Spots of Contentment

The Chinese internet is a very fickle thing. Our colleagues report some intermittent problems in service, but we really had a bad weekend after our first week of regular school, and that was very frustrating. Seeking some peace, we hopped on the subway to YuYuan Garden, a small plot of land made into a garden for a local ruler back in the 1500s, which is being restored after the destruction of the Cultural Revolution. The garden sits amid giant skyscrapers and commercialism of every description, but is itself a beautiful haven, and we were able to relax a little and remember that patience is a virtue. We bought a new router and did what we could throughout the weekend, finally calling our young friend Joey, who is 15 or 16 and knows everything tech. He waited patiently for the second China Telecomm technician to leave, tapped away on our keyboard, physically separated our modem and router, and had us working again by Sunday night. We also had our first Mandarin session with Tony, a young university student who is trading Mandarin lessons for help with his conversational English, so let's hear it for nice young people everywhere!

Our second week with students was threatened by a typhoon, and school was canceled on Wednesday, per order of the Shanghai Education Department. The day in question happened to be the first regular day of classes for the Shanghai public schools (Sept 1), so the local kids just got an extra day of summer. We were summoned to work at school just the same, so we got some extra planning time, which is always welcome. The typhoon, by the way, veered off toward Korea at the last minute, so the rain that fell would barely have been noticed in Phoenix, but it was nice to know that other school districts have difficulty dealing with weather predictions.

We had little bits of happiness during this week. First, I tried leaving a very short note of Chinese characters for Luo Yan, our ayi, to indicate that we were leaving her monthly wages. When we issued her August wages directly to her, we had some trouble communicating the purpose of the money, so I looked up the characters in the Oxford dictionary to say "for you." To my amazement, I got it right, and Luo Yan left a note saying thanks in English and characters. Next, we got our first piece of personal mail in our apartment box, an envelope of Sunday comics from my sister, Jill. What fun! Finally, we went on our first Payday Friday dinner to a Taiwanese restaurant named JoJo. Our Mandarin colleague, Helen, did the ordering, and the food just kept coming. We learned how to ask for a doggie bag (da bao) and how to count with hand gestures, which Joe is ready to use at his next wet market visit.

Meeting the New Students

The weekend was a good one when we finally got the internet connected at the apartment, and we were able to give our families a Skype tour of the whole place. We found a large grocery store much closer than Carrefour, so that will be useful, and we tried our first pizza delivery. It was delivered by bicycle and the toppings all slid to one side during the ride, but once we got everything shoveled back into place, it was "not bad," which is a popular way for Westerners to describe things, especially food related things, in China. "How was the new noodle shop?" "Not bad." We are hoping to find the places that are maybe a little better than "not bad."

The new students are definitely above the food standard. They are energetic (especially the first and second graders!), bright, and very cute. We have a lot of Asian and American students, but also a strong contingent of Swedish and Dutch. One of my first graders speaks nothing but Dutch and has no Dutch speakers in his classroom, so he is really operating under the sink-or-swim method. The kids had a great time laughing at me as I tried to pronounce their names, and many of the Asian students were quick to offer their Western names instead. I have a lovely fifth grader from Germany, so I asked him to say my last name over and over because it sounds so great when he says it. Each class is just under twenty students and I have fifteen classes, so the week stays very busy, but I managed to be in the right place at the right time.

Joe's office is really a work in progress. He has no furniture except a chair, no phone, and (horror), no air conditioning. He has the A/C control pad, but the office is a fairly recent partition of the building, so they forgot to include a vent in the ceiling, but the powers that be assure him it will be done soon. We celebrated our first week with a couple of dining forays, first to a burger place that offers burgers and drinks at two-for-one on Mondays, then to a neighborhood place called Casa Rosita which has absolutely no Mexican food, but we loved the Chinese food anyway (far above "not bad" so hooray). They put us in the front window table so the rest of the 'hood could see the Westerners eating there, and they played some Western pop music ("Barbie Girl" and various Michael Jackson tunes) so we would feel right at home. For those who wonder what one eats at a Chinese restaurant with a Mexican name, I had a Taiwanese fried pork chop and green beans fried with as much bacon product as possible. Joe had kung pao chicken and pork fried rice, although we skipped the pork parts, as they were somewhat wormlike in appearance. Just the same, we'll be back.

We had a tough Friday night because our internet was down when we got home. Joe did some fiddling and got it back, so he left to meet some friends, but was back shortly because he couldn't find a taxi. The internet had gone down again, so we watched some NCIS and went to bed. We have bought a few movie DVDs and decided to try a TV series. We got the entire set, all six seasons, for the low low price of 40 RMB, which comes out to about $7.75 US. Many of the titles are very recent (even some movies still in US theaters) and the quality is, you know, not bad.

Small World Syndrome Hits Shanghai

Last night, we went to hear the London Symphony Orchestra play in the Shanghai Oriental Arts Center. Joe had noticed the concert on a website before we moved, and we would never have this kind of opportunity in the States, so we were looking forward to the concert: Bernstein Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, Liszt Piano Concerto #1, and Rachmaninov Symphonic Dances. Amazing and chop-wrenching repertoire, and our seats were perfectly placed to see the keyboard and hear every note from the stage below, especially the power and precision of the brass section (lead trumpet is 22 years old). We really got our money's worth, as the pianist gave two encores (Chopin Etude in E flat and Satie Gymnopedie #1) and then the orchestra gave three (Dance of the Buffoons, a Chinese piece very popular with the audience, and... wait for it... Star Wars)! It was thrilling from the first note, and I was amazed to be hearing such a great orchestra and proud to be from the country that produced Bernstein.

Our friends the Giffords were there, because one of the violists from the orchestra is also the piano teacher to the Gifford children. We weren't sitting with them, but we talked to them before the concert and they asked us to come with them after the concert to meet the violist, so we agreed. By the interval (called the intermission by us common folk), we were looking for food and drink of any kind, but nothing was available, to my surprise. However, we discovered that meeting the violist involved getting on one of the orchestra buses and riding over to the hotel with the players post concert. In addition to the violist (Caroline), we met a violinist (Colin) and a cellist (Jenny), all of whom spoke to us as if it were perfectly natural to have strange Americans on the bus. We got to hear the story of the orchestra's flight over, when an oil light came on over Holland. Without the ability to check the dipstick right there, the flight was returned to London Heathrow, where the orchestra sat for the rest of the day. The funny part is that the concert tour is sponsored by Rolls Royce, and the engine that blew was, you guessed it, a Rolls engine. What sort of karma is that?

Upon arrival at the hotel (after I slobbered over both the principal clarinet and the principal bassoon), we went up to Caroline's room with Colin and found a great spread waiting for us, including lovely English cheddar, which is a great delight in this land of unbelievably sub-standard cheese. While we munched on cheese, grapes, chocolate, drinking either Chinese wine or Earl Grey tea (from the real country - Caroline believes in bringing her comfort food), we were joined by Nigel (violin), Jenny (cello) and Dick (viola). While chatting about this and that, Colin asked where we lived and when we told him about Flagstaff, he said he had been there to visit a violinmaker. Well, there's only one in Flag, so I mentioned Jeff's name, and all of a sudden, Colin didn't seem like a stranger at all. When we also mentioned our friend David (former LSO horn player), the room erupted with people who knew him, and somehow we were then among friends. The evening went until well after midnight, and Joe and I were pinching each other to be sure this was really happening. If you had told us a year ago that we would be partying with the LSO and talking about the next time we might get together, we'd never believe you, but this is China, where unbelievable things happen all the time.

Getting Around

To properly enjoy the traffic in Shanghai, it helps if you are a die-hard roller coaster fan, which I am. Let's start with the taxis. They are very cheap, about $2.00 for a short ride, maybe $4.00 if you're really going somewhere (30 minutes or so). We have ridden with cabbies who got lost a couple of times, and the driver turned off the meter both times, which was very impressive to me. I was in a cab in Louisville and we got lost in Cherokee Park, an easy thing to do, but believe me, the ride was full fare even on the scenic route. While there are traffic laws in Shanghai, they are taken more as suggestions, so trips really feel like a giant game of chicken, and the cabbies are often the boldest drivers on the road, even against buses and delivery trucks. I like to sit behind the driver, because you really get the best view of what is coming, especially the creative lane changes and mergers. Horns honk in abundance here, so my genteel friends from the South should probably bring earplugs for their visits. I gasped a lot in the first couple of weeks, but now I tend to laugh more and give the cabbie encouragement where I can.

You can also use the buses, which we haven't tried, but many of our colleagues swear by them, or the subways, which we use with pleasure. Our neighborhood subway line (Line 10) is the newest in the rapidly expanding system, which means that it is the cleanest, best air-conditioned and most high-tech. While waiting for a train, which comes every five to six minutes on the weekdays and twelve minutes at most on a weekend, we are entertained by video feeds of Expo commercials, sports highlights (a surprising amount of volleyball lately), or news. We have tried some transfers to other lines, but still have a lot of work to do in that area, as the maps are obsolete almost as soon as they are printed. We found our English map underneath our sofa, and it's not bad.

Another transportation option is the scooter or bicycle (electric or otherwise). These vehicles have a special lane at the edge of all major roads, one way with that side of traffic. Most of the time they all go that direction, but this lane can be obstructed by someone who decides to ride opposite traffic, a four wheeled vehicle that decides to park (usually quite suddenly), or (God help 'em) a cabbie who is tired of sitting in traffic and uses the two-wheeled lane instead. Again, horns are honked with great enthusiasm, and absolutely every human-powered bike takes special pride in having the squeakiest brakes possible so that you know that you have offended the rider by walking too slowly in front of him. The really impressive bikes have giant loads of all sorts of material that dwarf the rider and make the vehicle slightly more dangerous than a car, mainly because the brakes probably aren't as good.

Now we come to the lowly pedestrian, farthest down on the transportation food chain. The sidewalks are beautiful, tree-lined and broad, but that only makes them more convenient for the bikes and scooters, who are trying to avoid the cars and cabs in their lane. We have seen one car driving on the sidewalk, but usually cars are just parked there. Nevertheless, the sidewalks are the best place to see your neighbors out relaxing, sitting on various blankets or other ground cover, entertaining the preschoolers and babies. If you are walking late enough at night, you will also see people sleeping beneath the huge trees, as it's pretty hot inside at this time of year.

Of course, you can't walk down these beautiful boulevards too far before you have to cross a road. One of our friends who lived in China says she is only afraid of two things here: using a public toilet, and crossing the road. The intersections are governed somewhat by traffic lights, but again, these are merely suggestions and don't always apply depending on the type of traffic that is approaching. Government or police cars are completely immune to traffic laws and lights, and the hapless pedestrian has to watch out for right hand turns, because those are lawful regardless of the light color. Seriously, they don't even slow down, and don't forget, you have two lanes of turners, the cars and the bikes/scooters. The new arrival book suggests that you just cross when you think you can, and don't take too much time. I start just off the curb, move quickly through whatever two-wheeled traffic is coming (figuring that my large bulk will scare them off a bit), then stand at the slight curb to watch the four-wheeled traffic. If the road looks clear, I book it across, regardless of the color of the light or the pedestrian signal, although I do look behind for potential left turners from the intersecting road, because they can take you out and you never see them. I'm pretty sure a lot of the locals are laughing quietly at me, but I'm getting good at this. If you are good at the video game "Frogger," you're probably ready to cross a Chinese street.

Our neighborhood is fairly well off, and we see a startling (for us) number of very expensive cars; Audi, BMW, Mercedes, a Bentley, and even a lovely Rolls on frequent occasions. They tend to be black, perhaps because the earliest cars on the road were government cars and they were black. In all this controlled chaos, we have seen only one accident so far. A delivery truck had rear-ended a cab (most of the good cabs are VW sedans - not Beetles) on Hongqiao Road and the two drivers were out discussing the matter while the rest of traffic darted around them, honking angrily. Although the accident occurred right in front of a police station, the police were not involved, and after a lively discussion, the cab driver picked up his back bumper, somehow stuck it back onto the rear of the cab, and they both drove off.

Moral of the Chinese transportation story: Mao helps those who help themselves.

The Second Week - Meeting the Old Hands

This week was full of meetings and more trips to places and a party or two. We learned that Carrefour, like Wal-Mart, is best visited at odd hours, such as right when it opens at 7:30 a.m. During one such visit, we met Kathy and Bill, SCIS parents who also happen to work for a US governmental agency, which means that our years here in China will count for our state retirement in AZ, and that's very good news. They have three kids at the school and I will have the youngest in my class, plus she wants to play the violin, so we made the parents a little happier. We also visited a music store (Best Friends), where I fell in love with the gu-cheng, a Chinese traditional harp that rests horizontally on a stand and has 21 pentatonic strings (that's the five note scale that many early American hymn tunes used). The instruments were beautifully carved and inlaid with mother of pearl and surprisingly not very expensive, maybe $300 at the most. We also had duck with noodles for dinner, which was more gristle and bone than meat, but tasty just the same, and we were pleased with our new mattress pad and sheets, so I guess that Ikea trip was worth it, sort of.

We had a terrible start to our Sunday with the news that our second toilet was stopped up, and we were still suffering a bit from, shall we say, digestive readjustment. We ran to school for Skype meetings with family, then to Carrefour (third trip in 24 hours) for plumbing supplies, then off to church, where we got a couple of miracles handed to us. First, the pastor preached on how hard it can be to maintain a marriage in a city where things go wrong (okay, who told him about our toilet?), then we happened to sit in the same pew as the Gifford family, recently of England but now reassigned to China by Mr. Gifford's employer, National Public Radio. Some of you faithful readers might be saying to yourselves, "Hey, didn't she quote a passage by somebody named Rob Gifford a few months ago?" Why yes, dear reader, and here was the very same Rob Gifford sitting down the pew. I confess that I had a short fit, recovered, and introduced the family to Joe, who was equally amazed. I also confessed to Mr. Gifford about using his book in my blog, but he generously agreed not to sue me. (He didn't mention his publisher, however.)

The returning staff is a fun loving and helpful bunch, and I have a true leader in Helen Bendell-Hughes, the other music teacher. She is completely unconcerned about my lack of experience in general music and brims over with great ideas for everything. We also managed to get the VPN downloaded to our school computers, facilitating my triumphant return not only to this blog, but also to FACEBOOK! We were welcomed back with many digital cheers. Our ayi, Luo Yan, is the best housekeeper ever and I think we're just sorry we didn't ask her to cook. I read a different definition of ayi as "caretaker" which is a much better description for this lovely woman. By the end of the week, all our plumbing in both bathrooms was back to normal, we had keys to our rooms, and we felt sort of ready to start with the children on Monday. We ended our second week with a school sponsored bash at a downtown club on the 65th floor of a swanky hotel. Joe was the social butterfly while I sat and reviewed the partygoers with my friend Cheryl.

Our last hepatitis shot was quite an adventure. Normally, this is a 30 minute process if the county nurse wants to chat for a bit, but of course, everything has a new path in China. We made the appointment on Monday afternoon to return on Friday morning and got it approved by our new health care provider (really excellent benefits, but not in the US or Canada). When we arrived for our appointment, the process became an intake interview with our new doctor, Dr. Hussain from India, who speaks no Mandarin despite living in the country for four years. His conversations with the staff are decidedly brief. He approved our final shots, then Nurse Tina took us downstairs, where she accompanied us in the security guard's car for a trip to the Japanese clinic where the shots are actually administered. We had to wait at the clinic for 30 minutes to check our reactions, then back in a taxi to the hospital, where we had to meet with Dr. Hussain again to be sure everything was done correctly. By the time we were done, more than two hours had passed, but I guess it's nice to have your hands held in a country where you are functionally illiterate.

Next post, the real adventure of China: riding in taxis!

The First Week: Meeting the Other Newbies

When we last left our heroic traveling couple, they had just been dropped off at their new apartment in Shanghai...
Carnival Garden 4-201 is our new home, and it is far more beautiful than we could have imagined. Three large bedrooms, two bathrooms, large main living/dining room, laundry room and kitchen, and more storage than we needed even if we had brought everything from home. The floors are either terrazo tile or varnished wood, and the A/C works beautifully (which we might regret when we get our first electric bill). Our abundant luggage was waiting when we pulled up, and the bus driver and a few doormen got it up to our apartment, where we were met with the lauded fruit basket, one key, and yes, the famous stacks of money. We had to count it before we signed for it. We have two beds, one "king" (which might be larger than our king at home) and a "twin" (which is definitely a double), and the only drawback is that a Chinese mattress consists of springs covered by probably a 3/4 inch piece of solid wood, encased in material about the thickness of corduroy. It is, as promised, harder than anything we could have imagined, and we are eyeing the overstuffed leather couches as a potential alternative. Jet lag did hit hard the first day, so we took a long nap at noon, then got up, put things away and took a walk around the neighborhood.
Having no phone or internet service for the apartment, we headed over to school as soon as we could the next morning (which was quite early, as the time adjustment also meant we woke up around 4:00 a.m.), and Skyped with Joe's parents, then Rhonda and my mom. We had a little tour of the local shops, including the French sponsored Carrefour, which is much like a Super Wal-Mart, except with very little English and a cat in the vegetable/fruit section. We also put some faces to email names and started working on setting up utilities and finding someone to fix a stopped toilet (the school sent over a maintenance worker right away). The weekend found us again at Carrefour, where we met some of our new colleagues and had a nice dinner at a little diner. We had an initial unintentional subway ride on Saturday evening, when the security guard ordered some tickets for us and sent us on our completely unguided way. We managed to make it home again, and had a better experience on Sunday afternoon when we took off to find the Shanghai Community Fellowship, a great non-denom evangelical church with excellent A/C (that is becoming very important to me) and an even better preacher. The sermon was from Psalm 121 and was about how God guides us through the most confusing of circumstances if we will only trust Him, a much needed word in a long weekend.
The first week was a series of meetings and tours to different places: a hospital, a shopping mall, Ikea, the health inspection (not too bad). We met the Gribbles from Seattle, Amanda from Tucson, the Watts from Australia, and just about everyone else. The school fed us both breakfast and lunch (although after the first day, breakfast was just muffins and fruit), and we had one nice dinner at Big Bamboo, an American-style restaurant in a food street (Hong Mei Lu). We managed to get our bottled water service started (through Nestle, but not much English), had more toilet issues, and everyone started getting sick. Montezuma visited most of us, just cramps and such in our house, but some were running rather high fevers. I was the sickest on our Ikea day, and have vowed never to go back unless I must. We do need a few more things, but I'm going to try to get them online and delivered from the local store! We also met our ayi, a lovely tiny woman named Luo Yan, who will start next week if we can get an extra key and door card.
By the end of the week, we still didn't have internet or phone at home, but we had our school laptops and could run back and forth for email and Skype purposes. We also got a few electronics matters handled (good old Carrefour doesn't do clock radios) in the special electronics mall, which is conveniently close to the Shanghai Best Buy for anything else. My email buddy Steve Venema, who is unbelievably tall, led that expedition, and it seems that whatever you need, Steve knows a guy. Very handy.
We got a crash course in Mandarin and received a four page "cheat sheet," with lots of phrases in Chinese characters and pinyin, the English equivalent. Our tutor, Shirley Huang, teaches Mandarin at the school and is fixing us up with her university son, who needs to polish his English, for some language exchange. The cheat sheet is an amazing entree into the Chinese world; as soon as we bring it out, smiles break out everywhere and we are quizzed (and corrected) on every page of the guide, followed by instruction in more words and phrases as our Chinese friends deem useful. Our Mandarin, while still quite pitiable, is increasing every day, and we practice, sometimes by choice and sometimes by necessity, like when we went to the apartment management office to get an extra door card for Luo Yan. It is frustrating to be so hogtied by a lack of language skills, and we are certainly experiencing lots of adjustment, but the city is exciting and we are seeing so many new people and places that we have hardly had time to be homesick.

Flying and Landing

We've been in Shanghai now just over two weeks, and I have more to post than I ever imagined, so I'll try to break it down into manageable chunks, which is not my strong suit, so good luck, dear reader (always loved that phrase).
The flights were both great. Southwest got our bags checked with a minimum of fuss; it seemed when we were okay with paying for the extra two bags, nobody really cared how much they weighed. I did have a little moment during boarding because my carryon was too stuffed to fit in the overhead, so the flight attendants had to check it from the plane. I didn't figure I would need very much in a one hour flight, so that was fine with me.
LAX was an easier gig than I had expected. To begin, it was total fog when we landed around 7:00 p.m., so that made for a nice walk from one terminal to the other. We had our ten bags loaded onto two SmartCartes (a very well named device) and were hustling up on the elevator in the terminal where we landed to find our Korean Air gate. Silly first time travelers! Fortunately, we made some small talk with a maintenance worker in the elevator, and when he realized what we wanted, he got us directed back downstairs and out to the sidewalk, where we found an LAX volunteer who pointed us to the international terminal. There was no way we were going to unload all those bags into any type of motorized transportation, so we just started pushing, and after about 15 or 20 minutes, we got to the right place.
Korean Air is a complete delight. First, the baggage check was very simple (once we found the right desk) and the desk clerk politely told us that we could put more weight in the checked bags if needed (something about our pounds to kilos conversion). Hallelujah! We moved a ton (or at least twenty pounds) from our carryons to the big red duffles, and wheeled our lighter selves away. We had some Mexican food, more or less, and headed to the gate. LAX does not appear to offer wifi, free or otherwise, and the boarding process was less than orderly, mainly because our gate had absolutely no seating, so people milled about like sheep. We sat on the ground near a plug to juice up the laptop and wouldn't budge even when a gate agent was trying to set up some boarding lines. I told him if he wanted me to move, he would have to find me a new outlet (it was nearing midnight and I was getting pretty tired), so he backed down from the Ugly American.
Did a lot of sleeping on the big flight, and that is definitely a good preventer of jet lag. Our seatmate was a very quiet young Asian woman, and we really didn't talk to her until we had landed in Seoul. The Seoul airport was a bit hot (oh ha, I didn't know what was coming), but we managed to settle in and Joe napped while I gratefully surfed the web and did my last Facebook posting and chatting. The connecting flight was more organized in the boarding and we got a little bit of immigration paperwork done, as well as a pretty good nap. The Shanghai airport seemed completely deserted to us, and we almost didn't find our way off the jetway. After the wonderful service by the Korean Air staff, the Chinese airport workers seemed a bit distant, but I'm guessing it was more of a language barrier. The immigration line was swift and easy; not only did I not get hauled immediately to prison, I'm not even sure the clerk looked at me. I tried my best "ni hao" and "xie xie," maybe even "zai jian" to no effect. Baggage claim was also simple and everything made it, much to our delight. We cruised through customs with nothing to declare (our musical instruments probably exceeded the dollar limit, but we don't have valuations and weren't going to make extra trouble), and no inspection of our bags.
The pickup by the school was just like a movie, with our names and the school name on a butcher paper sign, and I'm sorry I didn't ask for the sign then, because it has since disappeared. Our Head of Schools, Mike Donaldson, was there to greet us and he knew us right away, probably due to the ten bags. He loaded our luggage into a school "bus" (which is really a 15 passenger van), loaded us into his very nice car, and off we went to our new apartment and life.