a weekend in Shanghai

Nathan and Shanghai skyline

Nathan went to Shanghai over the weekend to visit a friend of ours that we met right around the time when Sophia was born. Since then, he got his PhD here at the TU Berlin, and then he returned to China. He was apparently the perfect host, showing Nathan around and refusing any kind of present or well-meant gesture. ;) At any rate, our friend and his wife will have a child soon... and Nathan suggested that'll be our time to reciprocate. Here is his account of the weekend:

Last night I went to dinner with Jianpei... it turned out that his wife had another engagement, so I didn't get to meet her, unfortunately. I guess he also isn't feeling all that well. I was totally surprised, because he sent me a text message just before we were supposed to meet saying that he was at the hospital getting "tropfen(be)handlung" and that he would meet me a little while later. (He of course showed up almost exactly on time.) Of course in Germany of the US, you only get an IV if you have a serious illness or something, but here it is far more commonplace. I guess he had a bad headache and decided to take himself to the clinic. I felt kind of bad, but he insisted there was no problem.

Before I met him I had bought a nice box of oranges to give him and his wife (here they take fruit and wrap it really nicely for giving as gifts) and he refused to take it. He also insisted on paying for just about everything we did together yesterday. He was too generous -- while I enjoyed the visit, he made it difficult to be on an equal level. For the last period of time I kept trying to find ways to get him to take the oranges, but he just wouldn't go for it. The guy is clever. Anyway, if he and/or his family ever visit Berlin again we need to reciprocate. When the baby is born we need to send something. By the way, the local tradition is eggs if it's a boy, chocolate if it's a girl. But I don't think that'll work via the mail...

flowers on a pond in Shanghai

rain without end

Yeah, so it's still raining like crazy here... I feel like Forrest Gump a little bit when he's in Vietnam and it starts to rain and it just never stops. Really it's been like that here... I think it's almost stopped at a couple of points but never completely. At least now I can say I've experienced the rainy season here.

I don't have any new pictures for you because it's raining all the time and it's no fun to take the camera out in that. Maybe this weekend though I will go out with my camera just before I have a shower... the problem is that if I get wet, there's no good chance to get warm and dry quickly here. None of the buildings have central heating, not that dormitory, not the classrooms, not the cafeteria. Part of what was so nice about the restaurant I went to last night was that it was a pleasant warm temperature. :)

picture factory visit

frame production

printing of the posters

American sports motives

These are pictures from the factory we visited on Wednesday. It was pretty interesting... essentially they make the pictures that you buy at Ikea or Walmart or Target or Costco that are framed prints, like roses or a bridge or whatever. They have high quality printing machines, make the frames themselves, put them together and then shrink wrap and label them. All the big box stores do is put it on the shelf. And we wonder where all the jobs go. Essentially, these guys make about $1 on every picture they sell. I asked the guy how many pictures he shipped in 2009... he said 10 million or something... pretty amazing stuff.

Hangzhou photos

Here are some pictures from Hangshou, where Zhejiang University is located:

the airport (looks quite new and not often used)

the dormitories on campus: about an hour from downtown - not so conveniently located, but clean

my dorm room

the cafeteria with lots of yummy food to try!

intercultural exchange

So on Saturday night they picked us up at the airport. I managed to get into a rather lively discussion somehow with this guy (they sent over a bunch of German and English students to be our "tutors") who had very strong opinions that "Growing Pains" was a far better television series than "Friends." While I partially agreed with him, it's pretty amazing to see the degree to which students in China use the American tv shows they can find on the internet or on dvd to learn English, and how much they actually end up thinking about it. I mean for us it's just sheer entertainment, but for him, he was adamant that America should take better care of the type of programming they decide to share with the world. I decided not to go into a detailed discussion with him about what Mike's friend "Boner" actually means in everyday slang...

Last day in Beijing

Beijing main train station

So today I was pretty much on my own the whole time... I didn't have anything specific planned. So this morning I just took one of the buses to the end of the line to see if I could get lost and still bring myself back to the center of town. I was successful in both attempts.

Along the way I wandered into this shop that was probably about the size of a media markt, but it was only for cell phones and for cell phone accessories. I think it was like the supply area for all the cell phone vendors or something. There was so much action going on in that place; I have never seen anything like that before. Just thousands and thousands of cell phones, cell phone batteries, headsets, cards, all that stuff. It was pretty unreal. And all the people shouting and unpackaging phones, repacking phones; it was amazing.

I ate some really interesting meat at lunch time. Not sure what it was; looked kind of like chicken, kind of like pork, kind of like duck. Had the texture of menudo. I also ate some jiaozi... 21 kuai for the whole meal. Tummy still okay.

In the afternoon, I went to a Buddhist temple on the north side of town where they have an 18-meter high sandlewood buddha statue. Also pretty amazing. Unfortunately not easy to photograph though due to poor lighting conditions.

I like the part of town that we're staying in, but I feel like we get ripped off here a little bit. The prices at the restaurants are not that much lower than those in Europe... for dinner tonight we paid 151 kuai for 4 bottle of beer, two bowls of rice, a pork dish, a tofu dish and a chicken dish. That's about 17-18 Euros for a decent sized but not huge meal. I guess it would have been more like 35 euros in Germany, but the quality of the restaurant might have been better too.

hm... yummy :)

Or would you rather have Kentucky Fried Chicken? :)

Mao's Place

Nathan at Tiananmen Square

We saw Mao this morning. He's looking pretty waxy, actually. Compared to Lenin I would say a little less waxy, but he's had 50 years less of the formaldehyde bath. Now I just have to see Ho Chi Mihn and I'll have completed the embalmed socialist demagogue trifecta. Hopefully they won't give Fidel this treatment... I might not be able to get in there for awhile.

Gate of Heavenly Peace

In the afternoon I went to the Bell Tower, a old Ming Dynasty tower north of the Forbidden City. I climbed to the top (not that high) but there wasn't much to see... too much smog and that sort of thing. It's a good bit colder today, unfortunately.

Gero approves of the food, but worries that he eats too much of it. We didn't try anything too exotic at the street vendors... at least not on purpose. At one point we got some sort of meat product that we though would be barbecue pork but it was some kind of weird fish. That was rather disappointing. Breakfast buffet this morning was a bit steep (36 RMB) but rather tasty. They have these seasoned strips of bean curd that I am a big fan of.

men playing ping pong in a park

first picture from Beijing

This is a long stretch of street vendors here where you can get everything under the sun grilled on a stick. Yesterday we saw starfish, snake, earthworms, grubs, seahorses, and who knows what else. For dinner we ate baozi.

data detour from China

Hi, this is Conny, Nathan's wife. He sent me an email from Beijing, where has arrived last Wednesday, letting me know that access to both facebook and blogger has been blocked. So we decided that he would send me updates from his trip and I would post them, including some pictures. So, from now on, the posts you will find here are the result of that co-operation.

Denmark story published

Tooting my own horn here a little bit: Stars & Stripes recently published a wrap-up of my trip to Bornholm and the Ertholmenes last winter. There you read about the logistics of getting there, and if you're really into my pictures, order a print. Thinking about it all made me a bit nostalgic, and I uploaded the accompanying video above from the trip.

As you probably noticed, I didn't stray to far from home for the last half of 2007. I have a baby daughter to thank for that -- and I'm sure anyone with children can agree that parenting is a journey in itself. Still, I'm hoping to make a few jaunts further afield this year, and will write about them here when they occur.