How big IS this place?!!!

The Urban Planning Museum
This last weekend we took an outing to the Urban Planning museum here in Shanghai. It was a lot lot lot of info about urban/city developement in Shanghai both in the past (how it became such a huge city) and in the future (how they're trying to clean it up and make it "green".)

My favorite part was an almost comprehensive model of the city. It is a model of almost the entire city as it is right now... and also throws in some of the buildings that are in progress such as the two that are going in at the area near the 'Pearl Tower' and the 'Jing Mao'. One or both of the new buildings are supposed to push their way into the top 5 list of tallest buildings in the world.













Here is a picture of what Lujiazui (spelling) will look like by I think it's 2008.

Ahhh our bridge. This is our "portal" between Pudong (where we live on the East side of the river) and Puxie (where everything is on the West side of the river). As you can see, there's a fun spiraly-bob at the end of it. You just go round and round until the taxi driver decides that it's your turn to exit, then you get off.






















Here is the gargantuan model of Shanghai. The wierd looking building that's basically a spire with a big ball at the bottom & top, and a small ball at the toppest. Keep your eye on the Pearl Tower for orientation.. it's the easiest thing to spot.













Moving out. Can you still see the Pearl Tower? I live somewhere off the bottom left corner of the screen.











Even further out. Can you believe how big this city is?!













Here's a view of the model from a couple stories up. The Pearl Tower is right in the basket of the bend of the river. I live off the top right hand corner of the picture.

Here are some Fast Facts about Shanghai

Time Zone
GMT + 8 hours, same as Singapore. The whole of China, including Hong Kong, is set to Beijing time.

Holidays
2006
Jan 1 New Year
Jan 29-31 Spring Festival, Chinese New Year
May 1 Labour Day.
Oct 1-3 National Day.
2007

Jan 1 New Year
Feb 18-20 Spring Festival, Chinese New Year
May 1 Labour Day
Oct 1-3 National Day

Climate
Shanghai summers are hot and humid with temperatures reaching 40 degrees Celsius. The rainy season begins in June. Fall is mostly mild. In winter (January to February) temperatures can reach below freezing. Spring begins again in March. Click here for 3-day weather forecast for Shanghai.

Major Industries
Manufacture of textiles, garments, footwear, toys, crude oil, household electrical appliances, sports goods, telecommunication equipment, pharmaceuticals, steel products, general metalwares and coal

Teledensity
14.4 persons per telephone

Geography
China is the fourth largest country after Russia, Canada and the United States. It is located in Eastern Asia, bordering the East China Sea, Korea Bay, Yellow Sea, and South China Sea, between North Korea and Vietnam.
Land area: 9,326,410 sq. km.
Shanghai occupies 6,200 sq. km. and lies in central-eastern China, facing the East China Sea.

Population
China: 1.28 billion
Shanghai: 13.4 million

Ethnic Groups
Han Chinese make up the majority of China's population (91.9%). Zhuang, Uygur, Hui, Yi, Tibetan, Miao, Manchu, Mongol, Buyi, Korean, and other nationalities make up only 8.1%.

Language
The official language in China is Mandarin but distinct dialects are spoken throughout the country. Shanghainese speak Mandarin or Shanghaihua, however most tourist hotels have staff who are fluent in foreign languages.

Literacy
90.6%

Socks are Yummy!!

--the names of businesses or people may be changed to protect the innocent--

I recently recieved this e-mail. It's a good thing I got the warning, or i may have never known not to keep socks in the office! I also would have joined the "No Four Pest" campaign earlier.

Dear all,
Serious mouse problem caused by storing sock or fruit in office area was found in *** site recently. *** kindly reminds all ** colleague not to store any sock or fruit in office area and check before off your duty everyday to build one clean, health and no four pest (mouse, cockroach, fly and mosquito) work environment, thanks for your great supports!

Deja Vu

Deja vu

Do you have music? or a smell? or a feel? that when you experience it, it's like a hyperlinked wormhole into the past? I just thought of a few:

Counting Crows "August and Everything After" album – Reminds me of the bus ride to track meets in high school. I think I listened to that CD non-stop for an entire season.

Ace of Base "The Sign," and "Don't Turn Around" – The bus ride to school in 6th grade. Man we were SOOO cool sitting in the back of the bus listening to our walkmen! When did those things go out of style anyway. Maybe Apple should make an iPod that looks like an old school walk-man and bring us all back to The Day. :)

Different smells every two blocks– When I went running with Kira down in Arizona. She was 1) really excited to be running at like 4:30 in the morning.... 2) really excited about the different flowery smells one would encounter at each house, and 3) running way too fast for me.

A bike with a carrier rack on the back – When I was little and all my cousins and I (about 8 of us) would wait with baited anticipation for our Grandpa to give us a ride on his bike. It had a soft grey furry seat, and colored plastics on the spokes that made it sing as you rode.

"Dreaming of You" by The Coral – Late nite study-break dance parties at the Buchon house. For exactly 2:21minutes my roomates and I would lift our heads from our studies and dance around the frontroom and slide around in our socks on the hard-wood floors. Our frontroom had a Giant window that looked out on the street, and in brief moments of lucidity I would ponder what our neighbors thought of us.... oh well!

Jurassic Circus and a Cheap Hair-wash

The CircusFairZoo: a Jurassic Park Adventure

Recently the Kindergarten department (think 350 sum kids between the ages of 2.5 and 6) took an outing the the "Zoo". I place "zoo" in quotes because it really was more of a combination of Jurrasic Park for safari animals and the American Circus back in the 1800s(before all those animal-huggers got so pepped up on protecting their furry amigos or pungyos).

One part of our outing was a "safari drive." Instead of having people walk around to see all the animals in their different habitats, they just paved a road right through the center of them and let you drive through. The entry was seriously Jurrasic Park style with large electrified gates that opened to allow our Giant tour bus through. And warning signs that told you that "you're not allowed to tease the animals," and that "those who disobey will have to suffer any consequences" i.e. one of the lions, tigers, or bears making you their mid-day snackey. yummmmm... tastes like megwa (american). Well no kids lots any appendages, but we did have a giraffe try to stick his head through the bus window. We fooled him...it was shut!

Next it was off to the 1800s American Circus (you know the one where you could see the bearded lady?). We got to watch two bears boxing. Full on standing upright with boxing gloves on. We watched a monkey, a bear, and a deer (?) race around their circular track. The monkey's legs were moving at about 300mph and he kept looking back every quarter of a circle to make sure that he was still beating the bear----the deer type animal was way behind since it had to push it's bike while walking beside it since it couldn't ride it. There were acrobat girls who swung around on an Elephant. And a monkey who lit the "Olympic torch" (he did a very good job, and was wearing a stripped shirt).

Each of us Kindergarten teachers were assigned to one or two P1 students (they're the 2.5 to 3 year olds) for the day. They assigned me one girl, not two, because they said she was very "independent." haha. Her name was TingTing. She was pretty independent and I think was one of the few kids who didn't take a nap during one of the "zoo events," even though she did konk out as soon as we were on the bus headed back to the school.

So keeping in mind that we all had tiny little kids, with tasty tiny little appendages walking around this "zoo", it was interesting to find that they had a lion and a tiger with nothing more than a collar around their neck, laying out on pedestals along the walkway for people to come up and pet. One of the "zoo" keepers practically kidnapped one of Eric's kids to get him to come over and put his hand on the lion.

Lastly, is my most "china-esque" memory yet. While at the "1800s Circus" we were all siting in the second flight of seats with a walking aisle in front of us. Midway through the show I look to my left and see that the kid next to Eric (who was next to me) was being held in his mom's lap kinda oddly. Flashbacks came into my head of earlier in the day when the P1ers had to go to the bathroom after lunch the Aiyi's would just pull down their pants (right there on the grass where we had just finished eating) and hold them so that they could pee on the grass. So this lady was holding her kid in the same weird way. And I thought to myself (me of little faith)... nooooo... this lady is NOT going to let her kid pee right here in the stands with tons of people squished in on three sides, and another whole flight of people not far in front. About as soon as the thought had swept through my mind I see pee/water flying in an arch out of the ladies lap. Yes, apparently she IS going to let him just pee right here. As the ark of liquid flew back and forth and slowly formed a small tributary across the walkway I nudged Erik and told him to "pick up your backpack... PICK UP YOUR BACKPACK!.... The kids in the row in front of us got warned by one of our Chinese teachers just in time to pull their back packs out of the line of the river, although one boys bag had already reeked the consequences of splashage. So here we are.... the kids must have drank about 10 gallons of water because that's about how much is now sitting in the walkway..... After some chiding from the people around her, The lady grabbed a piece of newspaper that was sitting in the walkway and starts sloshing the pee up with it. Mind you this is a Single piece of newspaper, and her kid just let fly 10 gallons of liquid. We could probably pull in some simple geometry of surface areas combined with some Physics on the saturation potential of a Single piece of newspaper to come to the conclusion that the newspaper was quickly of no good.. and the lady was simply sloshing the pee into a puddle, and all over her hands. I spent the rest of the show watching in dismay as kids ran by right through the puddle of pee. My mind imagined putting a red tracking dye on the pee to monitor it's spread, and I decided that day that my roommates and I would be more committed to the practice of taking off our shoes before we enter our apartment. I've found that this practice became a cultural practice, because you have to do it in China to help prevent the spread of Hepatitis, etc.

TingTing didn't seem to notice this peeing escapade.. and thoroughly enjoyed the entire "zoo" experience. Well thoroughly in-as-much as I could tell as she didn't speak much to any English, and I don't speak much to any Chinese. :)

Ahh the joys of a Cheap Hair Wash
Time to walk to the Hair Cutting Place: 8 minutes
+
Definition of a "hair wash" = hair wash, hair properly conditioned; head massage, face massage, shoulder and neck massage, arm massage, and some back massage; hair dry.
+
Total time: about 40 minutes.
+
Cost: 10RMB / 1.25 USD

=happiness for all!

Hope all is well! Happy Thanksgiving to all! Amazingly enough, I'm in China and I've already had one true thanksgiving meal--and it's not even Thanksgiving yet! :) yeah! One (or two) more tomorrow. Tryptophan here I come!