I was returning home from Starbucks today enjoying the beautiful Shanghai afternoon, which seem to be aplenty lately, and witnessed an occurance that made me realize why China is doing better than the rest of the world (Okay, so this might not be true, but lets just let it ride for now). The sun was shining brightly and picturesquely being filtered through the leaves of the oak trees that line the roads of the French concession. I looked up to see a fairly common sight on the Shanghai sidewalks, that of two youths in their late teens playing badminton. There is no net. There is no court. Just two raquets, a birdie, and wild imagination. What was intruging about this particular couple was the total and utter looks of elation on their faces. They had found nirvana here on Earth. I thought to myself, ‘They are just hitting a piece of cork with feathers attached to it, back and forth right?’
I knew then that the Chinese must be so much more socially and mentally advanced than us that there was no real questioning their greatness.
I woke up this morning and thought, as I’m sure we all do on a regular occasion, I would just love to be completely and utterly surronded by gray. No overcast, pfft, I want all-around-cast. It really gets your mind in the right place to start the day when you’re still on the bridge and can’t see the massive pylons that hold the mainstay of the bridge. I’m pretty sure that a nail polish factory exploded in Pudong this morning spreading toxic fumes throughout the land. Don’t worry this will only affect us for the next 3 million years. GOOOOOOD MORNING SHANGHAI
The Shanghai commute has extended its travel time to about 19 hours each way. We, Liz, Petrus, and I, just got back from Fiji where we stayed for an entire month. It was a trip unlike I’ve ever taken before for two reasons.
One, we stayed in one place for a month. There was no driving from place to place, meeting up with friends and family, which is great but can be exhausting. It was a period of pure relaxation (as much as can be had with a two year old who’s just beginning potty training and coming down with a severe case of the screams). We set ourselves up for a cruisey, as Liz says, time. This was such a difference Shanghai and anything we’ve ever done that it took us about a week and a half to really let ourselves believe that peace, tranquillity, and rest were actually possible.
Second, It’s Fiji! It’s a tropical paradise. We stayed on the Island of Venua Levu, in Savu Savu. When we were on the main island, before we flew to Savu Savu, the locals would ask where we were headed and every time we replyed they would say “Oh, beautiful. It’s paradise.” We rented a cottage for the month right on Savu Savu bay. We could swim, snorkel, kyak right from our front steps.
We’re not rich, not by any standards, but we pulled of a life of luxury for a month in Fiji. In my wildest dreams I never thought I would travel to Fiji let alone live there for a short period of time. A lot of people kept saying to us, “I can’t belive you’re staying in Fiji for a month. I could never afford that.” Then they go and spend $2000 on flights to the states and another $2000 while they’re there. It wasn’t that hard to do and we had an amazing time.
What a strange existence I live here in Shanghai. Its six o’clock on a monday night I’m moving at a snails pace (I only use that phrase because the truck next to us is leaving a trail of something that to look at makes the stomach turn), there are approximately 200000 people in the a mile radius of me and I know none of them. I don’t even know the guy who driving me home. Who is this guy. What does he do all day that he has the time to drive me for two hours on a monday night.
The road is slam packed tonight and it looks like I’ll be getting home late. When I was in college I lived an hour and a half from my parents house in Haslett, and I rarely went home since it was such a long trip. Now I spend that much time, at least going to work one way.
Its a stream of communist blue trucks, minibuses, like the one I’m in, and the occasional black Audi that seem to be THE car to have in China. I liked the phrase I heard recently about Chinese drivers. “China is a country of teenage drivers”. Ten years ago their were one tenth of the cars on the road as their are today and all those new cars means new drivers. Cars have become accessible to the majority of people for the first time in fairly recent years. These people haven’t been driving since they were sixteen, they started driving when they were forty-five. On the way to school today we almost created two accidents and were nearly run off the elevated highway when a massive travel bus decided it wanted to be in our lane for no apparent reason. Ahead of us I watched another bus swerve in and out a lane like it had the suspension of a sports car. The whole thing nearly toppled.
If you saw this on the highways of Indiana or Illinois (maybe not Florida) you would some sort of reaction, maybe even to take action and call the police, but in the strange existence of Shanghai this is commonplace.
We’ve been talking just now about our friends that are overseas (home) and their importance to us. We travel around the world and meet people all the time, but most are transient. If we do keep in contact it’s jovial and enthusiastic, but we haven’t necessarily had enough time together to truly be intertwined in eachothers hearts as some of those who have been with us for years and years and years. As an expat you get used to the fact the friends, that you spend day after day with, at the end of the year are moving on to another adventure. Apart from your partner and children not a lot else is permenant if you have the desire to trounce around the world. I had a thought just now of talking with those people that you never lose touch with that share the same ideas as you and can be considered at most perfect of levels to be a part of your family, and letting them know that if it is possible, we want to share the amazing experiences of living abroad with them. I don’t want to just have a conversation saying “I wish you could be here.” I want to say “How do we get you here?” or “How do I get there?”
Last week I took my son out for a walk in his stroller down to the aquarium street near our house. To explain, this is not a road fully encased in glass with bubbling deep-sea diver statues hanging around, but an alley that has a plethora of stores that all sell the same things, aquariums. There are other streets around Shanghai that have themes. There’s the music area that sells instruments, sheet music, amps. I’ve seen an entire square block that every store sold toilets, all different shapes and sizes. The best is the row of about twenty-five, 7-11 sized stores that cater wholly to hair and nail care. If you every need to buy 3000 hair driers and 5000 sets of press-on nails, you will not walk away unsatisfied.
Anyway this particular area that we, Petrus and I, were headed has about 15 to 20 stores that all sell aquariums, filters, fish, little plastic bridges to go in the tanks, as well as the animals that reside there. We had purchased two turtles about a week before for the US equivalent of a dollar and a half and a nice 30 gallon or so tank for about 25 dollars. Petrus and I headed down there because we noticed that the turtles water was getting quite cold and we needed to get a heating pad for them to sprawl out on.
I know so far it doesn’t seem this way but, this story really has nothing to do with turtles, but everything to do with the ever-surprising nature of China and the goodness of people when you don’t expect it. I also noticed that I’ve had the need to use a lot of hyphenated words in this story. Hmm?
On the way home from obtaining our heating device we stopped at Starbucks to keep the ever-looming (another one) caffeine dragon at bay, I mean, enjoy a nice cup of Joe. We got our beverages to go and headed out to walk the one block trek home. When we got outside it had started raining, not too hard, but enough to get us wet, and cold. After we walked about a hundred yards away from the coffee shop a young man of about twenty sidled up to me and offered to hold his umbrella over Petrus in his push-chair. In fairly good English, he asked where we were going. I pointed across the street to our building, he just nodded in agreement. He walked with us all the way up to our apartment door, standing out in traffic, making sure it was safe for us to cross, shielding Petrus from the rain, and lifting Bubba and his stroller up the five steps to the entrance. I thanked him graciously as he shook his head nonchalantly and said “No Problem”, then turned and went on his way.
Thank you Sir for bolstering my faith in humanity. So many times I get rammed into, pushed out of line, stared at for not just a little bit too long, but all it takes is that one person to justify to you why you live in this city of twenty-some million, and make you appreciate kindness.
Each morning I wake up to my Chinese ring-tone alarm from my cell phone at 5:15, which is actually 5:10 because my clock is five minutes fast as I believe it will make me early to things, but I know its five minutes fast and I take it into account whenever I check the time. I start my normal routine and hop into the shower to close my eyes and basically fall back asleep for another half an hour or so. By that time my partner has gotten out of bed or back from her morning run and woken our son up. He’s nearly two years old and like a ninja in the morning. He always sneaks into the bathroom while I’m in the shower tears open the curtain and shouts something about this Allysia person, who we’ve never seen but he always talks about, causing me to leap to near impalement on the shower head. Best wake up call I’ve ever had. 
I’ve become accustomed to not driving anywhere anymore. Now I ride. I wonder how many taxis I’ve been in, in this one year. Half the time I don’t even really realize that there is someone driving the car, well, that is until they start slamming on the horn like there’s a prize in the steering column. Most of the time I’m I feel like I’m in my little bubble of safety that is anything but safe. They always remind you to put your safety belts on, but there aren’t any safety belts.
What gets overlooked are those people that are taking where I want to go after short bit of broken Mandarin is exchanged. One driver in particular driver showed me that I should pay attention to the cabbies a bit more.
I was coming back home around midnight after a night with some friends. I was sitting in the back of a nondescript cab just like any other staring off into my own thoughts somewhere. We were about half way over the Lupu bridge when a familiar tune came on the radio. Usually the sounds coming from the speakers are the Chinese version of “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” (at least that’s what it sounds like) or Chinese pop music, which if you thought pop music wasn’t aggravating enough, listen to that for an hour and a half coming home from the airport after a 19 hour flight. This tune cut through pollution of noise and carbon monoxide that constantly swirls around. It was a breath of fresh air and I couldn’t quite peg it down. Then as the chorus came up and Lionel Richie’s face popped into my head I was so out of my element that I forgot the nameless person in front of me was still behind the steering wheel and began singing. At the exact same time the man, who I had all but written off as being human, sang along with Lionel and I;
“Say You.
Say Me.
Say it for always.
That’s the way it should be.”
Our eyes meet in the rearview mirror and neither of us can keep it together. We both start laughing, though it only lasts a moment for we both get back to singing the song. I’ve had a lot of bad experiences in a cabs and a few memorable ones, but this has been the best to date and I think I’ll be hard pressed to top it. Lionel Richie has achieved god status in my book.Lionel Richie \’Say You, Say Me\’
I have just seen the best t-shirt to person combination of all time. Living in China you see some strange shirts with words put together that make no sense or the word has multiple meanings and the designer used the wrong one.
This shirt was in a different category. This category is the ’shirts that read perfectly well but totally do not suite the wearer’ category. For example: Seeing a construction worker with a t-shirt imprinted with the Dolce & Gabbana emblem.
I was making the interchange at Zhongshan Park, waiting for the train to pick me up. I looked over to see a young Chinese woman, who weighed 70lbs soaking wet, wearing a skin tight, cropped sleeved, brown t-shirt. On the front of the shirt in big, pink, sparkle encrusted letters it read, “MEAN JOE GREENE”.
She noticed that I was standing sheepishly at the entrance to the station, so I went over to her and handed her my Coca-Cola. She selfishly downed the entire thing in one chug. I stared back blankly at her in dismay. She saw that I was broken hearted and knew she had to make it up to me. She tore off the shirt as I began to walk away, shouted “Hey kid… Catch.” tossed the number 75 jersey to me and carried on her way.
OK, so that last part didn’t really happen and if it did, her knowledge of Mean Joe Greene Superbowl commercials would have dropped the rating of T-shirt to person combination down a few pegs, although we would have had to create a whole new category.Mean Joe Greene Superbowl Coke Commercial
