Out and About in Shanghai

This morning I woke up and the weather forecast said, "hazy." I had never seen that before on a weather report, so I looked outside and here is what I saw:

This is probably not the worst it gets here, but it's the worst since I've been here.  I asked Sharron if it was pollution, and she said, "I don't know, are you having a hard time breathing?" The answer is yes, but it's very subtle.  I asked her if she was having a hard time breathing and she said, "No, I am used to it."  Oh, well.  Yesterday it wasn't hazy; it was rainy.  The weather seems to change here as often as it changes in Seattle - one day sunny, one day cloudy, one day rainy.  It's sort of breezy today, so I thought maybe the "haze" (viz. the cloud of toxic fumes) would disperse, but it hasn't.  I think the breeze must blow it in from somewhere.  One of my students wrote in an essay today, "Although someone may say that the air in Shanghai is not well, you don't need to worry about it, because the air quality has been much cleaner in recently years." I was teaching them about answering the imaginary opposition in a persuasive essay, and this was a pretty good example.  Of course I have only been here this one time, so I can't say whether the air quality has actually improved.  As I write this, I am coughing, I have a headache and a sort of tightness in my chest.  But this is the first time since I've been here that I've experienced this and I've been out and about a lot this week.  I just looked up the air quality index and it's 178, which is "unhealthy."  To give you a comparison, Seattle today is 21. Cough, cough.

Shanghai is HUGE!  23 million people live here (maybe 24 million), so it's four times the size of Seattle in terms of population, and a lot bigger area-wise.  It's grown by 4 million people or so since 2010 because so many people are moving here.  The number of high-rise apartments, cars, bicycles, scooters and pedestrians is insane.  Riding on the subway at rush hour is an experience not to be missed.  And the way people honk their horns!  Crossing the street is also an adventure - I can't believe I haven't been run over, but drivers and pedestrians seem to have some kind of weird sixth sense that saves them (and has saved me so far).

But anyway,  I wanted to tell you some of the sights I have been seeing this week.  I have been really surprised how few people speak English at all, even in the touristy areas. I know, I know, it's China and they speak Chinese, and I don't want to be one of those Americans who says "Doesn't anyone speak English around here?"  I'm not trying to be like that.  But China supposedly has more English speakers than the United States.  The only places where people greet me in English are ritzy hotels/restaurants and of course shopping places.  Then I hear, "Hey, lady!  Hey, lady!  Watches!"  I have an app on my phone, Google Translator, that is incredibly helpful and I recommend it to anyone traveling in China.  You can type or speak an English phrase into it and the simplified Chinese characters will appear on the screen of your phone.  If you press the little sound icon, Siri or whoever she is will actually speak the words.  My most helpful one so far has been, "Do you have a menu with pictures?" This got me some delicious Xiaolongbao at one of the most famous dumpling restaurants in Shanghai, the Nanxiang Steamed Bun Restaurant.  Yum!  I can't get enough of these little steamed dumplings with crab and pork inside.  There's also this greasy broth that squirts out if you are not careful.  You can eat them with soup, or just by themselves.  I found out that there are two branches of Din Tai Fung, which is actually a Taiwanese restaurant that serves these, in Seattle!  So when I get back, you can bet I'll be going there and taking my friends.

This is the "mixed court" that was set up during colonial occupation

Shanghai is a really cool combination of old and modern, and you can see both in a day.  My first tourist attraction last Thursday (for some reason, Sharron gives me Thursdays off) was the Oriental Pearl Tower.  This is probably the most famous attraction in Shanghai, and is sort of like what the Space Needle is to Seattle.  The trip to the observation deck is like 25 bucks (similar to the Space Needle) and for the super high deck it's 35 bucks.  For just the Shanghai City Museum in the basement, it was 6 bucks, so that's what I did.  I know it might have been silly not to go up the tower, but it just seemed too touristy.  The tower itself is 1500 feet high, and the highest observation platform is 900 feet.  My favorite thing about it is, of course, the fact that it's pink.  It sort of looks like a giant item that you might buy at Toys in Babeland, and as such is the most distinctive feature of the Shanghai skyline, whether by night or by day. The museum was really good - it was sort of like that really cool history museum in Victoria where you can walk through the fake streets of yesteryear.  It had some displays from the Qing Dynasty, some from the foreign semi-occupation (it was like imperialism lite after the treaty of Nanjing) and some from today, including old tea houses, old vehicles, etc.  I imagine it's the kind of place that kids would like a lot.

me in front of the Bund across the river

trendy birds in window display

After visiting the tower, I stayed over on the "modern" side of the river for most of the rest of the day. That side is called Pudong, and most of the buildings there are less than 10 years old.  I walked through the giant "Superbrands Mall" there, which was 13 floors of pure capitalism.  It did have some good views of the other side of the river, which is called Puxi, and especially the Bund, which is probably the most famous street in Shanghai.  From the river walk on the west side, you can get really good views.  It was a rainy day, so not many people were around.

 After the morning on the ritzy modern side, I headed over to see one of the sights I had been really excited about, the Jade Buddha Temple.  Its current incarnation was built in 1928, although the statues it houses come from the 19th century.  The most impressive of these is a one ton Buddha made of solid jade that was brought from Burma by a monk who was on a pilgrimage to Tibet.  His name was Huigen and he originally came from Putuo Shan, which is an island that I really really really want to visit, but I'm not sure I'll be able to because of time constraints and of course the language barrier.  If nobody speaks English in the center of Shanghai, who is going to speak English on Putuo Shan Island, where there is a giant statue of GuanYin 100 feet high?

 The temple was a combination of Tibetan style Mahayana stuff (lots of different deities, guardians, Boddhisatvas etc. dancing around) and the more Chinese-style "Pure Land" Buddhism.  One room was called "the room of 1000 Buddhas," with 1000 little gold Buddha statues all around.  That's more Pure Land style, or pure fundraising, since they had been recently added with little plaques containing the names of donors who had given money to help renovate the temple starting in the 1990s.  But the main statue, which was hidden away upstairs and was carved out of a piece of solid jade, was really magnificent, very beautiful and mystical.  Even the boisterous tour group people would speak in hushed tones when they got up to the room.

 This reclining Buddha statue was carved more recently, out of marble, to replace a jade reclining Buddha (don't know what happened to it).  It was pretty cool also, as were the many, many other statues that space does not permit me to show you here, and the procession of chanting monks who appeared and conducted a prayer ceremony as I watched (and tourists filmed).  It was pretty awesome.

So that was my first day of sightseeing, with more to come in between all the teaching and observing classes and chatting with DaJing folks about topics ranging from pollution to academic integrity to the scrapping of the One Child Policy.  Thanks for reading!