SHANGHAI MUSING 6.29.14

A couple little notes as I wind down my time here in Shanghai.  First, I haven't finished posting.  I'm working on several other posts, but haven't had time to finish.  I will try to do so over the next month, so if you're following this, check back at the end of July.  I hope to be finished.

I've eaten out every day that I've been to Shanghai except for maybe two days where I had leftovers --and I bought chopsticks so I could reheat some things in the plastic boxes they give you here and once or twice I had the lunch they provide for faculty at the graduate center when they have a guest speaker.

So not counting those, I've eaten at a restaurant or buffet or cafeteria for every dinner and breakfast.   I counted those places up, and it came to 50 different places, mostly Chinese, second Japanese, and third a miscellany of various foods.  I don't have the names of all the restaurants but the list is pretty complete.

	Restaurants
1.	Dain Ti Hill	2.	Faculty Club buffet, breakfast and lunch
3.	Ding Tai Fung	4.	Hangzhou hotel rest.
5.	Jade Garden	6.	Hangzhou she knocked flat rest.
7.	Bellagio	8.	Hangzhou dinner on water. HK style
9.	Golden Bull	10.	Hangzhou  lunch buffet on the lake
11.	Sushi Restaurant	12.	He Yan treat Minhang district
13.	Simple Taste	14.	Lunch Minhang campus  Xiaohong
15.	1001 Noodles	16.	Minhang cafeteria—TA paid
17.	Express  Pizza	18.	Yonjie dinner rest.  Cantonese
19.	Charme	20.	Vegetarian with Daring
21.	Bamboo Terrace	22.	Suzhou  lunch noodles
23.	Ippudo  ramen	24.	Suzhou  Taste of China rest.
25.	Panyu Lu Noodle Place	26.	Suzhou restaurant breakfast
27.	Shanghai Min	28.	Suzhou lunch/fried rice rest.
29.	Simply Thai	30.	Jane People’s Cuisine creative
31.	Wagas	32.	5th floor Bailian mall   Shunfeng
33.	Elements Fresh	34.	3rd floor Bailian mall Bi Feng Tang Restaurant (Wenjie)
35.	DY dim sum west of Panyu	36.	Uyghur restaurant
37.	HY H dim sum	38.	Xiaohong Pudong Qian Xiang Ge
39.	AjiRamen across the street	40.	Faculty class on Minghang campus  Liuyuan restaurant. 留园
41.	Pin Wei restaurant	42.	Shangri-La
43.	Pin Wei café	44.	Tasty Congee and Noodles
45.	Subway	46.	Yuan Yuan  with  Lisa He
47.	Yue Yue on the Bund	48.	Faculty Club  dinner restaurant
49.	Itacho Sushi Restaurant	50.	Peninsula Chinese Restaurant on Middle Fuxing Rd.

__________________________________________________________________________
Out walking in the evening, an opportunity to see the global technical building transform itself.

 

 

______________________________________________________________________
 The hotel room in Suzhou had an usual feature.   I guess it's unnecessary to wonder why anyone would design a bathroom with a window looking out into the bedroom.  But I remain curious.   True, there is a shade.

_____________________________________________
What do people do when the sun goes down?   You'd imagine the big city is full of night life, and you could be right, but if you head to the local park, the chances are you'll see groups of people exercising to music.  One group seems to like to spend the evening slapping themselves. Infinitely more appealing are those who spend their evenings dancing--Imagine all the parks in Shanghai (and there are a lot of them) filled with people dancing!
The forecast was rain, the evening cool and cloudy, the crowd sparse, but they were still here.

 

Show-offs strutting their stuff

This mother and her daughter (drinking) danced all night.

____________________________________________________________________

Much of this blog has turned into a photo scrapbook, so I thought I’d set up a page where I would jot down some impressions I have of Shanghai.   I’ll update this over the next month and a half, so check back if you are interested.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Today is May 31.  This weekend is Dragon Boat Festival weekend, and the races are on Monday.  I asked, where are the races?   And I was told there are no races.   Not in Shanghai, but enjoy the holiday.   Thankfully, it's raining. And the heat wave of 90 + in Shanghai and 110+ in other parts of China, has passed for now.

Today is also Children's Day.   Some of my students said they would celebrate the holiday by staying home and enjoying family and maybe going out to dinner.
I'm invited to He Yan's today.  We'll take the campus bus to Minhang, where He Yan will pick us up.

Yesterday I had a great lunch with Wenjie and his wife Jingjie.  You'll find their  new pictures in the These People  Matter Page. Because of them, I have found another reasonably priced but delicious Cantonese restaurant.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

FACT:  According to one website, as of 2013, Shanghai’s population is 23.9 million .  This makes it China’s most populous city and the most populous city proper in the world!   In comparison, Tokyo has the largest population in all other categories (two different definitions of urban area, metropolitan, and city proper)  except the city proper.  
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& 
CARS CARS CARS CARS CARS CARS CARS CARS CARS CARS CARS CARS CARS CARS CA

This may be the most popular car in Shanghai.  I used to see half of the Faculty Club parking filled with this logo.  I didn't recognize it.  Do you?   When was the last time you saw a Buick on the freeway?  Or noticed one in a parking lot?  The second most popular car must be the VW, though not the bug.   Here it's the Santana.  Most, if not all, of the taxis in Shanghai are Santanas.
 I was amazed at the number of Audis on the road.   Not Audi 3s or Audi 4s, but Audi 6s.  Some Toyotas, Hyundais, a very few Hondas, not many. I have seen two Subarus.  A few Mazdas.  More Fords and  Chevs. Take a look.






  

Porche, SO BIG he's having trouble parking!

 But before you can buy a car, you have to buy the registration/license plate..  In China the cost of purchasing the license may be as much as 83,000 RMB.   This is more than some cars cost!  Remember the big controversy about our yearly license fees?  The one that passed and lost highway repairs, ferry support, bridge replacements?   At $150 a year, it would take us 96 years to pay the fee that Shanghai residents pay just to be able to buy a car.   Beijing residents don't have such a high fee, but they do have a lottery.  When was the last time any of us won the state lottery?

from Businessweek.com

I made the mistake in a class of undergraduate students by referring to filling up their cars at the local gas stations. I got only blank looks.   I later discovered most do not own cars or even motor bikes, and bicycles are the predominant mode of transportation.  On top of this, I later learned that people are generally over 30 before they get their licenses or even think about their own cars.   And to take the test, they have to enroll in driving school, which now costs 7000 yuan or over $1000.00.  (My daughter tells me that my 15 year old grandson is getting ready to start learning to drive.)   Students have to be enrolled for at least a month in driving school before they can take the test.   One province noted that only 20 out of 100 students passed a recent test, the result being a hike in driving school costs and extra classes on how to pass the test.  (If they only practiced safe driving the way they must be practicing safe sex!)  And one newspaper reports the cost of taking the test is about $500 U.S.

This story also says that the test cars are equipped with four or five cameras to prevent the applicant from bribing the examiners, apparently a common practice.

mp;&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

As I wander around Shanghai I notice the detail and handiwork everywhere. And it’s nowhere more obvious than right below my feet.   Maybe it’s my height (or lack of it). Maybe I’m starting to stoop.  Or maybe the sidewalks are just interesting.  I’ve noted walkways in other places, like YuYuan Gardens.   American sidewalks, where they exist are concrete and pretty standard; here they are often made of tile.  In fact, I’m amazed that so much tile and brick work goes into the sidewalks and footpaths around the city.  Here at the Xuhui campus, they have been tearing up portions of the walkway and replacing whatever was there with brick.   And the sidewalks in the city have pattern tile work, which, I am told is for the blind.   It’s like braille for feet.   Take a look.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Driving:  as long as I’m Shanghai and probably long after, I will talk about the drivers, who crowd through crowds of people, almost willing to shove walkers out of the way.  In fact, reading Country Driving: a Chinese Road Trip  by Peter Hessler, I found insight in his analysis of Chinese driving styles.  Driving was so new to China (in the late 1990s) that drivers used the patterns from daily pedestrian life – “people drive the way they walk.”  Even today they don’t use turn signals, they use automobile body language—they edge to the left if they are going to turn left; they are creative and create passing lanes out of sidewalks.  “They curbsneak in traffic jams.”  The driver of a taxi I was in was frustrated by the slow speed of the taxi in front, so he honked briefly, swung his wheel to the left, crossed the double yellow lines and moved into oncoming traffic, which just slid to the right enough to avoid hitting us.  It was all done with body language with no flashing lights, no heavy honking nor fist shaking. 

Imagine you are caught in a crowd of people, so crowded that it is barely moving, and you have to find a bathroom. That urgency to plow through the crowd, zig zagging if need be, or if you’re big enough, pushing your way through, is exactly the way drivers move through not only traffic but crowds of people crossing the street.  And, by the way, a red light is  not going to keep a driver from passing through an intersection.

I complained about people not using headlights.  It seems the use of headlights was banned in Beijing  until 1983, when the Beijing mayor visited the United States and saw that people used headlights, so when he returned he rescinded the ban, but many people still do not use them.   For sure, many bike and motorcycle riders never turn them on.  Hessler says that turning headlights on during a rainstrom irritates other drivers who flash lights back.

I also never understood the honking, though I have noted that the honking never irritates anyone.  Get in a taxi, and the first thing the driver does after pulling away from the curb is to honk.  You’d think it was a mating call except the honker never waits for the honkee to respond.  One bus driver on the Xuhui to Minhang campus run seldom honks his horn, and it’s a pleasure to ride on his bus; the others are incessant honkers unless they have a clear road in front—and the roads are seldom clear.

I sat in the first passenger row one day and decided I wouldn’t do that again.  The honking, the close calls, the wildly assertive maneuvers kept me fully attentive.   One driver, I remember, pulled out of the right lane of traffic so he could get to the head of the next line and then took a right turn in front of the traffic he had just passed!   Hessler makes this sound like a daily occurrence when he describes a town where the left turn lane was placed in the fartheset right lane.  To make the left turn, I suppose, you’d have to honk your way through three lanes of traffic!\

There are a variety of honks that I hear.  Some are quick and rapid. Some are long and sustained.  Some horns seem to change their timbre depending on the depth and sustain quality of the honk.   Hessler describes it like this:

 . . . the horn is essentially neurological—it channels the driver’s reflexes.  People honk constantly, and at first all horns sound the same, but over time you learn to interprret them.  In this sense it’s as complicated as the language.  Spoken Chinese is tonal, which means a single sound like ma has different meanings depending on whether it’s flat, rising, falling and rising, or falling sharply.  A single Chinese horn, on the other hand, can mean at least ten distinct things.  A solid hooooonnnnkkkkk is iintended to attract attention.  A double sound—hooooonnnnkkkkk, hooooonnnnkkkkk—indicates irritation.  There’s a particularly long hooooooooonnnnnnnnnkkkkk that means that the driver is stuck in bad traffic, has exhausted curb-sneaking options, and would like everybody else on the road to disappear.  A responding  hoooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnkkkkkkkkkkkk proves they aren’t going anywhere.  There’s a stuttering, staggering honk honk hnkk hnk hnk hnk hnk hnk that represents pure panic.  There’s the afterthought honk—the one that rookie drivers make if they were too slow to hit the button before a situation resolved itself.  And there’s a short basic honk that simply says:  My hands are still on the wheel, aand this horn continues to serve as an extension of my nervous system.  (31)

But most honks are like passing conversations. “Be careful old man, I’m coming at  you. “ “If you haven’t noticed I am here on your left.”  “Don’t change lanes because I am already doing so.”  “I see you. And you see me.”   “Don’t cross now, I’m coming through.”  “Don’t try, I’m bigger.”

Over the past two years I can’t remember using my horn while driving in Seattle.  The last time happened in a parking lot; I was trying to warn a driver backing up that she was going to hit me.  But I had never used the horn in my new car, and I couldn’t find the button.  In fact, I don’t understand why the horn is on the outer rim of the steering wheel instead of in the middle where a person can always find it. (I know, the air bag has replaced the horn).   That car wouldn’t sell in China. And at the time,  I didn’t know there was a rookie car owner honk that I could have used after she had hit me.  It wouldn’t have mattered; the honk would have been in the wrong language.

OK.  Maybe I have traffic out of my system for the next few days.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

WHAT'S MISSING?

Don't be surprised.

China seems to be a society where paper as a commodity is more precious than it is as currency. 

You need to carry paper to dry your hands, to use as a napkin in a restaurant, and of course in the cesuo (toire, tearai, hwajangsil, toilet).  That simplest of all items we expect and see everywhere at home doesn’t seem to exist here except in the finest shopping centers, restaurants,  and tourist attractions. (But don’t count on it.)