Totally haven't been posting every week like I intended, so here's a hodgepodge of what I've been up to.

So one of the most fascinating things about China is the relative cost of things. For example, I can get two grande lattés at Starbucks or a 1.5 hr long massage with unlimited tea and watermelon. Unfortunately, Chinese massage is not quite as relaxing as the ones at US spas. In fact, it’s a little on the painful side, especially when they stretch your groin for you by grabbing your ankles and pulling you’re legs apart and the while time you’re trying to remember the Chinese words for “not so hard!”

So everybody from Maryland will appreciate this (I literally cracked up when I realized what was happing). At the main entrance to my campus there is a small traffic circle. In the middle of the traffic circle there is a big rock (like the size of a sedan) with red characters written on it. Around the rock is a circular flowerbed. The day before school started for the real Shanghai University students (about two weeks after my classes started), grounds people spent the entire day digging up the old flowers and replacing them with fresh red flowers. Sound familiar?

The moon festival was September 14, and the university threw a party for all the international students to show us what the holiday is all about. For some reason, our program director though it would be a good idea for the USAC level 1 Chinese class to sing a traditional Chinese song for everybody (yueliang daibiao wo de xin, and you can hear it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51xS4yXbryc). Since our teacher, Fanny, is a crazy overachieving Chinese singleton who’s always busy, she asked her friend to teach us in the evenings. So this is what she says to us:
“I’m busy, so my friend will teach you. You know my friend, the FAT one.”
Now this friend is very much so NOT fat. She’s basically same size as me and even a couple inches taller. It’s crazy to think of her as her fat let alone outright call her fat in a room of 20 students, but Fanny was totally serious. Apparently, by Chinese standards, this girl is fat. Chinese people probably think of Americans as big piles of lard. (PS: we did a really good job at the song. People even said that we didn’t sound too much like foreigners).

A couple of weeks ago, a group of us went to Pudong/ the Bund. It’s basically the most famous part of Shanghai with all the big finical buildings. We started on the Pudong side of the river. We walked around by the water a little, and then went underground to the “tourist tunnel.” This so-called “tourist tunnel” contained a bunch of vendors, an Aquarium, and the Shanghai Sex Culture Museum. After getting hassled by the vendors, we visited the Aquarium, which supposedly contained “ the world’s most rare and exotic fish.” However, every tank contained at least one dead specimen. It made me really angry and sad, so I left and went to the Sex Culture Museum which was actually crazy cool. Among other artifacts, they had a couple of pairs of red bedroom slippers that women with bound feet use to wear to their husband’s beds. Seriously, these shoes could not be longer than 5 inches.



After the Sex Culture Museum we went though the actually tourist tunnel. We got in to a silver pod thing (see below), and entered the tunnel. So I’ve never done acid, but I’m pretty sure that I don’t need to after going though this tunnel. It was freaking crazy. The ride reminded me of the scenes from Willy Wonka, but more intense. The whole time I’m thinking only in China, only in crazy-ass China do they consider this a tourist attraction!!

Greetings. So I’ve been in Shanghai almost two weeks. Studying abroad for a semester is a little weird in that I now live in Shanghai, but I’m still a tourist and like to do touristy things. Then again, it’s different from studying somewhere like Europe. If I was in Europe I’d want to try to blend in and not act too touristy. In China, however, I have now hope of blending in at all. Today is a great example. I’ve noticed that I tend to attract more attention (or at least a different type of attention) when I’m on my own than when we travel as a pack. I was walking back from breakfast this morning, and they guy passed me on his bicycle. That’s totally normal, but then he proceeded to glance back at me ever other second but still riding his bike forward. He almost ran into another pedestrian and fell off his bike! I know I’m attractive, but at least keep your eyes on the road.

I went on a couple of adventures this week. Monday, I explored the French Concession. During the mid 1800s many western countries were establishing settlements in Shanghai. The French Concession was the French settlement and seems like any small city in Europe. We had lunch at a small French bistro. While I really LOVE all the great Chinese food we have been eating off the street/ from small restaurants, the French bistro was a nice break (though it was disappointing using a plain-old fork when I’ve become such a chopsticks master!) After the bistro, we went to the Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Museum. It’s really out of the way (thank goodness for Lonely Planet), in the basement of an apartment building. Nevertheless, it was really, really cool. Its weird to see images that are so anti-American, anti-western Europe, and anti-capitalism. IT was also a really reminder of how may countries around the world genuinely experimented with socialism. Though the subjects of the posters were clearly determined by the Party, the artistic techniques are widely varied. Apparently a lot of the artists had studied in other regions of the world, and shared their new leaning with other artists through the posters. The posters depicting Chairman Mao as some sort of god were really interesting too. They gave real meaning to the term “cult of personality.” After the propaganda museum, we went and relaxed at the Garden Hotel’s sky bar on the recommendation of a cute French expat. It’s on the 33 story of the building. While has a great view of a beautiful park, it is not nearly the tallest building in the area. Seriously, the buildings here are crazy. Any building under 100 or so stories is considered just average.

The nightlife scene is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Everywhere we go, weather it be a small café/bar or a raging nightclub, we meet people from all over the world. Most people my age have come to study language or business. There seem to be lots of masters programs for students in technical fields to study in Shanghai.

So, this is just a random musing. You know when there is a group of people talking about something or another, and a person says, “I would disagree with that,” and then proceeds to disagree, so, in fact, they are actually disagreeing. That person should really just say, “I disagree.” I guess the subjunctive tense makes the person seem less adversarial, but they are disagreeing nonetheless. That’s all.

Finally, my first post from China! I would pretend that some people have been anxiously awaiting this glorious event, but I didn’t tell any of my potential readers about my blog, so it’s not possible that anybody has been looking forward to reading this entry. As nobody expects anything from me, I can’t let anybody down with how bad my writing is (remember, I’m a biology major—I haven’t written anything but lab reports for two years).

I’ve been in Shanghai for about a week. I’m still having trouble conceptualizing how huge the city really is especially as I haven’t ever really lived in a city. Since I’m going to be here for a semester, I’m not racing to see everything right away. I’m just trying to take it slow and get to know the city (not to slow though, because then I get homesick).

On my second day in Shanghai/ my first day of class, I realized that I had to somehow feed myself breakfast before my first Chinese class. I hadn’t made plans to meet anybody, so I went on my one. I left the university gates and walked about five minutes to the farmers market. I walked into the market, got scared. Walked pass the market, realized that I actually did have to go to class. Turned around, walked back into the market, saw a woman buying live frogs, left the market again. Walked halfway back to campus, realized that I was being super silly. Turned around and saw a street vendor about half a block away, and decided I was going to buy whatever he was offering.

Seriously, I was so nervous to approach this street vendor. I felt like I was at a middle school dance about to ask a boy to dance. I knew I had to do it (or starve) but knowing that didn’t make it any easier. Eventually, after staring for like 5 minutes, I approached, pointed at what he was cooking (a greasy pancake thing with an egg/ chives/ crazy seasonings scrambled in the middle). He then proceeded to speak really fast in Chinese, but once he realized how confused I was he stated miming. I paid him 2RMB (like 0.30USD). After it all, I felt really, really victorious!!

Then I went to my first Chinese class, not so victorious (but its getting better).

I’ve been down to people’s square a couple of times, one time to visit the Urban Planning Museum. The UPM is 4 floors about past, present, and most of all, future Shanghai. The main feature of the museum is a huge city model of what the city will look like in 2020 (there was a Post article about the museum over the summer if any of you happened to catch it). The color buildings are currently present in the city, and the gray ones are building that are going to be built. Apparently the city literally changes every day, so the curators have quite a job. The UPM also features Shanghai’s plans for the 2010 world expo, which is going to be insane from what I can tell. It’s the first world expo to be held in a developing country, and Shanghai is preparing with as much fervor as Beijing prepared for the Olympics. The expo mascot is literally all over the city. It looks like a blue tooth with arms.

Okay, I have to go soon (I smell), but one reason that it took me so long to get around to posting this is that my original china blog, hosted by live journal, is blocked in China. The most fascinating thing about Internet censorship here is that when one tries to load a censored page, she gets an "server down" error. According to an NPR story I heard, most average Chinese Internet users don't even realize that sites are being blocked. Crazy!

After I realized LiveJournal was blocked, i tried to make a blog using Google-hosted blogger. However, in china, blogger.com automatically loads in Chinese. As I can't read characters, this proved more than a little problematic (there wasn't even an "english" button at the bottom of the page, at leas not one i could read). Obviously, I figured it out eventually (yay me!).

Lots of love from the Middle Kingdom