Differences between Seattle and Shanghai by Riley

Differences between Seattle and Shanghai

By Riley

6/29/2012

Our driver takes us to a fast food restaurant for lunch one day, we walk in and there is no English on the menu. Aiden is trying to figure out what they all mean and I’m using my mom’s phone to translate it.  Aiden is getting almost all of it right, but there are some really weird characters that he cannot figure out. So I use the translator and it comes up with something that’s not even food. So Aiden tries to go to the front and asks for a English menu “我们可以有一个美国的菜, they don’t have any in the restaurant. We turn around worried that our driver took off and will be back in an hour and we don’t know what to order. Just then this really nice lady, who is Chinese but lives in Canada, walks up to us and helps us find our food we want, then she is nice enough to even order for us. She was our savior for the day!   We walk over to an open table right in front of where our food comes out of.  So we are eating all happily, then a guy who has been sitting behind us the whole entire time started drinking his soup. He wasn’t just drinking his soup, he was slurping it, it was so loud and gross, my mom couldn’t stand the slurping and she couldn’t eat while he was making the slurping sounds.  It went on for about 2 minutes, then I turned around and looked at his soup bowl and then I turned back to my mom and said, “ Don’t worry he’s almost done”. 

 Then at another meal we had at the “Dome” (my whole family likes to call it that because it looks like a dome) but it’s really called Metro City. 

My mom and Aiden were talking to this really nice guy named Stu who owns a restaurant in the “ Dome”.  While they were talking I saw 3 people, 2 guys and one lady sitting at a table behind my mom and they all look like they didn’t know each other. One of the guys ate all of his food, but then once he is done with his food he waited at the table.  Then the lady walks away because she’s full, but the guy I have been watching wasn't. He swooped over once she left and started eating her food. He was sitting right next to a see through window that was right next to the escalator. The lady whose food the guy was eating walked by and looked at him and gave this really disgusted look at him.  Then once the other guy was done he did the same thing, started eating his food, but he didn’t go down the escalator so he didn’t see the guy eating his food.  Once he was done eating everyone else’s food he got up and started practicing kick boxing in the hall way. 

So now we move on to the people on the street, people don’t have the same customs that we do in the US. The thing that is most disgusting is they spit big, huge loogies out everywhere! It makes my mom and I look around and try not to step on them. We also look at each other and have this really disturbed look on our faces every time. 

Then there’s a lot of beggars that look so miserable I feel so bad for them, but I don’t have money on me whenever I see them so I can’t give money to them, but I really want to!!!! In the US you would rarely ever see people on the side of the road with no legs and missing one arm. It’s so sad that their in this position and I can’t do anything to help, it’s so sad.

This is a picture of a mother and son that have no where to live and sleep right there on the road.

Last time I was in Shanghai there was this father and son that looked like they were in a fire and burned badly and now they’re homeless and have no money. I wish there was something I could do.

We found the China that we remember…

We went for dinner tonight away from the apartment towards an area that we used to eat at when we were here four years ago. It’s probably only about half a mile from our current apartment, but clearly all the things that I have been making mental notes about that have changed, have not changed when you get off the beaten track a bit. This particular restaurant is called the Big Frog and every time we tried to go 4 years ago it was too busy and we couldn’t get in. Tonight was no exception, the place was packed. In fact, we waited for quite a while for a seat. Once it was finally our turn we followed the waiter upstairs to a room that was so filled with smoke that you could cook meat in it. Ah, the China I remember. We know that it can be different now so we asked to be moved to another table because it was too smokey. Now remember that I told you this was the old China, which also means that no one speaks any English, none, notta. After a bit of sign language we were lead downstairs and out the front door. Today was a rather warm day, so it was still quite warm tonight. There were some temporary tables set up in front of the restaurant for the abundance of patrons they had tonight. There wasn’t a table available outside either so they ran back inside, found a disassembled plastic table and set it up for us, followed by some plastic chairs. So now we have a place to sit and eat, but it is on an extremely busy, smelly, and noisy darkish street, but it is slightly better than the room filled with so much smoke that you couldn’t see clearly across the room.

Now it’s time to order our food. There is no English on the menu, not a single picture on the menu and no idea what they have except probably frog since it’s called the Big Frog (which isn’t in English either, but we recognize the symbol for frog). Oh and large pans full of Cray fish. Everyone around us is wearing plastic gloves and diving elbow deep into giant piles of Cray fish. I just can’t do Cray Fish in such a polluted place so we’ve got to figure something else out since we have now waited forever, had them set up a special table for us and besides the fact we are starving. Our waitress hands us a menu, stands and stares waiting for us to make a decision. We try to tell her that we need time, but she doesn’t get it so we let her stand there. She doesn’t speak any English and we try with our little bit of mandarin to figure it out and mostly it’s an awkward interaction. Finally Aiden asks her in Mandarin what she would order. She points to a few items on the menu that are completely in Chinese characters. Jeff tries to use his phone to translate the menu items, but it’s so dark that his phone is having issues. We finally decide on a few things with the waitress, not really knowing for sure what we are ordering. Our first item arrives. The phone has translated that it is some sort of golden, needle mushrooms. We have had these mushrooms before and really enjoyed them. The item that arrives might have had a few mushrooms in it, but mostly it is tripe. Tripe is cow intestine. And not only is it tripe, but it is SUPER spicy. Hmmmm, maybe the next item will be more in line with what we are expecting.  The next item is a soup with some sort of meat in it, probably beef, and noodles. It is also SUPER spicy, but with plenty of water it is consumed. Last item to arrive is a HUGE bowl with enormous fried frog parts. These must be the biggest bull frogs imaginable.

This is Claire holding up a frog leg, yummy! Notice the "Blond" Chinese lady behind Claire. We see that a lot here. Sad since they have such beautiful black hair, this orange color is not appealing to me.

 The kids said they saw a delivery of frogs and the frogs were plate size. I try to imagine my food was never alive so I do not look at the delivery.  This is perhaps the oddest concoction of ingredients that I could imagine; fried frog, sliced lotus roots and potato chips. Yes, you read that right, potato chips. Not the rippled sort, but the smooth, salted thick ones (like Tim’s Cascade potato chips).  This is super yummy!

This meal is nostalgic of most of our China experiences 4 years ago. I have another post written, but I haven’t posted it yet about all the amazing changes that we have seen in Shanghai. When I post that entry you will appreciate how far parts of Shanghai have come in a very short time. For now we enjoyed another adventure of not knowing for sure what we have eaten and eating things that we might not have normally ordered. The little things you take for granted when you are home. 

This picture is dark and we had eaten a lot of it when I thought to take a picture, but you can see the round, holey things those are lotus root slices. The flat, cream colored things at the top are potato chips. We have seen this dish at other restaurants, but we didn't know what it was until it was our turn to eat it.

What a typical day in Shanghai looks like:

I thought I would share with you a typical day here for us in Shanghai. We started out today by heading to the store to buy eye glasses for Aiden and I. We had Yang, our driver take us to the same place we went four years ago when we were here. It turns out that it isn’t where it used to be. After an hour and a half driving through crazy, busy traffic our driver got us to where he thought the Eye Glass Emporium used to be. L  (I saved a business card from before)Yang called the business and they explained where they had moved. He drove us to near the new location, but he couldn’t explain where it was exactly so after a little while of him telling me to wait, but not really knowing what for, a young woman came out of one of the buildings and waved at us. She apparently had come from the business to escort us to her store. We followed her through a quick mart type store, up three flights in the elevator and ended up in a very busy store full of many eye glass vendors.

This is one little shop in a large building FULL of different glasses stores.

 The young ladytook us to the owner of the store and she greeted us very warmly. She speaks very good English and obviously after looking around has a market on Westerners because there were several other Western clienteles besides us.  She and Aiden picked out a pair of glasses, and then it was my turn and finally Claire decided she really wanted a pair of sunglasses. Claire didn’t like any of the kid’s sunglasses as she had her heart set on an oversized set of adult glasses. So after a lot of deliberating about which ones might be more appropriate Claire picked out some oversized, reddish glasses. Here she is in her glasses before we added the shaded lenses.

While Claire was picking out her glasses, our glasses were being made. The frames are already made, but the technician shaped the lenses. He is done in about 20 minutes, so amazing to me even though I experienced this last time too.

Here's Riley trying on some beautiful purple ladies glasses, he's such a goof. :)

 By now we are starving and it turns out it’s going to take a while for them to get to Claire’s glasses so they suggest we go eat. We have no idea where we are or where to go so the owner of the glasses place suggests her worker again escort us to a nearby restaurant and then she will bring our glasses when they are done. We head back down the elevator and find a simple little restaurant and while we are eating our glasses show up. This so cool and such great service and all for about $115.  The $115 includes replacing the lenses in Aiden’s old glasses too. J

Then instead of being stuck in the car for another hour drive home we jumped on the subway and got to our stop in about 15 minutes. The driver is nice, but when you need to get somewhere quick it turns out the subway is probably quicker unless there is no traffic

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After our glasses adventure Claire and I decide to go have pedicures. Claire has been dying to have one since she recently missed out on an opportunity to go for my niece’s birthday. I asked the nice ladies at the front desk of the apartment where they would recommend and after a few minutes of me trying to describe a pedicure with sign language they recommended a nice place up the street. They wrote out the Chinese characters on a piece of paper. Then Claire and I set out on our quest to find this place with the unknown sign. We weren’t even really sure which street it was on. I stopped in a few stores and showed them my note and people kept pointing me in a similar direction and eventually we found it. This place was very small, not in any way luxurious, had an incredibly strong chemical smell, but did pedicures. Good enough! When they seated us, there was a little English, but not much. But the patron next to me spoke pretty good English so I had her interpret as much as I could without ruining her experience. At first they said they couldn’t do Claire because she was a kid, but when they saw how sad and disappointed she looked they changed their mind. She went first and had a very content look on her face, like she had joined some lady club that she had been yearning after for years.

 Then it was my turn. They did a nice job, it wasn’t your spa pedicure with all the massaging and scrubbing, but I have some pretty toes now. I guess I had to ask for the extras. I’m learning, it’s taking me awhile.

Next it was time for dinner with Jeff. We walked down the street to a Muslim, Uighur restaurant. It was a mix of Chinese and Persian style food. We had lamb, eggplant, green beans, and beef with yogurt. Super yummy, I think we will have to check out that place again as there were many really good looking things on the menu. Every time we have tried to go to this place it has been so busy that people are spilled out onto the street. We figured a Monday night was probably our best chance and it was. The one disappointment was there were no belly dancers today. Riley in particular was looking forward to them.

On our walk home Claire wanted to take a side trip to a little court yard near our apartment where some feral and not feral cats live. This side trip happens several times a day, nearly every time we leave or return to our apartment. There is a momma cat and four babies that we can’t get close to and then there is one brown kitty that always greets Claire when she goes to “Check” on the kitties. Here is a picture of Claire and her friend. 

The sad thing is most people here do not like cats so they are not nice to them. They look appalled that Claire is petting this cat (She always goes back and washes her hands). We have watched some of the other young children playing in the court yard and they will call the kitty over and then yell at it in a really mean way. It some ways I think Claire is doing this cat a disservice to be nice to it because it trusts Claire, but shouldn’t trust these other children and I am afraid it might get hurt. L

The last thing that I was going to mention about our walk home from the court yard tonight is the court yard is overlooked by a rather fancy restaurant. I have not gone into this restaurant, but it looks like from the court yard that there are many private rooms with one large round table in each room. Usually we are preoccupied by the kitties and I don’t pay any attention to the restaurant, but tonight one waitress caught my attention. She was clearing the table and kept taking bites of some dish that was left. She thought no one was watching her. I could tell by the way she kept looking out the door to see if anyone could see her, but I could see her from outside. She was acting nervous, but kept taking more and more bites. I have never been a waitress, but I don’t think it would ever occur to me to touch someone else’s uneaten food. I know it’s a little different here because every meal is served family style. Family style means that all the food is kept in the center of the table and each person uses their own chop sticks to take a small portion and put it directly in their mouth. Your personal bowl and plate are really only there for bones or other inedible pieces. Maybe her behavior isn’t odd and maybe I was misreading her nervousness, but it seemed a little odd, or maybe it’s just a perk for a food server. Either way the food she was stealing couldn’t possibly be as good as our dinner. 

Happy Dragon Boat Festival! Whatever that means....

This weekend is Dragon Boat Festival weekend here in China. It is a national holiday from what I can gather. Everyone gets Friday and the entire weekend off to celebrate. We plan to go watch some races tomorrow in the local river. I hear lots of music coming from the streets. The streets are packed with people coming from out of town to have their holiday here in the city. I love how all the holidays here are rooted deep in history. I suppose ours are too, but it feels fresh and interesting from an outsiders perspective. Here is some interesting history that I could find about this holiday. Dragon Boat Festival

The Dragon Boat Festival commemorates the life and death of Chu Yuan (340 –278 BC), a political leader of the state of Chu.

Chu Yuan was a respected poet as well as politician of ancient China. When he lost the trust of the King and saw his home state of Chu fall into the hands of inept officials, he saw his country weakened with the ensuing invasion by its powerful neighbor. This saddened him so much that he drowned himself in the Mi-Lo River in despair.

The people of Chu rushed to rescue him, but rushed in vain. In memory of Chu Yuan’s loyalty to the kingdom, and as a symbol to keep the fish away from his body, the people threw rice dumplings wrapped with bamboo leaves, called tzung-tze, into the river.

These are tzung-tze and they are every where right now.

Each year, on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month (usually June) crews of paddlers re-enact that frantic rush to save Qu Yuan, by powering long narrow boats with the ferocious heads of dragons mounted on the prow through the water, to the frenzied, rhythmic beating of drums. It is not known how the dragon boat prow came into being, but it is thought that over the years, they were added to ward off evil water spirits. This probably arose because the combination of the 5th lunar numbers is thought to be a bad omen and dragon boat races held, at this time, would ward off evil spirits; protect the health of the people and ensure a good crop each year.

Special foods are also eaten at this time of year, including replicas of the Rice Dumplings (tzung-tze) that the fishermen threw into the Milo River, all those years ago in a desperate attempt to save Chu Yuan.

How in the World Do People Learn to Drive Here?

How in the world do people learn to drive here?

Let me start with I have no answers, but I have thought a lot about this in the past few days. Aiden has been learning to drive for the past year. He’s still has some serious learning to do and I think it takes a lot of practice to become a good driver.  The traffic in downtown Woodinville can be a bit nerve racking for a new driver at times, and especially for the parent of the new driver in the passenger seat. J The traffic and customs for driving here in Shanghai are like no other place I have ever visited. It is crazy! The amount of lane changes and driving between two lanes is insane. It appears from my perspective that the cars, taxis, scooters, or whatever just move into their intended lane at any given time without a care in the world that their might already be a car there. The obvious rule here is the bigger you are the more the rules don’t apply to you. The buses barrel through every situation. In fact, today we were sandwiched in between two buses that were each headed their own way, doing their own thing and we were innocently trapped between them. This was quite a conundrum; each bus thought that they were the biggest and most deserving of the right away. We got out of our situation unscathed because of the skill of our driver. By the way, we have our own car and personal driver, Yang, for the next month, he is calm, he is brave and he is a good driver. I am always impressed with how many close calls we have, but never actually running into anybody. We have been out a few times with him and each time we sit in silence since he doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak Mandarin, but the question that I always really want to ask him is “How did you ever learn to drive in all this craziness?” 

Where Are All the Old People?

Well here we are in Shanghai again. I didn't expect to find myself here for another extended period of time, but here we are. Our last Shanghai adventure was 4 years ago and it was 6 1/2 weeks long. The kids were exactly 4 years younger, I remember Aiden celebrating his 13th birthday here and just yesterday we celebrated his 17th. How many kids can say they have celebrated 3 birthdays in a strange, foreign country? It looks like a this time we will be coming back again next summer too. Jeff's job has been relocated to Shanghai for 18 months. The kids and I have decided to stay in Woodinville for school so we will live apart for the school year, while Jeff schleps back and forth between Woodinville and China every six weeks or so. It's not ideal, but it is what it is for now.

Shanghai has changed a lot in the past four years. It truly is amazing how quickly this culture is changing. When we were here four years ago parts of it felt very modern and many parts felt like the US back in the 70’s. I kept a blog while I was here before noting our adventures and all the oddities that the kids and I noticed. If you care to read it, or refresh your brain here it is.

http://hollie-shanghai2008.blogspot.com/2008_06_01_archive.html

Parts of it are rather comical; I did feel like we had landed on a different planet at times. I will try to post as often as possible in this blog, but I don’t think I will every day since I don’t think there will be nearly as many fascinating things to post about.

Notice the rows with pieces of paper on top and the adults sitting behind them.

This post is titled Where Are All the Old People? We are living in a rather hip, fast paced area. There are young people everywhere.  Don’t get me wrong there are some old people, but the majority of the people working in the stores or restaurants or walking down the street are very young, college age kids. We made our way to People’s Square over the weekend; it is a local gathering place. Jeff was teasing Aiden that we were going to find him a wife when we got to People’s Square. Aiden and I had no idea what Jeff was referring too, but we soon found out. Apparently, on Saturday’s (or maybe other days too?) the middle aged parents (not much older than me really) meet at the park to try and find partners for their young adult children. It’s like a dating service for parents to interview other prospective parents. They sit in rows with all their kids’ accomplishments and statistics listed in front of them. Then other parents wonder around looking at all the data. There are NO young people in sight, only parents. Very interesting! There are rows and rows of people and large posters with pictures and info under each picture. I have no idea what information is listed on each young adult, but I am very curious what they say because that would tell me what they value. Most of them do not have pictures, which I think is very interesting too. Maybe they are on to something; watch out Aiden, Riley and Claire I might have to interview prospective parents in law in the future.

notice the sheets of paper listing all the eligible "children", while all the prospective parents mingle 

Can you imagine having your child's picture on this wall? It looks more like a missing person's wall to me.

They will use anything to post their info, these are all using umbrellas to  prop up their child's accomplishments and traits.

This was a rather large area, row after row of prospective children. Sorta like a  flea market.