Shanghaied!

Shanghai—It’s one of those places that’s written on the “to be visited before I die” lists buried at the back of some drawer along with spare keys, old licenses, random brochures, and other miscellaneous items that seem lost between categories. Shanghai is the largest city in China, the largest seaport in the world, and one of those places that finds its way into the history books over and over again. In American and European history books it is probably known best for the Opium Wars, The Treaty of Nanjing, and the thousands of “Shanghailanders” who inhabited the city after foreign nations gained extraterritoriality on Chinese soil and set up their own communities such as the famous French Concession. As globalization has grown, so has Shanghai’s fame. Today the two words are synonymous, and you cannot listen to the news, especially business news, without hearing about Shanghai.

However, its business fame is one of the reasons that it was not on the top of my lists of places to go. When my friend Kate suggested that we visit Shanghai for our trip, I was a little hesitant. Sure it is famous and one of those places that I should go, but I had heard stories of it being a cold, dog-eat-dog, corporate environment where people only care about money. Next to cities like Dali and Lijiang in Yunnan province that are famous for their natural beauty and cultural history, Shanghai didn’t sound like the top choice to me. I had spent the past few weeks stressed about work and I really didn’t want to go to a place where I had to watch others stress about work.

In the end, Kate successfully shanghaied me! Ok, she didn’t really force me to go, but she convinced me that it would be amazing and well worth it. It may not have as much natural beauty and quaintness as Lijiang, but it does have history; and it does sit at the mouth of the Yangtze River on the East China Sea. So, I decided to open my mind and forget about what I had heard about Shanghai. After buying our tickets (with the much needed help from Kate’s contact teacher), I was just as excited as Kate and enthusiastic about crossing Shanghai off my list.

As soon as we arrived at the airport I immediately knew I was in a different part of China. People seemed taller and paler, or maybe my mind wanted to see this since this is what I had heard about Northern China. Nevertheless, it felt different than Shenzhen. It was definitely apparent we were in the north when we got into our taxi to head to our hostel. We could barely understand our driver. He used the characteristic “r” sound that is used in Beijing and other parts of the north. For example instead of saying “zai nali” meaning “where” that they often used in Shenzhen, he used “zai nar,” which is what our textbooks teach us based off of the Beijing accent. However, there was also something strange about his accent that made almost everything else impossible to understand, and this, I am guessing, is the local Shanghainese dialect, which is almost unintelligible from Mandarin.

So, we crossed our fingers and hoped that the Chinese characters of the name and address of our hostel that we had printed before leaving were enough to get us there (n.b. whenever travelling in China it is always a good idea to write or print the names and addresses of your destination since dialects vary and some people are better at understanding your foreign accent/butchered Chinese better than others). Half an hour or so later we arrived at what looked like a web of back alleys and street food stalls. Our driver turned down one of the back alleys and motioned for us to get out. At this point we could not make out the name of our hostel on any of the buildings so we refused to get out until we saw visual confirmation. We had no idea where we were since, as usual when traveling in China, we couldn’t read anything, and we were not about to get out at this time of night and wander some random alley with our suite cases. Our driver got the message and drove down the alley a little ways, and finally on the left we saw the only English words on the street “Sleeping Dragon International Hostel.”

We awoke in the morning to the clanging, sizzling, and yelling of the street food market just below our second story window. Our hostel was right in the middle of old school China—men in broad-brimmed straw hats pulling carts, women selling vegetables from a blanket on the ground, hand-made flat bread, and noodles made to order in a wok. No cars, no high-rises, no business suits. It was wonderful. Of course once we bought our morning noodles, we only had to walk a half mile to the metro stop, the high-rises and the cars. It was this contrast, this foil of cultures, which made Shanghai so fascinating. It was enthralling to constantly discover the old just around the corner from the new, the West mixed with the East, and the historical adjacent to the contemporary. I had had this feeling in other cities in China, but in Shanghai it was more pronounced because there was such a visible trail of these contrasts.

The first day we went to the Shanghai museum and looked at artifacts thousands of years old, and then we walked a block over to the Urban Planning Museum to look at miniatures of the city’s skyline in the future. And between these two polar ends of the Shanghai timeline, we stopped to have lunch at an upscale restaurant on the rooftop of the Shanghai Art Museum, which seemed to halt us in the present to admire the current city skyline. I chose a nice roast duck with an orange glaze trying to remind myself amidst the square tables, white table cloths, and bread and butter that I was in Asia not Europe, which was futile as it was soon ruined by the mistakenly ordered imported glass bottle of water from Norway. Ultimately I found it quite amusing that imported water cost almost as much as my duck, and I began to wonder what other silly expenses Shanghai has paid over the years for its double life.

The contrasts continued as we ventured into the very European French Concession to visit the former residence of the famous Chinese leader, Sun Yat-sen. It was a beautiful area, but my only reminder that I was in China was the China Post van parked outside of one of the brick houses while its driver delivered mail. I was also soon reminded that I was in China by a bad menu translation at a nearby “Western” restaurant. Someone should tell the restaurant owners that in the West eating “U.S. tuna aioli grilled over disabilities” and “rice with mother and son” is not so politically correct and could get some human rights activists banging down their door. Human rights activists aside, it is this kind of humorous jostling of cultures that makes places like Shanghai so interesting.

While I also passed over the “assorted fruits with disabilities,” I couldn’t help but see Shanghai as some wonderful salad assortment of the fruits of different cultures. Each fruit is distinct within the salad and delicious on its own, but it can also be eaten together for a more complex and interesting taste. This salad analogy was most pertinent when walking along “The Bund,” a famous strip of historic buildings in the old international district lining the Huangpu River. The buildings were once the homes of banks and trading companies from Britain, the U.S., Russia, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, and Japan. If I focused my attention on the architecture of small sections of buildings I could imagine being in New York, Paris, or Moscow. However, if I looked straight ahead and saw these various building lined one after the other along the river walkway, I knew I was in Shanghai. Then I only had to look across the river at the new Pudong area where the new skyline of Shanghai lies eclipsing the Bund with its tall, shiny glass buildings. This skyline seemed to promise Shanghai that it will not stay a simple fruit salad for long because it is working on the secret ingredient that will take the city beyond its distinctive parts to a whole new recipe for success.

I hope, for the sake of the wonderful distinctive parts I have already tasted, that the aim is for a better fruit medley instead of a melting pot. At the heart of the globalization is the controversy over whether it is making the world a better, more open place, or whether it is erasing and blending together cultures into a boring mush. From what I have seen, Shanghai still seems far from the mush. The combination of the different cultures and time periods actually seems to save it from a lackluster fate. It is interesting, unexpected, ironic, ambitious, and at times unsettling.

After leaving the Bund and my ruminations on this great salad of a city, we jumped into a cab and headed back to our hostel just as it was getting dark. As we approached the narrow alleyway cramped with street vendors, we told our cab driver that we could get out and walk. He refused and insisted on driving down the alleyway even though it looked as if his cab would barely fit. The street vendors looked up from their goods to glare at us as we inched by their stalls, and I embarrassingly glanced at them since I was only a few feet from their faces. Then we heard the inevitable sound that we had all been dreading—ccrruunch! I wondered where the lady selling her vegetables on the blanket had gone as we inched down the alleyway, and it appears our cab had found her, or at least her vegetables. While her vegetables lay in ruins on the street, the lady was alright. In fact, by the time we had figured out what was happening, she was already running at our car red-faced and yelling. Soon a whole sea of angry vendors had taken up her cause and were yelling and banging on the trunk, hood, and sides of our car. Great, I thought, I am going to die via angry mob in a Shanghai vegetable market. It’s hard to imagine that just minutes before I had been contemplating globalization. Then again, wasn’t this a perfect example of the evils of globalization. We looked like the selfish foreigners crushing the property of the hard working farmers and locals because we couldn’t get out and walk. In reality our driver probably just wanted to make a few extra bucks on the cab fare, but they didn’t know that. We ducked down in shame, hoping that somehow the vendors wouldn’t see our faces and murder us later if we ever got out of this cab.

Soon, a policeman did come and arbitrate between the cab driver and the woman. The driver agreed to pay for the vegetables. The lady was still yelling but less murderous looking. Finally, the driver let us out of the cab, and we hopped out into the mob and quickly walked toward our hostel while they were distracted by the policeman. I looked back as we walked away and noticed an old man staring at me grinning and chuckling to himself. My fear soon subsided and I was laughing too. At least this cultural mess makes a good story.

Shanghai may be just that—a cultural mess, but it was a fascinating one. It wasn’t the boring concrete and steel mass of office buildings and stressed businessmen that I had imagined. It was international, intercultural, and most of all entertaining. Its beauty didn’t capture my heart like the peaks of Yangshuo or the old cities of Lijiang might have, but its contrasting images did capture my mind and make me realize why it deserves to be on that list of places “to be visited before I die.”

Guilt Trip

By mid April I was about ready to burst with anxiety and frustration about what to do the following year, and teaching was becoming a chore. I desperately needed a break, but apparently the Shenzhen Education Bureau didn’t think so. Usually there is a seven day school holiday in May, but this year they decided the three day weekend break for the Tomb Sweeping holiday (day to honor the dead by visiting their tombs) in early April was enough of a break. Of course, true to Chinese “nowism” they decided to tell us this in April. So, the seven day holiday I had been counting on to get me through the second semester had vanished. It was cruel, like eliminating the one water stop for the second half of a marathon, and I took out my frustration by making my own water stop out of thin air.

I told my contact teacher that I had a “friend from home” visiting Shanghai, and it would mean a lot to me if I could go and visit her. This “friend” happened to be another teacher in CTLC named Kate and we were secretly planning our own May break to Shanghai. My contact teacher, Elli, had mentioned to me earlier in the year that if family visited China, I might be able to get some time off to spend with them. I just couldn’t make myself lie that much and tell her that actual family was coming. The lie seemed a little whiter if I said “friend” since Kate is indeed my friend. After all, it was not the school’s fault that none of us got a break in May. It was the Education Bureau’s fault.

Wise one that she is, Elli took it upon herself to add a little grey to my white lie, and she told the principal that I had family visiting Shanghai. She was afraid a “friend” wasn’t a good enough reason, so she decided “family” might work better. She was right! With the principal’s permission, I rearranged my classes and soon had the prospect of a Tuesday through a Sunday to visit Shanghai. I felt a little guilty conjuring this lie out of nothing, and getting almost a week off while my fellow Chinese teachers had to keep on working. It was hard being the weird foreigner all the time, but this was one of those times that it paid off.

During this period of deception, I also made another decision that I felt guilty about. I had decided to reapply to return to Shenzhen the next year even though I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I received my acceptance letter in mid-April. By that time, however, I was home sick, frustrated with learning Chinese, and jaded with teaching. A couple hours after being accepted, I sent an email back to the head of the program thanking him for his consideration but politely rejecting the position. That day I found out that my friend Kate—the same Kate that was planning a trip to Shanghai with me—had been rejected, and she actually wanted to return. She assured me that she didn’t blame me, and that everything would be okay. She would find another job in China or work in the United States. To prove it to me, she suggested we go out and celebrate her rejection with some beer at one of our favorite hang outs—a mall with a nice bar street called CoCo park. So after drinking a couple beers, talking about our upcoming trip, and hanging out with some fun Chinese friends, we were both in a good mood again and ready for the rest of the year…and Shanghai.

Above: Kate, me, owner of the bar, and Wei, a friend of Kate's.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

I should begin Part II of China Tales with one of my unpublished blog entries that is partially responsible for my writing hiatus. I wrote, reread, and added to this blog draft over several weeks. The thoughts it contains occupied my mind for most of March, April, and May. I was so torn on whether to stay in China for another year or return home that I found it hard to think about anything else.

After weeks of anticipation, the head of our program finally sent out an email detailing the process for returning next year. Typical of people who have been living in China too long, this email gave us only one week to decide. Ideally, most people would have been thinking about this decision long before this email was sent, and I had been thinking about it. It is just that now I am forced to decide the question that has been puzzling me, well, since I got here. This question has been the hottest topic among the programs participants for the last two months. A typical conversation usually goes something like this:

Me: “So what are you thinking about doing next year?”
Other program member: Sigh. “I don’t know. Maybe I will stay. What am I going to do in the U.S.?”
Me: “So are you staying in the program or looking for another job abroad?”
Other program member: Sigh. “I don’t know. Maybe somewhere else in China would be nice—Hong Kong, Shanghai, Guangzhou.”
Me: “Have you found anything yet?”
Other program member: “No.”

I’ve had that conversation with at least half the people in our program over the past few weeks, including last weekend, and it is always the same defeated resignation to stay for lack of anything else better to do. I am no different. I have casually browsed the internet to see if any other teaching jobs in China sound interesting, but I’m not really motivated. How different can it be? It is still China. And what if it’s worse? I already have a network here. Why risk it? I’ve had a similar reaction to researching other countries. If not China, where would I go? Other places could be fun, but I have to start over again. I would have to learn a new language, and I feel as if the little Chinese I have learned would be a waste. No, the decision has to be between China and home.

I decided the best course of action to solve this dilemma would be to write a pro/con list. The problem with this sort of list is that it is tinged by my mood of the day. Some days I love it here and others I hate it here. So, thus far, I have stayed away from the pro/con list for this reason. Now, however, I am forced to write it. There is no other way.

I would gauge my mood on the day I am writing this list to be favorable. Nothing much happened. I got up to the sound of screaming children, ate the same bowl of oatmeal I eat every morning, listened to NPR via the internet, tried to decide what to wear (the weather over the past few weeks has altered from the 80’s to the 50’s), and rolled into the office around 9:15 in order to avoid the hordes of children soon to emerge from their classrooms for their ten min break before my first class at 9:30. I taught three classes which went relatively well meaning the kids seemed to have fun, possibly learned something, and I didn’t come out of the classroom with a sore throat. So, I guess it was as good a day as any to make that list.

The pros for staying in China seemed to flow out effortlessly.

I’ll have a job
I can learn more Chinese
I can gain more teaching skills
It will look good on my resume
I can travel more
Another job opportunity might present itself
I’ll have time to prepare for the next year in the U.S.

They were effortless because they are the more logical side of the equation. However, logic and reason is only half of a person. The other half is emotional, and my cons to staying in China are definitely more emotional. It was much more difficult to write these because I wanted to list all the petty annoyances of day to day life. The only obvious answer was “I’ll miss home, my family, and friends.” So, that naturally went first. After that, it was a struggle—not to think of something but to narrow it down to something substantial and equivalent to the level of my answers under the pros.
Before I narrowed down my list it went something like this.

I will miss my home, my family, and my friends.
I have to deal with people staring at me like an alien.
I have to feel awkward everywhere because I stand out like a sore thumb.
I don’t know what people are saying to me. I can’t talk to them.
Chinese people are too loud.
I have to listen to men spitting.
I have to use a squat toilet and always bring my own tp.
I have to sweat through all my clothing when teaching because there is no ac.
I miss my privacy.
I miss salads, sandwiches, and cereal.
I wish I could buy cosmetic products I like, and books and magazines I can read.
I miss clean air and open spaces.
I miss direct answers and honesty…

I soon realized this list was turning into my “things I miss about America” entry. So I stopped and reevaluated. It soon became:

I’ll miss home, my family, and friends.
I have to deal with Chinese culture (language barrier, no privacy, staring)
I will give up the comfort of my culture

After I combined all of the cultural aspects into two points, the list seemed more balanced.
I then added:

I’ll have to lesson plan, most likely without a curriculum again (not my favorite thing)
Learned teaching skills may not be that applicable to the U.S. since I don’t have the same responsibilities
Harder emotionally
I’ll only have one month home this summer

Immediately after I made this pro/con list I decided the answer was China. It seems to be the most practical choice in light of the “economic crisis.” Everything under the pros for China was logical while most of my pros for going back to the U.S. were emotional. So, it came down to a head v. heart argument. Being in a good mood, my mind immediately picked out the logical answer. However, a few days, a few maddening teaching moments, and a few cultural frustrations later my emotions took over and yelled at my brain to reevaluate. Emotions are important. So the question became not, which one makes more sense, but rather, which one makes me happy.

Before I added the emotional input to the equation I walked around China asking myself “Can I do this for another year?” Can I ride on this crowded bus for another year? Can I ignore the stares for another year? Can I try and cook all of my food on a hot plate for another year? Can I teach English to classes where only a fourth of my students understand me? The list went on and on. So every class, every encounter with a Chinese person, every minute spent with my American friends, I had to ask myself, “can I do this for another year?” However, when I threw in the emotional factor, I realized this question was all wrong. It should be “will doing this for another year make me happy.” The first question had been built entirely around settling. Sure I could do those things. I did it this year, so obviously I can do it again. The second question was more philosophical: will this make me happy? So, what does make me happy? The answer to that question is something I’ve been trying to understand my whole life. At the moment, I do not know the answer to that question.

I never posted this blog draft because my decision was constantly fluctuating. I did reapply to return to the program, and I was accepted in April. However, I ultimately decided not to return. I decided to go with my emotions. Most of my friends, however, decided to go with their logic. I would say that at least 60% of the program’s participants reapplied, and many of those who did not reapply or get reaccepted into the program found another job in China. In this entry I will not divulge whether I believe now that I made the right decision, but I want to post this entry because it is a good indicator of the internal struggle that I and many of my friends went through our last few months in China.

Stay tuned for my revaluation of these thoughts now that I’ve returned to the United States!

China Tales: Part II

At the request of a very special VIP in my life (a.k.a. my grandpa a.k.a. Papaw), I am going to finish this blog. It’s something I should have done anyway. I have no excuses, except maybe that the Chinese government decided to block blogger starting in May, which meant I could not access my blog. They also decided to block facebook shortly after this time—apparently blogging and facebook were distracting the youth of China. Imagine that!

Government limits on free speech and communication, however, is no excuse. Others in much dire situations than me have managed to get their messages back to their friends and families. My problem was that I had lost my will and direction a little bit over the last few months in China. Life had become hectic and confusing. Should I stay in China or not? If not, what do I do when I return to the United States? Once that decision was made (I am now in the United States in case you didn’t already know), I then had the task of soaking in any and every Chinese experience like it was my last. I went to Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Beijing—three of the most travelled places in China. I took a few final trips back to Hong Kong. I prepared for a visit from a good friend from America and for my last week of teaching. I did my best to pack a year’s accumulation of stuff into my suite cases. I went to countless goodbye dinners with the other foreign teachers and Chinese teachers, and I planned for a month of travel when my teaching came to a close.

I could leave you with that summary of my experiences over the last few months, but I don’t think that would be fair. So, I am going to back track, and tell you in more detail the craziness, the stress, and the fun that ensued over the last few months of this life-changing experience in China. Finally I will try to sum up what this experience has meant to me, and I think it will mean for me in the future. I will also tell you about readjusting to America, how it has changed for the better and worse in my eyes, and how my view of China has evolved over the past year.

I will do my best to give you at least one entry per week. If you see a lapse, feel free to write a nasty comment on my blog. Comments are always welcome. I love knowing what you like and don’t like about my entries. It keeps me motivated to write more.

Without further adieu, I give you China Tales: Part II.