March 21, 2006- Tiffany
After living in China for 6+ months, the first words that come to my mind when describing a typical Shanghainese person's manners do not include courteous or refined. As China prepares for it's international debuts (Olympics and World Exhibition), the government is taking steps to correct the country's bad behavior, as highlighted in the following article. What Zach and I were most surprised about was the fact that the 'spitting' habit was not addressed.......
Shanghai Gets a Manners Makeover
Shanghai Daily, February 22, 2006
TEACHING local residents not to stare at foreigners and scream out laowai (translates to outsider/foreigner in Mandarin) will be one of the main focuses of an etiquette program that begins on Saturday. The program is also aimed at teaching people how to act in society, with family, in the office, and on campus. One million local families are expected to take etiquette classes as part of the program over the next five years so that they can politely welcome visitors from around the globe when Shanghai hosts the 2010 World Expo. "Shanghai is developing into an international metropolis. Accordingly, Shanghai people should also master international etiquette. It is an emergent and important task," said Qu Meng, an etiquette expert. The city is currently recruiting 400 volunteers to teach etiquette classes in neighborhood communities. A survey conducted by the Shanghai Women's Federation suggests most local women are eager to learn more about etiquette. The survey suggested some current faux pas include walking along the street in pajamas, and using vulgar language.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Monday, March 13, 2006
Ten Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Our Life In Shanghai
From Tiffany's perspective:
10. Online bill pay is not an option…….and for some reason unknown to us, we have to pay all of our bills in cash at local convenience stores.
9. People in China love to sing and aren’t afraid to do so in any public situation. You’ll often find people walking down the street singing their heart out or taxi drivers burst into solos (these people are rarely using walkmans or singing along with the radio). In ill-fated attempts to get me to join the trend, cab drivers often scan the radio channels to find American songs to play really loud for me when I’m riding alone in their cabs. They’re particularly fond of Air Supply and boy bands…….I haven’t succumbed to the music yet, but may at some point just to see how they react.
8 When you have your clothes tailor-made, there are no tags. It’s great, because you can always pretend you’re a size small!
7. China only lets 10-15 foreign films enter the country each year, but the DVD black market is a big business. We can usually buy a high quality version just about any US movie as soon as it hits American theaters for about $1/copy. We’ve learned the good shops to go to, and how to ask for the real copies, but even we get tripped up every once in a while and end up with the handy cam version (a la Seinfeld) with crowd noise and all.
6. Staring is considered a national pastime and not considered in the least bit rude. If you look different or do something out of the ordinary, be prepared for lots of rubberneckers.
5. Our local grocery store resembles more of a pet store than the local Safeway. While they rarely have skim milk or wheat bread, they, without fail, always have low, water-filled bins (with open tops) filled with living frogs, eels and crabs. It always surprises me that there are really no measures taken to ensure these creatures stay confined. I've learned it pays to tread lightly down the aisles.
4. Cash is king in Shanghai. Credit cards are not accepted anywhere (except for western hotels) so we’ve taken to carrying huge wads of cash around in case we need to pay our bills or stop by the grocery store.
3. Pedestrians never have the right of way, even on the sidewalk.
2. One of the favorite street foods here is called Chou Doufu (literally translated to mean stinky tofu). The delicacy is served in squares on a stick and has a nauseating smell that is somewhat like sweet smelling, gamey meat gone bad. One of our friends was shocked, yet a bit relieved, to find out the smell was due to the Shanghainese delicacy and not just a really bad form of air pollution.
1. I know we’ve brought it up before, but it still blows my mind. Spitting in the street is considered a way to stay healthy during cold and flu season, as it clears your lungs of all the germs.
10. Online bill pay is not an option…….and for some reason unknown to us, we have to pay all of our bills in cash at local convenience stores.
9. People in China love to sing and aren’t afraid to do so in any public situation. You’ll often find people walking down the street singing their heart out or taxi drivers burst into solos (these people are rarely using walkmans or singing along with the radio). In ill-fated attempts to get me to join the trend, cab drivers often scan the radio channels to find American songs to play really loud for me when I’m riding alone in their cabs. They’re particularly fond of Air Supply and boy bands…….I haven’t succumbed to the music yet, but may at some point just to see how they react.
8 When you have your clothes tailor-made, there are no tags. It’s great, because you can always pretend you’re a size small!
7. China only lets 10-15 foreign films enter the country each year, but the DVD black market is a big business. We can usually buy a high quality version just about any US movie as soon as it hits American theaters for about $1/copy. We’ve learned the good shops to go to, and how to ask for the real copies, but even we get tripped up every once in a while and end up with the handy cam version (a la Seinfeld) with crowd noise and all.
6. Staring is considered a national pastime and not considered in the least bit rude. If you look different or do something out of the ordinary, be prepared for lots of rubberneckers.
5. Our local grocery store resembles more of a pet store than the local Safeway. While they rarely have skim milk or wheat bread, they, without fail, always have low, water-filled bins (with open tops) filled with living frogs, eels and crabs. It always surprises me that there are really no measures taken to ensure these creatures stay confined. I've learned it pays to tread lightly down the aisles.
4. Cash is king in Shanghai. Credit cards are not accepted anywhere (except for western hotels) so we’ve taken to carrying huge wads of cash around in case we need to pay our bills or stop by the grocery store.
3. Pedestrians never have the right of way, even on the sidewalk.
2. One of the favorite street foods here is called Chou Doufu (literally translated to mean stinky tofu). The delicacy is served in squares on a stick and has a nauseating smell that is somewhat like sweet smelling, gamey meat gone bad. One of our friends was shocked, yet a bit relieved, to find out the smell was due to the Shanghainese delicacy and not just a really bad form of air pollution.
1. I know we’ve brought it up before, but it still blows my mind. Spitting in the street is considered a way to stay healthy during cold and flu season, as it clears your lungs of all the germs.
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Our New Home!
Tiffany and I are officially moved in to our new place now. This is the first blog entry from the new apartment! This weekend was pretty hectic. We packed everything up Friday night and Saturday and moved in Saturday. It’s not too bad, since most apartments come fully furnished, so we’re not moving any furniture. But for two kids who came over to China with only two suitcases each, we’ve done a remarkable job of accumulating, over the past six months, STUFF (for lack of a better word). I guess it’s understandable, given that we had to buy a lot of basic goods, like food and sheets and cookware. But still…In China you can call for a moving van the same way you call for a cab. And in fact, they are run by the same companies. So we called the number for a moving truck and sure enough, it came with the same cab meter and charged us a little more of a base fare, but was free of charge both for the time it took us to load up our stuff, and the time it took to unload at our new place. Since there’s only room for one in the truck cab, I rode in the back with the stuff the first time. That made Tiffany nervous, though (like those movies with illegal Chinese immigrants packed into trucks to get to America, but in reverse?), so the second time she took a separate taxi and trailed us. All together, for two truck rides and one taxi, we paid about $10. A lot better than I ever got with U-Haul!
Today (Sunday) we’ve had the front door open all day, with random Chinese service people coming in and out. For as crude as they can be spitting on the street every few steps, they can also be surprisingly civil. Around 9:30 this morning we got a knock on the door and a Chinese man in a sports coat and briefcase introduced himself as the dishwasher installer (and not the encyclopedia salesman he appeared to be). He made sure to take his shoes off and leave them at the doorstep so as not to track any dirt from outside into our mess of a half-moved into apartment. A few minutes later, the suit-clad internet technician arrived, installed some wires and played around with our com
puter for a bit, ensured that our internet access was all up and clear, and politely excused himself. We also have a balcony that was enclosed in glass today. And while that guy kicked up a bit of dust (well, he was drilling holes into the walls), he had an assistant who came in to sweep up behind him. He also conducted his death defying work with such nonchalance (as you see him lifting a beam while balanced on our 16th story balcony, secured only by a rope that looked like one of my Boy Scout lanyards). Right now the TV cable man is here, in his black button down shirt and matching slacks. It’s like having the Chinese Tony Soprano walking around your house, making sure that you have HBO. We pay a one-time fee for the satellite dish and then it’s yours for life, and you don’t even have a monthly payment. Of course it’s frowned upon for Chinese to have (not that it stops them), but it’s apparently ok for foreigners. All very friendly and courteous, indoor-slipper-wearing folks, all checking with you to make sure that you know what they’re doing (we don’t, but we watch their hand gestures and nod at their Chinese).Anyway, it’s been one, long, crazy weekend, but we are sooo happy to get everything set up in our new place. Tiffany already noticed that it is much quieter here than our old place. She hadn’t heard a cowbell or bike-mounted public announcement rider all day! And we’re much closer to work now. Just in time for Spring, Tiffany will be able to walk to work in about 20 minutes, and we’re only 5 minutes from the metro line which I take to work. And since we now have a guest room with two, double beds, we are throwing out an open invitation to come and visit us whenever you happen to be passing through Shanghai!
To the left is the dining room and the kitchen is through the paned glass door. On the right is our new study. We're also on the lookout for a big, comfy reading chair to throw in the corner.
Below on the left is the new guestroom, just waiting for
visitors! And on the right is our bedroom, with a great 270 degree view. Tons more light than our last place, which had darker woods and a much heavier feel. I think we'll like this place better :)
Here is our living room. You can see Mrs. Chinese Cablewoman on the left. They just drilled some holes and hung satellite wires down from the roof. Very practical. On the right you can see our new favorite vegetation spot on the sectional couch in front of the tv!
And here are two pictures from our apartment. On the left is a shot to the south of the gardens that run through the middle of our complex. There's a lake and some nice little waterfalls, a big kids playground and a fitness center which we have yet to check out. On the right is the view to the north from our newly glassed in porch (or greenhouse now, I guess!). It's pretty amazing to see the patches of old, red roof two-story homes of Shanghai's past that still pocket the city, surrounded by the glass high rise office buildings that represent today's Shanghai.
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Life on the Road - Beijing
Sorry no pictures this time. I'm writing to you from Beijing, the capital city of China. Filled with 1000's of years of history and ancient architecture, I couldn't tell you the first thing about what Beijing looks like. So far, I've seen the airport and my hotel. I'm here on business, looking at a real estate deal, but tonight was just meetings at the hotel. Tomorrow I'll actually get to see the property and maybe a little more of the city. My brief thoughts:
The downside of business travel:
- I missed lunch (well, peanuts on the flight), and my flight was late so missed dinner and went straight into meetings upon arrival and am writing you at 11pm here, having just wolfed down some food at the only open hotel restaurant. After I'm done here, I've got a bit of work to do, and then will wake up early tomorrow to do some more work before a 10am site visit and then hurry to the airport to make a 2pm flight back to Shanghai.
The upside of business travel:
- The Peninsula Hotel where I'm staying is beautiful and I have a gorgeous 42" plasma TV in my room (of course, I haven't gotten a chance to watch it yet...) And I had the best butter at dinner that I think I've ever had. And I've eaten a lot of butter. It was firm and so creamy that I thought it was cheese at first, but then no, it was butter, but it's so flavorful it must be cheese? no, it's definitely butter, just some really amazing butter...
Anyway, to summarize, fun perks, but not a lot of sleep.
Apparently China, way back when, had to write some laws about which areas of the country would require central heat and air conditioning. So an imaginary line was drawn east-west across the country. Shanghai falls just south of that line, and so central heating was never introduced into the buildings. Beijing, on the other hand, is solidly north of the Chinese Mason-Dixon line, and I have to say I have noticed the difference. The airport in Beijing was nice and warm, my cab ride was positively steamy, and the hotel is like a sauna - I almost went to my meetings in a t-shirt and boxers. Almost. Even outside it's very dry so even though it's colder here temperature wise, it feels warmer than Shanghai.
Well, gotta go now, I'd like to get back to my room soon so I can at least fall asleep watching that beautiful TV...
The downside of business travel:
- I missed lunch (well, peanuts on the flight), and my flight was late so missed dinner and went straight into meetings upon arrival and am writing you at 11pm here, having just wolfed down some food at the only open hotel restaurant. After I'm done here, I've got a bit of work to do, and then will wake up early tomorrow to do some more work before a 10am site visit and then hurry to the airport to make a 2pm flight back to Shanghai.
The upside of business travel:
- The Peninsula Hotel where I'm staying is beautiful and I have a gorgeous 42" plasma TV in my room (of course, I haven't gotten a chance to watch it yet...) And I had the best butter at dinner that I think I've ever had. And I've eaten a lot of butter. It was firm and so creamy that I thought it was cheese at first, but then no, it was butter, but it's so flavorful it must be cheese? no, it's definitely butter, just some really amazing butter...
Anyway, to summarize, fun perks, but not a lot of sleep.
Apparently China, way back when, had to write some laws about which areas of the country would require central heat and air conditioning. So an imaginary line was drawn east-west across the country. Shanghai falls just south of that line, and so central heating was never introduced into the buildings. Beijing, on the other hand, is solidly north of the Chinese Mason-Dixon line, and I have to say I have noticed the difference. The airport in Beijing was nice and warm, my cab ride was positively steamy, and the hotel is like a sauna - I almost went to my meetings in a t-shirt and boxers. Almost. Even outside it's very dry so even though it's colder here temperature wise, it feels warmer than Shanghai.
Well, gotta go now, I'd like to get back to my room soon so I can at least fall asleep watching that beautiful TV...
Monday, February 27, 2006
Coats of Many Colors
Even though Chinese New Year is technically called the Spring Festival, we still find ourselves in freezing cold weather and in need of warm clothes to keep our body temperatures up (unfortunately, the body heat from the 17M other Shanghai folk doesn't seem to cut it). So, we've managed to put together quite a nice coat collection, ranging from puffyand furry (fake of course) to wool and ca
shmere. Here's a sampling of our collection.....
A Shanghai Favorite-the long puffy coat! Everyone who's anyone in Shanghai has one of these (probably because no one has central heat).
And it's not just a girl thing, Zach LOVES his puffy jacket too!
The jury's still out on this Shearling/leather combo, Zach's convinced it makes him look like Conan the Barbarian, but considering the ladies at the fabric market kept laughing and pointing every time he went in for his fittings, we think it might be better suited for Tiffany.
Zach looks groovy doing the robot in his gold leaf, lame jacket, but that's not all......
There's red silk lining inside!
Sunday, February 12, 2006
BANG! Goes The New Year of The Dog
Go
ng Xi Fa Cai!Our ears are ringing from the two week celebration that is Chinese New Year’s. From January 28th, “New Year’s Eve”, until today, February 12th, the Lantern Festival, we have been bombarded by constant fireworks explosions. Everyone is partying like it’s 4704. Which it is, according to the Chinese calendar.
Tiffany and I spent New Year’s Eve at the Radisson Hotel in People’s Square, in the heart of Shanghai. From the 45th floor of their revolving restaurant, we witnessed the beginning of what would be a wild, raucous two weeks. As we slowly panned across the city, bright flashes of firecrackers kept up a noisy chatter down in the streets, and deep booms accompanied the larger, colorful flowering explosions that split the night sky. It was a beautiful, hazy scene.
Monday we joined our Chinese teacher, Jan, at her home to celebrate the New Year with her family. Unbeknownst to us, Jan’s father is like the Chinese Emeril Lagasse. He amazed us with his culinary prowess, and every time we thought we were done… BAM! Dumplings! or BAM! another soup!
We were stuffed to the gills with what Tiffany and I still maintain was the best Chinese meal we’ve had yet in China. I mean, you just can’t beat the home cooked meal. And all from a tiny kitchen, with no oven and only two burners.
On second thought, maybe Emeril is like the American version of Jan’s father… BAM! Eight Treasures rice! BAM! crab!
Luckily, Jan took us to a beautiful pa
rk nearby and we spent the next three hours waddling around trying to burn off spring rolls and mand
arin fish.
The following Thursday was “Money Day”, and all across China people wished each other “Gong Xi Fa Cai” a
nd hand out “hong bao”, red envelopes containing money to wish each other a prosperous New Year. The money god demands a sacrifice, of course, and a deafening one at that. Starting Wednesday night and all through Thursday, Shanghai erupted with fireworks heretofore unimaginable by us. And what to do, but join in the mayhem? I channeled my inner pyromaniac (a little too easily!) and purchased as many fireworks as Tiffany and I could carry. Then we headed off to our friend Tara’s apartment complex, and proceeded to make war with fireworks.
All in all, it’s been an exciting two weeks. And we’re still a bit shell-shocked. Next year, I think we’ll bring in the New Year from
a nice, warm beach somewhere in southern Asia…
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
EXTRA! Zach Gets New Job, Saves Face
Similar to the circle of life (cue Lion King soundtrack), I have found myself flung around the circle of jobs. I found my full-time employment, and it is with Credit Suisse, the same company with whom I began my working life almost 9 years ago back in New York.
And actually, I'll be doing very similar work, as VP of Strategic Transactions, I'll be lending money to real estate owners, only this time it will be for Asian real estate. It looks like I'll be busy; my first few deals will probably be a newly built casino in Macau (China's answer to the Vegas strip), an office building in Beijing, and a retail mall here in Shanghai. So hopefully I will get to do some traveling, but regardless, I can now happily claim to be gainfully employed, and no longer "the intern", otherwise known as Tiffany's charity case.
Last night, to celebrate my emancipation, Tiffany brought home a wonderful gift: Stouffer's vegetable lasagna. Now while you might think that to be an insignificant gift, here in China, it's worth its weight in gold. Literally. The demand for lasagna here is apparently so low, that they can charge whatever they want, $25 to be exact. We've been eyeing that lasagna for months, but never had an excuse to spend so frivolously. Erica, I hope you're happy. (Our friend Erica works for Stouffer's at their Cleveland headquarters and we just boosted her sales margins by 50%.) Anyway, we were both ill last night after our lasagna binge. Yummmm.....
Tonight we dined at one of Shanghai's finest restaurants, Jean-Georges. I had raved about my dining experience at Jean-Georges in New York to Tiffany and she surprised me with dinner reservations! While we're not sure it was worth the 4,000 dumplings that it cost to eat there, we enjoyed every minute of living the high life, and it was a fitting celebration to mark the end of what has been a tumultuous 5 months!
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