We went out bowling tonight with my friends Anqian, Emily, and Zack. We went to a locals’ joint called Sakura. John and I went bowling several weeks ago with Wang Jian and Ya-Ya near their home in Hankou district. I really suck at this sport, but it’s so much fun. We showed pretty good improvement last night compared to before. But John and I are going to start bowling on our own so we can practice our game!

The cool thing about places in Shanghai… there’s no open container laws. Not that such regs apply to nondrinkers like me, but it’s good news for John and others. After bowling, we headed to a 24-hour place called Bi Feng Tang. John felt a new kind of liberation, chugging his beer in public. BFT was cool… we sat in these makeshift outdoor rooms, covered from the rain by a patio umbrella and sheltered from the wind with shower curtains. Sounds dingier than they looked actually. Plus there was a little fan heater by the table… it was so nice and toasty. I’ts been awhile since John and I have hung out late with other people. It was a good time. We hope to throw a party at our new place in a few weeks. Maybe even break out the boardgames (yes, I brought Taboo and Cranium to China)!

Less than a week ago, John and I started looking at apartments again. You see, our lease requires three months’ notice. So, since the lease ends in June, we’re supposed to give notice in March on whether we’ll want to renew or leave in June. Well after seeing a bunch of places nearby, we came across THE place. A new community with serious grassy area, a huge patio, cathedral ceilings, an awesome floorplan, a water heater for the bathroom (scalding hot showers!!), and UNFILTERED internet (I can access Washpost and NY Times!). At first we were really bummed because the place was available immediately, but we couldn’t move in until June… But in China, anything can happen. Our realtor, seeing how much we loved the place, started putting the wheels in motion. Three days later, they said they could get us out of our current lease for a nominal penalty, they got the new place to come down in rent by almost 10 percent, AND they would halve their commission. So needless to say, we bit on the offer. By week’s end, we had packed up all our stuff, ended the old lease, signed a new lease, processed our address change, and moved in.

And there are no regrets. Our new place rocks!! And it’s even a little cheaper than the other. The dogs are already reversing their slow path towards retardation… it’s wonderful here. Someone please come visit just so we can have witnesses! 🙂 And down the street, we discovered an open-air produce market. So fresh and cheap. Now we just need to work on learning to cook Chinese food!

In other news, I did a week of teaching earlier this month. Was fun to get back into things… but the experience made me decide to start my own tutoring/freelance writing business. I got a bite last week… a petrochemical company called and asked me to do corporate business English training. So now I’m doing research to put together a course outline and proposal. It’s so much work– I’ve already spent like 5 hours in the bookstore looking for a coursebook, but I’m very excited. I like the sound of working for myself. 🙂 John’s been helping me design my business cards and brochures. Wish me luck!

John and I just celebrated our 8th Valentines Day! I must admit, after so many years together, birthdays and holidays just don’t offer the same level of excitement. I think we’re just getting old! 🙂 But we still had a great day. The weather was beautiful, so we took our new bikes out for a spin. The way we rode those things… you’d think we’d never been on a bike before! Of course we had Giant and Trek bikes in the States– rode them all about 4 times. Blame it on the hills of Virginia, okay? In Shanghai, it’s a whole new sport. The land here is so flat, riding bikes is almost as easy as breathing! Okay, not really that easy but still, not strenuous in the least and that is key for non-athletes such as ourselves.

We also get a big thrill from the dangers of biking. Here you have to basically fend for your life– against taxis, psycho drivers, not to mention oblivious pedestrians, obnoxious scooterists and other cyclists. John and I are all about riding fast. We book it full speed ahead (as fast as our single-speeds can carry us), weaving in and out, ringing our little thumb bells nonstop. Outta our way, we’re coming through! Being maniacal bikers is a total blast!

After an afternoon of tearing through town, we stopped at Simply Thai for dinner. After a series of disappointing misses at the local restaurants, we were pleasantly surprised. Despite having his mouth on fire, John was very pleased with his Thai spicy beef salad and coconut curried duck. Thank goodness– one less McD’s dinner. 🙂

My grandmother in Taiwan passed away today. Earlier in the week, my family had moved her out of the hospital into a Buddist temple to live out her final days. I’m not familiar with the traditions in Taiwan, but according to my brother, family members went to the temple daily to pray. They say she passed away looking content and at peace.
Death, no matter how expected, remains a difficult event. But what I learned from this final visit is that love truly grows around good people. You show compassion and humanity towards others and more often than not, you receive a lifetime of love, friendship, and respect. So many people came out of the woodwork to see my grandmother when she fell ill. Even though she wasn’t some VIP or famous individual, my grandmother had clearly touched the lives of so many. And kudos to my grandfather… for over a year, he was her caretaker–giving her baths, cooking her meals, feeding her, dressing her. When she was hospitalized, he endured a 90-minute each-way commute, complete with two bus transfers, to see her every day. Most of the time, she was unconscious, but it didn’t matter. Nothing could stop him from loving her. Not lack of personal transportation, poor eyesight, fragile bones, a chronic cold, or his own old age (85 years).

Sorry for the long absence. My paternal grandmother who has been battling terminal liver cancer went into critical condition after the Chinese New Year, so John and I made an emergency trip. Because our visas were only single entry, leaving the China meant making a pit stop in Hong Kong to get visas allowing us back in. Fortunately, we obtained one-year multi-entry business visas and are now set for awhile.

Our two days in Hong Kong were quite good. Never been to the “most popular destination in Asia” before. After reading all this propaganda on Shanghai proclaiming itself as the next Hong Kong, we were surprised by just how much farther SH needs to go. Hong Kong has all the ritz and glam of a big city. It’s hard to describe, but the feel is just so much more affluent and polished and cosmopolitan. And everything is so clean and efficient. Going in and out of the airport takes like 10 minutes. You catch a train to the Central peninsula and inside there’s an electronic map showing you exactly where the train is. Certainly, HK benefits from its small size, but still the initial impression is mindboggling. Things are just done right. No BS.

The official languages in HK are Cantonese and English. I think John felt a little weird being able to speak English at full-speed. We took full advantage of HK’s international status by stuffing our faces with the foods that we miss so sorely in SH. Indian, Mediterranean, Italian, Cantonese… all meals were excellent. And our hotel… I swear I need to get into the travel business. I found us an awesome place at a great price. Our room had this supped up telecommunications control center, with full panel instrumentation/controls on each bedside and at the desk, where a computer served as a PC and a TV. All our messages printed out on our in-room fax/printer. We were in heaven… well at least until the morning of checkout when our toilet wouldn’t flush. I called downstairs and apparently construction workers had busted some water pipes… so the entire hotel’s toilets couldn’t flush. Fortunately, the water still ran from the faucets so housekeeping arrived at our door with a bucket to manually fill the water tank and give us a flush or two!

We did the usual tourist activities—took the ferry over to Central and then rode the tram (cable car) up a 30 degree incline to Victoria’s Peak. It was a hazy, but beautiful nonetheless up on the mountains. A group of school girls were conducting some survey on foreigners… so they trapped John and bombarded him with questions about his thoughts on HK. Of course, no one was interested in this foreigner’s take. Then John granted them a celebrity photo. He eats that stuff up.

Unlike SH, HK is very hilly. We got a really good workout, especially after getting lost many times (the signs for some reason are not as clear as in SH). We went to one of the main city parks. It was of course all artificial and manicured but still, I thought it was beautiful and a nice escape from the city’s hustle and bustle. HK is much more densely populated than SH. I dunno where the government gets its numbers, but it’s hard for us to believe SH has a population of 15 million. We don’t see THAT many people on the streets.

After two fun days in HK (we even saw LOTR), we headed off to Taiwan, for a totally different experience. Dirty and dingy, Taiwan (at least southern Taiwan) is an environmentalist’s nightmare. At least in SH, the government makes a big effort to conceal the grime. In Taiwan, public space is everyone’s garbage can.

The main point of our trip was to see my grandmother. She recognized me the first day and in typical fashion, kept asking where we were staying and if we had eaten and if her house was clean and welcoming. My grandmother has terminal liver cancer and during my visit, her condition worsened. The day I left, my grandfather and aunts signed hospital papers declining automated life support and surgery. After I left, she was moved to the Buddhist temple for her final days. My parents made an emergency trip to see her one final time and fortunately, they made it in time. My grandmother who had been unconscious, opened her eyes and seemed aware of their return. She could not speak, but she knew they had come to see her.

Today John and I went to the Shanghai Museum, located in People’s Square. A nice four-storied building with beautiful art galleries displaying calligraphy, ceramics, bronze figures, scultures, etc. But John and I tire easily at museums, so we were in and out in 90 minutes.

Well the pyros are at it again and Remy and Martin are back on high alert here in the war zone. Yesterday marked the fifth day of the new year… celebrated with another night of explosions. Of course safety takes a back seat on ocassions such as this: our neighbor set off a bunch of firecrackers and our kitchen window was showered with fiery debris. In the parking lot below, people lit off strings and strings of crackers, causing all the car alarms to go off. It was crazy. We went out onto our 14th floor walkway and you could smell the gunsmoke and see the dirt clouds rising. The pictures don’t really do justice to the event, but we weren’t about to take our laptop outside to collect sound recordings either.

On New Year’s eve, John and I had dinner at Ya-ya’s parents’ home in NE Shanghai. We celebrated the holiday with a huge New Year’s feast, complete with jellyfish, cow liver, sauteed shrimp, scallops, mini-escargots, SH hairy crab, dumplings, soup, and some delicious vegetable dishes–celery and cashews, shrimp and edamame, and asparagus and lily petals. During dinner, we watched the SH version of Dick Clark’s rockin’ New Year’s party, a variety show with Chinese acrobatics, song and dance.

After dinner, we had our first SH bus experience. Thankfully it wasn’t too complicated. We just followed WJ and YY, and because it was New Year’s eve there weren’t many riders. We were on our way to YY’s workplace– a hospital near the Bund. YY is an emergency room nurse and she was on call that evening from 10:30 pm to 7:30 am. I guess she didn’t miss all the festivities… while we waited to leave the station, all of the passengers were treated to a fireworks display right outside (put on by the bus’ staffers). Some of flying debris even hit the bus… probably wasn’t very safe but it was still fun to watch.

Around 11 pm, John and I met up with Anqian, Catherine, and Mike (whom we met a few weeks ago). We had drinks at the CJW (Cigar Jazz and Wine) bar on the 50th floor of the Bund Center. Hung out for a couple hours and watched the fireworks. Unlike the US where fireworks are essentially one big, orchestrated pyro show, in SH fireworks go off randomly all over the city– set off in hidden alleys, people’s backyards, business parks, etc. The result, when viewed from somewhere high, is a beautiful spontaneous performance of light and sound.

I was almost pickpocketed today. John and I were on our way to meet up with Wang Jian and his wife Ya-Ya at the Pacific Hotel (where we stayed in September). It’s location alongside Nanjing Xi Rd. has always been a bustling spot in the city… just across the street from People’s Square and near a shopping distrcit where plenty of foreigners drop some dough. We got off the metro and walked through the square, passing three unkept women, each carrying a toddler. They seemed to know one another– could have been part of some organized begging operation which I’ve been told is common here… but as I continued walking, all I could dwell on was the children. Certainly SH is like many cities with the blatant and uncomfortable juxtaposition of affluence and poverty. There are beggars everywhere, but what I find most disheartening are the child beggars. Sometimes they are just so painfully young… maybe only two or three years old. They sit on the sidewalk for hours each evening, with a cup in front. There’s no harassment, no clamoring for coins, just a lifeless steady stare straight ahead and cheeks burning red from the cold. I was carrying this image in my head when suddenly John turned and said, “Watch your bag!” I looked to my left and what I had dismissed as a shadow shrank back into a small dark figure. I turned around to find a frightened 5-year old boy. He said “hallo” and then quickly turned back. I looked down at my purse and saw that the zipper had been pulled halfway. I had no idea someone had been tagging along so closely. Fortunately, nothing was taken… but the scare of nearly losing my passport or ID has now prompted me to put a small combo luggage lock on my purse.

So we went out to a Mongolian restaurant for dinner with WJ and YY. The restaurant had a really rugged, frontier-feel to it with large tree stumps for chairs and fur pelts hanging everywhere. The food was good though… always is so long as someone else orders. Afterwards, we went to a tea house on Hengshan Rd.–formerly the most popular late-night street (but now surpassed by the trendy Xintiandi). We had wulong tea, prepared and served in that special tea-pouring sequence (which includes rinsing/warming the tea cups, washing the tea leaves, pouring into the fragrance cups, inverting it with a regular tea cup, and passing the cups out on wooden coasters). Had some snacks with the tea too… mini-walnuts, pistachios, and sour plums. Over tea, we saw their digital honeymoon pictures from Phuket Island, Thailand. They went in November and it looked so warm and sunny and beautiful. I think John and I are going to have to take a trip somewhere warm during this bitter winter.

Today started off as any ordinary day. Remy and Martin got us up early (before 9), we took them out, came back in, and returned to bed. From our brief 10 minutes outside, we already knew it was going to be another cold, dreary day. It’s too difficult getting up knowing that small piece of information, so John and I slept in late. We didn’t wake until around 11:30. Some days, sleep simply ranks above all else.

Still, today promised a busy schedule. My friend Emily was back in town (she took a 3-week vacation to visit family back in the States) and we were gonna catch up. For John and me, catching up always takes place over food. So I call Em and suggest getting food. She wants to go to the Flower Market but there are food places nearby she says. So John and I skip breakfast (as usual) and wait for to have lunch with Em and Zac. What I’m expecting to be a brief stop to pick up some flowers ends up being a three and a half hour ordeal. I buy some calla lillies and gladioli… they get pink tulips, purple/white peonies, white roses, pink roses, greens, red hairy flowers, gladioli, and this huge chair-sized potted plant. When we finally get out of the place (with a massive headache), Zac supposedly runs off to grab a cab (not sure how he planned to get the chair into it) and disappears. for like 30 minutes. After hearing horror stories from my relatives in Taiwan about people getting abducted and shit, I start panicking (internally, of course. One must still maintain outside composure). And the dude has been here 5 years and does not have a cell phone! So Em, John, and I split up and scour three different streets. No Zac. Finally, he appears as quietly as he had left. Who knows where he had gone… it’s not as if a tall African man is difficult to spot in Shanghai (Did I tell you he is fully fluent in Mandarin?). Anyway, after having the group reunited, we spend another 40 minutes in the f-ing cold trying to hail a damn taxi. When it’s rush hour, cold, or rainy, your time is better spent walking. But we had all those flowers… by the time we got to Em’s, it was 6:00. Zac disappeared again to buy food for dinner. We watched an episode of Trailer Park Boys, this hilarious Canadian “reality” show and then had to jet for the pups. So we couldn’t even stay for dinner. John was not thrilled. Guess what we had for dinner? Pizza Italia pizza (called in as soon as we stepped in the door) slathered with our grocery-bought tomato sauce (instead of their pizza sauce, i.e. ketchup), salad, eggplant Parmesan, spaghetti, dove chocolate… yeah all of it. That’s what happens when you starve the whole day. When you finally get your hands on food, you binge like there’s no tomorrow and then you go to bed and surrender to the food coma.

On Tuesday, Nai and Yeb began the painful 24-hour journey back to the States. They’re both in their 80’s and still making crazy long trips like that! It’s amazing. I don’t know where they get that kind of stamina. Yeb spent his final days taking advantage of all the pampering services SH has to offer. He went to the bath house down the street for the third time. Soaked in the hot tub, took a dip in the cool tub, went to the sauna, got a back rub. Then went to the local massage parlour and had got a foot massage… For dinner, we went to a tiny food joint a few doors down. It has the same name as I: Xiao something Hui. The place was so mobbed, with dirty dishes left on the tables and soup spilled all over the floor. Seats were so few and far between that random people shared seats at a table. After a few minutes of strategizing, we secured four seats at a table, but the fifth seat was taken by some random young lady. We consumed so much food at this meal: a dozen wontons, two bowls of beef noodles and 24 shen jian bao’s (dumplings). Total cost? A whopping 20 kuai (or $2+ USD). Yeah the food is cheap as hell and according to John, the dumplings are incredible. But still, I prefer my PBJ. Old habits are tough to break.

So Wednesday was our first day without Nai and Yeb. It was definitely a little strange. No more waking up to a hot morning breakfast. No more constant commotion in the kitchen. And no more cab rides everywhere. One good thing: we were able to break the Chinese food diet. For dinner, I was so excited to eat non-Chinese. We went out for pizza at La Casbah… unfortunately, this place was all quality not quantity. We devoured the thing in a matter of minutes and then headed to good ‘ol McD’s to fill ‘er up. I know, it sounds ridiculous. In the States, we rarely visit the golden arches. You’re probably familiar with all the news about the multinational corporation falling into a rut, closing shops and suffering losses for the first time in the company’s history . Well whatever the story is in the States, it’s completely different here. McD’s is always packed. You have to push and shove just to get in the front door and then you have to wrestle with all the line butters at the counter. When you finally do get your food, there are no seats. It’s insane. But I have to admit, those fries hit the spot. And at McD’s you can always count on the food tasting just as it should… the fries, the coke, the apple pie– processed, packaged, and heated to utter perfection! Other successful US MNC in Shanghai include: KFC (that place has more business than McD’s), Starbucks, and Pizza Hut. But the Colonel definitely rules in Shanghai. KFC’s elite status has even prompted some knockoffs (see left).

Thanks for sending all your positive comments regarding John’s new hairstyle. I think Mr. Fancypants is quite pleased with his new look. The ball is now rolling… The latest change? His fingernails. Let me explain. I’ve known John since 1995. He has never, and I repeat NEVER had that white part on the tip of his fingernails. He has always ripped them off (yes, violently) with his teeth, resulting in red, raw little nubs for fingers. Early on, I had already accepted this idiosyncrasy. Fingernails occupying just half of the nail bed were fine. We’re married, after all. Then all of the sudden, John tells me he’s going to grow his fingernails. As a test of will, he said. A way to demonstrate that old habits can be broken. Fine, whatever floats your boat, right? Three weeks later, voila! There was about 3-4 mm of white on every fingertip. It was all uneven and jagged, but a huge victory nonetheless. We went to the nail salon for his first manicure (I know, a little primpy, but it’s just this time). Even got the clear gloss. 🙂 And boy do his hands look nice. Have a look for yourself. Smooth, trimmed nails. At this rate, in another month, I won’t even recognize him!

In other news (I almost forgot), I was offered a couple of teaching positions this week. After facing weeks of discrimination (to put it bluntly), I finally found some employers who agreed that I could both be Chinese and a native English speaker (Imagine that!). So I will be a part-time ESOL instructor for two places, starting after the Chinese New Year. Hurray!