Becca's blog

When I was packing for this semester over the summer I thought about what I wanted to do during my four months in China. I knew it would be four months, just like our first fall semester, that would seem unending at times but in a flash be over. I had been starving myself of Chinese food for the past few weeks and was starting to dream about dim sum and how I wanted to eat outrageous quantities of dim sum (specifically barbeque pork buns, crystal shrimp dumplings, and Macanese egg tarts). I also wanted to visit Hong Kong and get traditional Chinese acupuncture. Well… I did eat outrageous amounts of dim sum with my roommate Nikki and its one of the reasons that we have become such good friends.
 
But I never made it to Hong Kong (I guess we ran out of weekends and I only had one entry added to my visa) or experienced acupuncture (though I did look up and find a reputable, expat-y place near my apartment. What I realize now is that plans change. When I was packing I didn’t know that there would be an NYU sponsored trip that would send 60 NYU students into the dunes of the Gobi desert (or that I would be unlucky and not get one of these coveted spots). Or that my other roommate Clarissa and I would decide, screw it, we’re going to play with camels and sleep under the stars whether NYU arranges it or not.
 
Instead of acupuncture I got an amazing (and really cheap!) Thai massage in Phuket and instead of visiting Hong Kong I was able to visit Tokyo, somewhere I have always wanted to go but never got the chance, and eat some of the freshest sushi in the world at 5 am at the Tsujiki fish market. I met some amazing people and did amazing things. This semester wasn’t what I expected (or packed for…).
 
It was so much better.
 
 
Thanks for a great class everyone – your comments always made writing these posts just a little more entertaining :) Have a great winter break.


Photo: "View from atop a camel" - I took this on my film camera (hence the light streaks, it's really old ;) during the first break when my roommate and I decided to trek into the Gobi desert on camels (the best $50 I have ever spent :) The whole experience was surreal and beautiful and cold.

Learn a few phrases of Chinese before you arrive. Taxi drivers (and pretty much everyone except market sales people) speak almost no English.
 
Tip: Even if you can speak Chinese fairly well, taxi drivers may still not understand you. It is amazing to just be able to hand a driver a printed out copy of where you need to go with the address in Chinese characters. I found this website in my first month here and it has proved to be invaluable and reduced my stress about getting places J
 
http://shanghai.streetsofchina.com/

Here are a few phrases that will help you get around your first few days:
 
Ni Hao - Hello
Zai Jian- Goodbye
Xie Xie- Thank you
Duo Shao Qian? – How much does this cost?
(Bu) Yao – (don’t) want
(Bu) Yong- (don’t) need
(Yi Ping) Bing Shui – (One Bottle) Iced water – Chinese people think that cold drinks are generally bad for your health and will typically serve you tea or just plain boiled water with your meals. Tip: If there is a sealed plastic packet with chopsticks and napkins on it at your table you will probably have to pay extra for it.
Wo Shi Mei Guo Ren -  I am American
Wo Bu Shou Zhong Wen – I don’t speak Chinese
Ting Bu Dong – I don’t understand
Ce Suo Zai Nali?－Where is the bathroom? Tip: Always carry toilet paper around with you – even some of the nicest squatty potties will lack this necessity.
 
Many people found cycling to school to be fun, inexpensive, and a good way to see the city and get to school- but get a good bike lock! Bikes are stolen every day!
 
Download the NYU VPN before you arrive- you’ll need it to access lots of blocked sites from Facebook to Wordpress to Google. Tip: try not to get too frustrated with the Internet speed here, if you’re trying to watch an American TV show or download an attachment or simply just trying to do some last minute research I recommend taking a break (the VPN gets slower when there are lots of people on it) and go buy some fake DVDs at any of the stands around campus and the apartments.
 
Eat lunch in some of ECNU’s many cafeterias – the main cafeteria has 3 floors and over 50 restaurants for food – all stands are under $3 for a large lunch. I recommend the Xiao Long Bao (soup dumplings) and think they are some of the best I’ve had in the city. Or the Japanese cafeteria next to the main has great sushi, curry, and fruit slushies (bing sha) – try the peanut slushie! It’s awesome!
 
Unlock your cell phone (iPhone or blackberry) before you arrive or just buy a new phone when you get here – they are crazy cheap – about $20 for the phone and 1.5 cents per text. Tip: if you have an iPhone that you are willing to unlock, a 500mb data plan is only about $10 per month and you will NEVER use that much data – it’s really been a lifesaver to have a map, translator, and the Internet on the go.
 
Don’t buy the cheapest thing on store shelves- buy the 3rd or 4th cheapest. My friend Rob thought it would be okay to buy the cheapest Chinese brand of toothpaste – it turned his teeth black. Tip: For all things hygiene related go with western brands that you trust. Tip for girls: Bring all feminine hygiene products you’ll need for the semester with you from home, tampons do not have applicators here (this frightens some people).
 
You will hear this in every Chinese guidebook but: Bargain, bargain, bargain -It is a way of living in China – sellers even have systems for tagging tourists who are willing to pay outrageously high prices so that other sellers know it (usually a different colored shopping bag or something of the sort). Tips for bargaining - if the price seems like what you would pay in America (be it for boots, a backpack, or a fur poncho) you’re paying too much (almost everything in tourist-filled markets is fake) – probably six times what the seller got it for – start bargaining at about half of what you want to pay and if you stick below that price you’re doing well J
 
Sherpas.com.cn – a great resource for when you’re really craving western food  and don’t want to leave your cozy luxury apartment– they deliver right to your door and offer free delivery from 2-5pm Monday through Friday! (The dishes even come with forks!) I recommend Wagas – for sandwiches and pasta – pricey but will satisfy your cravings
 
Yolota – right next to the off campus apartments – you’ll probably end up here when you’re too lazy to go anywhere else but too broke to order Sherpas – its delicious Taiwanese noodles – with peanut sauce or in soup, not too pricey and very filling.
 
Finally: Coco– possibly the greatest thing about studying in China – CoCo is an amazingly delicious Taiwanese bubble tea store with 5 locations just between the apartments and campus alone (new ones pop up every day). CoCo here is cheap – only about $1 per cup for lots of delicious beverages – the most popular being  Jin Ju Nai Cha (literally pearl milk tea). It’s so popular that they have two locations in New York now (but you pay way more than $1 a cup L
 
The picture is a notebook/ calendar I got at CoCo (I had to buy two special winter drinks and pay five kuai to get it but it was so worth it)

         The spirit of Shanghai is something that is very difficult to pin down. If, as Rudyard Kipling wrote, to understand a foreign country “is to smell it” then I really do understand China- probably more than I would like to. The smells of any place unfamiliar to us are different – good like French bread or bad like the amazingly rancid stench of China’s signature “stinky tofu”- I still haven’t tried it but I do plan to before I leave (even if it is made with fermented this or maggots that…).  China has so many smells that are so different – I’m pretty sure that most of them cause cancer- they smell like plastics, chemicals, raw meat, cooked meat, cooking meat, rotting, unidentifiable carbon based life, and so many which are entirely indescribable except for “that weird smell of the fake DVDs right after you unwrap them”.
         But I think that the true genius loci of Shanghai is the mysteriously limbo between stuck in the past – garbage in the streets, spitting – and hurdling towards the future – high tech, brand new metro system, tall, beautiful skyscrapers popping up every week. It is often described as developing too quickly which is, in my opinion, quite accurate. Shanghai wants to be New York but the Shanghainese don’t necessarily want to change or stop selling cheap fried rice on the street late at night or stop letting their toddlers relieve themselves next to trees on the street like dogs. The Chinese – for reasons that have always been unclear to me- refuse to get a good English translator for signs, brochures, museum postings, pretty much everything. It’s primarily because there isn’t much of an English speaking audience for such products but mainly they don't see accurate translations as necessary. Other than picture menus in restaurants, there is not a lot of translation happening. To most Chinese young people (the only ones who actually look at English items) anything with English on it is automatically “cool” even if its just a t-shirt with incomprehensible sentences or a mish-mash of random letters. The picture I selected for this post is something of that nature- English just so that it can be in English – the meaning is written in Chinese elsewhere – this is just to “impress” you (ouch potato ;) Shanghai is changing and the huge community of expats is fostering the sorts of changes that they want to see. But this city still has a lot of work to do to become what they see as an “ideal city”.

I took this picture myself last weekend near a restaurant mall (yes, it is a mall filled only with restuarants - often called food malls).

Since the first book I read about China was rather scholarly, for my second book I selected a more upbeat, pleasure read. Life on Planet China is certainly one of the funniest books I have read and the author manages to capture the quirks of Chinese life as seen by a foreigner even without permanently changing his address. Maarten Troost, a self-proclaimed non-travel writer nor China expert manages to write a fascinatingly accurate and enlightening book about China. As he writes in the author’s note, “He would write from the perspective of a guy who neither speaks Chinese nor has all that much knowledge pertaining to things Chinese, a guy who spent month after month just kind of wandering around this massive and rapidly changing country, without a plan, learning and experiencing life there … He Hopes that by writing honestly, that by sharing his experiences,  readers might in fact, get a sense of this vast and complex country. Because it’s important. We need to understand China. Really. You’ll see. So there will be no fucking sunsets in the pages that follow (Troost, xi).  This upbeat, funny, honest style flows through the whole book as the reader follows Troost all over China’s diverse landscape making an almost 400 page book a page-turning quick read that is both fascinating and hilarious. I would honestly recommend it to anyone – even someone who hates reading – it’s that good and I plan to pick up the rest of his books as soon as I’m back home. Maybe its because the author and I have had similar experiences in China – with the Chinese language, food, people or maybe it’s because we both look to experience culture full-on, immersed in it. In the second chapter Troost explains his difficulties in trying to learn the Chinese language – something that has become all the more real after arriving at NYU Shanghai and having characters drilled into my head – about 70 per week- and still feeling like I can barely communicate with anyone outside of NYU. He writes, “I couldn't help but conclude that the Chinese language is the Great Wall of languages, a clever linguistic barrier erected to keep foreigners out … Like nearly everthing else I assumed about China, I was wrong. The Majority of Chinese characters are mixtures of the phonetic and the semantic … and then the linguistic powers that be – whoever they are- threw in tones – possibly to ensure that no foreigner would have any chance whatsoever if understanding the Chinese language” (Troost, 17).

Troost examines every aspect of Chinese life both on a local and national level through his humorous personal stories – everything from pollution to cat-burgers to mountain climbing to standing on the edge of the North Korean border. He starts out the book with an idea of China being the future but along the way forms new opinions – he develops China fatigue – something that I seem to sometimes brush away as culture shock. China has a way of both over and underwhelming at the same time. He discusses the controlling nature of the Chinese Communist party and finds a way (even with more limited Chinese than I have) to talk to locals in every city and town that he visits. In the final chapter Troost discusses China’s future, “If you ignore the environment – an you can’t because the damage is utterly overwhelming  - the future of China looks sunny –okay, smoggy—and I suspect that China would find a way to manage all its fissures and problems and perhaps Chinese society would indeed become harmonious – barring a complete societal collapse as the environment degradation undergoes devastating feedback loops. It’s a complex country, not easily summed up” (Troost, 376). And it is this idea- that the country of “Planet” China is in fact as complex as planet earth that is Troost’s concluding thought. This is not a book about what to do in China or what China is “really” all about. This book is China –the good, the bad, the fake stuff, the pollution, the governmental control, the the squatty potties, the dog meat and everything in between. Troost tells it like it is and isn’t trying to please anyone. His honesty and willingness to go everywhere, do anything makes this more of a story than any “travel” book that I’ve ever read – but I promise that it will teach you more about the real China than all the other books combined. 

NYU in Shanghai offers its students two options on where they can live: on-campus or off-campus. As a typical NYU student who wants to get the most bang for NYU’s hefty tuition I elected to live in luxurious Shanghai apartment for less than the cost of a low-cost triple back in New York. And it certainly is luxurious – each room for 3-4 students has all single bedrooms, some with private baths, a full kitchen, dining room, living room, storage closet, and washer dryer. But perhaps the nicest thing about living off-campus is the location. It is situated in a lovely residential part of Shanghai next to one of the city’s best and I believe oldest parks, Zhongshan Park. Upon walking the three blocks from the apartments and entering the park you will feel that you have left the city for a picturesque country village. The park is aesthetically beautiful with lovely trees and gardens engulfing the visitor from all angles. In The Great Good Place Ray Oldenburg writes that, “places such as these, which serve virtually everybody, soon create an environment in which everybody knows everybody. In most cases, it cannot be said that everyone will like everybody else. It is, however, important to know everyone, to know how they variously add and subtract from the general welfare” (Oldenburg). This describes Zhongshan Park perfectly, there are numerous pavilions, man-made rivers with connecting bridges, boats for rent, children playing, older people doing tai chi, old men writing in calligraphy with water, couples, families, grandchildren –on a Sunday afternoon this is the place to be. Not only that but there is wonderful dim sum restaurant in the center of the park that is always packed on Sunday mornings by Shanghainese locals taking part in the tradition of Dim Sum on the weekend. Though originating in the Cantonese region of China, dim sum is popular with Chinese people all over Shanghai and all over the world. Though each time I enter the park I encounter different people, Sunday is really the ideal day to see Chinese life in full-swing and see all the different stages of life enjoying one of Shanghai's most beautiful parks.
 

Earlier this semester I went with my photography class to the Shanghai Contemporary – a multi-day exhibition of contemporary Asian artists that takes place every September. It was a remarkable opportunity to be able to experience it (it has only been around since 2007 but has been remarkably popular) and our teacher was able to get us free tickets for one afternoon. I am personally not a fan of contemporary art (even after trying to increase my enjoyment and understanding of the modern art world through a class on modern art since 1900 last semester). I just don’t “get it”. My notion of art is a rather romantic one that focuses on proportion, skill, and technique. I don’t even consider my own “art” – photography- to be art – I don’t have a special talent or put a lot of emotion into my work, but I enjoy taking photos and some people enjoy looking at them. The first (and only other) time that I had experienced modern Chinese art (at a modern Chinese artist’s exhibition at a museum in Sydney) I was equally disappointed. But as I do with each museum or exhibition I enter, I tried to keep an open mind – this was the best of the best – there had to be something that I liked. And there was – I ended up having a great time and finding a few artists who’s work really spoke to me – they were everything that I like about classical works – aesthetically beautiful, precise, and showed incredible skill (examples below). A good number of Chinese artists are able to take traditional methods of Chinese art and translate them into something for a modern market – classical painting or calligraphy, ink impressions, stamps, shadow art, and wood carving are just a few examples of what we saw. But there was one artist who’s work really resonated with me and my love of classical works. It was the work of Japanese artist Mori Hideo- a solo exhibition entitled “The Deceptive Blue Sky”. People that know me know that I love when authors make references to things I know or like. I am an avid lover of useless knowledge; it’s why I love being a part of NYU’s trivia team. I love that feeling of “getting it”. And with this artist I just got it. The whole thing. I turned and saw his painting and I just “got it” – like an inside joke. He uniquely combined classical paintings with a Magritte-esque surrealism; and I ate it up. I adore Rene Magritte and went to a whole museum of his work this semester and gained a great appreciation for his style and subject matter. The picture that I included above is one I took at the SH Contemporary and it is a combination of Hideo’s work with one of my favorite artists, Jean Francois Millet– his painting The Gleaners 1857, makes up the background. His unique approach to multiple styles and time periods was fascinating and exemplified his excellent technique. 



Image taken by me at the Shanghai Contemporary.

Most countries and even cities have some kind of “staged authenticity” that they are known for and in my experience it often has to do with the food of a certain place. In Paris it's the crepes or baguettes, in Florence it's the gelato, in Beijing is the Peking Duck. It’s that thing you have to try because its the “best” only in this particular place and its what the “locals” eat. Shanghai has one of these dishes – the xiao long bao or soup dumplings – a delicious little doughy pocket of scalding soup and a juicy ball of pork steamed to perfection. For most tourists in Shanghai this is the food to try- something that expats hunt the whole city to find the best of. One article describing one xiao long bao place - Jia Jia Tang Bao 佳家汤包- described it as a Mecca of soup dumplings – making the trip there a pilgrimage in its own right – it is a secular and culinary “authenticity” adventure. Through my experience of attending one of Shanghai’s many universities it is simply just one of literally hundreds of choices in one of four cafeterias. Like the anthropologist that Margaret Mead describes I have “entered and observed” the eating habits of Chinese students (MacCannell, 592). Through my position of a student, much like that of an anthropologist, I have access to the “back” of society. And the ECNU students don’t flock like outsiders to the xiao long bao section more than any other even though most students come from far away provinces (in fact I think the Korean section is the most popular). The cafeteria provides no “false front” (592). But take one step onto one of Shanghai’s most popular tourist areas, the Bund, and you will find countless xiao long bao locations enticing tourists inside with crazily overprices dumplings and hundreds of customers daily. To them this is authentic – they are having a “real” but “safe” Shanghai experience. As MacCannell explains, “What is being show to tourists is not the institutional backstage … Rather it is a staged back region, a kind of living museum for which we have no analytical terms” (MacCannell, 596). Of course most tourists understand that this “Best in Shanghai” xiao long bao restaurant is neither the best nor the most authentic place to get the savory treats but it is close to their hotel and it is a clean, western style restaurant where many of the wait staff speak a few words of English. In my opinion this is exactly what many tourists are looking for – something “authentic” without hard work. For such people it just authentic enough. 


The link uploader isn't working (probably a Chinese internet issue) but article about the Xiao Long Bao restaurant is pretty interesting and if anything it will make you hungry :) - http://frenziedpalate.blogspot.com/2009/11/jia-jia-tang-bao.html

And watch the video to see these yummy treats being made.

Each person who writes about a place approaches that place with a unique perspective- have they been here before? Do they speak the language? Is this their culture or someone else’s? That is what makes reading about a place so much different than actually experiencing it. There is no way that an author – maybe even one from your hometown – will have the same experience that you will. James Fallows, journalist and author of Postcards from Tomorrow Square does not shy away from explaining his paradigm – in fact he embraces it. He makes it clear to his readers that his viewpoint is unique – as someone who has lived around the world but primarily in Japan but that he is also an American taking a look at China during a boom time. The book is actually a collection of articles that Fallows wrote between 2006 and 2008. While I would caution a reader to be discerning about how strongly they accept Fallows’ claims, he manages to portray China in a way that is both different than the American media, how most Americans see China, and how I thought of China before it became my temporary home. Fallows works to touch on all the major issues impacting China’s development at the time – the rich, the poor, the factories, the farms, Internet censorship, game shows, and natural disasters. And while these topics may seem random, these chapters all flow together into a story that says so much about China during those years and make so much about China today clear in a way that Fallows probably didn’t expect as he wrote them.
 
For example, “Zhang Yue is no more representative of today’s China than a fur merchant like John Jacob Astor or a press baron like William Randolph Hearst was representative of the America of his time. But certain prominent characters are interesting because they are so clearly of their culture’s moment in history… He suggests an answer to one fundamental question about the China of the era to come” (Fallows, 39). In this chapter “Mr. Zhang Builds his Dream Town,” Fallows discusses one of China’s newest millionaires who has not only been extraordinarily successful but has done so with a green, efficient air conditioning system which saves the customer money and is overall better for the environment than traditional systems. On the surface such an article might seem simple but the reality is that it is amazingly complex. It not only deals with China’s new wealthy class but the workers who work for them who are, “arguably better off economically than an American in Chicago living on minimum wage” (Fallows, 93). It deals with problems associated with China’s growing population, its less than desirable food production areas, its pollution and its desire to be both successful and sustainable in the future. Each chapter in Fallows’ book works in this interconnected way that keeps the reader interested from cover to cover and prevents a collection of articles from seeming like just that.  

One of the most remarkable differences between life in New York (one of the United States’ most expensive cities) and Shanghai (one of China’s most modern and relatively wealthy cities) is the difference in the cost of living. Even starting with living accommodations the difference is striking. The off campus apartments NYU Shanghai rents for its students are located in an upper class residential area. Each student has a single bedroom some with walk-in closets, others with private bathrooms. The 3-4 bedroom apartments also have spacious kitchens, dining rooms and a massive common living room that include a comfortable couch and television. Some even have a balcony – all for less than the cost of a low-cost triple in New York per semester. In New York, an apartment of this size and in this location would probably go for 1-3 million. I feel like I am living beyond my means and yet I am actually saving money. And its not just on housing. The cost of food is staggeringly cheap. Every morning I spend on average 3 yuan or 50 us cents for breakfast on either 3 bao ze (steamed buns filled with veggies or pork) or “Chinese burritos” (a “crepe” filled with fried egg, scallions, ginger, hot pepper flakes, and a crunchy piece of fried dough wrapped up with hoisin sauce (plum sauce) as the glue). Both are filling and fast popular breakfast options. But while these typical Chinese office workers breakfasts are extraordinarily cheap, if you wanted lets say milk and Cheerios for a taste of home you will be able to find them but it will cost you an arm and a leg (around 60 yuan for the cheerios and 30 yuan for the milk). This off-putting difference in price has not (as it has for a few in the program) caused me to resent my host culture but instead to embrace it more fully. I feel lucky in the morning to pay 3 yuan for my delicious “breakfast burrito,” smiling as I wait in the long line with Shanghainese businessmen and women who live nearby rather than paying 50 yuan (almost 10 USD) for a Starbucks plain coffee and a pastry. A few of the NYU Shanghai students, myself included, have become so attached to our block’s burrito many that when he was taken away by the police for not paying enough of his rent, we were distraught (luckily he came back three days later). 


Image: A snapshot of my burrito on the way to school.

As Time Out Shanghai’s Photography intern I have spent a good amount of time running around the city in delightfully inexpensive taxicabs. I work on taking pictures for stories that the staff photographer is unable to get to in time. Most of the time these are far off the beaten path or in strange neighborhoods that I am unfamiliar with. Regardless, I need to tell the driver where to go with the Chinese cross streets. In New York, taking a taxi is easy and it is rare that a driver doesn’t know 2nd avenue and 38th street or the Met or JFK or that they don’t have a gps if they aren’t comfortable with Manhattan’s helpful grid. In Shanghai, this is not the case. You might give them the right address (if you are lucky to have found it) but not know the cross street, sometimes you might just have a name (like Shanghai United Family Hospital) and they might flat out tell you that they don’t know where it is or how to get there. This makes getting into a taxi an adventure each time as you have no idea how much your taxi driver will understand about where you want to go. I have been forced to “Look at the eyes, the gestures, the intent behind the words” (Alastair Reid).  One is forced back to a watchful silence” While the driver may not speak English and I speak very few words of Mandarin I recite the cross streets and show the Chinese characters spit out by my Chinese address app and look at the driver to gauge his understanding – does he know what I meant? Should I use one of my stock phrases (like jie jin which means near). A chuckle, a nod, handing me back my piece of paper with the address usually means “I understand” while a blank stare, a sigh, a quizzical cocking of the head means “You are going to have to be more specific or say that again”. In this way I focus more on basic understanding of gesture and common human reactions to clarify that I am understood. It’s communicating without words.
 
It is not just words that can be confusing in a new place. Often daily activities or tools that are dramatically different from what we expect can throw us for a loop. “In the more fugitive, trivial association of the word exotic, the charm of a foreign place arises from the simple idea of novelty and change – from finding camels where at home there are horses, for example… “ (De Botton, 193).  I feel that for Flaubert this feeling of the exotic was often positive but for me there have been a number of times that such “exoticisms” have been negative, throwing me into a spiral of culture shock. This quotation can be summed up in a Chinese context each time one opens a Chinese public toilet stall and is met with a porcelain hole in the ground with little grooves on the sides for one’s feet. There is often no toilet paper (you are required to tote around your own) and since Chinese plumbing is weak and crumbling you must put your used toilet paper into a small trash can next to the “squatty potty” as we lovingly call it. This means that most public bathrooms stink to high heaven and are just generally filthy. Imagine walking into a fancy hotel lobby or casual bar, asking where the bathroom is, opening the stall door just to see a large white hole in the ground on a raised platform staring back at you. The first few times you are perplexed and after that it is just annoying or makes you chuckle.
 

I hope that this post shows some of my ups and downs of wayfinding in Shanghai for someone who is about to start her fourth week of Mandarin in a city where most people over 30 speak no English.
 
Some back story: I am Time Out Shanghai’s newest photo intern and part of the job is going out and taking pictures of places that the in-house photographer doesn’t have time to get to (usually in a pinch). On Tuesday night my boss emailed me to ask if I would be able to take some pictures of two beautiful early 20th century mansions in northern Shanghai that are probably going to be demolished.
 
So, on Wednesday I got out of class at 2:50 armed with the cross streets she had given me (in English, just my luck) and set out to find a taxi. I got into the taxi, recited the cross streets with my minimal understanding of Chinese pronunciation and was met with a blank stare.- a far more common occurrence that I am comfortable with. Oh no. This is bad. I quickly Google the location on my phone and get the district that one of the buildings is in and tell the driver to just drive there, I scramble through many helpless Google findings, wasting megabytes of my data plan, finally coming across an address in Chinese characters and showing it to the driver. As I get out of the cab 25 minutes later I am very apologetic for the confusion and he replies with “Mei guan xi” which means it’s no problem or it doesn’t matter. With a smile I leave the taxi and cross the street, pleased that I managed to navigate myself to this new area. As I continue down the street I’m worried that I might have not found the correct place – after all this building was a Kung Foo Studio over 100 years ago and it is at risk of being torn down by the city – who’s to say that Google didn’t just spit a random article at me? I also a group of old men playing cards if they know “Chin Woo” the name of the school. They point down the street. I ask again, “Chin Woo?” to a group of women, they look confused. I search the dictionary on my phone for the word for school or studio or gym – nothing works. I keep walking. I stumble upon the street for the second location – an old mansion/garden complex  - still inexplicably called Nie’s Garden even though the manmade rivers, ponds, flowers, and trees were paved over by the city in the last few years. I take a variety of pictures of the two remaining homes now inhabited by squatters, the huge cement lot in between them, and the beautiful old details – screen porches, grand staircases, and crumbling walls that remain from when they were built in the early 1900s. The sun is setting; I’m getting worried that I won’t be able to find the school. I call my boss, telling her I cant find it. She says she’ll look it up and call me back. She does and she apologizes for giving me the wrong cross streets but that the other building is just down the road from where I’m standing. The old men were right. I smile. I thank her and hang up and finally find four beautiful Spanish mansions built in 1906 that were converted into a Kung Foo School. In the setting sun amidst old palm trees the wrought iron balconies, colored glass windows, and Spanish-tiled roofs look magical as opposed to covered in garbage and graffiti. 

This is one of the pictures from my adventure of the Spanish mansion/ Kung Foo School (Sorry for the poor quality, it wouldn't let me use the original) - who knows, maybe one of my pictures will end up on the website or the magazine? 

"Yet this description only imperfectly reflects what occurred within me that morning, for my attention was in truth much more fractured and confused than the foregoing paragraphs suggest" (Art of Travel, 19) - Here Alain de Botton describes that it is not only works of art and travel brochures that enhance the characteristics of a place but the travel writer as well. I have noticed this in my own personal blogging - I tend to make even the mundane activities both exciting and attractive even when they may not be. After reading these excerpts I have tried to make my accounts more truthful - more true to how I am feeling and what I am doing. I feel that many of our online presences (facebook, flickr, blogs, etc.) are highly edited - in a way that makes us look good and more attractive/exciting to our friends and possibly random viewers. We work to make our page/blog the "best" - the one that people want to read or follow.
 
http://shanghaishanghai.wordpress.com/ - you can click here for my blog 

In the second chapter of the Art of Travel de Botton writes about T.S. Eliot's explanation of Charles Baudelaire. Eliot wrote that Baudelaire 'invented a new kind of romantic nostalgia' (Art of Travel, 33). This is something that I recognize in my own experiences. While Baudelaire saw the beauty in travel and machines, I see this beauty in something possibly equally mundane, the super market. In many places that I have traveled and lived I find comfort in supermarkets and markets in general. If there is anything that all humans do it is eat and buy things on a regular basis. Finding a supermarket is also something that is necessary when you first come to a place- it is guaranteed that there is a food you need to buy or the inevitable thing you forgot (even though you made sure you brought everything you needed). Both two summers ago when I went to Paris for the summer and right now in Shanghai all supermarkets are a place of comfort for me. It is one of the few places where I can fall back on my own ways and do exactly what the locals are doing without having to act like a bewildered foreigner (even if I have no idea what 70% of the foodstuffs are or why there are 45 kinds of mooncakes). Even during my first few weeks in New York as a freshman Spacemarket and D'agastinos provided a similar comfort.
 
Later on in the chapter de Botton further describes both Baudelaire's fascination with travel and new technology involved with it as well as his person interest in airplanes. With my supermarket fascination I also marvel at all things different- what things in this supermarket reflect differences in our cultures? - what products are more common (fresh tea, unpackaged raw meats, dried products) and which are less common or missing entirely (milk, cheese, napkins). But de Botton, in a similar way to the comfort I feel in supermarket perusing, feels comfort in comfortable things in a new environment, "With the in-flight tray, we make ourselves at home in this unhomely place: we appropriate the extraterrestrial landscape with the help of a chilled bread roll and a plastic dish of potato salad" (Art of Travel, 43).

(I actually took this photo in a nearby supermarket - I seem to take a lot of photos in supermarkets - I felt that it connected well with my ideas of both comfort and confusion)

Hi everyone,

My name is Rebecca (Becca) Zeidman. I am a Junior in CAS studying Anthropology. I am minoring in Global Visual Art and Media, Culture, and Communications. I don't have a specific career path in mind but I know I want to do something with travel and photography later on. This fall I am studying in Shanghai and I joined this course so that I would be forced to actively examine my experience abroad as well as learning about people's experiences at other study abroad sites. I am also working as a photo intern at Time Out Shanghai which hasn't started but should be an interesting experience. I have been in Shanghai for almost two weeks and my experience so far has been very positive. Though this is not my first time in China (I have actually vsited Shanghai twice before) this time it feels remarkably different becuase we live and go to school quite far from the tourist/city center. We are just finishing up our first week of classes and they have been fairly normal so far (Elementary Chinese I four times a week is a bit much but it is a requirement of the program to be taking a Chinese course). Each of the non-Chinese classes are three hour blocks once per week which can be a bit draining. 

As you may or may not know many social networking sites (and a host of other sites) are blocked or limited in China including - Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. So I set up a WordPress blog linked to my facebook before I left home (http://shanghaishanghai.wordpress.com/). It has a bit more of my daily life and funny stories about the first two weeks.

The internet in my apartment is very weak but once I get back to the school building I will be able to upload more/better pictures.

I look forward to your posts and comments,

Becca


(This first photo is one that I took on my little cell phone of raw beef on ice at a great hot pot [cooking food in boiling broth] restaurant near the apartments)