Tomorrow, Wednesday 19th, I will be going on the Spring ECNU field trip to Xiamen in Fujin Provence by Taiwan. Xiamen is a "small" Chinese city noted for its lovely gardens, seafood, and for being one of the first cities the Chinese Emperors opened to the Western "barbarians." It should be fun, I am looking forward to sitting on a patio drinking Tsingtao, eating a horrifically unkosher animal, shaking my fist at the Republic of China occupied the Provence of Taiwan. I have high hopes for Xiamen, it should be fun. Hopefully ECNU's staff will let me chill a bit because that is really what one should do in a shore city. It should be noted that a shore city and a beach city in China are very different things. The only real beaches in China are on Hainan while the whole east of the country has shore. For the most part, you can't swim in good chunks of the country. I will keep the blog updated.
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Last night, the friend who's house I went to for the second night of Passover ended with with an extra ticket to the hit Brodway musical Wicked: The Untold Story of the Witches of Oz at the new Shanghai Cultural Center (上海文化广场) in the former French Concession. Even if she didn't have the extra ticket, it doesn't seem to hard to buy a ticket from one of the many ticket scalpers just walking around outside the theater. Major theater productions, like Wicked, will sometimes form traveling troupes to bring their show to audiences who might not be able to make it out to New York's Brodway or London's West End, so the whole cast and a large number of the crew members were foreigners. The whole cast crew was very polished; which I guess is what happens when you have a musical running for as long as Wicked has. Even though we were in China, the whole production was done in English with Chinese subtitles next to the stage. I do kind of feel bad for the guy who had to think of the Chinese names for all of the stuff that appears in the play. Oz, the Great and Terrible, used his magic powers throughout the show to shine a red Laser of Shame down on anyone who is trying to use their cell phones to record the show in direct violation of the laws of the People's Republic of China. A show that was very well produced actually, Wicked has always been know for its great production and Shanghai Wicked was no exception. I was especially impressed the first time the Wizard of Oz appeared as a giant golden head, kind of like he did in the Wizard of Oz film and book. The plot was also interesting. It played things a more morally grayer than ether the Wizard of Oz film or book. I am slightly surprised that Wicked was produced in China because of the plot. If you haven't seen it, it is basically about the government lying to people to keep power. I guess the message wasn't too strongly anti-authortarian and it wasn't too sexy of a show so got a pass. I was a bit less impressed with the songs, they were fun and some of them stick around in my head but I am not in love with any of them. Still I, and many of the local Chinese who went out to see the show, enjoyed Wicked so I guess I could recommend.
While they might not take Canada Coins to pay rent, if you are so inclined you can check out Dream Home Canada. I don't actually know what Dream Home Canada does, but it doesn't matter. Everyone likes the Canadians so it shouldn't be too hard to sell whatever Dream Home Canada sells. I would like to note that even the Chinese doesn't help tell me what these people do. Last semester I was asked to write a short English essay for the 留学丽娃:International Students at ECNU, the International Office's annual magazine thing, about my experiences in China. I am actually quite happy with how the whole thing turned out, I feel my writing is good and the magazine is actually really professional looking. If you would like to read my little essay and you can't afford a trip to Shanghai to pick up a copy of 留学丽娃, posted it below. The TL;DR version is I liked my time in Shanghai because everything feels connected, form buying bread to class to extracurricular activities.
After being asked to write this article on my time at East China Normal University for 留学丽娃 I struggled to figure out what to write about. It is not that I didn’t do very much at ECNU, in fact I feel almost as though I did too much! How would I summarize in some form of coherent article the opportunity to take Chinese studies and Chinese language classes with students from around the world as a part of the Global China Program (GCP), the chance to work with Chinese and other international students on the first semester of the Global Business Project (GBP), my experiences outside the classroom living in and exploring Shanghai, and all the new friends I made along the way? Then it struck me, one of my favorite things about my time at East China Normal was how it felt like everything, in the classroom and outside, both curricular and extracurricular, tied neatly together. Shortly after my arrival in Shanghai I attempted to buy some pastries for lunch at TESCO in the Global Harbor Mall by ECNU’s Zhongbei (中北) campus. Little did I know that the lady at the pastry counter would be the proctor for my first Chinese test of the academic year, a test I unfortunately failed. After what felt like an eternity going back and forth with the lady at the counter and a Chinese shopper trying to help the confused foreigner (老外), I finally understood that they were trying to tell me to buy three pastries, since three pastries cost the same as one. I promised myself I would never buy bread in China again, a promise I did not end up keeping. Thanks in part to my Oral Chinese Language class at ECNU and my new Chinese friends, I am now able to successfully order food for myself in Chinese by name. I can now enjoy potato and beef noodles (土豆牛肉面 ) and soy sauce braised fresh beef noodles ( 红烧牛肉拉面) at the Hui Muslim owned noodle place across from the main gate or spicy tofu (辣豆腐) from a street vender without just pointing at what I want. Shortly after ordering the tofu, my Issues in Contemporary Chinese Society class discussed street venders in Chinese cities and they relate to migration and regulation. We also discussed minority peoples, like the Hui people, and their role in China. My experiences off ECNU’s campus went beyond the short walk to the noodle place. I got to visit the SAIC-Volkswagen plant in Shanghai with my China’s Macroeconomic Impact class. While I would find visiting a car plant to see how human workers and robots work together to build new vehicles interesting enough, I found it even more interesting because of my GBP group’s case study and my Globalization & Urbanization final paper. Even though my GBP group’s case study was not on Volkswagen in China, it was on Tesla Motors in China, I still found it useful to help me better understand the SAIC-Volkswagen plant. As part of my general research for the case study, I got to look up the rules surrounding foreign auto manufactures in China, particularly the rules forcing foreign auto companies, like Volkswagen, to form a joint-venture with a Chinese car company, like SAIC, to be permitted to make cars in China. For my Globalization & Urbanization final on Chinese copycats I did some research on how Chinese copping effects the automotive industry, a problem that foreign firms in China, like Volkswagen, face regularly when they tried to bring their new models into the country. While I could continue talking about how my class work, fun, and extracurriculars at ECNU all connect, all writing must end somewhere. Part of the point of study abroad is to see things from a different perspective so that you can better understand them, something I felt East China Normal did very well. I feel like getting a chance to study China from many different viewpoints while at the same time getting to live there has helped me understand one of the world’s most important countries better. I also feel that being able to study Chinese in China has helped my language skills immensely. I am very happy that I chose to study abroad at East China Normal University in Shanghai. Traditionally, the Passover festivities are a two day affair so I hit the Metro again to return to Pudong for another Passover Seder. This time it was at a American ex-pat friend's house, not the Kerry Hotel, and the Seder was the Rabbi Yonah Bookstein's 10 Minute Seder, not Chabad's 3 hour Seder. Finding the complex was easy enough, the buildings in the complex were laid out strange so it took a bit of effort to find the place but I made it on time (enough). While the Seder wasn't 10 minutes, it was pretty quick. Dinner was very good. I finally got home made matzo ball soup, the one major Passover dish Chabad forgot, with an IKEA smoked salmon. Both were very good, Passover simply doesn't feel right without smoked fish and matzo ball soup. We then did the traditional chicken, potatoes, and vegetables all of which were nice. Finally I had a excellent home made cheese cake, it wasn't too sweet which is how I like my cheese cakes. We all then chatted about the ex-pat life until about 11:00PM when I had to return to Puxi.
I would say my Passover experiences in Shanghai, while different from each other, were both nice. It is always cool to see how similar major Jewish holidays are, even when you are on the other side of the world. It is also nice that if you don't have family to spend Passover with, since you are in China and your family is in New Jersey, someone will invite you to their Seder. The Maggid (the reading of the Passover story) begins with a short paragraph proclaiming "this [matzo] is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. Whoever is hungry, let him come and eat; whoever is in need, let him come and conduct the Seder of Passover. This year [we are] here; next year in the land of Israel. This year [we are] slaves; next year [we will be] free people." It is nice that this sentiment is more than just empty words. Happy Passover all. Last night was the first night of Passover, the two day Jewish holiday commemorating Exodus and Moses's flight from Egypt with the Jewish people. Since Passover is usually a larger affair, Chabad of Pudong usually decides to hold their annual Seder in the Kerry Hotel, Pudong. Getting there wasn't too hard, the hotel's mall and the subway hooked up so it wasn't that hard to find. Some of the nicer Chinese hotels, like the Kerry, end up a bit labyrinthine with malls connecting to restaurants connecting to business centers connecting to ballrooms. I did eventually find the correct ballroom, right on time but still too early. It is actually quite a small world, I met some of my both my American and Chinese neighbors, one guy form Morristown, NJ and another guy who lived in the building across from mine at ECNU (he will only be in Shanghai for a few weeks though). While Chabad does a full Seder they are actually quite efficient with it and there were enough twists to keep it interesting. Since the crowd was so international anyone who spoke a language that wasn't English, Hebrew, or Chinese (the three languages we read the Four Questions in) could read the first of the Four Questions (Why is this night different form all other nights?) in their native tongue; while there were the standard languages of Italian, German, and French we also had people read the First Question in Kurdish, Belorussian, Japanese, and Afrikaans. The food was pretty good and fully Kosher since the Rabbi Koshered one of the Kerry's kitchens and his wife supervised the cooking process. It was the classic chicken, soup, and salmon mix but familiar done well is sometimes nice. I still don't know why Israeli Kosher wines don't sell better in China. The Rabbi has a thing for a Zion Winery of Mishur Adumim, Israel (not to be confused for the Zion Wines of Zion National Park, Utah) which tastes like it could have been made by Great Wall Wines (my preferred Chinese brand of wine). The biggest issue I had was getting back to ECNU. I thought I was good, me and the other guy who was staying at ECNU decided to split a cab. Unforntually, we seemed to have found the one cabbie in all of Shanghai who didn't speak or read standard Mandarin. I ended up giving him my phone with a map just displaying the way to East China Normal. It worked out in the end, even if I ended up back on campus a bit later than I wanted too.
This evening is the start of the Jewish holiday of Passover in Shanghai. I have two Seders scheduled, a Seder at Chabad and a Seder at a local Jewish ex-pats house. I might do two posts or do one bigger Passover retrospective post, don't know yet. I will update you all after I do Passover.
So to those of you celebrating, have a good holiday. To those of you not, have a nice day anyway. |
AuthorI am a junior at Juniata College spending a year studying abroad at East China Normal University. Please feel free to join my on my journey to China and beyond. Archives
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