Nothing Says Christmas Like Owls and Spoons

It's the holiday season and Shanghai is definitely getting in the spirit! We walked around town last weekend to see a sampling of what our city had to offer in terms of Christmas cheer. While not necessarily traditional, the decorations were oddly entertaining......

Pretty in Pink!

We couldn't figure out if this mother/daughter couple is dancing or dueling with a fork and spoon...but we dig the lemon-yellow bell bottoms and the pilgrim outfit!

Who knew owls were a popular Christmas animal? In this picture, the owl's house is the main centerpiece of the decoration. But look closer in the lower left had corner....

Santa appears to be springing an elfin girl trapped in what appears to be a birdcage. Perhaps this is what happens to kids on the 'naughty' list....

A HUGE tree made of ornaments, Tiffany is in the middle with a white scarf for perspective on how large this tree is...

And finally, what Christmas wouldn't be complete without the 7 dwarfs with hatchets making their way into a huge stocking?

We hope you're enjoying your surrounding holiday decorations as much as we are!

Time For Me To Fly

From our experience, the Chinese seem to be on the emotionally expressive side in their writing. This could not be more evident than in the mass, company-wide 'goodbye' emails some of our colleagues have sent out as they've moved on to better opportunities:

Example 1.
RE: Ciao Ciao Shanghai Centre, Ciao my friend
Dear all,
Tomorrow will be my last working day in Shanghai Centre, up to now it’s complicated mood in my heart as the people who likes you no matter know me or not know me it’s all in a bravo memory, I will recall those time when we were together.

I wish all of you will have a great life like chocolate’s sweet!

Keep in touch and all the best!
XXX

Example 2.
Re: Farewell
I am so happy to be working with you guys for five months. Now I am leaving and I wanna say Thank You to everybody here who has ever helped me.

Winky, Your humour is the flavour in our life.

Vivian, Cute and nice girl. Like you very much.

Amy, I hope one day I could be as elegant as you and have half of your equanimity when in a panic.

George, You are like a senior friend and sometimes silent observer.

Elian, Quiet impressed by your big and watery eyes. Thank you for your encouragement when I am in depression.

Tiffany, The most pleasant and considerate “lao wai” I’ve ever met. If only I could have a boss like you!

Sophie, You are sweet and your daughter is sweeter.

Although we are going to be apart far away from each other, I trust our friendship will last forever.

Yours Faithfully,
XXX

Zach and I plan to use thesaurus.com heavily for our eventual 'farewell' emails, something tells me the usual 'nice working with you, here's my personal email address' note won't quite cut it here.

Elephants, Tigers and Lionel

It's easy to see where Zach got his interest in international travel. His parents, Lionel and Lorraine recently took a wildlife-filled trip through Asia. They spent a few days visiting us in the urban jungle of Shanghai...




Then won the hearts of the elephants by handing out watermelons and pumpkins at the Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai, Thailand......


And taught some tigers how to meditate in Bangkok, Thailand.


Lionel and Lorraine have learned what we've been finding all along, the idea of 'human handling' limits is not very prevalent when it comes to wild animals in Asia. While I'm sure organized animal rights groups would protest and throw fake blood on us if they saw what we've been doing (holding penguins, feeding monkeys, etc.), we've decided to take our chances. Who knows when we'll be able to get up close and personal with such incredible animals again!

One Night In Shanghai

All of Shanghai was abuzz last Thursday with the arrival of the Most Inexplicably Famous Person in America, Paris Hilton. Apparently in town for an MTV event, Paris shunned her family's own Shanghai Hilton for the newer, recently opened Grand Hyatt on the Bund.

















In any event, Tiffany and I were too busy with our own big party -- Thanksgiving at our house! We hosted my Credit Suisse colleagues as well as Tiff's Shanghai Centre co-workers, about 15 people in all, to celebrate and give thanks. Most of our guests were native Chinese and were excited to be celebrating their first Thanksgiving.

















One of Tiffany's coworkers brought her 5 year old daughter, Yao Yao, who provided much of the entertainment for the evening. The turkeys arrived in an insulated styrofoam carrying case, and little Yao Yao was curious and scared that when I opened the case, the turkey would fly out and start sqwuaking! You can see her cowering behind her mom in the picture. She soon learned it was a little too late for the poor turkeys. Yao Yao also discovered a love for corn. After polishing off her plate, we caught her later shoveling corn directly from the serving bowl on the food table into her mouth! Luckily everyone else had already served themselves corn.


Tiffany took the opportunity to work on her cooking skills and spent Wednesday and Thursday cooking up a feast. We found an American diner to order in the turkeys (we ordered two, 14-pound birds), sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes, but Tiffany whipped up homemade cranberry dressing, corn bread, herb vegetables, brown-sugar honey coated carrots and a honey-lime-ginger coated fruit salad. She also cleaned out some leftover foods from my cousin Josh and our friend Meredith, by preparing the corn, carmel yams, baked beans and a vegetable curry that we inherited from them.



We gave thanks for something that is rare in China, our kitchen oven. Not a common item in Chinese households, we are the only people from both our works to have an oven in their home! Amazing how the Chinese make do with steamers and a few stovetop burners. But we wanted to show them what they were missing.


Tiffany bought two large cans of pumpkin pie filling and found a recipe for homemade crust using olive oil. The recipe for the pie was somewhat generous, and she ended up baking eight pumpkin pies! She also baked a blueberry and peach crumble. My contribution was my world-famous homemade cookies (I am generously assuming that if people have eaten them in both the US and China that they are now "world famous" :) I baked an assortment using chocolate chips, oatmeal, dried cranberries and macadamia nuts.

I think it is safe to say that we have now left an American footprint on the waistlines of China!





Everyone had a great dinner - most of them were tasting these traditional Thanksgiving dishes for the first time. And we explained in the other Thanksgiving tradition, everyone had to take home leftovers. Some people we even convinced to take entire pies. All in all it was a huge success.

We'd like to wish all of our family, friends and blog readers a Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Bootylicious Kimchee

Actually there are two separate recent events combined into this one entry, our trip to Korea, and the night Beyonce came to Shanghai.

We spent a beautiful weekend in Seoul, Korea, wandering around the streets, visiting palaces, and finding non-Korean foods to eat. I actually had a business dinner one night and ate possibly the worst dish I've ever tasted. Even the Koreans admitted it was pretty horrible, but said it was one of those "acquired tastes". I noticed not even they were eating it, though! Basically it was a cold fish dish that smelled and tasted like ammonia, bitter and sour, like it had been left out to rot for a few weeks before serving. Anyway, all the Koreans had a good laugh watching my eyes tear up as I struggled not to throw up on myself.

Suffice to say, Tiff and I stuck to more pedestrian fare the rest of the time. Luckily, it turned out that Seoul did have great French and Italian food readily available. And even better for Tiffany, they had Dunkin' Donuts, where we binged like Homer Simpson.

It was a perfect fall weekend and we were able to walk around a nearby mountain to enjoy the changing colors of foliage. The air was crisp and clean, and the trails remarkably quiet. A very nice change of pace from Shanghai for sure!





We toured the last Korean palace grounds, which included this "secret garden" area where the royalty could retreat to for some peace and relaxation.




Here I am in front of the main palace receiving hall, still feeling slightly hung over from the post-Dunkin Donuts sugar crash.






Tiffany found a friend in one of the local guards!

A day after returning from Seoul, we saw Beyonce in her first Shanghai concert ever. I don't know what it is, but seeing concerts in Shanghai is remarkably hassle-free. I guess it's because we can take the subway there, the concerts are exactly two hours long, there are no opening acts and the shows always start and end right on time, but we've seen way more concerts than we normally do in the US. And it's fun to watch all the Chinese singing along to "Bootylicious"...

Hiking with the Masses

It's particularly common with Chinese companies to treat their employees to an annual outing. The outing is usually a 2-3 day vacation taken with colleagues (and sometimes their spouses) and paid for by the company. This past weekend, the two of us went with Zach's company to Huangshan to see the famous Yellow Mountain area, a popular tourist destination and a place we've been wanting to visit for a while.

There are a few truths to every Chinese outing. First, there must be a flag present. And that flag is always held by a tour guide that likes to talk. Loudly. And Constantly. On all of the annual outings we've attended (this is our 4th), we usually tend to be the only foreigners, so we can't understand the tour guide, and never really know what is going on or where we're supposed to be. Fortunately, our co-workers know this, and are kind enough to let us know what time we need to get up (always before 7am) and when we're eating.

We were fortunate to have clear, crisp autumn weather for the trip.













Unfortunately we had to share it with a huge percentage of the Chinese population. We had to wait over 2 hours for the cable car just to get up to the hiking trails.

















And once we got to the hiking trails (which are really just miles of cement staircases placed up and down the mountain), it didn't seem to get any better.

A picture of Tiffany waiting patiently on the steps to get to the top of the mountain.





















Who knew you could feel even more claustrophobic outside of Shanghai?














Gorgeous mountain scene, but note the small, ant-like line of people on the staircase to get up the mountain.













So much for enjoying some peace and quiet in the mountains. These people were vicious, elbows were constantly thrown and cigarette stops put a hamper in that fresh outdoor air we were hoping to experience. Not to mention, there was a crossover of tour guides with their megaphones each giving their own individual commentaries.












Tiffany really misses her less populated, smoke-free Colorado hikes.



















What a fantastic view. And gloriously highlighted by the yellow flag!











Alone at last!












The saying 'Give a Hoot, Don't Pollute' hasn't seem to hit China yet, so there were plenty of workers around to pick up litter and sweep the steps (in between crowds, of course).




























There are a few hotels at the top of the mountain, and the only way to get there is on foot. Supplies for the hotels and restaurants must be carried up by porters like this one. Things we saw porters carrying: budles of sheets and towels, crates of beer, construction material, a flat screen tv, even canisters of propane! Luggage must be carried long distances by guests, as the hotels are at least an hour hike from the top of the cable car. Of course, you can always pay someone to carry your bags. Fortunately, we packed light!








Zach enjoying the sunset.











Regardless of crowds, the views were gorgeous.










The 2 hotels at the top leave a lot to be desired. Mr.'If it's not 5-star, I'm not staying here' Zach almost had a heart attack when he saw the door open to our neighboring room and thought we may be sharing our room with strangers. Fortunately, we had a double, unfortunately, we still had to share it with the bugs...
































After a 7 hour day of non-stop stair climbing and crowds, we spent the 2nd day in Huangshan at a small village called Hongcun. The water town was the setting for part of the film 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'. The town was lovely, but we (and our sore calves) were more relieved that it was flat and stair-free.

All in all, the trip was another eye-opening China experience, and allowed us to check off another place on our 'Must-See' List!

Our Own Personal Typhoon-The Fallout

As mentioned in a previous entry, we had a bit of a flooding problem a few weeks ago. After 4 days of hotel living, we were able to get our electricity and water turned on and moved back into our apartment. The wooden floors were quite warped, but after repeatedly voicing how grateful we were to be renters and not owners of not only the apartment, but also all the furniture, we sorted through the mess and moved on.

While on vacation, we received an email from our landlord informing us that they had found 6cm. of water between the concrete foundation and the wooden floor leftover from the flood. They had taken the liberty of moving all of our furniture and personal belongings to the balconies and covered them with a tarp (note our things under the red tarp on the balcony-not the most settling news considering it's typhoon season) so they could rip up and replace the floor. They were nice enough to put us up in an apartment within our complex for the remaining 2 weeks after we returned from vacation, and we did manage to sneak into our apartment to grab some work clothes to supplement our vacation attire.

As you can see by the pictures, our place is a mess. The workers have moved in to the apartment, and we had to laugh when we saw them smoking like chimneys as they laid down the wooden slats, drilling them into the concrete. We can only hope that the noise is irritating Tiffany's nemesis next door... The workers are leaving a healthy dose of cigarette butts between the slats, something we're sure will be left there underneath the floor providing us with kind of a built in air freshening system. We look forward to moving back in to our apartment, and again, cannot count how many times we've said 'thank goodness we're just renters'!