A Pyramid of Disco Balls

One of the first tasks on my long list of things to do was to orient myself to my new surroundings, my new neighborhood, the campus, this district. Where can I buy food, where is the nearest bus stop, where does it go, how can I find the metro, where is the nearest McDonald’s, etc. I spent much of my drizzly Monday set to this task. Fudan’s campus is located in the northern Yangpu district, sort of halfway between the downtown, Bund area and the city’s Yangtze River border to the north. It’s a quiet, sprawling district, home to several very large universities (Fudan, Shanghai School of Economics, Tongji U., to name a few), a few shopping plazas, and suburban style apartment blocks. There are trees in this area, relatively quiet streets, decent buses, it seems nice. And will probably be really nice in the spring.

I walked around the campus on Monday, hell bent on finding my particular school, Fudan’s School of International Relations and Public Affairs. I say hell bent because up to this point I’ve received very little information about my program, when and how to register for classes, who I need to check in with, and all that. It’s frustrating. I’m a planner. I like to know what’s going on. I thought maybe I could find the school and start poking around, ask some questions. Most of my emails have gone unanswered. I know there’s a language barrier issue but I do speak some Chinese and my program is taught in English. My suspicions are the buildings to my school are empty for the holidays, especially for the never ending Chinese New Year.

But either way I also more generally wanted to check out the campus. Step one. Find the cafeteria. My girlfriend and I heard the student cafeterias were opening this week so we wanted to check that out, get some cheap grub. We walked in to the large canteen located in our section of the campus, near the foreign student dorms, and found it bustling with Chinese students and staff. University cafeterias in China are huge and industrial, well oiled machines of mass food production. We walked through the large glass door frame, struggling with the large plastic curtains that hang from the entrance to keep the warm air in, to find a warehouse of activity. Along the inner walls were window after window of various cafeteria style displays of food. Each window had a few servers and a long line of Chinese students. Above each window was a list of about ten or so different dishes, all in Chinese characters, and much to our dismay, no prices, meaning we wouldn’t be able to use cash. We needed student cards, cards we weren’t yet issued, cards we could load with money and scan for food. Let down and awfully hungry, we wandered around the cafeteria without a plan.

But luck was on our side. Through the sea of Chinese students we honed in on a pair of western-looking students. My girlfriend and I looked at each other and as moths drawn to light, walked up to the foreigners and asked them for help. It’s amazing how easy it is to spot foreigners in Chinese cities. Chinese people all drum to the same beat and foreigners, expats, international students, tourists, never seem to really figure it out. There’s just no blending in. Whether it’s the way they dress, the way they walk, or talk, or look around, or listen to music, or talk on the phone, Chinese people do it differently, in their own way. Of course, we managed to find the only two foreign students in the cafeteria, walked up to them and asked them how this all works. They confirmed our suspicions that we needed student cards to pay for food. But they offered to help. The other odd thing about foreigners in China is that we have this inherent urge to help one another. Like those of us who know better have been there before. Have been dazed and confused and at times, utterly helpless. And because we have been there before, we want to help the newbies. Charlotte from Ireland and Hayden from Australia knew just what to do. Me, “Hey, can you speak English?” Them, “Oh, yeah no worries, what’s up?” “How does this work? Sorry, we’re new.” They explained the process, lent us their cards so we could get lunch which we paid back to them in cash, and let us sit with them. Super cool people. Expatriate camaraderie.

After lunch my girlfriend broke off to register for her language classes and I continued to wander around campus. It’s a very attractive place and has some interesting, quirky statues, including a giant smiling Mao Zedong at the main entrance, some traditional Chinese gates, and some traditional gardens and buildings. Fudan is split into two main parts, each divided by a highway that runs east/west. After wandering around the northern half of campus I crossed over to the less ceremonial, more academic southern half. I found my building after some difficulty. The School of International Relations and Public Affairs is actually the sixth floor of the large Liberal Arts building. And the whole building was locked, “winter vacation”, I later learned.

I kept wandering. I poked down some side streets along the edges of the southern half of campus. In the distance, as this walk was starting to become more residential, I spotted a crowd gathering in the middle of a quiet intersection around two cars, one crunched into the side of another. A policeman was standing in the middle of the crowd talking to another man and writing some things on a notepad. No one seemed hurt. Fender bender. The crowd of about thirty huddled in closely around the policemen, next to the cars, and consisted of passers by, nearby shop keeps, me, scooter riders with apparently no rush to get wherever they’re going, and the perpetrators. The middle of the intersection was a buzz with activity, completely blocking traffic, forcing other cars to partially roll onto the sidewalk to get around.

But I had been wandering around long enough and I was beat from walking and thoroughly soaked through. I trudged back to the room to rest and dry off.

Mao, standing watch by Fudan's main entrance gate

Some small shops by the university, the car crash huddle taking place behind me

A clear view from the Bund, the magazine office is a few blocks behind me

Night vendors to meet the demands of returning club goers on a Saturday night

A small, Japanese run coffee shop in the French Concession

The view from my balcony, looking left down Wu Dong Lu

And my view looking straight out, the Yangtze sits just behind the furthest buildings

Part of getting to know the neighborhood is getting to know your fellow expatriates. In this case, other Fudan international students. There is a few western bars in the area outside of the campus and one of them is sort of legend for the international student crowd here. Helen’s is a large restaurant and bar, set above street level. They serve burgers and pizza and beer. A sort of refuge for the exchange students from the ubiquitous Chinese noodle shops that dot the streets nearby. And a good hangout and place to meet other foreigners. The inside looks like a sort of tiki bungalow with long wooden tables and benches. These tables wrap around the central bar on three sides and the waiters and waitresses speak English. My girlfriend had met some people in line at registration for her language classes and we went to go meet some of them at Helen’s in the evening. After a beer in the dormitory lobby area we walked over to the bar and found the group, a large one, maybe eight or so people, mostly Kiwis. And thus began our night.

Even before we were sat down and had fully taken off our jackets we were invited “out” with the group. Going out in China means going to the club. It’s what international students do in China. And we needed a head count. We had a met a student that knew a promoter. A promoter is a person whose job it is to fill their Chinese club with foreigners. They do this by networking and making contact with expats and foreign students, enticing them to come out to their club, getting them on a list for free entry, and getting them a table with free bottle service. So everything is free. Tables with bottle service usually costs a group hundreds of dollars plus the cost of the alcohol. It’s an absurd concept. The reason the clubs pay these promoters to give free everything and VIP service to random foreigners is because they believe that a club packed with foreigners will draw in the rich Chinese crowd who can afford to pay for the normal service. But they won’t come if the club is empty. And apparently if the club is full of foreigners, it appears that the club is more successful. It’s pretty unfair to the Chinese club goers and I couldn’t tell you if they know that we get this stuff for free. On the other hand it’s hard to say no to a free evening at a premier club in Shanghai. We did this all the time in Chengdu but then again it was Chengdu, a city with a far smaller expat crowd. I was a little surprised to see the promoters in Shanghai too.

After a few rounds of Tsing Tao beer we got our group together and hopped a couple of cabs. It was about 11 at night. Fudan is annoyingly far by cab to get downtown but luckily cabs in China are very reasonably priced. Thirty minutes in the cab costs each of the four of us about two dollars. We found the club. From where I got out of the cab I watched as a middle aged Chinese man in a suit propped open one of the industrial, back doors to the large building that housed the club and proceeded to drag two very large disco balls, each by a string, the little shiny bits of reflective glass scraping along the sidewalk, about twenty yards to a paved space in a back alley lot where a large pile of these disco balls were just sitting in a pyramid next to a pile of garbage. I watched him do this for about thirty seconds. The others with me, completely unfazed, started to head for the entrance and I joined them as we waited for the others to arrive.

We were met at the door by the promoter, a very tall, thin, blonde Czech guy with a goofy but cool demeanor, wearing a tuxedo and shiny black shoes. He shook our hands and asked our names. He showed us through the entrance, where to check our coats, and led us past the bouncer and past the long line of Chinese club goers awaiting entry. We were taken into the thick of this large club and directly to our table, adjacent to the dance floor and right below the DJ booth where two large basins of ice were filled with bottles of Belvedere Vodka. On the table were empty glasses and a few large plastic containers of juice. The promoter poured several glasses of juice and added the Belvedere to each, passing them around the group.

Chinese clubs are pretty unique to western standards. This particular club was like most other Chinese clubs I’ve been to but was much larger. Lounge tables were spread around the perimeter of the space where well dressed, upper twenties Chinese men with some swagger sat, surrounded by attractive women, cigarettes hanging from their mouths and unopened bottles of champagne laying around them. These particular Chinese men have money and park their sports cars in the front of the club entrance, along the sidewalk, where all can see them. I counted a Maserati, Ferrari, Lamborghini, and a fair few German luxury cars in the mix. In the middle of the club was a large dance floor sitting beneath a familiar disco ball. At one end was an elevated platform for the DJ, a resident DJ, it was a Wednesday night (school hasn’t started yet, don’t judge me), and the other end claimed the long bar, cool blue streaming along the shelves of imported bottles. Two long catwalks sprung from the DJ’s booth and led along either side of the dance floor. The beat hung heavy in the air as we screamed at one another to make conversation and remark how cool the place was. From time to time, the lights would go dark, the beat would get louder, and spotlights shined down on the catwalks where foreign dancers emerged and danced to a choreographed routine along the dance floor. It was impressive.

In addition to the bottles on the table we were given drink tickets at whim from the promoter from time to time with which we could use to claim free drinks by the bar. We spent the late hours going back and forth between the table, where we met other foreigners nabbed by promoters, and the dance floor. But as all evenings in the club go, the beat eventually resonates too loudly in the ears and the fog of cigarette smoke hangs just a little too heavily in those wee morning hours. We said our thanks to the promoter and took our leave, wearily hailing a cab back to the dorms.

Apart from the following morning, which I spent sleeping, I spent the rest of the week exploring. There are some great Chinese restaurants all along the road just outside the gate in our part of the campus. A healthy blend of both local and my favorite, western Chinese food styles like Sichuanese, Hunanese, Hui, and Uighur. My part of campus is convenient too in that nearby are a small Family Mart (Japanese 7 eleven), a bicycle repair shop, a tailor, a small fruit market, and other sundry conveniences. I’m slowly gaining a comfortable familiarity with my new neighborhood and I still find myself staring from time to time out at the city beyond, high up on my balcony. I think I’m going to like this corner of the city.

In the coming days I officially check in with the university and register for classes. I’ve read through the syllabuses and they seam like they’re going to be right up my alley. And I start with City Weekend magazine soon. It will be nice to be productive again.

Time to get to work.

Welcome to Shanghai

5am. Shower. Change. One last sweep of the house for things I’ve probably left behind. Hit the road. I-93 south is slow but moving. I can’t imagine how people do this everyday. The horizon glows a dark plum color that intensifies to bright orange in the time it takes us to drive into the city, a special treat for us and all others who are awake before dawn. Detour around the Callahan Tunnel. Terminal B for tickets and coffee and I’m off. A beautiful day for a flight.

I’m flying Air Canada mainly because it's a nice airline but also because I accrue Star Alliance mileage points. But a pleasant effect of this flight is my stopover in Toronto. Every seat in each waiting hall comes equipped with a clean, stone table, an electronics charging unit, and an iPad. Yeah. An iPad. I opted to charge my computer and check my emails from the tablet. The airport is clean, modern, and organized. The basic signs, gates and infrastructure are stylish. I’m tempted to drop three Canadian dollars and order a Coke from my iPad (oh, what service!) but I’d rather not tempt my bladder. I’ve got a window seat.

And fourteen hours on a flight is no joke. I took the window seat because on trans-Pacific flights to Asia, at least on those that originate from the east coast of the US, the plane route naturally takes the shortest distance between the two cities which in this case nearly takes us over the north pole. When looking at the GPS tracker from the small monitor plastered on the seat in front of me, the direct route the plane takes misleadingly looks more like an exaggerated, upside down U-shape that shoots the plane directly north out of Toronto to well above the Arctic Circle and into the Arctic Ocean, north of Canada. We don’t fly back over land until dipping back south from the Arctic Circle through Siberia, down the longitudinal axis of about Yakutsk, through northern China, and then down to coastal Shanghai. I would say that from the look of the route on the monitor and then confirmed from my constant peering out the window from my seat on the left side of the plane, just behind the wing, that for roughly 90% of the ride, if we were to go down in an unfortunate turn for the worse and then somehow survive the crash, sadly this would be no “Lost” (hit ABC tv show Lost) situation, we’d have minutes before freezing to death and zero chance of being reached. Nice thoughts for a fourteen hour plane ride.
 
One thing I learned from this particular plane ride was that Chinese people love to take advantage of duty free items. Stuff is cheap in China, true, but imported foreign goods are not. I never really understood the desire to purchase ordinary items on a plane however and I’ve never actually seen anyone do it before. But the stewards and stewardesses always roll the duty free cart down the aisles in any event, mid-flight, on all these long trips. I’ll set the stage. To my right were two Chinese people, a middle aged woman to my immediate right and a middle aged man to her immediate right, strangers to each other and to me. Directly in front of me was a flamboyant Korean-Canadian man, upper-20s. I was mid-nap but stirred awake when the frenzy began as two stewardesses stood on either end of the duty free cart in the aisle next to me. One stewardess, an old Canadian woman, no apparent skill for the Chinese language, the other, a young Chinese woman, fluent in both.

“You know, you’re up to 110 dollars at the moment. If you spend just 15 dollars more you get a free bracelet from the airline.” (Chinese stewardess to the Chinese woman in English)
“ 好. ” Hao. Okay. (Pause. Think.) “ 你有什么酒？” Ni you shenme jiu? Tell me about your liquor…
“Excuse me. Do you have cigarettes?” (Korean-Canadian to old Canadian stewardess)
“Yes.” (Checking.) “We have Marlboros, Camels…” (old Canadian stewardess)
“Oh, you just have cartons. Not individual packs.”
“Yes.”
“Do you have Pall Malls?”
“No.”
“Okay, I’ll take the Marlboros. Red.”
“Great.” (Dipping back down into the cart.)
“You know, you can buy them cheaper in China.” (Chinese stewardess to Korean-Canadian man)
“I can?”
“Yeah, do you speak Chinese?”
“No. Korean.”
“Well, just go to the airport and buy them there. They’re like half the price.” (giving the Korean-Canadian man a look as if to say, you’re welcome.)
(To the Canadian stewardess, rummaging for the carton) “Ahhh, excuse me, I don’t want them anymore.”
“What?”
“Nooo, no, no. I don’t want them anymore.” (Speaking louder to get her attention) “She said they’re cheaper in China.”
“What?”
“She said they’re cheaper in China.”
“Who did?”
“She did.” (pointing to the Chinese stewardess, who was mid-negotiation with the Chinese woman next to me over a bottle of Sky vodka, speaking Chinese.) “She said I shouldn’t buy them.”

The old Canadian stewardess, upon realizing she just lost a sale, turned and frowned at the young Chinese stewardess, who was occupied with the Chinese woman next to me, pretending not to notice, but clearly looking sheepish, betrayed by the Korean-Canadian man. It was pretty awkward. The woman next to me, when all was said and done, had spent roughly 125 dollars on two boxes of stuff I didn’t recognize, a bottle of vodka, and a complimentary bracelet.

As all this was taking place around me, disturbing my sleep, I opened the window shutter and looked out to find a deep orange sun just sitting on the horizon, it’s ripply edges melting and molding into the crack of land below. The sun just sat there, in a permanent form of stasis, as if frozen in time. The sun was not actually setting, I realized, we were just so far north that the sun could only be seen directly south, the frozen, cracking, Arctic ice below was in a permanent state of winter darkness, as I could only see the sun from the vantage of this 35,000 foot altitude. And we were following the sun as both we and it made our way east. A bizarre situation. The sky below was perfectly clear of clouds and I could see the the frozen ice of the Arctic and its cracks as large as canyons, rippling like lightning in all directions across the surface. I’ve seen this before, on my flight to China from New York in 2007. I chose this seat to get this view. I’m glad I didn’t sleep through it.

Meanwhile, the two Chinese people next to me were chatting in Chinese about her recent purchases, deciding, post-purchase, what was a good deal and what wasn’t, as far as I could understand anyway. The Chinese man flipped through the magazine further as the cart rolled slowly away down the aisle and came across something desirable. He showed it to the Chinese woman next to me, lifted his eyebrows and shoulders as if to say, “Eh?”, and struck with shopper’s delight, the woman threw up her arm, said, “Hey! Ni hao! Ni hao!” flapping her hand up and down in a summoning motion. The Chinese stewardess turned around and then turned back towards the old Canadian stewardess who just frowned. I went back to sleep.
 

Logan Airport, Boston

Every seat at the Toronto Airport comes equipped with an iPad

The route

The sun, looking straight south, motionless

Cracks in the ice over the Arctic Ocean, from 35,000 ft

An eclectic lunch: cup of noodles, Israeli Coke, and French Canadian cookies

My first Chinese meal in Shanghai, lamian, Hui pulled noodles

Touchdown. Shanghai’s Pudong international airport. Grab my bags and wait through customs. The lady at the customs window took my passport and looked from me to my passport two or three times, turned to her coworker and showed him my picture, then turned back to me and said, “胡子.” huzi, beard. Then she asked me for a second form of ID, laughed at the childish grin beaming up at her from my I’m-21-now! face on my driver’s license, shook her head a bit and let me go. I have a beard now.

First impressions of China are vivid in my mind. The first time I came to China in 2007 for study abroad I remember getting off the plane with all my Holy Cross undergraduate friends, groggy and discombobulated, being shuffled into a large tourist bus in the late evening hours, and driving into the heart of Beijing towards the school. I sat by the window and with my face pressed up against the fogging glass gawked at the glowing billboards and the huge Chinese characters on the walls of buildings and the smog. The smells, sights, that whole drive is still permanently imprinted in my head. Shanghai strikes me in the same way, not of course, for the novelty of Chinese characters or smog, but for its huge, tall, sprawling buildings and its cosmopolitan orderliness. If Beijing is old China, traditional and at times, chaotic, Shanghai seems to be new China, orderly, planned, and international. Being shuttled into the city on Pudong’s Maglev high speed rail, the transfer onto the city’s elevated subway lines with images of the brightly colored TV tower, bottle opener building, Jinmao tower, whizzing past through the windows, suggest prosperity. Even the hostel I stayed in was pleasant and packed with international travelers.

I’m moved into my new residence now. After a brief stint in the hostel to await my appointed check-in day I’m in the international student dormitory on Fudan University’s main campus. I live in a very comfortable single room on the 20th floor of a very tall apartment building. My view looks north, away from downtown (sadly), to a cityscape of endless residential apartment blocks. I’ve got a balcony and the weather is pretty mild for February so I’ve found myself once or twice (more times actually) standing out the balcony door peering out into the great cityscape beyond. It’s peaceful so high up in the air. A nice thinking spot I suppose. In the very furthest edge of my view north, towards the Yangtze River, the buildings gloss over in haze, smog presumably, and a few factories billow smoke. But they’re pretty far away and the smog in this city is already noticeably better than I’ve experienced in either Beijing or Chengdu (a city I lived in last year).

I’m also still hearing the pop pop pops leftover from Chinese New Year (which occurred weeks ago) and for the start of the Chinese paper lantern festival. Fireworks day and night (I’m hearing them now, in fact. It’s 10am). And from my vantage point high up in the northern suburbs, pockets of low level fireworks dot the city below in dense neighborhoods, scattered all around. This was frightening when I experienced it in Beijing. Living much closer to the ground at the time, fireworks would explode right outside my bedroom window, in the dense alleyways between buildings and in hutongs, and during the day outside our classroom windows. I’m feeling slightly more removed from them here though, the fireworks are much more pleasant from this comfortable distance.

So I’m here. I’m jet-lagged. Oh, so jet-lagged. But I made it. I’m off to the Bund today to soak in the grandeur of this city and will check in with the university in the morning.

More to come!

Prelude

I’m trying to remember how to do this.

I’m sitting on a stool by the window in a busy cafe in Cambridge. There is a young woman two spots over to my left chatting with a young man to her left, a pad of paper open in front of her with the words “science chats with Luke” written in bubbly letters across the top of the page. There is a young Asian woman to my right reading a print-out of an article with the word “science” in the title, as I can casually observe anyway without being creepy. Behind me calculations are being conducted with oversized calculators on long tables that cover the small space within the cafe, crammed with students, and other meetings are occurring over coffee.

I’m in Area Four, a hip cafe in the heart of Kendall Square, Cambridge, Mass., right across from the main campus of MIT. I don’t belong to this crowd per se (in that their BS/MS was my BA/MA—a different sort of pursuit and ambition) but I don’t stand out either and I feel comfortable here. It’s a creative outlet. The Asian girl next to me got up and relocated to my immediate left, apparently tired of the entrance door draft that opens with frequency, letting the Boston chill ruin her concentration, something I’m immune to. I’m drinking black coffee from a glass and munching on a cookie. It tastes too buttery though, a very disappointing taste, if you know what I mean. I’m reading [whatever] magazine, issue zero, their pilot issue, and I am amazed there are others who love what I love. Who love to write about what I love to write about, in the same way. I met the editors when I bought this magazine, from them directly actually, at a stall in a summer night market in Brooklyn. The front cover totes the phrase: an out of place journal, and is filled with travel essays, from those who travel because they can, and investigate contemporary issues while they do it (a similar goal for this blog). Good luck, ladies, this magazine is fantastic.

This boxy, minimalist cafe is dotted with the occasional obscurity because this is, of course, an indie cafe requirement. Think little metallic clocks, an old manual egg beater, ceramic cows, etc. The menu is plastered on a large black poster board in large neon green, pink, orange, yellow helvetica lettering behind the bar. And TCM is streaming from a corner of the ceiling, high above the cashier. This place suits its MIT clientele, blending messy creativity with the clean precision of science. There is music streaming un-obnoxiously in the background, playing stuff I don’t recognize but like anyway. Despite the rest it is minimal and I find I can write here.

I’m meeting a friend here in a couple of hours for some pre-dinner drinks. I’m relaxing in the cafe with my laptop open but we’ll meet in the equally hip bar next door. I’m using this opportunity to think about my upcoming trip to Shanghai. My flight leaves this Tuesday. I’m excited. I’m back.

I’m moving to Shanghai to continue my graduate studies abroad for the next six months in the Chinese Politics and Diplomacy program at the School of International Relations at Fudan University. And I’ll be working part-time for City Weekend magazine, a local, city-culture magazine for expats. A nice set up. Can we sweeten the deal? Yes. I’ll be reporting to the Wine and Dine editor. 试一试一些小饭馆儿，可能？(Let’s not worry about the correctness of that grammar) shiyishi yixie xiao fanguanr, keneng? Critique some local hot spots, perhaps? I’m hopeful anyway.

And this is my great return to blogging. One thing I learned from The Great Eurasian Adventure is that I love writing and more importantly, I love exposing the obscure cultural nuances that become lost to the average traveler, things that go unnoticed because they are not obviously noticeable. I think there is real beauty in these subtleties however and I want to share them with you and the world. That sounds ambitious, as if the world was following my blog. But if you’re satisfied, I’m satisfied.

I think I’m back to Blogger but I haven’t really decided yet. If I suddenly shift sites it’s because Google isn’t working in China, Chinese firewalls have never been a friend of mine, and re-routing illegally through Russia isn’t working either. For now, this format will do. I’m still in Mass. after all.

9am Tues., Logan Airport, Boston, Mass. Layover in Toronto. Fourteen and a half hours to Shanghai and I arrive one day later. I’ll keep notes. Expect a blog entry every Sunday. You’ll know what I’m up to and you’ll learn a little about being an expatriate in Shanghai. I’m excited for this chapter of my life book.

Stay in touch. Let me know if you have a particular interest in a particular topic. I’ll do my best to accommodate.

在上海看到你, zai shanghai kandao ni. See you in Shanghai.