictures) about my Chinese Spring Break. Enjoy.



For spring break, a group of friends and I (as well as an overwhelming majority of the kids on my program) went to the the province of Hainan, which is actually China's largest island. We stayed in the city of Sanya, which lies at the southern tip of Hainan making it the southermost point in all of China. This geographic location makes Sanya's climate, landscape and even its inhabitants more like what I would expect to see in a South East Asian country like Vietnam or Thailand. It is extremely humid, tropical, and mountainous and the people's skin is dark from the constant sun exposure. Furthermore the air quality in Sanya is leaps and bounds better than that of any of the other cities I have visited thus far (A tourist map we found claimed that the air quality in Sanya is the 2nd best in the world; 1st place was given to Havana. Though incredible comparied to the rest of China, Sanya's air was still a bit polluted. And though I don't claim to be an expert on air quality, I do find it a bit suspicious that 1st and 2nd place were given to two of the only remaining communist countries in the world....coincidence, I think not.)

I arrived in beautiful Sanya on Saturday, April 24th with reservations to stay at the Blue Sky Youth Hostel until the following friday. Though there are many incredible hotels in Sanya, my friends and I were hoping to do this vacation on the cheap as we have been blowing through our money this semester (seriously, my new chinese name is Cha-Ching). I'm no stranger to hostels, I stayed in quite a few of them during my backpacking trip in Europe, and knew full well the possibilities that could await us- either an incredible stay or a complete sh*t hole. Luckily, the Blue Sky was incredible stay. The rooms were nice, the staff was helpful, the beer was cheep and it was located a mere 2 minutes from the beach. Also like the hostels in Europe, it was full of Aussie and British travelers who were full of incredible stories and advice and who all wanted to party. Within minutes of arriving we made some quick friends and headed down to the beach.

Besides it's beautiful beaches, Sanya has many other tourists attractions such as fishing, surfing, snorkeling and even day visits to nearby monkey island. Though we originally had plans to do all of the above, we ended up laying by the beach for the entirety of the week; and when 6 days of being beach bums wasn't enough, we extended our tickets and hostel for another night and spent a 7th day on the beach. I probably sound like a huge slag, having not done all of the touristy activities. But in reality laziness had little to do with it- we were trying to do the vacation on the cheap, and these day trips/tourist activities were very expensive.

Below are a few other notes/observations about spring break and China.

- There are three bays in Sanya: Yalong Bay, Sanya Bay, and Dadonghai Bay. The order that I have listed them here corresponds with the beauty of their beaches (from best to worst) and also corresponds to the cost and extravagence of the hotels located on them (from most to least). Needless to say, our youth hostel was located on Dadonghai bay, and though this was not a bad beach we still prefered to spend the majority of our time on the other beaches. Luckily for us, there were tons of other study abroad kids in Sanya, many of whom did stay in the nicer hotels on these nicer, more private bays and thus we had constant access to their beaches and pools.


-Contrary to what I believed going in to Sanya, it is not an undiscovered tourist spot. Rather it is mostly undiscovered by (or just too damn far away from ) English speakers. Sanya is mobbed Chinese and an overwhelming majority of Russian tourists. Everywhere we went the signs and menus were written in Russian, Chinese, and English. And the beaches were full of big burly speedo wearing Russian men. Furthermore, as it is a tourist spot, it is not cheap. We were constantly getting ripped off by cab drivers, store owners and street food vendors (though it may only mean the difference of a dollar or two to me, the principle of the thing still really pisses me off).

-Eating there was for the most part brutal, and a stark reminder of how easy we have it in the U.S.. The cuisine either catered to the Russian tourists (gross), or consisted of loads of shell fish; though i'm not actually allergic to shellfish, I'm not a huge fan. The only other option was food from street vendors; I often eat street food in Shanghai, and did so in Sanya too until 3 of my friends came down with severe food poisoning midway through the week. They were out of commission for literally 24 hours and were absolutely miserable; the cluprit, street dumplings. After consulting with hostel management about their condition, we heard a story that we have heard time and time again in Shanghai- There are many impoverished people in China, some will do whatever it takes to make a dollar, whether or not it is at another's expense. Some people (possibly this particular dumpling vendor) use sick animals to make their street food, because sick animals are cheaper to by than well ones, this can obviously lead to food poisoning and other health issues. We were also warned too be careful where we bought alcohol as some people make fake alcohol which they try to pass off as western brands. This is an extremely dangerous practice, as the consumption of fake alcohol, which is usually closer in content to rubbing alcohol , can make you go blind, or worse. Having never heard of such practices I was stunned, and moreso when our British friends told me that the same practices happened throughout the middle east and India (which they had recently visited). This made me realize how much I take the U.S. forgranted, at home, I have never once worried that the food/drink someone was giving me was knowling and intentially poisonous or fake.

Thats really all I have to say about spring break. As I said, we spent most of our time being beach bums and therefore had little time for cultural interactions. Below are some pictures.

The Blue Sky Youth Hostel In all of it's glory.

Crazy Chinese man making a sand sculpture of a woman's body in the middle of the night. We thought the sand sculpture was an actual unconcious/possibly injured person when we first caught sight.....
View of the Pool and Sea at the Holiday Inn Sanya Bay
Jungle Mountains
Marriot Yalong Bay
More Marriot

Yalong Bay