Month: March 2018

(Sorry this post took a little longer than usual to get out, I had a very busy couple of weeks setting up for our first Virtual Open Day on campus- now that it’s over, I can get back to posting!)

On our second trip to Shanghai over the holiday, we had an appointment to go notarize documents at the Embassy in Shanghai- just in case the notarize.com documents were rejected.  The day before we we’re going to leave though, we got the news that the documents were accepted and we could just go and enjoy the trip.

We stayed in a different part of Shanghai for this trip, closer to the embassy, but also closer to metro stops and a really neat area.  We stayed in the Jing’an Temple area, and loved it. As soon as we got off the metro, there was a relaxed fun atmosphere.

Surrounding the temple are lots of restaurants and shopping and hipster coffee joints.  We found a hipster place at the bottom of our hotel and right across the street from the temple to hang out until our room was ready.

We were all so excited about what we wanted to do first.  After tons of research, and much missing of our cat (that was rehomed to my sister-in-law and family) we were going to go hang out in a cat cafe and make some cat friends.  We hopped in a cab and they took us to the address we gave them…. that was closed down (and a while ago too). So we looked up the next cat cafe and it was within a long walking distance but doable. And off we went.  After walking to the next cat cafe, we were in a little neighborhood of apartments, most with no numbers on them, and no way to figure out which one of these was or could be a cafe. We circled an entire section of the apartment block before we had to give up.

Completely dejected, we started walking in no particular direction hoping to find a cafe of some sort to sit and rest and plan our next move.

We walked into the first one we came across and were surrounded by books, all in English. We had stumbled into an english bookstore cafe (with fantastic “after eight” mint gelato). Alex had some gelato, which mostly made up for the lack of cats.  Everyone got to look at some books and we all relaxed. After that we decided to keep walking around and actually found the cat cafe , well, one of them anyway.  It was in a small neighborhood of apartments, with different block numbers.  We knocked on the door, so excited to have finally found it….. and then don’t let kids in. No one under the age of 15.  Alex was crushed.

After that we decided to go to dinner, and we had found an Indian place on our first trip but hadn’t gotten a chance to go to it.  So back on the metro we went.  The restaurant was in a great old town area called Tianzifang.  The dinner was fantastic (Indian food is some of my favorite) and Alex even picked something that we wouldn’t have gotten other wise that was terrific.   We walked around, looked at every store and decided that when people come to visit, this will be another must do.

The next morning we got up, checked out of our hotel and headed back on the metro to get another dose of jianbing and green twisties.  Unfortunately  this time they were both closed. But we did find another bagel shop to try out instead.

After we ate, we found a Starbucks across the street to hang out at and play a few games.

And then we decided to head back to the YuYuan Garden area. I had enjoyed that so much, and we had all had a good time wandering around there and looking at things. The difference was, this time was after the main holiday days. It was so much busier and more crowded (which honestly I thought it was pretty crowded the first time we went).

We saw some kids wearing crowns, and Alex decided he needed one too. So to join in the festivities we got him a antennae crown. 

Aside from the fact that I don’t know how someone hasn’t lost an eye due to the antenae,  Alex loved his crown and he got a lot of attention for wearing it.  Especially older people stopped us to smile and coo at Alex in his crown. And he loved all the attention.

When we were there the first time, there was a guy in a grey coat who was taking pictures of the square and the people,  and while I was trying to get a picture of Mark and Alex by the lion people kept crossing in front of us and walking right into my shot. By the third time one guy had walked into it I made a face at him, and grey coat took a picture of me making that face as I took a picture of Mark and Alex. Mark and I laughed about it saying he’s going to be showing pictures to his friends of the crazy foreign lady making faces.

So this time when we went, I was surprised to see him again, same grey coat, and he recognized us too.  He took a ton of pictures of Alex and followed us around for a bit to see what else Alex would to that he could take pictures of.  I think he may have worked for the YuYuan gardens, or he’s just really enthusiastic about taking pictures of tourists.

Mark has found a new favorite treat in China (pictured above with Alex). We find them lots of places, especially touristy places.  They’re strawberries, but you can find and get other fruit as well,  glazed with a simple sugar glaze.

There were giant displays set up in the river in the middle of the area for the Spring festival, and people were all waiting to get onto the bridge to see them. We decided not to wait in the line because I was getting a little too crowded out to get jostled on a bridge. But it was impressive to see the number of people waiting to see the displays. 

We had a fantastic time in Shanghai, we will absolutely go back again for more adventures.

I’m going to add some random pictures that didn’t really fit anywhere but that I wanted to share.

 

Today is a special guest post by Mark, my loving husband, who not once in the following post mentions anything about his wife, but you know…whatever (update from loving husband: just discovered bus treads on back).

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I am writing as I lounge in one of the famous Chinese hospital IV wards I’ve jokingly heard about from other foreigners. If you’re from the US, you probably recall the salt water gargle cure-all offered by the school nurse. Well, I was led to believe that, in China, an IV at the hospital is similar in spirit.

I’ll spare you from a discourse on my aches and pains, but I have to provide some context. I left work immediately after lunch with abdominal pain. I hoped it would pass, but it didn’t. Instead it elevated to holy-shit-this-hurts intensity.

I’ll be totally honest: I was quite apprehensive to go to the emergency room. A niggling, lizard-brain centered voice based on groundless prejudice but amplified by pain warned there would be not but a shark-fin soup and bird’s nest infused concoction waiting. I stalled until I couldn’t any longer and here I am.

Now, I  am coming into this with a couple of advantages. You’ve heard of white privilege in the US. Forget that noise, give laowai (foreigner, slang)-laoshi (teacher)-with-an-insurance-card-and-cute-kid-in-tow privilege a whirl. Second, a buddy who can “zhong the wen” (our family’s slang for conversing in Chinese, zhongwen being spoken Chinese) rounded out my possy. The end result would have been the same, but these factors definitely helped to finesse the process.

Long story short: 3mm kidney stone that should pass on its own. To those who might ignorantly presume this was determined through some quackery, I have absolute confidence in the diagnosis as it is backed by a CT scan. Time to diagnosis after entering emergency room reception: under 45 minutes. The ultimate irony in all of this is that I have wanted a CT scan since learning the reconstruction methodology direct from domain pioneers during graduate school. It was even a helical scanner, squee!

Let’s bookend this thing baby (Brian, you there?). Second IV bag is almost empty. I feel great, no more pain. I’m guessing the stone has passed to the bladder (update: yes). The IV fluid infusion may even have been the trigger (my first-principles-based lay-knowledge suggests the possibility). Made friends with lots of curious little kids and a cool family sitting across from me. I was totally impressed with the courtesy and downright kindness exhibited by the security guards.

All joking aside, I am writing to say thank you yet again to China in general and the city and people of Haining in particular for being there when I needed you. The professionalism and clinical expertise demonstrated by the nurses, doctors, and everyone involved with my care met all expectations. I can rest easy tonight due both to absent pain and the knowledge that, should my family or I need you again, Haining People’s Hospital is just a quick DiDi down the road.

This was Alex’s and my first time in Shanghai, Mark has been there a couple times for travel and meetings.  I was able to figure out how to get us train tickets on my own- a seemingly small task, but it’s one less thing that we need to ask for help on.   The people in my office are so amazing and helpful but we try to limit how much we ask for help and save it for big favors (like helping me get my driver’s license).

So we hopped on the G train and headed into Shanghai.  Alex was so excited to ride the bullet train- even if he was a little disappointed that the world didn’t flash by in the window the way it does in cartoons.

The station in Shanghai is a little overwhelming at first, there are so many people and so many different ways you can go. We got lunch in the station – Alex got to have Subway for the first time in China, and Mark found a dumpling place he liked.  We knew we were looking for the metro, but there are two signs on opposite sides of the metro for two different lines of the metro, neither one was the one we wanted to be on.

Once we got to the 2 (you have to get on that or the 10) you can transfer to any other line.  Buying metro tickets is a breeze, there’s an English button, and you pick your destination.  By the end of these two trips to Shanghai, Mark and I feel like pros on the metro.

Now, I learned a lesson here that I should have learned already – get the app before you go. There is, of course,  an app for the metro in Shanghai that has a map of all the lines.  There is an app for almost anything here, and half the time there is an English version.

Our hotel was a short walk from the metro station, and in a fairly quiet section of Shanghai. As many people as there were around, it wasn’t nearly as many as I was expecting.  The best thing about the hotel was that is was attached to a fantastic sushi place. We had dinner there the first night, and Alex even tried some salmon belly (not his thing, but he tried!)

Sometimes I forget that I should take pictures for the blog, especially when food is involved.  So there are no pictures of the actual sushi- but it was great. I tried some new things and overall we had a wonderful dinner.

The next day was adventure day. Mark watches a youtube show called “Food Ranger” and one of the first shows he showed me was about a breakfast food called jian bing. our family has been talking about this for months, wanting to try it. We’ve even shown other people the show about it (Sorry Dad).  So since we were there, we decided this was the time. So we hopped on the metro, put the address into the maps (Google maps is accurate about 3/4 of the time here, I also have a map app that come on my Huawei phone that works better with addresses in Chinese) and wandered around until we found it.

Our review on Jianbing is all thumbs up.  It was delicious, everything that had been hyped up was real. It’s crunchy and eggy, and a little sweet and a touch of hot- it would replace breakfast noodles for me if I knew where to find it locally.  We all agreed that it was worth the trek to find it, and that we will be going back for more!

On the same street  we found a bakery that sold what I think are called mahua. My office mate brought in a snack from her home town to share, and we loved them. They are green twisty crackers, that I did not take any pictures of.  So when we found them at the bakery, we knew we had to get some more.  I didn’t take any pictures of this either, so you’ll have to imagine them.  We are trying to find these in Haining as well because it is a new favorite. We can find brown twisty crackers, but they are more like cookies and sweet.

We also hung out in a coffee shop for a while. Mark and I really loved the street that we were on, it was small and local but still lots of movement and bustle.  I really ended up liking all of Shanghai more than I expected.

After that we went to YuYuan Garden, I found that on several lists of things to do when you’re in Shanghai.  Again, we hopped on the metro and got there very quickly.  To get to Yuyuan, you have to walk down a street lined with stores, this stores sell all kinds of things, scarfs, toys, wigs, you name it, it can probably be found here.  It was so fun to see so many people out and about, it was busy but not unbearable.

We decided we’d go through it and see what the shopping area was like before heading to the garden.  It was amazing.  There were so many souvenir options and food options. There was a line for a dumpling restaurant that was 60 people deep.  As we worked our way through, the crowds got a little thicker and there was definitely a press.

After Alex got his treat and we pressed on to find the garden. The closer we got to the garden the denser the crowd got- there were decorations set out on the water and a bridge to walk through  to see them all. Everyone was heading to see that.  We found the garden, bought our very reasonable 30RMB tickets, and headed into what we didn’t know was the back entrance of the garden.

The pond in the background had huge koi in it, Alex enjoyed feeding them the green twisty crackers, the fish seemed to enjoy it too.

I loved the round doors, and the sunlight and shadows. It had a wonderful sense of calm, despite all the people there and the fact that it is nestled in a city of 24 million people.

 

We took the train back, and had a pizza party dinner in our hotel room while watching some survival show dubbed in Chinese.

This is the end of part one-  and really just day one (and a half ) in Shanghai.

As mentioned in the last post, our house sale hit a few road bumps that affected our travel plans.   We had given power of attorney to a family member, that the title company decided wasn’t good enough. So we had to scramble in China during the busiest holiday, where 5 million people are traveling home and businesses are closed, some times for weeks at a time.  This involved embassy appointments, that couldn’t be kept because there was no available way to travel to the embassy.  Panic that we would have to travel home for the closing, which would cost us thousands of dollars.

We were given a suggestion to try a new concept, Notarize.com, an online notary company that is authorized to notarize documents over the internet that are legal and valid in the state of Virginia and any state that will accept other states notarizations.

We decided to take our weekend trip anyway, because we could all use a break and not counting trips to visit family or business trips for Mark’s conferences that we tag along on, we haven’t had a family vacation in years.  So we picked up Alex at school on his last day before break, and took a cab to Wuzhen again. We had such a great time the first time, we wanted to see it at night, when it is the most beautiful.

I found us a cute little boutique hotel just outside the park, with the nicest owner ever. She offered to pick us up at the train station, drove us into the park, picked us up,  went above and beyond to make it a good trip.

It started off beautifully, we waited for a ferry to take us across to the fun area of the park- and while one the ferry, we got our first view of the lights.

Alex stopped at the same corn stand that we had gone to last time, and this time he also got some tea boiled eggs.  He enjoyed them more than I thought he would.

 

We walked straight in and made a beeline for the Full Moon Restaurant that we had gone to the first time.

We had the same delicious fish (that we were too excited eating to take a picture of) , green xiaolongbao that Alex ate most of, something called Shanghai soup, a duck and rice dish, and crab cake sticks.  It was a phenomenal meal.

After that huge meal, we had to walk it all off around the park. There were lots of people around, and all the lights were lit. It had such a fun atmosphere.

We even managed to find a Caffe Bene, a coffee shop we used to go to in Illinois.

It was time to start heading out of the park and back to the hotel, with plans to come back the next day and do some more exploring.

Unfortunately, the next day didn’t happen. Because we had to run around trying to find witnesses that spoke English we had to come back to the university a day early.  The plus side is that we ended up getting all the paperwork signed and turned in through notarize.com. They were a great company to do business with and we will use them again if we ever need to.

We did make it back it to Wuzhen (to collect our stuff from the hotel and check out) and had a really wonderful dinner in a local restaurant.  We walked over there and found them on the Chinese yelp Dianping.

We ordered things by pictures and by what we could translate on the phone app. Alex informed us afterwards that one thing we had ordered was Stinky Tofu, because he had learned that at school.

After dinner we walked around an old town area that was really neat to see. Lots of little stores and restaurants.

 

The next post is going to be about our trip to Shanghai, it’ll be in two parts. 🙂