Shanghai weekend - Long Post

On this first weekend, I had a lot of interesting experiences.

On Friday evening we had a team building, which was karaoke and games. Very friendly and very fun with some nice talented people. We played a variation of phone tag where the native Chinese speaker would give a North American a phrase to repeat for others but by the time it got to the last person it was pretty jumbled. Then we did the same with an English native giving a phrase to the China team and watching them butcher it. Pretty funny both ways.

The meal was an altogether different story. It was a banquet ordered for us by one of the senior merchandising people. We arrived to find 8 cold dishes waiting on a lazy Susan for us to share. There were delectable goodies like fried pork skin, jellyfish, chicken pieces, pumpkin with flower petals, etc. Then began a procession of hot foods like shrimp with spicy vegetables, mushroom soup, a snapper-type of fish and crab. There were many things i couldn't identify and many that were not appetizing to me. I tried almost everything but not the jelly fish or the pork skin. The featured food was a cow's head. There were no eyeballs, tongues or other obvious body parts on the huge platter but the skull bone was there. It was served with some spicy peppers. The meat was tasty. The dessert was a soup with some type of white things floating, sorry, i didn't get the exact info on that one or try it and then mooncakes. The mooncake looked like a nice light sweet pastry.but it was filled with something my mouth didn't recognize so it got put aside. Mooncakes are usually filled with a paste like lotus seed or sweet bean paste. I should have known when i picked it up and it weighed way more than a light sweet pastry should have.

Saturday was a very eventful day. I took the subway to a huge mall area to scope out what was there. I also wanted a western meal so i could at least put some calories in my body, otherwise this will only be a weight loss story. I went to the Blue Frog which serves hamburgers with imported meat. A very nice burger and fries put me a good mood. So I went shopping. The crowds of people were stunning. The Chinese people are taking this consumerism very seriously and crowded into this 8 story mall in an endless procession of people. I went into Best buy to find a surge protector and was amazed by the high prices. No deals here. I also went to a book store to find a book on Shanghai that would better orient me to the city. Then I was on my way to interview a Chinese tutor. Stepping outside into the blast furnace was a bit of a shock as it's quite warm here now and the mall was cool. I bought two small bottles of water for $.20 each.

On my way to meet the tutor, which was another subway ride, I stopped at a Dairy Queen and got a Blizzard. Not exactly the same taste as the US but pretty close and they do turn it upside down to show the thickness just like they do in the US. the only problem is a minute later it's not so thick in this heat.

The tutor's name is Lillian, although I'm not sure what her Chinese name is. She works independently, has been teaching Chinese to Anglos for 8 years. She just finished her MBA. Several of you might ask how do you find these people? I went on the Shanghai expat sites and searched for tutors. Most companies charge $25/hour for private tutoring, while Lillian charges half of that. She just finished here MBA so she is quite smart and very nice. We have arranged for her to tutor me privately and then a lady who's here from Canada will also work with her. We met at Starbucks and after some discussion, I agreed to have her tutor me. The first session was very good as I learned a lot in just one hour. Our 2x per week sessions will be 2 hours, if my brain can handle it.

When we were finished, I took a long walk through a very nice shopping district to catch the subway a little further down. Did I say it was warm here? I kept going into the beautiful shopping areas to get my body temperature lowered and then back out to the blast furnace. Finally catching the train and going to Carrefours to pick up some things for my apartment. Tide so i could do a load of clothes in my combo washer dryer, more on that later. A cup for me for China. Many of you at Staples know I used the same cup for 14 years so I wanted to get one for the China experience, which won't be 14 months but hey it was $1. I bought some other necessities like Oreos, chocolate covered almonds and bottles of water. I thought the water was a decent deal. It was 9.30 RMB (China $) for a twelve pack of 20 oz bottles. (They're actually 550 ml but I'll let someone else make the conversion.) That comes to .88 RMB per bottle which is like $.13 each bottle. Not sure it's Evian or Perrier but it looks clean. This water is just for walking around in my office and apartment, there are 5 gallon bottles of water in a dispenser so you can constantly drink clean water.

OK then back to the room via the subway again, an hour to get my body temperature back to below 100, a quick shower, back into the blast furnace to meet the Staples gang for dinner. (Did I say it was warm here?)

For dinner our group of 8 went to a Muslim restaurant, another first for me. We drank Black Beer (i had to try it and it was very good actually.) The food started coming and didn't stop again. We had two veggies plates, one with spicy green beans(?) and the other with some kinds of cooked green peppers (a large size). It was very tasty. Then came the flat bread baked in the restaurant plus skewers of lamb, some kind of lamb meat mixed with rice that you put on a small tortilla type of shell, a spicy chicken dish, I'm probably leaving something out but the dinner was very good and not expensive. we did leave a lot behind. This was my best meal in China, by far, a very nice surprise!

The photo is me getting some cold air from an air conditioner that didn't reach our table.

So this long day is coming to an end, but wait the team wants to go for foot massages. OK into taxis and off to get foot massages. We ended up getting shoulder and foot massages in one large room we all shared, very nice. My masseuse was a young blind guy who put me in incredible pain, cracked my back, and did a great job. This cost less than $10.

Me getting my massage and feeling pretty good.

Finally, into a cab with others and then to sleep. A really great day. (Did I mention it was warm here?)

Sunday will be a walking tour of Shanghai using an excellent book that Susan discovered was written by one of our Hopkinton neighbors who is a Shanghai native.