It has been a while since I've blogged. Time continues to fly as I and the other English Teaching Assistants enter our last week of classes. Next Tuesday we will depart for our China mainland teaching attachment. I'm excited at the prospect of seeing rural China. I will be one of the ETAs going to Sichuan Province while the other ten go to Inner Mongolia. Inner Mongolia is approximately ten degrees right now while Sichuan is more temperate so I am quite pleased with my placement. As the other ETAs have become like my family, I will miss those of them who are going to Inner Mongolia, but we will at least spend three days together in Nanjing before we split off. I'm especially excited to return to China after having spent last weekend in Shanghai. Before coming to Hong Kong I thought that Hong Kong was China. I didn't realize how wrong I was until going to Shanghai. Even crossing over the border into China I immediately sensed a difference. In China people spit on the street; in Hong Kong this is considered rude. In Shanghai none of the taxi drivers spoke English, in Hong Kong almost all of them do. Shanghai seems to mix East and West in a way that even Hong Kong fails to do. Architecturally it is splendid. It is an amazing mix of European buildings from the 1930s and Chinese buildings. Along the Bund, the river which cuts through the heart of the city, the old European banks built when Shanghai was divided between the European powers, continue to stand. The city is also beautifully planned. Large, futuristic looking skyscrapers form the perfect backdrop to two story Chinese houses and shops, with parks forming the center of the cityscape. It was an amazing contrast to Hong Kong, were you feel the energy of a cosmopolitan city constantly. The pace was somehow slower and more laid back. Walking through the French concession on Sunday, with the old European villas and cobblestone sidewalks felt like being in Paris in the fall. In fact Shanghai is called the Paris of the East, though that compliment does seem to overlook its unique charm. It is however a city rich with culture and history. In The Astor House, the hotel my friend Emily and I stayed, was the first luxury hotel in Shanghai and was established in 1846. Albert Einstein stayed there, as did Teddy Roosevelt, and the first electrical light in all of China was turned on in front of the hotel in 1882. While it is no longer a luxury hotel the interior has been beautifully restored. The hotel just completed a renovation in which they replaced all 100 of the original windows with authentic reproductions. Shanghai's food is similarly worthy of awe. It is famous for its soup dumplings. These dumplings are fried to a deep brown on the bottom, coated with sesame seeds, and are made with a sweet dough packed with a pork and soup filling. To eat one without severely burning the roof of your mouth takes some practice: you have to first take a tiny bite from the top of the dumpling, and then sip at the soup inside the dumpling, and finally bite into it. Over the course of the weekend I ate about 30 of these dumplings, and once waited in line for them for 45 minutes. They were indeed THAT good. In addition to my culinary adventures, I had a real life adventure. I was supposed to meet up with Emily, the friend I was travelling with, in front of the Yu Yuan Gardens. Alas, with neither of us having working cell phones in Shanghai, I realized too late the impossible task of finding her in the mass of teeming people. Luckily, a Shanghai white knight was on hand to save me. He was, in fact, an elderly Shanghai man who speaks English very well. Ma, which means horse in Chinese, initially approached me as I was anxiously pacing outside the gardens, imagining wandering around lost in Shanghai and wasting a precious afternoon. He asked me what I was doing in Shanghai, why I was in Hong Kong, and what I think of China. After showing me a dumpling place around the corner (my aforementioned addiction having shown itself) he offered to show me around the quarter if I did not find my friend. The next event is predictable: willfully ignoring the voice of reason, and the reprimands I could already sense I would hear from my dear mother, I met Ma for a tour of the city. We first went to the theatre where he volunteers for a tea ceremony. While I watched the chrysanthemum flower slowly unfurl when placed in hot water, we discussed life and the pursuit of happiness. Ma gave me some insight into Shanghai life, or rather love life. He is in his late 50s, his current girlfriend is in her late 30s, and he began dating her while he was married to his first wife. To further complicate the story, his first wife, who has since remarried, recently asked their son if Ma would let her come back. Apparently she is not satisfied with her new husband. From my discussion with Ma, I saw the unrest in his and his wife’s relationship as indicative of wider unrest in Shanghai. Shanghai has experienced rapid growth, such that wealth is pouring into the city. While this is improving the Shanghai quality of life, allowing more people to own cars and homes, it has also aroused jealousy. While people were once oblivious to the outside world, they now see what they are missing, and they see what they don’t have. Ma gave the example of a woman who had married a westerner. She has a friend who is also married to a westerner. But while the first woman is still asking her husband to purchase instead of rent a home for their family, the second woman’s husband has bought her a home. Jealousy has inserted itself into this friendship, as one woman sees the financial security of the other and yearns for the same for herself. After the tea ceremony, Ma gave me a walking tour of the city. We walked through the French Concession, and saw the hotel where Nixon stayed during détente in the 1970s. We also took one of the local buses and saw the houses which have been reclaimed as the city seeks to expand its transportation infrastructure in preparation for the 2010 World Exposition, which will showcase the cultures from around the globe. My afternoon with Ma concluded over dinner and his offer to come stay with him and his 26 year old son should I return to Shanghai, which I well may do next year. From my time in Shanghai and Hong Kong, I’ve come to the conclusion that having tea with someone is the best way to get to know them. Two weeks after Shanghai, and I again sit for tea, this time with my mentor Rebecca. We of course end up discussing the pursuit of happiness in daily life. For Rebecca, this means the arrival of her much anticipated Philippine domestic helper. Incredibly, this woman has a college education and could be teaching in the Philippines. Instead she is doing laundry and cooking in Hong Kong because she can earn more. Rebecca undoubtedly is a good employer. She has her children treat their domestic servant as an older sister, or their mother’s helper, to prevent the unseemly behavior I have witnessed in which a little child runs ahead while her family’s domestic helper follows behind, holding the child’s backpack, coat, etc. The commonality of domestic servants in Hong Kong is still difficult for me to get over. While I realize that most people here have domestic servants, it was extremely strange for me to sit with Rebecca and realize that while I admire and respect her, there are still cultural differences and attitudes that separate us. It also gave me a vague sense of déjà vu, thinking how history continuously repeats itself. Only a century earlier British women must have been sitting discussing how difficult it was to find good domestic Chinese servants, and now a Chinese woman is discussing how much she appreciates her Philippine domestic helper.
