Self-Bunding

Two observations so far about life in Shanghai 上海:

1.) I'm lonely. Amber and Pamela are currently in Taiwan visiting the family there, and won't be back until the first week of August, shortly before my daughter starts her new school. I'm glad they're able to spend time with the folks on Formosa, but the house feels empty without them here. 

2.) I'm sweaty. We're in the midst of a heat wave, with the temperature today (according to the Shanghai Daily newspaper, which I've started a subscription to) reaching 35°C (95°F), though it felt much hotter this afternoon. And that's not to mention the humidity, which is seemingly as high as the temperature. Today was one of the sweatiest days ever for me, and that was without doing anything other than the simple act of walking around outdoors.

Despite the heat outside and our personal effects currently piled away in the living room and awaiting some kind of sorting and distribution throughout the house, I decided to check out more of Shanghai's Bund 外滩 area, the former International Settlement that is now the city's premier sightseeing spot and home to its finest (albeit Western-style) architecture. I actually began the day north of the Bund, getting out of the Tiantong Road Metro station 天潼路站 (and right into the heat) and making the short walk to the Main Post Office 国际邮局:

The building has been used as a post office ever since it was built in 1931. It's a striking structure, but that wasn't the reason for going there. On the second floor is the free-of-charge Post Museum 邮政博物馆. Actually, philately wasn't the reason, either - what drew me there was the prospect of getting a great view of the Bund from the rooftop garden. Alas, the roof area was under renovation and thus closed off, but the displays inside the museum were interesting. Best of all, it was air-conditioned.

A rare stamp issued (and then withdrawn) during the Cultural Revolution 文化大革命. On display in a special climate-controlled room were stamps put out between 1888 and 1978, with one glaring gap in the timeline - the 1960's.

The interior of the Post Museum. On the floor was an example of a mail train car, which had samples of letters being sent all over China...including Taiwan.

From the Post Museum, I crossed Suzhou Creek and entered the Bund (again; see last week). Following lunch in an air-conditioned Subway, I checked out the exterior of the former British Consulate (1873):

The old building is now some kind of private club and while the grounds are open to the public, white and black-shirted guards keep an eye on you as walk by the expensive luxury cars parked inside. The atmosphere was more than a little intimidating, while everything seemed a little, um, suspicious. The darker side of Shanghai appears to have taken over what the Brits left behind.

The former consul's residence (1884) was also well-guarded

Walking out of the consulate grounds, I came across a couple more examples of the bad old days (for the Chinese, of course):

The former Shanghai Rowing Club, built in 1905, used to have a swimming pool as well as docks for tying up the rowboats. Today it's a teahouse.

The former Union Church, dating from 1886

The street next to the church, Yuanmingyuan Road 圆明园路 was lined with both historic buildings and security guards. They didn't bother me while I was taking pictures (it is a public street, after all), but their presence was still a disturbing sign of the New China.

The China Baptist Publication Society building (1932) 

The Italian Renaissance-style Lyceum Building, finished in 1927

The Missions Building (1924)

The YWCA Building (1932)

The Yuanmingyuan Apartments, the date of which I forgot to note at the time, but thanks to Google, I now know is 1934.

Unfortunately, the 1933 Royal Asiatic Society Building was covered up in scaffolding. I couldn't find an entrance to check out the Rockbund Art Museum 外滩美术馆 housed inside, which I had wanted to visit today. Another time perhaps. 

There is a lot more to the Bund than what I've seen so far, but I decided to leave it for another day and walked over to Nanjing East Road 南京东路, stopping en route to practice my bad Mandarin with a couple from Shandong Province  山东省, who had asked me to take their picture. Instead of doing the sensible thing and heading home via the Metro, I made the stupid decision to see how far it was on foot from there to Nanjing West Road Station 南京西路站, the closest Metro stop to where I work. Dumb because I wasn't properly dressed for the weather (I was wearing a heavy pair of jeans as all my shorts and sandals are still waiting to be unpacked), and because it was damned hot and humid. This was the point where my shirt became drenched in sweat as I walked along the pedestrian walkway between Nanjing East Road 南京东路站 and People's Square 人民广场站 Metro stations.

I now know where single men can easily find female company. Walking along Nanjing Road, I was constantly being approached by people asking me if I wanted a "massage", with a couple of them also mentioning "girls". One, er, "recruiter" even tried to give me his card in case I changed my mind, though when I told him my wife wouldn't like that, he seemed to accept that as a reasonable excuse. Though I didn't get any massages or girls, I did discover the not-so-imaginatively named Foreign Language Bookstore 上海外文书店 (Communists were never known for their clever marketing strategies) a few blocks away on Fuzhou Road 福州路. Four floors of English-language titles (plus a Japanese section), including a ground-floor section devoted to books on China, mean I'll probably be back several times during the next couple of years.

The end (or beginning, depending on your perspective) of Nanjing Road's pedestrian-only zone, as seen from the entrance to the People's Square Metro station. From here, I continued to plod on, stopping to have a Tiger Beer at a bar called Windows Garage, a happy-hour bargain at only 15 RMB ($2.40). As wasn't the case with the Post Museum rooftop garden and the Rockbund Art Museum, this time my timing was good.

The interior of the Westgate Mall. The visa section where I now work is located in the same complex. The shopping center is full of high-end designer-brand outlets, but were empty despite the number of shoppers inside (most of them checking out Isetan 伊勢丹 Department Store, which anchors the mall). As a colleague explained it to me earlier, building owners make their money from apartments and condos, with store rents being surprisingly reasonable. As a result, foreign designers open up shops in these complexes knowing they aren't going to sell anything, looking at these outlets as a way of getting themselves noticed in China. Chinese consumers prefer to go overseas to buy their 名牌产品, the cost being cheaper than back home thanks to China's high tariffs. No wonder we're so eager to issue visas to Chinese tourists.

Next weekend I hope to do some more exploring. I also hope to be better prepared for the heat.

Welcome to Shanghai: The Bund

Taiwan: China under Japanese management.

A strange statement to begin my first blog entry regarding life in Shanghai 上海, but that was one of the first impressions that formed in my mind soon after we arrived on the afternoon of July 5, and made our way to our new home. I can't claim credit for the above observation as I'd read it online somewhere a long time ago and had dismissed it at the time as being somewhat ridiculous. Now, however, I'm starting to see it makes a certain amount of sense. Compared to what I've seen so far, Taiwan is far more organized, and the standards of service much higher (at least in terms of politeness), compared to this side of the Taiwan Strait. It'll be interesting to see how my perception of Formosa will have changed (and I'm sure it will have) the next time I visit there.

But that's there and we're here, and it's been over a week now. Things have been busy, of course, which is to be expected when settling into a new lifestyle, a new job and a new country. There's so much to learn about visa work, and at this point I can't imagine how I'm going to remember it all, but hopefully I'll get the hang of it once I'm on the visa line. For now, though, I'm still in training, taking it all in and trying to remember the Chinese I've somehow forgotten since passing my Mandarin test back in late June.

Amber and Pamela are also in the process of getting settled in, though next week the two of them will return to Taiwan for about three weeks to see the family there before coming back to Shanghai next month. Amber will start school here in early August, and hopefully she'll quickly make some new friends. For now, we're waiting for the bulk of our stuff to arrive from the U.S. so we can stop living out of our suitcases (though the girls will continue to do just that while they're in Taiwan).

Today (Saturday) was the first day for us to venture out of our neighborhood (or workplaces, in my case) and do some sightseeing in China's commercial capital. Our initial foray naturally had to be to the Bund 外摊, site of Shanghai's former International Settlement and home to a number of European buildings. Though the history of this area is one of humiliation for most Chinese, the buildings were surprisingly left alone during the Cultural Revolution and today the Bund is home to fancy restaurants and high-end stores. It's also a popular sightseeing spot for Chinese tourists, so the three of us certainly didn't lack for company while we wandered around the area.

When in Rome, do as the Shanghainese. In this case, it meant wandering along the waterfront next to the Huangpu River 黄埔江 up to Huangpu Park 黄埔公园, supposedly the site of the infamous "No dogs or Chinese" sign that every Chinese fervently believes existed (it didn't, though Chinese other than servants initially weren't allowed into the British-administered park). And, of course, Amber and I had to have our photo taken with the Pudong  浦东 area in the background.

Another view looking across the river to Pudong. The building on the far left is the iconic Oriental Pearl Tower. I'm sure we'll check it out at some point during our two-year stay here. The clouds in the sky are the result of an approaching typhoon, which is predicted to miss Shanghai, but will unfortunately probably result in some destruction in the region south of the city.

This Art Deco monstrosity is the Broadway Mansions 上海大厦, built in 1933, at which time it was the highest building in Asia. Located across Suzhou Creek via Waibaidu Bridge 外白渡桥, it was initially an apartment building but now operates as a hotel.

Hideous though it may be on the outside, the interior of the Broadway Mansions was actually not too bad, as we took an elevator to the top floor (the 18th) to admire the view of the Bund.

Back at ground level, we walked over to the nearby Astor House Hotel 浦江饭店 (built in 1846, enlarged in 1910). Back in it's early 20th-century heyday, this hotel saw such famous guests as Charlie Chaplin, Albert Einstein and even a young Zhou Enlai 周恩来. Here, Amber stands next to some mannequins modeling qipao 旗袍.

While admiring the lobby of the hotel, we took our first steps toward becoming Old China Hands by purchasing some items from one of the gift shops inside. We hadn't planned on doing so, but the shop was in the process of liquidating its stock before closing at the end of this month, and the prices were just too good to pass up.

Back in the Bund proper, I took this photo looking across Suzhou Creek. The white edifice is the Russian Consulate. Unlike the American Consulate, the Russians work out of a far more accessible building. Thanks to the worldwide popularity of American foreign policy, our diplomats tend to labor in far-more fortified compounds than the foreign legations of those of our friends (and other countries). Behind the Russian Consulate building is the Pujiang Hotel.

Amber poses for a picture inside the Peninsula Hotel, one of the newer (and swankier) buildings along the Bund. While the restaurant was busy with customers enjoying their afternoon tea, the ritzy shops filled with designer brands were largely empty. I've only been here just over a week, but I've already noticed that Shanghai's top-end stores, while numerous, seem to be largely devoid of customers. Apparently, it's much cheaper for Chinese to travel overseas and buy name-brand items, a fact the U.S. government is only all too happy to take advantage of, which is why I'm probably going to be approving the vast majority of the visa applicants I'll eventually be interviewing.

No. 27 on the Bund was once the base of Jardine Matheson, a trading house with a history in Shanghai going back to the Opium War.

No. 24 used to be the Yokohama Bank, but is now a branch of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. A careful look above the windows reveals the chrysanthemum symbol of the Japanese Imperial House. Considering the feelings of many Chinese toward their neighbor to the east, I'm surprised they haven't been removed from the exterior.

Next door at No. 23 is the Bank of China, built in 1937 in the Chicago school style of architecture but with a Chinese-style roof.

Amber stands opposite the Peace Hotel 和平饭店, which was once the Cathay Hotel. It's also known as Sassoon House, after Victor Sassoon, whose family was the major player in Shanghai's International Settlement in the early years of the 20th century. The interior is supposedly well-worth checking out, but it was getting late in the afternoon, so we decided to head back along Nanjing East Road 南京东路 to the subway station of the same name. The Bund continues on beyond the Peace Hotel, but we didn't want to see or do too much our first time out sightseeing in Shanghai.

Before heading home, we had dinner and took a walk along the pedestrian-only street in the area around the Metro station. Bee Cheng Hiang is a Singaporean foodstuffs company that has a number of retail outlets in Taiwan. Next to it (but almost impossible to see in the picture) is a shop selling Taiwanese snacks. Taiwanese street food and drinks appear to be popular in Shanghai, as we've seen several such places even in the area where we live. I've yet to find a milk tea that could match the taste of Balance, however.

We're here

After nine days, six airports and four hotels, we finally touched down in Shanghai 上海 late this afternoon. First impressions include: it's humid; the traffic is worse than in Taiwan; fried rice is pretty cheap; and our house is huge. I'll blog more on life in Shanghai once we're settled in. For now, here are some photos from our last stop (Narita 成田, Japan) before reaching China:

Taking a walk along Narita's Omotesandō 表参道 in the evening after checking into our hotel. Finding a place to eat at 7 p.m. proved to be quite a challenge.

Preparations were being made for the city's summer Gion Matsuri 成田祇園祭り, a three-day celebration that began the day we flew out of Japan.

I don't always eat nattō 納豆, but when I do, it's usually because it's available at the hotel breakfast buffet.

My daughter poses at the entrance to Narita's premier sightseeing spot, Narita-san Shin-shōji Temple 成田山新勝寺. In the background, food and souvenir stands are being erected in preparation for the festival.

The main temple building and pagoda of Narita-san

It doesn't get more Japanese than posing in front of a stone lantern fronting a pond in Narita-san Park 成田山公園.

 Narita-san's Daitō 大塔, built in 1984

Amber poses on Omotesandō. In contrast to the previous evening, more stores and restaurants were open.

Amber and I battle the traffic on Narita's traditional shopping street

Force-feeding a monkey rice crackers 煎餅 and Calpis Soda カルピスソーダ. The camera adds about thirty pounds or so to one's frame.

Amber checks out the carp in the pond at the Narita Excel Hotel Tōkyū 成田エクセルホテル東急. After years of transiting Narita Airport 成田空港 on her way between Washington state and Taiwan, my daughter was excited to actually see a little of Japan other than the airport.

The last night...

It's our last night in the U.S., and I'm spending it in the lobby of a hotel in South San Francisco, a short drive from San Francisco International Airport. We depart early tomorrow afternoon for Japan, where we'll spend the night (and the Fourth of July) in Narita 成田, before flying out to Shanghai 上海, our final destination, on Friday. I'm five months overdue in China, and excited to finally get started there, but saying goodbye to family and friends for the next two years is never easy. A few photos from our last two days in America:

My daughter gets her feet wet in Puget Sound, in Silverdale, Washington. With her swimsuit already on its way to China, Amber was jealous to see other kids having fun in the water, so I let her look for shells. I wish I could've gone in for a dip as well, but I was also unprepared for the surprisingly warm weather in the Pacific Northwest.

Flying back from Seattle to San Francisco, we rented a car at the airport and drove out to Davis to see some old friends. We took the long route across the Golden Gate Bridge, so the girls could have a chance to see it up close.

After driving over the bridge, we stopped at a lookout point for one final view of San Francisco and the bay before the long drive to Davis.

On the streets of Davis, home of the University of California at Davis, my alma mater. The town has changed quite a lot in the twenty-five years since I've graduated. No longer a sleepy college town, it was surprisingly busy, with more restaurants and bars than I remember from my collegiate days. Some things never change, however, like the summer weather - it was well over a 100° F out there this afternoon!

The real reason for making the trip to Davis today was to see my old friends Joe and Rich. We've remained in steady contact since our high school days, but this was the first time to see them in person in about thirteen years. I hope it won't be so long until the next time we can all get together.

The town has changed a lot, but the campus still looks the same. A lot of memories came flooding back as we walked around the school grounds. I ended up buying an Aggies football jersey to wear on my off days in China.

Amber poses at the vista point rest area in Vallejo along Interstate 80, a road I've driven many times between Sacramento, Davis, Berkeley, San Francisco and several points in between. My visit to California was too brief, but it was still good to be back home again.

What a long, strange trip it's been...

Halfway there...

Since finally passing the Mandarin Chinese exit exam on June 24, here's what we've been doing: I spent literally all of Friday evening following the test, plus the entire weekend, lying in bed and suffering from a terrible case of the flu. Unfortunately, this left the job of sorting through our goods up to my wife, who had to decide what would go by air, what would go by ship and what wouldn't make the cut at all. On Monday, I finally dragged myself out of bed, and somehow managed to make it down to both FSI and Main State in order to complete the check-out procedure. Afterward, I finally saw a doctor, who prescribed some heavy-duty medication, including Tamiflu. On Tuesday, the movers came and took everything away, including our car, to eventually reunite with us someday in Shanghai 上海. On Wednesday, we said goodbye to Falls Church, and flew across the country to San Francisco, via Atlanta.

Back in my native California for the first time since the dawn of the 21st century, last-minute meeting cancellations left me with an unexpected free day on Thursday to spend with the family. On Friday, we flew up to Seattle, and have been staying in Bremerton since then, visiting with my parents and my sister. We're here for one more day, after which we return to San Francisco on Tuesday, where we hope to meet up with some old friends in Davis. On Wednesday, we're scheduled to leave the United States, flying from SFO to Narita Airport 成田空港 in Japan. Following a one-night layover, we're due to arrive in Shanghai on Friday, beginning a new chapter in our lives.

Until next time, please enjoy a few photos of our slow journey to China:

Amber at Union Square in San Francisco

Getting ready to board a cable car

Alcatrazz Island

Discovering that the water of San Francisco Bay is still cold even in late June

Amber and friend before boarding the duck boat. I was leery about the proposition, but the girls wanted to take a tour, so we did the duck. Departing from Fisherman's Wharf, we were driven through North Beach, Chinatown, Union Square and Market Street, before plunging into the bay. There, we puttered past the Bay Bridge and over to AT&T Park, before doing a U-turn in McCovey Cove and returning to dry land. We made our way back to Fisherman's Wharf via Polk Street. Had we time, I would've preferred to have rented a car and spend a couple of days driving in and around the city.

The kids were allowed to drive the boat while it was in the water. Here's Amber in McCovey Cove.

Pier 39

On the waterfront in Bremerton, Washington

The jets of water are supposed to symbolize the salmon swimming upstream

Amber making friends with a corn snake at Bremerton's newest tourist attraction, the Bug Museum.

The Bug Museum was very reptile-heavy. My daughter showed no fear, asking one of the workers to take this skink out of its aquarium so she could have a closer look.

Do these look like submarine conning towers coming up out of the depths of the sea?

The USS Turner Joy, one of the attractions lining Bremerton's waterfront. The area has been greatly cleaned up since my parents moved up here in the early 1990's. Gone are the seedy bars and boarded-up storefronts, replaced by condos, hotels, museums and tourists.

With two of the other of my favorite women, my wife and my sister