Shanghai Literary Festival

March was a busy month for us, we attended the literary festival, restaurant week and we had to move from the 28th floor to the 17th floor of our building, more on this later.  As usual  I am weeks behind on my blog, the literary festival began on March 3rd and I am now just getting around to posting the pictures and reporting the event.   We have never attended the event and I thought that this could be a nice change of pace for us. So off we went on a Saturday afternoon to learn something new. 

The venue was at The Glamour Bar on the Bund.  The Bund is on the waterfront of Shanghai and there are many famous and historical buildings facing the Huangpu River.   The famous Peace Hotel, is located on The Bund and you can read about it here:  http://www.surpriseshanghai.blogspot.com/2010/10/drinks-at-peace-hotel.html. 

We went to hear Mr. Arvind Subramanian speak about China becoming the next Super Power. He has written a book about it in English and as it is favorable to the Chinese point of view and it supports the theory that China will be the number one super power it will be published in Chinese as well.  He told us it will be published in Chinese after the government vets it, edits it and makes sure it is completely without a negative comment against China. I am not sure why he would want his book published as his thoughts will be changed but I guess it's all about the money and the honor of having some of your ideas spread in a controlled society. It was fairly interesting but we didn't learn anything new, just a confirmation of what we suspected.    I suppose if you don't live here you don't have the same understanding of the power house that China is, but our US leaders know and try to manage it the best they can without upsetting the citizens.

Although the festival was a week long I did not see any other lectures listed that I was interested in attending.  Matt Groenig  the Simpson's cartoon creator was here but the Simpson's never did much for me and I probably have only watched a handful of episodes in the past 10 years.   Next up - restaurant week.

New Apartment vs Old Apartment

OK, OK, it really does look the same but it's not.  There is new lighting in the ceiling, and the window dressing is different, there are wooden floors instead of wall to wall carpet, kitchen wine storage changed and counter changed.  I don't dislike it but I don't love it enough to have to change apartments.  The worst part for me -  when we were on the 28th floor I could see the sky, on the 17th floor I only see the middle portion of various buildings - yuck!  The management tried to soothe me by telling me that I now had 2 balconies.  I looked at her with a sense of wonder.  The Chinese use their balconies for storage, hanging laundry and they usually enclose it as well so that it becomes more valuable space - a room.  Here at our building we are forbidden to enclose our balcony, in addition, the air quality in Shanghai is pretty bad so there are relatively few days a year when you can sit out and enjoy the outdoors. Plus now on both balconies I see the middle of the next building where as on my one balcony on the 28th floor I could see the sky!  We were "forced out" but we will be able to return to the 28th floor in October after they do the silly renovations to our place.

Old apartment with green walls, new apartment with beige walls.

The moving was terrible - I began at 5:00am and stopped at 4:15pm and unfortunately was not completely done. It's not that I had a lot of crap (as my loving husband calls it) but I wanted to move it, put it away and be organized right away.  So no dumping boxes, each one unpacked and carefully put away in a new apartment with different and LESS storage space. I know, looking at the pictures you would think the storage is exactly the same.  Oh well it's done now and we are all moved in.  I am sure I will grow to love this apartment and then be bummed I have to move all over again back to 28........or maybe not.

Following directions

 

This is the sign I encountered at the airport the day we were leaving for Vietnam!

Enough said.

Ear massage!

 

Yesterday I went to my favorite hair salon - Contesta Rockhair and in addition to a wonderful cut and color I received an ear massage during the shampoo.  So strange, yet oddly comforting.  The tops of my ears were lovingly rubbed and then the side lobes as well.  The Chinese seem to have a thing about ears.  

In the summer you can find the "ear cleaners" in the park with their odd instruments poking and prodding into peoples ears.  

Here is a picture of a typical instrument used.  One end to scoop the wax the end other to brush away the particles.  Actually I have no idea how the puffy end is used and I am not up for an ear cleaning adventure. There is usually a candle nearby but what the cleaner uses it for is beyond me.

 

 

Great Wall Wine!

 Saturday night, it's St. Patrick's Day and we are not going to the ball. Here in Shanghai (in the Expat community) de rigueur is to attend balls and galas which are events to raise money for charity and also where you go to be seen! The St. Paddy's ball is considered the best ball of the season and it is the hardest ticket to get.  We have attended this ball for a number of years and always had a marvelous time. Last year Tony and I decided that in 2012 we would not attend any ball or gala.  If we wanted to dress up in our long gowns and tuxedo we would just go ahead and do it and hit the town in our fancy dress. Or perhaps even prance around in our apartment looking fine! I wish I could tell you last night we did get dressed up and pranced around but we didn't. Instead we opened a bottle of wine given to us by our good friend Julian who has a great nose and pallet for wine.  We were skeptical when a few years ago he said he had had a delicious bottle of Chinese wine and was going to buy a couple of cases to have at home. He broke open a bottle at a dinner we had at his apartment to share with us and we were surprised at how good it was. 

 Two weeks ago we asked Julian over for dinner as his wife Gaby was still away in the UK and we thought he could use a little pampering and nice home cooked meal.   He brought us a bottle of Great Wall as a small token of appreciation.  So last night, with great fanfare we opened the bottle.  We noticed the fine dust on the bottle as we lifted it out of the attractive wooden box and thought, oh my an nice old wine, it must be good. (We are suckers for a good visual and fall right into the marketing trap...keep reading)  Tony started laughing and said "look at the vintage"!  It read - Since 1992,  now that leaves a lot of room for when the wine was actually bottled.

 As he began to pour I worried that he would have dust all over his hands and get the dust into the decanter.  But NO! Not to worry, the dust is not dust but instead the bottle has been tossed into a large machine (I am guessing here) with small stones to "chip" or scratch the bottle.  As you run your finger nail over the surface you can feel the chipped glass.  But looks like dust, right?  Now I am worried there are fine chips of glass in our wine!!!  But the wine felt smooth and silky on our tongue and we enjoyed it immensely.  Great Wall wine has similar characteristics of a good French Bordeaux. I did notice this nice little brochure which accompanied the wine.  Inside there is a map showing that China is on the same latitude as France and California, implying that of course it will be as good as their wines! 

The wine was very good and we really enjoyed it!  Cheers Julian!! (Who by the way was as the St. Patrick's Day ball with his wife Gaby!)

P.S. I do not think all Great Wall wine is equal.  I believe that this wine (vintage circ. 1992 - 2012) is of a higher grade then other Great Wall wines which may carry the Expo 2010 logo, or have a different color label. I do not know how to tell the difference except IF I were to buy a bottle of Chinese wine I would buy one with the same label as the one Julian gave us.    But I am pretty sure this isn't going to happen!

University of Michigan -Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute

 

As of October 2011 I have been working at UM-SJTU JI as a marketing consultant; in February my responsibilities increased and I began teaching a writing course as well. I have two classes, one is comprised of 40 Freshman  and the other has 40 Sophomores.  It's tough, I grade 80 papers a week, each class meets three times a week for a total of 9 hours of class time. I have to be available to the students so I have four office hours weekly and I must prepare the lessons, which takes me about 9 hours a week as I have to relearn/learn all the rules for writing.   Tough, tough, tough!

 

 

 This day was very exciting as a cat wandered into the classroom and was sniffing out the kids breakfasts begging for a bite.  My student, Martin, accidentally stepped on the cat's tail and the cat let out a loud squeal and raced out.  I was in the process of taking a picture of the cat begging for bites of food but instead caught him mid-flight.

You can see how dreary the sky is, we have had 32 days of rain and cold weather!

The school is right next to the nuclear power plant.  China loves nuclear energy and you see quite a lot of these cooling towers around China.