Currently Watching The Interpreter see related

WOW...has it really been 2 months since last time I wrote??  oops...time just goes by so fast!  Honestly that feels impossible.  It seems like every single minute of the past months has been filled, theres never a dull moment here.  Just thinking about all that has happened makes me sleepy! 

So much has happened, it really could have been two years ago and not just two months!  Travelling more, working more, going out more...its been a whirlwind.  And now I'm coming to the realisation that its almost the big ONE YEAR mark in Shanghai. 

Adventures outside of Shanghai...

I guess I'll start with last week's trip, a fantastically spontaneous trip to Hong Kong.  In celebration of May 1, we took an impromptu trip south to the island of Hong Kong.  What an amazing place!  It was like leaping twenty years into the future.  Downtowon is wonderfully modern, clean, organized; everything that the "motherland" lacks at times.  At times you would think its NYC, at others London, some San Fransisco, and still others Monaco.   But not only is it a fab city, but it has everything you could want from a place: Warm weather, beautiful beaches, mountains to hike and jungles to explore. 

We took full advantage of all the offerings of the city, but by far the most memorable part of the trip was an ill-planned campout on the beach! 

After an afternoon of window shopping, skyscraper-gawking, and random exploring of downtown we set out on a bus to a village 30 minutes outside of the city centre.  The contrast is striking!  One minute you're in one of the most futuristic metropolises in the world, and in less than an hour you're in a rural village complete with farming peasants and waterbuffalo. 

From there we decided to take another bus to "savage beaches", these paradisic untouched beaches we'd been told about.  Unfortunately we set out a little late and weren't prepared for what was in store for us...a 5 1/2k hike up and down mountains to get to the beach!  Sunset was fast approaching so we had to try to run for it before night. 

The heat was suffocating.  We were running up and down hillsides through the jungle and the humidity was unbelievable.  About an hour later, absolutely drenched in sweat,  we still hadn't made it to the beach and the sun had completely set.  We were in a pitch-black jungle trying to hike our way to the ocean.  Eventually we found it...and were surprised to find that it was so secluded that wild cows had also made it home (and left their mark, haha). 

 Not to be deterred, we jumped into the ocean which was perfect.  Not too cold, and so salty that you could float without even trying.  And the strangest thing in the water was that whenever you moved, the water lit up as if it were full of lightning bugs.  (i hope it wasnt a radiation dump site or something... ;) ).  At this point we were so happy to be there, the only people for miles, enjoying a gorgeous beach.

The paradise came to an abrubt halt when we tried to go to sleep.  It turns out that this beach was the home of about 47 billion mosquitos!!  You've all seen the commercials for bug spray where someone sticks both their arms into the mosquito cages to compare how many bites they get.  Now imagine those mosquito cages, but triple the number inside and you have an idea of where we were camping...

Within 20 minutes I counted 36 mosquito bites...just on one leg!  and of course we didn't think to bring bug spray or even protective clothing.  it was just us against nature and that night nature gave us a beating!  We coudn't hike back to the city in the dark so our only choice was to try to ignore them.  You cannot imagine how hard it is to ignore a deafeningly loud chourus of "zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz", knowing that there is absolutely nothing you can do to keep them from biting you! 

So after an estimated 375 mosquito bites (those are just the ones that were red the next day...) and what was quite probably the most miserable night of my life, we couldnt have been happier to see the sun start to show.  Straight into the water for a little bite-escape and we caught a sunrise that almost made the whole night worthwhile. 

As the light filled the valley we discovered that we were in a cove with white sand beaches, crystal-clear water with a bright turquoise glimmer, and surrounded by rolling tropical hillsides.  It was really a paradise...and after a night of hell we certainly made sure to appreciate every aspect of it!

Besides the mosquito beach and gorgeous HK, I've been lucky to take 2 trips to Beijing.  Its so peaceful and historical up there compared to shanghai, its like a little weekend retreat.  And another weekend trip to Xi'an, the city famous for the 7000 Terra Cotta Warriors.  I have to admit that tourist sites tend to be less impressive than those we have in the west (half the time you wouldnt even know there was something "tourist-worthy" except for the random crowds of tourists taking pictures...), but to see thousands upon thousands of life-sized, handmade soldiers was very impressive.

The Breadwinner...

And of course, there are the normal days back in Shanghai.  Work has been really fantastic and I'm very lucky to have landed in the company that I did!  I've been working in the marketing department and we had an incredibly busy 3 months.  Two grand openings with over a thousand people in attendance. including all the "vip"s (so chinese! :) ), plus all the PR events, supporting materials, etc. 

But apparently all the hard work has paid off because starting yesterday I've been promoted to "Business Manager" for our biggest clinic/hospital!  Its quite the challenge, fixing all the systems and processes, implementing entire new programs (pediatrics, radiology, pathology, cardiology, and optometry are my "first priority" to be implemented starting next week...)

And then there is nightlife...

This is what Shanghai is famous for!  And we all do our best to help keep that reputation going strong. 

Currently Watching Hotel Rwanda see related

My apologies for the topic du jour, but its so prevalent that its impossible to sidestep!  (literally!  haha)

Spring is finally starting to show and we are embracing it with open arms...and for many, open nostrils.    With the changing weather many people have caught seasonal colds and stuffy noses.  but you would think that Kleenex hasn't entered the Chinese market by the way the "take care" of their sniffly dilemmas...

We call them "Snot Rockets".  Its the art of pinching off one nostril and blowing hard out the other, shooting a boogary-projectile for the world to admire.  Lately it's been like a war zone out there!  People steer their bicycles with one hand to shoot with the other, or stop in the middle of the sidewalk to concentrate and blow.  The award for the grossest of the week goes to a fellow restaurant patron who put down his chopsticks, turned away from the table (at least he had that courtesy...), and proceeded to snot rocket right onto the restaurant floor.  somehow i wasn't very hungry after that little talent show.  uuuugh!

Our waitress yesterday gave us a good demonstration of technique number two, the direct pick.  its less dazzling than the first but equally gross.  we were eating in a local cantine and i looked to the back of the restaurant where i saw our waitress digging for gold...with two hands!  eeeeiw!  she caught me giving her that icky-face-look but must have thought it meant, "please, come closer to our table with your boogery fingers, and dont take them out of your nose" because she came up to our table to see what the problem was.  hmmm, i wonder! 

The other is a stylish modification of the standard pick.  Remember the little kids song, "You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friends nose"?  Well apparently it hasn't caught on here.  on the metro you can find the couples that must really be in love because the girl is picking the guys nose for him.  or two friends who pick each others while waiting for the bus, thats nice as well.    

Or there is the traditional llugie hacking.  sometimes i'll see a really pretty lady, nicely dressed and coiffed, strutting in her little stiletto boots, then hear her make that horrible hhrrrrrrrrrrrrrk sound we hear so often and spit onto the street.   its somehow less shocking when its a middle-aged man doing it, but even after 9 months here i'm still surprised when i see an elegant lady hawk mid-step. 

The government has been making an effort and now the streets are lined with giant posters saying, "wash hands frequently", "spit in trash", and "do not sneeze".  they dont seem to have had much of an effect, but its at least nice to see that someone has noticed that a phlegm-coated city could be a problem. :)

and on that lovely note, zai-jian!

xoxo

"The Hawaii of China"

The intense hustle of bustle of megalopolis life has its charms, but last weekend we decided that nothing could be more charming than an escape from it all!  So, with a last-minute call to a friend, Julie had us tickets for a weekend escapade to Hainan.  Rumor had it that it was a tropical paradise and it was called "the hawaii of china" by a few different people.  Knowing that i live in what is called "the paris of china" i understand how people can get carried away with these comparisons, but at that point anything outside of Shanghai was very welcome!!

Low expectations in tow, Julie and I rushed to the airport.  While we were waiting to board she stocked up on travel-sized packages of duck tongue to eat during the journey.  "very delicious, this one is spicy," she assured me. mmmm.  ;)  I had to pass on that one...

I was the only foreigner on the plane and was met with stares as I walked down the aisle to my seat.  Julie and I had been assigned seats apart from each other and when she objected, the stewardess explained matter-of-factly that I had to sit in the back because I'm TOO BIG and sitting elsewhere would upset the weight balance of the plane.  ahem!! 

but then again...i think this plane needed all the help it could get and i was happy to sacrifice my dignity for the cause of getting us into the air.  looking at the decor of the plane i had sudden flashbacks to my childhood and flying to grandmas house when i was 7.  great memories, but it was not exactly reassuring to be in what may have been the exact plane of my memories!  it was built, in maybe 1985, and wasnt exactly in the best of shape.  but soon we were in the air and being serenaded by Backstreet Boys blaring over the sound system during the entire flight.  "backstreets back alright!"  in china, at least... :)

the party was interruped occasionally for the standard messages.  first in chinese, and as a foreigner was aboard (thanks, guys!) they were also said in english.  the girl was obviously reading the phonetics but had no idea how to put the sounds together and the result was hilarious.  when we hit turbulence she announced what sounded like, "the plane is bump head. we landed in a tree".  i'm not quite sure what she was trying to say, but this was surely not calming my nerves any!

Saturday started early, with julie knocking on my headboard at 7am to get me out of bed.  we found a new hotel (3 stars, on the beach and cost US$10 per night...$5 per person!) and then bartered for a driver.  success!  we hired someone to drive us for the whole day, wherever on the island we wanted to go for $7. 

Julie had a whole agenda planned for us, the first being a "native villiage".  in essence, this villiage-turned-theme park.  they charge admission, the take you through a very disney-ified version of their traditions.  then you walk around and see the "natives" doing "native" things for money.  you give someone a dollar and they climb a tree for coconuts.  you give someone a dollar and they show you their traditional tattoos.  it was an absolute exploitation of any culture they may have held and the quintessential sell-out.  a woman actually took my hand, put it on her tattooed shoulder, then put hers out so i would give her money because i'd seen her "ancient tattoo".  i couldnt help but feel empty in this world of cultural prostitution.

after that little adventure we went to the international sea shell hall of fame, another big hit in my book. :)  Then finally to the beach.  tourism in china is a strange phenomenon, something that is only just developping as peoples incomes grow, and the result is very strange.  the villiage and sea shell museum are two examples, and this beach is another.  to get to it, you pay an admission fee then walk through some strange landscaping.  a crowd gathers at the shoreline and they all take pictures of each other.  the girls strike a super model pose and the boys take their pictures.  this goes on for two or three minutes, and then they leave!  they just go to the waterline, take a picture of someone standing in front of it, then leave!  julie and i were the wierdos, actually sitting down in the sand and enjoying. so funny!

Sunday was more of the same, laying in the sun and watching everyone take pictures of each other.  i was one of maybe 5 people on the whole beach wearing a swimming suit (the weather was perfect...), and we were all foreigners! 

the chinese have an obsession with pale skin.  i've accidentally bought the "whitening" body wash, and every lotion or cream or other body product has some sort of whitening version.  so of course, they like to avoid the sun.  at the beach they were wearing jeans, long sleeved shirts, and umbrellas!  ok, in 20 years i'm sure they'll be the ones laughing at my wrinkly, cancered skin, but it just seemed so silly to go to the beach completely covered like that on such a beautiful day.

but unfortunately i should have followed their lead a little more because i ended up with the WORST sunburn!  i didnt notice it and whenever i asked julie if i was turning pink she would say, 'its ok, very good".  apparently that means "you're not only a little pink, you're bright red.  great!"  haha.  note to self: don't take tanning advice from the lady in 3 layers of clothes!

that evening we took a bus up to Haikou to catch our plane...i'll write a poem to summarize the experience.

A haikou about haikou:

airport

long line, standing, falling

passed out

We were waiting in line for check-in and next thing i knew i was surrounded by a crowd, yelling at me like they yell at the taxis when they are almost hit!  (that furious sounding "jianre ihghe thiehlsneui!").  i fainted right there in the middle of the line!

i had already put two and two together and figured out it was probably some sort of sunstroke, but they brought two nurses over to see that i was ok.  first thing they said, " 10 rmb!".  (there was an up-front $1 service charge. haha).  and really, thats about how much their diagnosis was worth!  they took my temperature, blood pressure (90/60 and "normal") and then decided that i fainted because i was cold.  so they took away the water i was drinking and filled the bottle with boiling water. I was to hold it but definely NOT drink it.  ok!

so that was it, a fab tropical weekend and then back to the bustle of city life again.

***

On a search for Aloe I ended up at a big cosmetics store on what happened to be international womens day.  a law states that for this day, all women are allowed a 1/2 day off work and are given $20.  (to spur the economy, perhaps??).  whatever the logic behind the holiday, it is definitely a day to avoid a cosmetics store!  by this time i'm used to being crammed into crowded places, but this was a whole new extreme.  the store was like a big mosh-pit!  bottles were being pushed off the shelves, people were pushing and shoving, and there wasnt an inch to move.  good think i'm taller than everyone or it may have been hard even to breathe!  haha.

Currently Reading Gonococci and Meningococci: Epidemiology, Genetics, Immunochemistry, and Pathogenesis By J.T. Poolman see related

Her name is AYI:

We've finally done it, we've found ourselves an Ayi (Chinese for "aunt"/housekeeper).  At first the idea of it seemed a bit wrong.  After all, we've been taught our whole life to take care of ourselves and sweeping the floors doesn't REALLY take that much time.  Plus, having a stranger from the countryside come into our apartment and poke around was an unpleasant thought.  But after months of mingling in the expat community I've been convinced that we really do need a maid. :)  besides, its a small way to help out a family in shanghai and the local economy...

Becoming an Ayi for a foreign household is a prized position for most people living in China.  Everyone outside of this country laughs at my income (and really they have reason to!!) but compared to a local shanghainese i'm rather wealthy.  the average salary for a college graduate in shanghai, a city in the richest area of china, is 4000RMB per month (US$ 480).  so although my salary is very meagre, it is still well above average and locals assume as soon as they see a "big nose" face that there are probably bucks in their wallets.

For an ayi, a job that many people can't even find, the standard rate is 6 RMB per hour, or 72 US cents.  Ours is getting 9/hour ($1.08) and is absolutely thrilled!  all the girls in the office laughed at me when i told them how much i was paying our maid.  "thats too expensive!! she makes you pay more because youre a foreigner!".  the truth is that she proposed 8 and i said 9!  haha.  i couldnt bring myself to pay someone less than a dollar per hour!!

She has 9 years experience working as an Ayi, and 4 working with foreigners.  I've been told some hilarious ayi stories from people who had "NEW" ones that "needed to be trained!".  the way we do things in our house, as is the case for so many things, is apparantly very cultural and westerners have quite different expectations.  from what i can see, ours did quite a normal job with one exception. 

We had a balloon that had been floating around the apartment for awhile and had eventually found a home in the corner by the couch.  When i came home, i found that it had been washed and was perched on our dish-drying rack in the kitchen!  apparently it was dirty. :) if thats as wierd as it gets, though, we're very lucky!

it was so wonderful to come home to a spic-n-span house after a day at work. why didnt we hire her sooner??!

**

This morning started with yet more fireworks, and for once I was happy to hear them because I had overslept my alarm(S)!  They're still going strong at night. 

i seriously didnt know it was possible to light so many fireworks.  On saturday they were lighting the huge ones to appease the god of money ALL night and were SOOOO loud.  the huge ones were exploding against our window (the 11th floor) at midnight, and again at 4am.  and again at 9...

the festival is supposedly over now so we'll see when the fireworks end!  i'm looking forward to it!!

XIN NIAN KUAI LE to all, may you have wealth and long life.  and for all you roosters out there, don't forget to wear red underwear!  this is our lucky year and any day you wear red underwear you're supposed to have good luck.  time to go shopping!