Getting started in Shanghai
Maybe I had decided to like Shanghai before I got here. I at least has positive expectations. Even though I haven't seen all that much of the city, I like it here. There is some element, some sense of detail, some little international flair in the architecture, something that reminds me of Hong Kong, and probably many other things that have made me really enjoy my time here so far.
I arrived Tuesday evening at Hongqiao airport, the domestic one without the Maglev technology demonstration train that I was kind of curious to see. It was still large and pretty clean. I kind of compare everything to Hong Kong in terms of cleanliness and efficiency. Not much can keep up, but still, the process of getting from airport via subway and feet to my hostel was easy. The hostel is large and really clean with nice indoor and outdoor communal areas. I'm sitting on a small patio in front of my own room in a lounge chair with various plans and landscaping nearby.
I had dinner with Yasmine the first night at a Vietnamese restaurant in one of Shanghai's ten billion malls. We stuck to English mostly. It's weird to speak Chinese with her since we always spoke English in New York. Back then she spoke Cantonese but no Mandarin. Now she speaks Mandarin well after two years of living here and having a Chinese boyfriend. That said, last night we went out again, this time with four of her friends who are all Chinese and we spoke Chinese for the whole meal. Perhaps that will eventually not merit mentioning but for now I make note of all my Chinese conversations since they make me happy.
I posted on Couchsurfing that night to seek out people with whom to go to vegetarian restaurants and people with whom to trade English for Mandarin. I received various responses but one was particularly interesting. A girl with whom I had almost met via CS during her trip to NYC in 2007 wrote to me. We had not managed to meet then due to her time constraints but we had added each other on MSN and then forgotten how we knew each other. Yesterday she wrote me and said, "Now I know who you are!" and we recalled the whole story. We ended up meeting for lunch and she took me to a lovely Japanese-run vegetarian cafe on a beautiful, quaint street with this sort of old-style and foreigner-influenced architecture. We ended up speaking at length with the owner who was incredibly friendly and insisted on giving us all this food to try. Then we took a short walk around the neighborhood and parted ways before I walked back about 30 minutes through the city to my hotel. I need to do more walks like that but actually my time has been reasonably filled since arriving. I suppose all of this happened yesterday though somehow it feels like longer.
Since being here I also had a good conversation with an American at the hostel who lived in Hangzhou and teaches there who was visiting Shanghai for the weekend. I also met another guest here, also American, who has been living in Asia in different locations for years including Taiwan and Korea. He teaches as well. After dinner last night with Yasmine and her friends at an extremely non-vegetarian restaurant, I met up with Couchsurfers at this insane bar called Zapatas in a nightlife district of Shanghai. It was packed with everyone I'd like to avoid being in Shanghai. That probably sounds elitist but hey, it's just not my scene. Large groups of foreigners who don't seem to be connected with Chinese culture at all and groups of Chinese people who think they are cool. Maybe I'm generalizing and maybe that is local culture, but the music was loud and horrible and the scene out of the sort of bar I'd never want to visit in New York. That said, they had an outdoor area which was better and the Couchsurfers I'd come to meet turned out to be very nice. We ended up eventually going to a karaoke place which was a lot like the one I visited in Taiwan a long time ago. Here, those places are like hotels. You arrive and go to a front desk where you check in and they escort you to your room on any number of floors. The places are gigantic. You pay a flat rate for the room for the night I believe, but it was hard to be sure since none of the local Couchsurfers would let us pay for anything despite fervent efforts. It ended up being four local Chinese, one guy and three girls, two Australian guys in Shanghai for the summer, one guy from Switzerland here for a few months and me.
Other interesting conversations include two women who are friends of the owners of the hostel who work down the block and were hanging out in the common area. Also an interesting conversation with the security guard last night who asked me if there are black people in the US and how come people who are from the US don't all look the same. He also asked how long different people live. The people who work at the hostel are nice, I speak with them in Chinese. Last night at karaoke I spoke with the girls in Chinese mostly, though a few of them clearly wanted to practice English so I did what I could to help. I have received several emails from people interested in language exchange which I will try to respond to today. The internet is very erratic which is frustrating. It's probably a reason I'd find it tough to live here long-term. I think Taiwan or HK seem more likely choices at the moment. That said, Shanghai is probably the most western-friendly and yet culturally-interesting city I have visited in China. I'm sure this is no surprise to anyone who has been here though despite all the time I have spent in China previously, this is still on my second full day in Shanghai.
Anyway, I have a ton of research and work to do on vegetarian restaurants which I'm going to try to do today. I had congee and a red bean bun for breakfast from a place down the street. The guy at the hostel pointed me in the right direction when I asked where I could get something other than the English and American breakfasts they offer here. The guys at the congee place asked if I'm staying at the hostel and I said yes. They said they see all these foreigners all the time but none of them speak Chinese, so they were very impressed and complimentary. This is the style of course but I appreciate the encouragement even though my Chinese has a long way to go. I'm working pretty hard at it here, speaking constantly whenever possible and looking up and writing down new words as much as I can. But about the restaurants, there is this pretty great website called dianping.com which is a Chinese restaurant guide someone turned me on to. They have an Android app too which I installed, but everything is entirely in Chinese. That's not going to stop me from integrating it into MTS in the next few days and using their content to monitor the existence of vegetarian restaurants throughout China. I will play with that today as well. Also later tonight there is a CS meetup in Pudong, the giant financial center of Shanghai which I haven't laid eyes on yet. That's the place with that crazy tower and all those skyscrapers you often see in the news when they show pictures of Shanghai. I wanted to check out the view but didn't make it there yesterday. Tonight before the meetup I'm going to try to go over to the Bund which is the promenade by the water in Puxi, the west side of the river where I am staying. Then if possible I will try to take some kind of ferry of which I think there are many over to Pudong and work my way towards wherever that cafe is where they meet. Couchsurfing has been very useful for meeting locals on all of my travels and here is no different.
I originally booked 6 days in Shanghai. I have since extended to 10 and may extend further. I like being in one place. I like getting to know a city better and not having to move so often. I like this hostel and neighborhood. I like not having to pack my backpack every 3 days to relocate to some new place. I like the people I've met so far and I seem to have no shortage of things to do here.
I arrived Tuesday evening at Hongqiao airport, the domestic one without the Maglev technology demonstration train that I was kind of curious to see. It was still large and pretty clean. I kind of compare everything to Hong Kong in terms of cleanliness and efficiency. Not much can keep up, but still, the process of getting from airport via subway and feet to my hostel was easy. The hostel is large and really clean with nice indoor and outdoor communal areas. I'm sitting on a small patio in front of my own room in a lounge chair with various plans and landscaping nearby.
I had dinner with Yasmine the first night at a Vietnamese restaurant in one of Shanghai's ten billion malls. We stuck to English mostly. It's weird to speak Chinese with her since we always spoke English in New York. Back then she spoke Cantonese but no Mandarin. Now she speaks Mandarin well after two years of living here and having a Chinese boyfriend. That said, last night we went out again, this time with four of her friends who are all Chinese and we spoke Chinese for the whole meal. Perhaps that will eventually not merit mentioning but for now I make note of all my Chinese conversations since they make me happy.
I posted on Couchsurfing that night to seek out people with whom to go to vegetarian restaurants and people with whom to trade English for Mandarin. I received various responses but one was particularly interesting. A girl with whom I had almost met via CS during her trip to NYC in 2007 wrote to me. We had not managed to meet then due to her time constraints but we had added each other on MSN and then forgotten how we knew each other. Yesterday she wrote me and said, "Now I know who you are!" and we recalled the whole story. We ended up meeting for lunch and she took me to a lovely Japanese-run vegetarian cafe on a beautiful, quaint street with this sort of old-style and foreigner-influenced architecture. We ended up speaking at length with the owner who was incredibly friendly and insisted on giving us all this food to try. Then we took a short walk around the neighborhood and parted ways before I walked back about 30 minutes through the city to my hotel. I need to do more walks like that but actually my time has been reasonably filled since arriving. I suppose all of this happened yesterday though somehow it feels like longer.
Since being here I also had a good conversation with an American at the hostel who lived in Hangzhou and teaches there who was visiting Shanghai for the weekend. I also met another guest here, also American, who has been living in Asia in different locations for years including Taiwan and Korea. He teaches as well. After dinner last night with Yasmine and her friends at an extremely non-vegetarian restaurant, I met up with Couchsurfers at this insane bar called Zapatas in a nightlife district of Shanghai. It was packed with everyone I'd like to avoid being in Shanghai. That probably sounds elitist but hey, it's just not my scene. Large groups of foreigners who don't seem to be connected with Chinese culture at all and groups of Chinese people who think they are cool. Maybe I'm generalizing and maybe that is local culture, but the music was loud and horrible and the scene out of the sort of bar I'd never want to visit in New York. That said, they had an outdoor area which was better and the Couchsurfers I'd come to meet turned out to be very nice. We ended up eventually going to a karaoke place which was a lot like the one I visited in Taiwan a long time ago. Here, those places are like hotels. You arrive and go to a front desk where you check in and they escort you to your room on any number of floors. The places are gigantic. You pay a flat rate for the room for the night I believe, but it was hard to be sure since none of the local Couchsurfers would let us pay for anything despite fervent efforts. It ended up being four local Chinese, one guy and three girls, two Australian guys in Shanghai for the summer, one guy from Switzerland here for a few months and me.
Other interesting conversations include two women who are friends of the owners of the hostel who work down the block and were hanging out in the common area. Also an interesting conversation with the security guard last night who asked me if there are black people in the US and how come people who are from the US don't all look the same. He also asked how long different people live. The people who work at the hostel are nice, I speak with them in Chinese. Last night at karaoke I spoke with the girls in Chinese mostly, though a few of them clearly wanted to practice English so I did what I could to help. I have received several emails from people interested in language exchange which I will try to respond to today. The internet is very erratic which is frustrating. It's probably a reason I'd find it tough to live here long-term. I think Taiwan or HK seem more likely choices at the moment. That said, Shanghai is probably the most western-friendly and yet culturally-interesting city I have visited in China. I'm sure this is no surprise to anyone who has been here though despite all the time I have spent in China previously, this is still on my second full day in Shanghai.
Anyway, I have a ton of research and work to do on vegetarian restaurants which I'm going to try to do today. I had congee and a red bean bun for breakfast from a place down the street. The guy at the hostel pointed me in the right direction when I asked where I could get something other than the English and American breakfasts they offer here. The guys at the congee place asked if I'm staying at the hostel and I said yes. They said they see all these foreigners all the time but none of them speak Chinese, so they were very impressed and complimentary. This is the style of course but I appreciate the encouragement even though my Chinese has a long way to go. I'm working pretty hard at it here, speaking constantly whenever possible and looking up and writing down new words as much as I can. But about the restaurants, there is this pretty great website called dianping.com which is a Chinese restaurant guide someone turned me on to. They have an Android app too which I installed, but everything is entirely in Chinese. That's not going to stop me from integrating it into MTS in the next few days and using their content to monitor the existence of vegetarian restaurants throughout China. I will play with that today as well. Also later tonight there is a CS meetup in Pudong, the giant financial center of Shanghai which I haven't laid eyes on yet. That's the place with that crazy tower and all those skyscrapers you often see in the news when they show pictures of Shanghai. I wanted to check out the view but didn't make it there yesterday. Tonight before the meetup I'm going to try to go over to the Bund which is the promenade by the water in Puxi, the west side of the river where I am staying. Then if possible I will try to take some kind of ferry of which I think there are many over to Pudong and work my way towards wherever that cafe is where they meet. Couchsurfing has been very useful for meeting locals on all of my travels and here is no different.
I originally booked 6 days in Shanghai. I have since extended to 10 and may extend further. I like being in one place. I like getting to know a city better and not having to move so often. I like this hostel and neighborhood. I like not having to pack my backpack every 3 days to relocate to some new place. I like the people I've met so far and I seem to have no shortage of things to do here.
posted by Dan at 10:33 PM
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