3 days in Shanghai

I am warning you now that this post is a beast with 18 pictures and 3 videos. But our 3 days in Shanghai were pretty awesome and I don't want to split this into multiple posts.

The flight from Qingdao to Shanghai was great and way faster and cheaper than a comfortable seat on a train. We loved the place we stayed at, which was probably the cheapest place in the main city area that allows foreigners (about $25 a night for a small room with a large bed, TV, bathroom, and AC). We didn't  talk to a lot of the non-Chinese people we saw, but of the ones we did none were American.

Enoch loved the bunnies that our hotel, the Shanghai Old West Gate International Youth Hostel, had in the lobby. He started calling them dog in English but ended calling the bunny in Chinese.

Our first day there, we went to a town called Zhou Zhuang about an hour outside of Shanghai. It's a town heavily based on water where they used to primarily get around via boat. I think authentic water towns are hard to come by nowadays, since they are mostly all just tourist sites now.

It started out a bit rough, as Enoch was sleeping, it was raining, we had to keep up with the tour group that we signed up for, and this little town had tons of stairs and rough pathways. Things soon got fun, however, becaue Enoch eventually woke up, the rain cleared, and we got free time where we didn't have to follow the tour group around.

We thought it was really pretty. We decided to take a little boat tour around the village, even though our tour guide didn't recommend it. We thought it was the best part of the whole day. The lady guiding our boat asked if we wanted to pay an extra $5 for her to sing us Su Zhou opera songs as we went along. She sounded terrible, but it still added a nice touch.

The second day, we again left Shanghai to see the famous West Lake in Hang Zhou. Just like the previous day, we went with a Chinese tourist group. We did this because it was a lot cheaper and potentially easier and more convenient than going by ourselves. To give yourself an idea what I mean, the ticket to enter the water village alone would have been over $16 a person, not including money spent traveling to get there. We paid about $11 for the tour group, which included travel, tickets, and of course the tour guide. You get the discounted rate because they are contracted out by some stores that they take you to. Overall, we were pleased with our tour group at the water village, but we were quite disappointed with our experience in the West Lake tour group.

One reason was that our group at the water village was only about 10 people, but at West Lake our group had about 40 people. It often felt like we were a large group of farm animals with wallets, being herded from place to place in hopes we would spend money.

This entire group of people following a person with the flag in front was our tour group

After a 2 hour bus ride, they immediately took us to the West Lake, which was nice. Afterwards, however, we spent the whole afternoon being herded around to shops and other places we didn't want to go to. One of the places was supposed to let us "experience" the Su Zhou method of drinking tea, which of course turned out to be a marketing ploy of selling tea. Since we don't drink tea, we told the guide we would just hang out outside, but he said we had to go inside anyway. We didn't get back until about 9PM, and we left at 6:30AM. In sum, a few enjoyable hours at the West Lake was not worth hours on the bus, hours visiting silly shops, and hours listening to an incredibly annoying tour guide who wanted our money. I don't think we will ever do any kind of tour like that again.

This tea pot water fountain was kinda cool

Despite the unpleasantness mentioned above, West Lake was nice.

Enoch enjoyed the boat tour of West Lake more than the above picture makes it seem.

The park had a marriage carousel  that Chinese woman used to be carried on  the day they got married

The last day was spent touring the actual city of Shanghai. First, we went to a famous city temple that has been completely commercialized.

First time I've seen Dairy Queen in China. If you look closely, you can also see Starbucks in the background.

We then did a lot of shopping. An old "antique" market on DongTai Road was pretty cool. They had some awesome vintage posters of Chairman Mao, but Sharon said she wouldn't let me hang it up if I got one. 

We then walked around the main shopping malls on Huai Hai Road, but they were like American Mall prices without sales so it was no fun. Later, however, we found the wholesale place that all the locals go to, which was great.

The Qi Pu road wholesale market in Shanghai. There's 4 or 5 floors in the market, with hundreds of shops on each floor  

Everything in this little shop was 10 chinse dollars, about $1.60. The Qi Pu market is the way to go

Enoch had fun here, too.

We left with a bag full of clothes. It's hard to resist prices like that. If you go to Shanhai, don't waste your time in the malls and make sure you go to this place.

Probably the most famous place in all of Shanghai is The Bund. It's stretch of city with old, western-looking buildings behind you and a great view of skyscrapers across the canal. At night it's a great view, but it happened to be raining (as it had been for most the week), so views were limited. 

The next day we flew back, and all was relatively smooth except for a 4 hour delay in the plane before we took off in Shanghai. Luckily Korean Airlines is pretty nice and they tried to make us comfortable. By the time we reached home in America, we had been traveling for 29 hours. It's definitely a long trip with a baby. Probably due to jetlag, Enoch developed a habit of crying from 12-2AM, but he's over that now and all is back to normal.

Goodbye, Zhu You

Four generations 

It's now been a month since we got to China, and it's time to say goodbye to Sharon's family in 36 hours. Last time we said goodbye and left for America, I felt guilty for taking their daughter away. This time, we're not sure when we will have another opportunity to come back. People say it's a small world, but China is pretty far away. The bigger and older our family gets, the more expensive coming back here will be. Starting medical school soon, time and money will both be sparse and the kids will be harder to manage. Whenever we talk to Chinese people who have immigrated to America, I always ask them how often they visit their family in China. I suppose it's a difficult task to assess how high of a priority and how feasible it really is.

As we leave this time, I'm not sure what to feel. Sharon's parents are by no means poor and appear quite satisfied socially and financially. This weakens the idea that her parents are probably happy I gave their daughter a chance to start a family in an affluent country and escape the bitterness of living in China, as some have suggested to me. Her dad keeps asking us to leave Enoch with them, and he's actually serious. I know I need to remember that I made the decision to marry someone from China, but also that Sharon made the choice to marry an American. I think her parents respect her choice and ultimately acknowledge that this is life.

It has been fun to be here. I am very happy that Sharon's parents got to spend considerable time with their grandkid. The tourist sites and scenery have also been fun. It has also been very difficult in numerous ways and we will be glad to get back to a comfortable routine and leave behind some of the more taxing aspects of being a parent here. A few specifics: worrying about Enoch getting sick from food; outside, it's a constant worry Enoch will pick up trash on the ground or get hit by crazy scooters/cars/bikes; inside, houses are anti-baby friendly; friends, family, and strangers feel it is their duty to tell you how to be a parent and to tell you when you are doing it wrong; in China people think you are evil when you don't spoil your kid.

That might have made China sound miserable for foreign parents unaccustomed to life here, but it's really not. Just be aware what you are getting yourself into.

Now, for some more pictures of our time around Zhu You. This little road we found was really nice for a walk.

Wheat fields are pretty

That big, scary, barking dog by the gate made Enoch really happy. He loves dogs.

Enoch is getting pretty good at walking/running

We went to the beach on Saturday afternoon, but Enoch was super tired so we went without him. The water felt like it was around 70. Would have been great paddling weather.

Lai Zhou Golden Sands Beach, about 15 minutes away from Zhu You. I think this place is going to be really nice in 15 years.

31 weeks pregnant

Swimming like a champ

The family business is usually just a storage shop for fish food, but sometimes they make it themselves. Starting a bit over a week ago, a bunch of people come over most days at about 6 or 6:30 AM and sift through sand for small sea snails and other ocean products to turn into fish food. People come to work for about $1 an hour, which still boggles my mind. Stuff in China is generally cheaper than America, but not cheap enough that you can make that kind of wage and live comfortably.

Morning in the courtyard

I mentioned I was plant stupid earlier, but I'm also pretty animal stupid too.  I'll simply call these little sea snails. They grind them up and get the meat out (it's kind of loud at 6:30AM).

Goodbye, Zhu You! (Hello, Shanghai)

Birthdays all around

In the morning on June 10th, we got to web cam with Mom on her birthday since it was still June 9th in America. Happy birthday Mom! If moms were up for trading, I definitely wouldn't trade you. Love you!

A few hours later, we went out with lots of Sharon's extended family to celebrate Sharon's Grandpa's 78th birthday (with Chinese reckoning, however, he just turned 79). Growing up, Sharon lived with her grandparents for many years. Her grandpa was a teacher and was no doubt a great influence on her. In the morning, they used to go jogging together before school. Now he is slow physically and somewhat mentally as well, but he comes across to me as an extremely nice man.

Lao Ye (Grandpa) with his grand daughter and great grandson

The family portrait. Sharon's mom is excluded because she is taking the picture.

The Chinese birthday cake for Sharon's Grandpa. The writing says "Long life like a mountain, blessings like the east sea"

When a bunch of Chinese people go out to eat, lots of alcohol and toasting is usually involved. Combine this with a dialect that I don't understand very well, and you will understand why I was glad Sharon got me to sit at the women's table instead.

The men's table

The women's table

Only 3 days left before we leave for Shanghai and then back to America. Better make the most of it.

Yay China: $3 for Microsoft Office Pro 2007!!!

While inside the Terracota Warrior park, I saw a man throw what I thought was some sort of Microsoft Office product in the trash. I quickly and stealthily retrieved it. Indeed, it was Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007. What good fortune for me!

If you zoom in on the picture, you will notice the bottom right hand of the picture says 1 CD 18元. The exchange rate right now is just under $1 for 6.5元, so this means that the software had a retail value of just under $3. Not bad! The suggested retail for this software is $499.95, which puts the discount at 99.4% off! What a bargain. I mean, everyone knows that you should never pay the suggested retail price, but who knew you could get such discounts? Currently, amazon.com and buy.com sell Microsoft Office Professional 2007 for $366 and $340, respectively. Everyone knows it's a rip off to pay that much money for some silly software, but now things are really put into perspective. Shop China!! At prices like this I might stop getting my software out of the trash and actually buy it myself.

The company selling this software is really considerate, too. Near the bottom of the picture above is some blue print in a yellow box. It's a warning that cautions against using any sort of game or software that is similarly packaged, because it might be pirated and cause harm to your computer. Whew, thanks for the tip! I definitely don't want some pirated game to cause my computer to crash while I type my book reports on my new Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007.

English Vs. Chinese (Enoch)

Here's a summary of Enoch's vocabulary:


English Words

1. Mom
2. Dad
3. Bye
4. Ball
5. Dog (he often pronounces this "gog")
6. All done (usually said when he wants to take off his bib)
7. Amen
8. Uh oh
9. Oh no!
10. No no no no
11. Ouch
12. Poop (usually sounds like boop)
13. Yum yum

Chinese Words

1. Mom (the same as English)
2. Dad (pronounced "baba")
3. Light (pronounced "dung"; he probably thinks this means up. he always points up when he says it regardless if a light is present)
4. Aye oh (taken from English but everyone says it here to mean oh no)
5. Wei Wei (the name of Sharon's old dog)
6. Little brother (pronounced "dee dee"; he thinks this means stomach)

Enoch's Words

1. Geng geng geng (usually used to mean he wants to drink milk)

It looks like English is already dominating. It will be fun when he starts to make sentences; then we will start to see chinglish. When he learns a word in one language, he understandably gets confused when one of us starts saying that word in the other language. I can imagine he is thinking something like "what the heck, I thought that was a ball, not a qiu!"

Last, I figured everyone might enjoy seeing Enoch kicking the chiwawa. I like to rewatch the first few seconds over and over again. Not sure where he learned to do that (Sharon's counsin's bratty daughter?), but of course we're trying to get him to kick the habit (ha).

Our journey to the west

When we got to XiAn the first thing we did was see the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. It's a 7 story tower that was built around 650 AD to house sacred Buddhist artifacts and scriptures, most of which were brought back from India from a famous Chinese Buddhist named XuanZang. 

The idea of some old Buddhist tower may not sound incredibly interesting to westerners (and we really didn't think it was worth the $12 USD to go inside), but the story of XuanZang traveling to India and back to seek out sacred texts is very important in Chinese culture. A very famous story was written about this event called Journey to the West.

On the left is the monkey king, who is actually the main character of the story. The monkey king is still prominent in many other Chinese and Japanese stories today. Next is the monk, and the last two characters are a half pig/human character and then a sand monster general banished from heaven. The 3 are all trying to help the monk in his journey. What makes this story personal is that, in the 80's, a TV show was made about it that Sharon watched all the time during her childhood. Here is a nice clip.

The next day, we went to see the Terracota Warriors. I had heard people say it was both awesome and lame, so I wasn't sure what to expect. We ended up thinking it was pretty awesome.

Qin Shi Huang was the first emperor to ever unify China. By defeating all the other warring states, he unified the country around 250BC. He also did a lot of other things like burn books and kill scholars, unify the writing system, built lots of roads, started the great wall, etc. In sum, he is one of the most important people in all of Chinese history.

They say there are about 8000 soldiers in this army that he built to help him rule in the next life. He made sure all of them were unique, and you can actually tell that each one looks different. They weren't discovered until the 1970's, so the site is really unique in that it hasn't been pilfered. Most tourist sites in China are fairly expensive (this one is $17 USD a ticket), but we thought it was worth seeing.

About a mile away is Qin Shi Huang's actual tomb. For some reason they haven't opened it yet, and it is believed to be in tact. It will be pretty neat to see what they find when they open it up.

This big hill is actually the tomb. There has to be a ton of cool stuff in there!

There was a 10 minute performance at the tomb site which was pretty entertaining.

Then we took the bust to HanZhong and saw Sharon's brother Peng Peng.He joined the internal security branch of the army. He was able to get a day of leave and stay with us for about 24 hours.

This means that whenever there are riots, rebellions, or protests like Tianamen square her brother would be part of the crew that comes in to take care of the situation. He said that things have been especially strict recently since the revolutions in the Middle East. I'm not sure how accurate this is, but he says he knows a soldier who got sentenced to 14 years in prison for sending an incriminating text message that implied he would support a rebellion in China if it happened.

People in China sort of have a tacit agreement with the government: you pave the way to prosperity and we will be willing to forgo certain rights and liberties. Considering the century of wars and poverty the people have experienced, it makes sense that the economy is their first concern. The standard of living in China is higher than it has ever been, and it is difficult to argue with a government that has brought this relative prosperity. However, the gap between the rich and the poor is probably widening at a faster rate than before and there has also been high inflation. I believe one of the government's biggest fears is that, one day, the economy will stop growing and a host of poor Chinese people will demand change.

I can't keep Chinese history straight. Dynasty after kingdom after dynasty after state get overthrown by dissent and intrigue as one topples another. I think the government is paranoid this will happen again, which is why they censor their media so strictly. On the internet, all content is monitored for sensitive topics and promptly banned or censored. Facebook, youtube, blogger, twitter, and many other sites are banned, probably because the government wants to limit the influence of our ideas of democracy and civil liberties. They also are probably not keen on Chinese people seeing that the average westerner's standard of living is still far higher than in China. I am able to access these sites because I am logged into a virtual private network through the UofA, which basically makes the internet think I'm on campus in Tucson, AZ.

As China gets more and more prosperous, I believe their tight security will lax. The richer they get, the more human rights their government will feel they can safely afford to provide.

Back to our trip..........

This is the alley where we stayed for a night. All the red signs are different motels. We got 2 rooms for a total cost of under $12. Both had a TV and ours had a private bathroom. Turns out you get what you pay for, because the walls were paper thin the bathroom echoed the noises of all other bathrooms in the building extremely well. We went to a much nice place the next day for about $13.

Saying goodbye to Peng Peng as he left for his base

The whole family except for dad

We then went back to XiAn so we could catch the train. We walked around the central part of the city and Enoch had a blast. I took this short video to show how crowds of people would literally gather around him in awe.

This next picture is great. Behind him is either the big drum tower or bell tower. Can't remember which one, because they both look exactly the same.

In our last stop, we saw Sharon's aunt and cousin.

OK, sorry for the long post, but nobody stopped you from skimming if you got bored. Not sure what we're going to do for the next 11 days before we fly to Shanghai and then fly home.