Packing

I'm currently getting ready to go on a weekend trip to an island in China with some friends. I don't actually know what the island is called or what we'll be doing there, but I'm excited about exploring some more of China. Because I seem to get sick in China whenever it is the most inconvenient to do so, I'm bringing plenty of Immodium and toilet paper. I leave right after work tomorrow, returning sometime Sunday afternoon.

A Good Weekend

On Saturday, I slept in, went on an outing to buy deodorant, which is annoyingly difficult to find in China, and played basketball at Shanghai Maritime University, 上海海事大学, with a coworker and his friend. The courts were just regular gray concrete, and they were packed; nonetheless, it was a lot of fun to be on a college campus again. My coworker, who was an undergrad at Shanghai Maritime University, said that the 4 floor teaching building was once the tallest building in Pudong. The small campus area is now dwarfed by 50+ floor skyscrapers. I read somewhere that in 2015, 50% of the world's buildings constructed since 2000 will be in China. Looking around the neighborhood where I live, this is not hard to believe.

While we played basketball, my friends' girlfriends made dinner (somehow, I think we got the better end of that deal). Among other dishes, dinner included chicken feet, a first for me. They mostly 'tasted like chicken', except with a definite tendon and ligament texture to them (which I guess makes sense). I learned by watching the others at the table that the way to eat chicken feet is just to bite off the fingers and spit out what you can't chew, which is surprisingly little if you're good. My main complaint was that the feet were a lot of work for very little meat.

On Sunday after another basketball game with some other people from my office, I met with the Fall FSP kids for dinner. It was fun to talk to them and reminisce a little about what it was like to have been in China for only about 4 or 5 weeks, taking classes and exploring Beijing. I think I might try to visit them in Beijing sometime this fall, but we'll have to see - I'm also planning trips to Hangzhou and Suzhou with my neighbors and coworkers.

I'm getting ready to start some intense exploration of Shanghai. It's very easy to just want to go home and read or nap after work, but I think I will regret doing that too often once I'm back in the States.

这几天

On Sunday night, I went to a party with one of my dad's former students. The party was another kid named Joe's birthday party. Understandably, I had some difficulty answering the "How do you know Joe?" question:

"Well, I AM Joe, but - uh - my dad's former student, whom I just met tonight, somehow met Joe... - sighs - I don't know Joe."

The party was actually pretty fun. It was definitely the most multicultural event I think I've ever been to: I met people from France, Lithuania, Italy, Germany, Japan, US, and - of course - China.















On Tuesday, I went to Zhouzhuang with my neighbors and their friends for the day. Because this week everyone in China is off of work for the National Holidays, Zhouzhuang was ridiculously packed. Chinese traveling is something I'm not sure I will ever get used to: you're led by a fast-talking tour-guide with a megaphone through hot, crowded tourist attractions, which mostly exist as places for humorous photo-ops (i.e. sit down at this ancient wealthy Chinese person's desk for a picture).

We all had our fortunes read by monks at a temple we visited. This was very bizarre. You "donate" some amount of money to enter a big room lined with people waiting to talk to one of the 7 or 8 monks reading fortunes. They give you one of about 12 possible pieces of paper with Chinese writing that the monk reads to tell you your fortune (mine had the character 上 on it - my neighbor tells me this is good). If you buy a gift for a monk you can go to the front of the line in front of all those who merely "donated". When the monk finally got to me, a lowly donor, he told me in hushed, fast Chinese that I had a stubborn personality and needed to open up to my friends more. I thanked him and wondered how many of the hundreds around me would get the same advice.

My neighbors

Today my boss gave me my RMB 2000 prize money, so I attempted to ask my neighbors out to dinner. The wife has been making me dinner every day and - whenever possible - (s)mothering me to no end. Anyway, I figured taking them out for Italian food would be a good way to blow some of the money. As I expected, they said no (I get the sense that 19 is much younger in China than in the US). I think I even offended them by very indirectly suggesting that I wanted to eat something besides her food.

When I got home from work at about 6:30, both greeted me and told me she had made me "Italian noodles". This sounded pretty interesting, so I quickly sat down in their apartment. The dish had noodles that looked a lot like spaghetti, only they were mixed in a typical Chinese sauce with chunks of tomato, onion, and beef. It tasted nothing like spaghetti and was a little strange, but it was very cute.

Meals with my neighbors are always pretty funny: the husband, who only wears boxers at the table, usually just makes puns about me that I don't understand to the wife, who - even as I am shoveling food into my mouth - continuously insists that I "多吃一点“， “eat a little more". After every bite, in between her exhortations for me to eat more, she asks "How does it taste," and then - as if in agreement with my standard response, "good" - says "other places don't make X dish as well as I do." She has said that for every meal except for the spaghetti, which she has somehow decided that my mom can make better.

Sanya and Miscellany

I got back from Sanya at about 3am Saturday night. In true Chinese fashion, my plane was delayed both ways. Sanya was pretty fun. It definitely had the most picturesque beaches and I really enjoyed lazily swimming and lying around. By Saturday I was pretty exhausted - essentially every part of the trip was done in Chinese (tour guides, my bosses, activity leaders, and friends all spoke in Chinese). While it was certainly good for me (and while there was some English), I was done with wanting to hear/speak Chinese until Monday.

On Friday night, there was an office-wide banquet with a prize-drawing. Awkwardly, I - the unpaid, newly arrived intern - won the top prize of RMB 2000, about 200-300 dollars. When I went upstage to collect my prize, one of the firm's principal partners said in Chinese, "He has been studying Chinese, so I won't give him the prize unless he gives a speech in Chinese first." The thought of speaking in front of 100 colleagues I had just met in a language in which I am hardly literate was a little daunting. I ended up jokingly saying in Chinese, "Hi my name is 周洪恩 (my Chinese name) and I'm an unpaid intern here." Luckily people laughed, and the rest of whatever I said went by quickly.

I celebrated the mid-autumn festival with my neighbors and their family. We went to a nearby restaurant and had moon cakes. That went pretty well, except that my neighbor has taken up the habit of telling people (or just telling me) that I use chopsticks terribly and then insisting on putting food on my plate herself. Now, while I may not have the skills of a native Chinese person, I'm pretty sure I can at least feed myself. Oh well, I guess I need to practice more.

At work, I'm getting more and more things handed my way. I feel like I'm slowly getting a sense of some of the basic players in Chinese corporate law (the important agencies and regulations). That's probably pretty silly to say, but - at the very least - I don't feel as clueless as I used to when I'm handed an assignment. I had to buy some more clothes for work; as usual - and as my neighbor was happy to point out - I paid too much for them. That'll happen.

I bought a Chinese movie to try to improve my listening comprehension. I just asked a street vendor to pick me out their favorite movie. It was corny and girly, but fun to watch. I asked my neighbor's brother for a movie recommendation, and he gave me the name of an action movie. I'll try to find it the next time I walk by a DVD stall.

台风 (typhoon)

so far the typhoon hitting shanghai has been pretty anticlimactic. when i left work today there were some pretty neat winds and it was raining some, but nothing too impressive. i'm a little disappointed, though there is still hope for more tonight.

the past two nights, i've had dinner with my neighbor and her husband. they're a relatively young couple so it was fun to talk to them. she says that because i'm young and alone, she, as my older chinese sister, has to take care of me. in any case, it's been a great way to practice my chinese and eat good, free food.

on sunday when i get back from sanya, i'm going to play basketball with some of the people at my work (including some of my bosses). while i realize there is a bit of a conflict of interest there, i think it should be fun.

settling in

at work, i've either been extremely busy or very bored. i write and edit (articles, powerpoints, etc.,) for the partners at the firm, meaning i don't really have any long term projects to work on when they don't need something written. it's kind of like being a freelance writer who has to be at the office from 9-6. the upside is that i'm learning a lot about really specific, obscure topics. give me a call if you want to learn about new chinese antitrust laws. or if you're an employment law buff, last thursday i was up late because i had one day to write a 6 page article draft about regulations concerning equity-based employee compensation or incentive plans.

i think i'm starting to make friends at work. it's pretty difficult because, not only is everyone older than me, but those closest to my age are chinese with limited english skills. i think the language problem is actually an impetus to conversation though - they are as eager to practice english as i am to practice chinese.

i'm working on getting more acquainted with shanghai. on saturday, i took the subway shangha's "people square" or 人民广场. after buying some english books to keep me occupied, i attempted to walk back to my apartment. when i realized there wasn't a nearby bridge to cross the huangpu river, which cuts my neighborhood, pudong, off from the rest of shanghai, i had to give up and take a subway-like thing across the river.

on thursday, the office is paying for my coworkers and i to fly to sanya, an island in southern china. i don't really understand what this "office outing" is for, but i think it should be fun. at the very least, i'm staying in a 5 star hotel and eating well on the company's dime.

here is a picture of my apartment building.
it's pretty basic without too many flourishes. on the first floor, there's a bank, two bakeries (one french, one chinese), a hair salon, a dry cleaners, and a coffee shop. in that respect, the location is pretty handy. i've started trying to run up and down the stairs to release energy. i really confused some of the other tenants when they saw me take the elevator down to the first floor and then go right for the stairs.







this is a picture of my office building, jin mao tower (there are probably better pictures on wikipedia). It looks a little like something out of batman's gotham. it also seems very hi-tech: to get to the area where the elevators are, employees have key cards that they slide, opening little clear plastic gates. then to get into the baker & mckenzie office i use another key card to open these big sliding glass doors. there are all sorts of expensive restaurants and bars on the top floors, but i don't have the money to eat at any of them. when i go in and out of the actual building, i see lots tourists taking pictures of china's tallest building (though, obnoxiously, a taller one is being built right next to it).

the first picture is taken of the neighborhood where i live/work from across the huangpu river. i'll try to post pictures of the inside of my apartment sometime soon.