The Year In Review

A few years ago, on New Years Eve, after exchanging "man, this year went by so quickly!" cliches with various people, I remember making a simple and seemingly obvious discovery.  As one gets older, each individual year represents a decreasingly significant proportion of one's life.  It's no surprise, therefore, why we are always marveling about the speed with which years elapse.  And sure enough, as December ticked by and Christmas week turned into New Years Eve, my initial reaction was to look back wistfully on 2011 and think, "man, this year went by so quickly!"

Upon further review, however, I'm not so sure it did.  One year ago today, I was in New York, getting ready to go out to a party at Union Square Ballroom with a bunch of friends.  It seems like...well...about a year ago.  And maybe that's because 2012 was probably the most action-packed, event-filled, up-and-down (but mostly up) year of my life.  There was just too much that happened for it to have flown by.  It's been a while since this blog had a good list, so primarily for my own records, I hereby present Josh's 2012 In Review.  The list is in no particular order, and is not nearly exhaustive.

• I spent at least one night in the following places: New York, New York; Washington, D.C.; Omaha, Nebraska; Keystone, South Dakota; Austin, Texas; Nashville, Tennessee; Louisville, Kentucky; Chicago, Illinois; East Jordan, Michigan; Clinton, Connecticut; Shanghai, China; Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China; Beijing, China; Hanoi, Vietnam; Halong Bay, Vietnam; Houwu Village, Zhejiang Province, China.
• I moved twice -- from Washington to New York, and from New York to Shanghai.

• I attended a baseball game at Wrigley Field
• I toured the United States Naval Observatory (a very underrated activity for those seeking amusement in Washington).
• I ran my personal Triple Crown -- attending the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, and Belmont Stakes.  With me for all three legs were Ben Zachs, Jeremy Perlman, and Michael Moran, with many others along for part of the ride.  Unfortunately, I'll Have Another got injured the day before he could run for the Triple Crown, but going to all three races in one year was a sports fan's dream.

• I pulled two all-nighters as a paralgeal, billing 25 hours to a client in each of two 24 hour days (don't ask me how that's possible).
• I went to Mount Rushmore.  It's smaller than expected.

• I attended the following concerts: Bruce Springsteen, Radiohead, Kenny Chesney (shown below), the New York Philharmonic, the Washington D.C. National Symphony Orchestra, and (several) shows by the Horde in Beijing and Shanghai, a band of whom I'm an official groupie, and the unofficial manager.

• I helped plan my parents' first trip to China in March 2013.
• I completed my two year stint as a paralegal at Paul, Weiss, learning more and meeting more great people than I thought I would.  
• A new tradition was continued at Lake Charlevoix.
• I saw one of my comedic idols, Jerry Seinfeld, live...in Omaha.  His first joke?  "So what's the deal with Omaha?  I'll tell you.  It's FLAT!  Just FLAT!"
• I turned 24.  One-fifth of a century.  Makes a guy think.  (Some Like It Hot reference).
• I joined a darts team, adding to my resume of things I am not very good at.

• I played golf with my father, my friends, and my friends' fathers.
• I played softball with Vincent Grey, mayor of Washington D.C.
• I went on two mini road trips (significant for someone from New York who barely knows how to drive): from Omaha, NE to Keystone, SD (1150 miles round trip) and from Chicago, IL to East Jordan, MI (700 miles round trip).  Shoutouts to Michael Joseph O'Donnell III and Allan Ziegler for accompanying me.
• For the first time ever, I had Thanksgiving dinner with people other than my family.  29 expats gathered in Shanghai, all of them missing home, and managed to have a festive meal and share the plentiful reasons for being thankful.
• I visited Vietnam, exploring the motorbike-filled winding streets of Hanoi and the unique beauty of Halong Bay.

• I discovered the epitome of revisionist history and propaganda at the Hanoi Hilton.
• I voted via absentee ballot for President Barack Obama.
• I watched from afar as the Yankees and Giants both made fools of themselves.  But I won my two fantasy football championships, so it's okay.
• I learned that Settlers of Catan, or 卡坦岛, is not only a phenomenon in the US, but one in China as well.
• I played hours (and hours) of Mafia, a campfire game for kids, with a bunch of friends on the beach in Connecticut.

• I applied to law school.  And got in.
• I went out drinking with my brother and two cousins, the first time the four of us had been together in about a decade.

• I learned that, if you're quite lucky, the year ends with equal amounts of looking back, fondly and wistfully, at the year past, and looking forward, with eager anticipation, if not a little bit of healthy trepidation about the proverbial what comes next.

In Which I Realized, Finally, That I Will Never Be Fluent In Chinese

While picking up some wine for a Christmas Dinner I'm going to this evening, I witnessed a rather discouraging exchange.  I was in line at City Shop, a supermarket that primarily attracts expats for its reasonably varied selection of Western foodstuffs.  In front of me was a foreigner -- German, I'd guess, but what do I know -- who was paying for his Christmas Eve grocery run with a young girl of about 6 years, who I assumed was his daughter.  The staff at City Shop usually has passable English, but this particular cashier was struggling to express herself, so she just gave up and started speaking in Chinese.  I wasn't really paying attention, so I didn't catch what she said.  Neither did the customer, who looked bewildered for a while before calling his daughter over.  The cashier repeated herself to the young girl -- this time I was paying attention, and still couldn't figure out what she was saying -- and the girl calmly looked up at her dad and said "Oh, she just meant that we should hand our receipt to the parking guy over there when we're driving out of the garage."

I've always known that young children have a linguistic advantage over adults; if you don't learn a language by the time you hit puberty, you will probably never learn to speak and understand it in an even remotely native fashion.  But I had always hoped that the only two things standing between me and Chinese fluency were practice, and immersion -- I could overcome my linguistic senility by simply throwing myself into the Chinese scene, and allowing my brain to mop it all up like a sponge.  That clearly has proven to be a lesson in naivete.  Not only do I not practice enough (nobody's fault but my own...and Shanghai's, I suppose, for being an enclave of English speakers), but I also have 5 years of formal Chinese training under my belt.  And as it turns out, while my studies gave me the basic toolkit for basic, conversational Chinese, it actually hinders my pursuit of fluency.  I think - in English - before I speak in Chinese, desperately searching for the correct combination of verbs, nouns, and adjective clauses to form a perfect sentence.  I do this naturally; if I didn't, and I just was able to speak, and listen, I would be much better at Chinese.  But I can't, primarily because I didn't start learning the language until I was 18, a senior citizen from a linguistic perspective.

Clara Mei, the two year old daughter of a couple that came to Moganshan with us a month ago, is Venezuelan, but she has grown up here in Shanghai.  Her ayi, the Chinese housekeeper who takes care of her while her parents are at work, speaks to her in Chinese.  And whenever she's around other foreigners, English is, naturally, the primary language.  The result: Mei Mei can speak Spanish, English, and Chinese, as fluently as any two year old can speak any language.  She's too young to really understand the difference between the three languages, so she ends up jumping between the three without realizing it.  It's adorable -- and it's also the reason why the ceiling for my Chinese ability is, I realize, so low.  She, like the daughter in City Shop, were exposed to the language before they were able to process that it was a separate entity from their native tongues.  The girl in City Shop is likely old enough now to know the difference.  But the look of immediate recognition that flashed across her face when the cashier spoke to her (in a strong, fast Shanghai accent) told me all I need to know.  This girl, like Clara Mei, doesn't need to translate.  She hears Chinese as if it were her mother tongue, something I was never able to do in Spanish during the five years I studied it in high school, and something I've certainly never been able to do with Mandarin.  

Guest Blogging: Shanghai Burger Review

For those in search of where (and where not) to go for hamburgers in New York City, look no farther than Burger Weekly, a comprehensive weekly tour of the Big Apple's best burgers.  Burgermeister Brad asked me to do a guest post for their foreign affairs section on a burger joint in Shanghai.  Over the weekend, I made it to one of the so-called "best" burger spots in the city, where I proceeded to weird out all of the Chinese staff members by snapping pictures of both the restaurant, and my food (including one which you'll see below of me, mid-bite...a tricky gymnastic act of self-photography if I do say so myself).  Short story: you can get a decent burger in Shanghai.

Congratulations on surviving the Mayan apocalypse, and Merry Christmas to all!

New York Style Steak and Burger

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Burgers Ordered: The Big Boy

The Experience: Despite its 23 million people and cosmopolitan, international feel, locating a good hamburger in Shanghai has proven somewhat difficult. Having eaten handful of mediocre burgers in his fourth months living in China, Guest Burgermeister Josh set out to find one worth (literally) writing home about. What better place to start for this native New Yorker than New York Style Steak and Burger, recently voted Shanghai’s best burger.

Tucked away in Tianzifang, a network of narrow alleyways with a variety of bars, restaurants, and shops, New York Style advertises its recent top-burger award on a poster as you walk in. The restaurant is small and cozy – typical for Tianzifang – with only a handful of tables on each of the three floors. It honors its namesake with elegant black and white photographs of The Big Apple hanging on the walls, along with somewhat tacky news clippings and reviews of the chef, who fancies himself somewhat of a celebrity. Josh was seated at a small table facing a window onto the kitchen, where he could supervise the creation of his burger.

The Taste: The Big Boy Burger – aptly named – was a sloppy, juicy, and ultimately satisfying burger experience. It is a standard cheeseburger with all of the usual accompaniments, plus some Russian Dressing. Burgermeister Josh was initially disappointed with the size of the patty; he wasn’t convinced he received the half pound of chuck the menu promised. But the plentiful accoutrements – crisp lettuce, flavorful onions, pickles, tomatoes, sharp cheddar cheese, and a light Russian Dressing – were all delightful, and contributed to an overall positive burger experience. However, while munching on his sandwich, Josh couldn’t help but notice an inherent contradiction in New York Style’s culinary philosophy. The menu made a big deal of how its ground beef is seasoned only with salt and pepper, so as to not overcrowd the flavor of the meat itself. But if the meat is to be the centerpiece of the experience, why overshadow it with so many toppings? For most of the burger, Josh was tasting – and enjoying – the other stuff more than he was the meat. By the time he got down to the last few bites, and all of the toppings were either eaten or on the plate, he found the meat to be juicy, and well cooked, but not particularly flavorful. So it appears as if the meat-first philosophy espoused on the menu doesn’t quite translate into the burger itself. The fries that came with the burger were not offensive, but entirely uninspiring. They were French fries – nothing more and nothing less.

The Verdict: Burgermeister Josh loved the feel of New York Style: classic, homey, steakhouse feel, with a modern window-into-the-kitchen upgrade. The service was warm and English-speaking (standard in expat-heavy areas of Shanghai like Tianzifang). And the burger itself? It was good…tasty, but certainly not mind-blowing. It ranks well above the other mediocre burgers Josh has suffered through in Shanghai. But he hopes that New York Style’s recognition as the best burger in Shanghai was mistakenly awarded, and that the true apex of Shanghai’s burger offerings is still out there awaiting discovery.

New York Style Steak and Burger is located at 155 Jianguo Middle Road in Shanghai, China.

The Dangers of a Chinese Holiday Party

I attended my company's holiday party last Friday evening.  For the first few hours (it was a long party) it was casino themed, creating a feel not unlike what one might expect at a bar mitzvah.  There was blackjack, poker, roulette, baccarat, and a dice game -- all of which you could gamble fake chips at for the opportunity to amass a chipstack big enough to win auction prizes at the end.  It was all very informal, though that didn't stop me from getting into an argument with the blackjack dealer -- who was very clearly not enjoying herself -- about why I should be allowed to double down whenever I damn please, not just on 11 (apparently, at some Asian casinos, this 11-only rule is a custom.  Weirdos).  Impulsive gambler that I am, I naturally lost my little bag's worth of chips three times, and each time was manage to surreptitiously steal a new bag.  I had twinges of guilt about this blatant disregard for the integrity of the game, though the auction prizes were pretty meaningless and silly indeed, so I didn't bid on any of them thereby relieving me of my guilt.

You'd think that a party planning company that specializes in this sort of theme party, often for international companies, would have mastered the art of English translation.  If not, you'd assume that my company, headquartered in California, would be able to translate English into Chinese.  Alas, you would also be surprised and amused, therefore, to find this sign in front of the Roulette table at the fake casino at my holiday party:

 

I mean...seriously?  Nobody, in what I imagine was a long line of people involved in the creation of this banner, had the moxie to suggest that the difference between roulette and Russian roulette is like the difference between an Irish car bomb and, you know, a plain old regular everyday car bomb?  And it's another example where the problem isn't translation, per se -- 俄罗斯 means Russia and  轮盘 roughly means roulette. The thought that this probably had to go through several levels of checking before it was approved for display at a party (where there were many children present) is hilarious to me.  The Chinese characters below the title proceed to offer a very basic explanation of roulette.  There's no confusion as to what this poster is advertising.  It's saying "come here! play this game!  here's how!" but gets the title of the game quite unfortunately wrong.

The Shots Felt Halfway Around the World

Yesterday, we had several people over at our apartment for a potluck brunch, primarily to celebrate the end of the semester for Franco and his teacher colleagues.  At one point, I was acting as DJ and put on "Psycho Killer" by the Talking Heads.  Almost immediately after the first chorus, Franco said, "Josh, don't you think it's a little too soon for this song?"  He was joking, and everyone laughed, albeit somewhat nervously.  We had spent the first part of the day talking about the horrible tragedy in Connecticut, which certainly dampened what was supposed to be a festive gathering of friends.  Nobody had much to say, other than how awful it was and how on point The Onion's coverage of the shootings was.  What can you say, after all?

When you're 12,000 miles away, it's sometimes tough to get a sense for the pulse of the nation.  News coverage is patchy at best, and is often confined to online media -- soundbytes, blogs, and e-journalism -- rather than live news.  There's nothing wrong with this -- I have way more access to news now, even in China, than I would have 10 years ago, let alone when my parents' generation was my age -- it just sometimes is difficult to put a finger on what's going on back home.  Not so with the reaction to the Connecticut shootings.  From Facebook to the New York Times, calls for tighter gun restrictions became ubiquitous, mere minutes after the echoes of gunfire had tolled through the halls of Sandy Hook.  On the other side, right wing protectors of the right to bear arms began their defense of the semi-automatic weapons by calling for restrictions on gun ownership for those with mental illness, or, from the particularly insightful Mike Huckabee, just blaming the schools.

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone where I fall on that particular issue.  Guns kill people.  The guns that are used to kill deer are not the same guns that are used to kill children.  And if those guns that were used to murder 27 people on Friday were not so easily accessible, the self-defense argument would be moot.  That's all I'm going to say on that.  This blog is not going to enter that particular fray, but rather offer my own reaction to the news, which was twofold.  The first was utter dispair.  I, like many other people who have grown up in the post-September 11th world, have become accustomed to news of death and destruction.  As embarrassed as I am to admit it, my reaction to most news of this sort is "really?  again?"  I don't think I'm alone in this regard.  But to think that 20 children, still young enough to exist beyond the borders of this sensationalist-media world in which we live, were mowed down -- by someone four years younger than me -- and that dozens more will now live for the rest of their lives with images and sounds permanently etched into their sense memories...it just shatters me.  My second reaction, just as powerful, was one of longing; for my parents, brother, grandfather, and friends back home -- all of whom will have to accept cyber hugs from me in lieu of the real thing.  I am lucky to be alive, to have never been shot at, and to have all of you in my life.

Feels Like Christmas...Well, Sort Of

The Christmas season in Shanghai unofficially began ages ago, pretty much right after the National Holiday at the beginning of October.  With only a minimal Chinese interest in Halloween and no break for Thanksgiving, China spends virtually two and a half months preparing for the Christmas season.  For weeks now, the Starbucks experience has included red-themed Christmas decorations and coffee cups, and muzak versions of "Little Drummer Boy" and other slightly less annoying Christmas songs.  Nanjing Road, one of the main drags in downtown Shanghai, is replete with snowflake ornaments, and has been so since the middle of October.  For such a profoundly secular society, one with its own, lunar New Year's celebration in February, the holiday season sure has a visible and prolonged presence in everyday life (see pictures below, all taken in a one block radius of my office building).

Tomorrow is my office holiday party.  It's casino themed, which means it'll likely feel more like a bar mitzvah party than an office party.  That said, I have no problem with gambling, particularly the kind with no prospect of losing money, so I'm not complaining. It also starts at 2pm, which means, assuming there is alcohol served, that it'll likely feel more like my bar mitzvah party (thrown at the Tau Epsilon Phi off-campus fraternity house when I was 22) than any normal bar mitzvah party. The Chinese colleagues whom I sit near have prepared a song, to the tune of a popular Chinese pop song that can be heard here.  The lyrics have been rewritten, to pertain to our work and colleagues, and I translated them into English so the few non-Chinese speakers will know what we're singing about.  Oh, right, that's the other thing... I'll be singing it with them.  Should be just about as ridiculous as it sounds.  If there's a video (I'm hoping there won't be), I'll put it up here.

Christmas time in Shanghai: putting a whole new meaning to the phrase "season's greetings" (in that it lasts literally an entire season).

The Adaptability of the Great Firewall

Most of the readers of this blog are, I assume, at least somewhat familiar with the Great Firewall of China -- the Chinese government's attempts to suppress the dissemination of information over the internet without its censorship and supervision.  Sites like Facebook, Google (and with it, Gmail), the New York Times, and Twitter all run very slowly at best in China, and often don't work at all.  This blog too is blocked by the Firewall, and wouldn't be able to exist were it not for the amazing powers of virtual private network technology.  Through a VPN, which can be easily downloaded for a relatively small price, one can route the internet through foreign servers, thereby disguising its IP address and evading the Chinese Firewall.  The Firewall can only detect Chinese IP addresses -- if my computer is surfing the internet using an American one (as it often does through my trusty VPN), the Firewall is powerless.

That is, apparently, until now.  A few days ago, my particular VPN stopped working.  It's not a perfect program, and I've encountered small glitches before, so I just assumed this was one of those instances.  The tricky thing was, without a VPN, the Firewall blocked my access (naturally) to my VPN's website, so I couldn't access their troubleshooting page from home.  Fine, I thought.  I'll wait until I get to work, and use the very reliable foreign-routed internet there.  Of course, my company blocks my VPN's website too, not because of the Firewall, but out of corporate security policies.  Finally, I got my hands on the VPN's support email address through the gracious help of a friend, and gChat (thanks, Pete).

As it turns out, my VPN trouble was not an isolated issue.  As I found out from the support staff (which is actually very reliable, something other service providing companies could learn from), China has apparently updated the Great Firewall.  Since it was powerless to stop disguised IP addresses, it has managed to block the disguising process, making it impossible for VPN users, at least the ones that use my VPN, to access the VPN servers in the first place.

My friendly VPN people tell me they're developing a workaround strategy, that might be able to circumvent the Firewall's bolstered defenses.  What's interesting to me is the consistency and adaptability the Chinese have demonstrated in their efforts to quash the spread of free ideas throughout the country.  VPNs are essential to business here -- my company, for example, wouldn't be able to function in Shanghai or Beijing if it didn't employ some sort of VPN technology.   And while I assume that my company's VPN is far more sophisticated and secure than the one I use at home, who's to say the Chinese won't figure out a way to update the Firewall even further, to block even the best VPNs?  There's a quiet war going on here, between the censors and those who seek to ignore them.  I have always assumed the good guys would win -- the internet is far too powerful, ubiquitous, and adaptable to smother.  But China scored a few points for its cause this week, a dubious portent, perhaps, for things to come.  For those who live here who are used to the privilege of free information, the Firewall and its apparently increasing reach provides stark perspective that information, ideas, opinions, and speech are not everywhere and always such simple and assumed aspects of life.

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On tap for tonight: KTV (karaoke) with the Chinese colleagues.  Always reliable for some good and (mostly) clean fun.

What I've Learned: November

I'm not sure how long this particular recurring blog theme will survive.  My monthly ongoing lists of what I've learned here have been getting shorter, and I should've seen this coming.  The biggest change that I've undergone since arriving here, short of perhaps my strong belief that everyone should live for a while in a country other than the one in which they were born (if they can), has been that I'm not nearly as acutely aware of the differences in my surroundings here as compared with what I'm 'used to', and what I am learning from them.  (Pardon that egregious run-on sentence).  Put simply: I'm used to it -- China -- now.  I live here.  I noted in late September or early October that I was starting to feel like I lived here, rather than just on an trip or adventure in China.  That process has continued over time.  The fact that the lists of what I'm learning here are getting shorter doesn't mean I'm getting less out of the experience.  It's just becoming more about the experience itself, on macro level, and less about the little things that I pick up.  But anyway, here's what I learned in the month of November:

• November 11th is the unofficial holiday for singles in China.  Get it?  11/11.  The day to celebrate being a 1!  Apparently the traditional celebration is KTV (karaoke).
• Explaining the concept of verb tense to Chinese people, even my colleagues at work who speak decent English, is tricky.
• The Vietnamese are a very proud people, more so than I've noticed amongst Chinese or other cultures (other than Americans, perhaps).  The victories over the American and French in the 20th Century hold very palpable places in the historical memory there, and those memories are visible on the streets and in the museums of Hanoi, as well as in the conversation with the Vietnamese themselves.
• I apparently look like Dexter, from the TV show.  My Chinese friends have started calling me Dex.  It's a cool nickname, but I can't say I agree...

• The Chinese are obsessed with marriage, and relationships; the Vietnamese are even more obsessed.  One Vietnamese guy offered me his friend to marry.  I think he was joking, but I can't be sure.  His friend told me that in her village, men traditionally brought water buffaloes to the family of the girl who he wanted to marry.  I immediately set off in search of water buffaloes.
• Expats band together.  This has its downsides, making it too easy to comfortably hang out with English-speaking Westerners, as detailed in a few of my blog posts.  But it also has its upsides, like on Thanksgiving, when it was very clear that a lot of the misgivings about being so far away from home, which I try to suppress in favor of having the best possible time here, are shared by all of my friends.
• Those expats that band together are also incredibly diverse.  I have met with (and live with) some of the most varied and different people I have ever met.  Even the Americans comprise a vast swath of humanity, with very little in common other than that they are all abroad together in China.
• I am very bad at shopping in general, particularly for other people, and even more particularly for souveniers.
• The Vietnamese language, which has Sinitic roots, has various similarities to Chinese despite sounding totally different.  Various simple words have identical sounds (if you ignore tones, of which Vietnamese has six, compared to Chinese's four).
• Chinese people (or perhaps Asians in general, just to make this gross generalization even more offensive) appear to be incapable of finding their assigned seats on an airplane without flight attendant assistance.  Seriously, the tickets say, in big letters, a number followed by a letter.  This number-letter combo corresponds directly to a seat, which is displayed in similar prominance along the aisles of every airplane.  Is it really that hard?
• The travel bug continues to solidify its residence within me; the more I do it, the more I want to do it.  While I've never thought that I would live abroad forever, I think I will be constantly thinking of the next trip.  These three months have made two things abundantly clear: there is way, way too much to see, and I want to see as much of it as I can.
• In that same light, one of the reasons I'm out here is for adventure -- weekends in the rainy mountains, nights on a random boat in a beautfiul bay in Vietnam, intense darts matches at bars around Shanghai, Chinese karaoke -- the randomness of chance ocurrances for a stranger in a now-slightly-less-strange land. 

Weekend Away: Moganshan

When I lived in Shanghai during the summer of 2008, the one "off-the-beaten-path" place that I was frequently encouraged to go was Moganshan (Mogan Mountain), an enclave of villages and mountains about 120 miles west of Shanghai.  I didn't make it out there then, but remembered the advice when I moved back here, and have been trying to find a good time to go ever since.  This weekend I finally managed to go.  I had my suspicions that Mother Nature would disagree with notion that the first weekend in December is a "good time" to explore Moganshan.  An old couple who lives in my apartment building, and who knows me as one of the foreigners in the building who can speak Chinese, told me that I was an idiot for going to Moganshan in December.  "You should go in July," they told me.  "Shi'er yue tai leng le, xiayu xia de tai duo le (December is too cold and it rains too much)."  While I can't argue with them at all -- the weather was pretty brutal (more on that below) -- I had a very pleasant weekend indeed.

Most of all, it was nice to escape the city for a while.  I am a city dweller, born and raised, and likely will always be.  But part of what I enjoy about living in an urban environment is my heightened appreciation for the peace and quiet that comes with retreating into the woods, mountains, beach, or lakes.  Other than the 24 hours on Halong Bay in Vietnam, which can hardly be described as "peaceful" considering the city multitutde of tourist boats, I realized that I haven't spend any time outside a major city since mid August (and then for only two days).  So it was nice to get away from the hustle and bustle of Shanghai, to breathe air that wasn't palpably polluted, and to listen to the sound of very little at all, save for rain drops and wind.

The decision to head to Moganshan for this particular weekend was made easy when Pamela (my Chilean roommate) extended an invitation to join a whole group of her friends who were planning a weekend up in the mountains.  I eagerly tagged along.  A few of the guys organized the logistics: a bus to take us from Shanghai to the mountain and back, and a cabin/hostel/lodge, which we had enough people to rent out entirely, all for less money (and far less hassle) than it would have been to get there on my own.  All I had to do was show up.

The group of travelers was an eclectic mix of personalities and nationalities, all of them with either a direct or indirect connection to Maersk, the international shipping conglomerate where most of my companions are employed here in Shanghai.  Perhaps the only disappointment of the trip was that I was literally the only person in the group who wasn't in a committed relationship (either dating seriously or married) with someone else on the trip.  OK I lied.  I wasn't the only person not in a relationship.  One of the couples brought their 2 year old daughter.

Had I known that it was to be a couples retreat, I may not have chosen to come.  In retrospect, therefore, I'm glad I didn't have that news ahead of time, because everyone was very friendly and welcoming.  I felt a little like a 21st wheel, but not nearly enough to ruin the fun.  The weekend away was an unofficial farewell to two of the guys in the group who will be leaving Shanghai in a couple of weeks, so it would have been easy to feel like I was intruding on their bittersweet last hurrah.  But I didn't.  After a few hours on the bus out to the mountain (during which, I might add, people did not wait to begin the party), I was well on my way to being part of the group.


                           

We stayed here, at the Prodigy Outdoor Base, so-called because the owner doesn't want people thinking of it as a hotel, but rather more of a, well, base for outdoor activity.  We had enough people to rent out the whole cabin, so other than a few staff there to prepare the meals which came with our rental, we had the place to ourselves.

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These three pics are from the roof terrace of the cabin, when the weather was semi-clear.  Evidence that Moganshan can be quite beautiful when you can, well, see.  Keep these in mind for later.

Looking down on the tiny village of Houwu, where the cabin was located.  It's basically a village of three streets, one on top of the other on top of the other, with very steep steps connecting the levels.  We didn't see much evidence of life here, other than the ducks and chickens milling about

And then there was Saturday, our full day in Moganshan, when we braved the elements and took a very long hike over the mountains to Moganshan Village.  The hike was actually quite fun, despite the awful weather, but after several hours of trekking through the woods, undergoing a combination of freezing temperatures, cold rain, and heavy sweating from such intense hiking with so many layers on, everyone was very glad to be finished.

The view from the bamboo forest through which we hiked to get to Moganshan Village.  Literally every tree was bamboo, for miles on end -- quite remarkable, for someone who grew up on Seventy-Eighth Street and Broadway.

A path to....somewhere, we hoped, but we sure as hell couldn't see.

This "view" is from the highest point from our very steep upward ascent towards the village.  There is a sign nearby that says "Moganshan Scenic View Point," so one would have to assume that on a normal day, this would be pretty stunning.  In a way, it still is, for the lack of visibility.

The view from the porch of Moganshan Lodge, in downtown Moganshan Village.  I promise, there's a town here, through the mist.  It's not big, per se, but it's there. The lodge provided warmth, shelter, and refreshments for the weary hikers after a long day in the cold and cloudy rain.

Just Another Single Guy in Shanghai

The Chinese, perhaps surprisingly, are fascinated to the point of obsession by my love life.  Or, really, my current lack thereof: they are consistently perplexed and disappointed by the fact that I am single.  This feeling is focused primarily on my female colleagues, but it extends to males and non-work friends as well.  The following conversation, which occured about ten minutes ago, is a good example of what I'm talking about:

Me:  Hey Ellen, do you know if Chelsea is here today?

Ellen (a bit taken aback):  Um...no I don't think so...why?

Me: Oh, just needed to talk to her about something, didn't see her at her desk.

Ellen (a bit concerned):  Oh... I'm sorry.  I don't think she's single anymore.


I shouldn't have to explain that I have no interest in Chelsea whatsoever, but I let me just say for the record's sake: I have no interest in Chelsea whatsoever. I needed to talk to her about work-related things (the gall of me, to expect to do that, you know, at work), and instead I receive unsolicited information about her relationship status.  Earlier today, one of the office managers asked me if I would be taking anyone to the office holiday dinner (we're allowed one guest).  When I said no, she emailed responded in Chinese something to the effect of "how pitiful. you're so lonely :( " (emoticon was in her email).  A few weeks ago, I showed up to work in a blazer that one of my roommates had given me, and pretty much all of my female colleagues assumed (hoped, in fact) that I was going on a date after work.

Never has my lack of a girlfriend been such a defining characteristic of my personality, to the point where people assume that if I want to speak to someone, it must be with ulterior motives (or if it isn't, it damn well should be, because no self-respecting twenty-four year old man would be without a woman in his life).  It's very clearly a cultural thing, and one that isn't necessarily restricted to Chinese.  Vietnamese people that I met on my recent trip would ask me if I was married, often within ten seconds of meeting me.  It's a part of one's life that seems far more important to peope in this part of the world than it does in the West, where staying single until your 30s is not only not frowned upon, but is often encouraged. 

The Hanoi Hilton

On October 26, 1967, John McCain's plane was shot down over Truc Bach lake in Hanoi.  He ejected, and was captured in the middle of the lake after almost drowning.  He was taken to Hoa Lo prison in downtown Hanoi, where he would live under well-documented brutal conditions for about five and a half years until his release in 1973.

The prison, christened sarcastically "The Hanoi Hilton" by its American captives during the war, has mostly been demolished and built over.  The gatehouse to the prison still stands and has been turned into a museum for public view.  I visited while I was in Hanoi, and was pretty blown away by what I found there.

Visually speaking, the museum isn't all too impressive.  Since much of the original prison no longer exists, much of what you can actually see inside the museum are rather absurd-looking dioramas of prisoners in recreated cells.  Perhaps the most jarring visual exhibit is a real-life guillotine, used by the French during their colonial rule of Vietnam, when the prison was used for Vietnamese political dissidents.  But in general, you didn't really get a feel for the prison, or how it was when it was operational.  This is understandable, since the prison itself no longer exists.

The museum's real power stems from its narrative, which is simultaneously fascinating and patently ridiculous.  The first half of the museum deals with the prison's original use: by the French, on Vietnamese people.  There is no shortage of condmenation of the French treatment of the Vietnamese during the colonial period.  And much of this condemnation appears to be warranted -- if the museum is to be believed (and despite what comes next, I think this part probably should be), the conditions in the prison were brutal.  Prisoners were kept shackled, by their feet, in square, stone cells, many of which were on an incline.  They were therefore forced into the most uncomfortable of positions, which they had to endure for hours if not days on end.  Of course, those were the lucky ones -- many were beaten, tortured, or killed (hence the guillotine).  There are dioramas throughout this initial exhibit, many of them more absurd-looking than actually effective, that depict the conditions for the Vietnamese prisoners during French colonial rule.

There is nothing to suggest (and quite a lot of evidence proving otherwise) that such treatment did not carry over to the Vietnamese treatment of American POWs during the Vietnam War.  And yet, that's exactly what the museum argues in the second half of the walkthrough: that American POWs were not only treated in line with the provisions of the Geneva Convention, but were offered quite comfortable lifestyles indeed.  The museum's treatment of the prison during the Vietnam War is comical -- the dioramas disappear, and in their place are trinkets like cigarettes and playing cards, blatantly on display to suggest that what American POWs experienced at Hoa Lo was nothing more than controlled leisure.  There is a video on display, obviously coerced, with prisoners sporting bandages, bloody faces, and black eyes, similing together as they prepare a Christmas feast in prison.  One sign goes so far as to argue that the quality of life for American POWs at Hoa Lo was, by every measure, better than that of Vietnamese living in Hanoi.  You would think, from the narrative at the museum, that the nickname Hanoi Hilton was not sarcastic at all.

Perhaps none of this is surprising.  Vietnam is still a palpably communist country, considerably more so than China is, and propaganda is one of the government's most effective weapons.  But the Hoa Lo exhibition is stark evidence, almost satirically so, that museums inherently have politics.  Every curating decision is made with an agenda.  I would just like to assume that for most museums, at least one prong of that agenda is objectivity.  Even museums like Yad Vashem in Jerusalem or the Newseum in Washington, which deal with topics so wrought with politics and emotion, do so with the promise that facts reign supreme over all.  Perhaps I'm spoiled by the terrific museums I went to as a child, but I really do think a museum ought to be this way.  Not so at Hoa Lo.
 

Halong Bay

After spending three nights in Hanoi with my friend Sam, I ventured outside the capital to Halong Bay. Recently pegged by UNESCO as one of the seven modern wonders of the world, Halong Bay is located about 100 miles east of Hanoi in the Gulf of Tonkin.  There are countless tours that bus eager tourists from around the world to the bay -- most of these tours involve an overnight on a boat, as was the one I ultimately decided to do.  It was a fun trip, with friendly fellow travelers, lots of good but highly Westernized and heavy Vietnamese food on the boat, and lots of picturesque sightseeing.  As luck would have it, about 8 Chinese people traveling together were on my trip.  I didn't let on for a while that I spoke Mandarin.  This proved useful when they started making fun of our Vietnamese staffers.  Ultimately, however, I invited one of them in Chinese to sit next to me on the boat.  Everyone was very surprised and impressed.

Halong Bay is home to over a thousand islands, many of them just rock formations that jut jaggedly out of the sea in terrific shapes and angles.  It's a beautiful place, one of the more stunning that I've ever been, and I'm very glad I got to see it when I did.  This is because I'm not particularly confident that it will survive for more than ten or so more years.  If the physical majesty of the bay was the major takeaway from my overnight, a close second would be the glaring environmental concerns posed by all of the human contact the bay has to endure.  Hundreds of ships carrying thousands of visitors sail into the same small circle of water every day.  It is a huge boon for the Vietnamese economy that relies on tourism, but one can't help but notice the damage it causes as well.  The water is visibly tinged with oil, the smell and sound of boats dominate, and there is little to no wildlife to speak of.  My trip ended at around noon, and within fifteen minutes they had another group filing onto the boat that my group had just vacated.  It's a well oiled machine (no pun intended) -- groups are constantly on the bay, to the potential detriment of the bay itself.

So if you have the chance to get to Vietnam, go to Halong Bay.  You might not be able to for much longer!

I wasn't able to capture the crowds very effectively, but this is the entrance to the harbor in Halong City.  Zounds of people mill around until their tour leaders tell them that their boat is ready, at which point they are ushered through the crowds to the docks.

The little houses are used by fishermen and kayaks, which we got to paddle.  Two of the Chinese people who had never kayaked before capsized their boat and fell in.  I tried (and failed) not to laugh.

We visited an enormous cave in one of the rock formation islands.  They had installed funky colored lights throughout the cave, for which I was thankful since we wouldn't have been able to see otherwise.  But for some reason, the lights coupled with the flash made the cave almost impossible to capture effectively on film.  Looking at this and my other cave photos now, I have trouble visualizing how the cave actually looked.  This is the first (and smallest) of three chambers.  It was really much more impressive than this picture makes it seem.

Stalactites.  Or stalagmites?  I recall from somewhere that stalaCtites are the ones that hang down, cause they're on the Ceiling, and stalaGmites jut up cause they're on the Ground, but what do I know.

The bay (and a small fraction of the boats) from the mouth of the cave.

The highlight for most people at Halong Bay is the sunset.  It's certainly what I was looking forward to most.  As far as sunsets go, I think I've seen more impressive colors elsewhere (Montana and Cape Cod both come to mind).  But you'd be hard pressed to beat the setting.  These two were taken on top of a steep mountain on a beach island, which we climbed up to catch the sunset.  Not shown here are the dozens of people jostling for position as everyone tries to snap the perfect sunset photo.  It was pretty funny, actually.  Very few people had any time to just enjoy the sunset -- they were all too worried about getting that postcard photo.

This one was taken from our boat, and is probably my favorite picture from the trip.  As Sam quipped when I got back to Hanoi and proudly showed her this picture, "Everyone becomes an amazing photographer at Halong Bay."

We had a cooking class on board the boat before dinner.  And by "class" I mean our Vietnamese tour guide showed us how to make spring rolls, had us each try once, and then just made more of them herself for us to eat.  My spring roll fell apart, naturally.

A view of the bay the next morning, which was cloudy and rainy (good timing, since we basically just cruised around and ate both breakfast and lunch, until it was time to get off the boat).

And I made some friends!  From left to right, we have Udo and Sara, a German couple, and Patrizia, an attorney from Switzerland.

A Shanghai Thanksgiving

Thousands of miles away, on the other side of the world, belts are bursting and tryptophan is just starting to catalyze the telltale food coma of a good turkey dinner.  Football is on television, family and friends are home for the long weekend, and everything is as it should be for one of the favorite American holidays of the year.  It's Thanksgiving night in America.

There are those who simply live for Thanksgiving.  They gather their nuclear and extended families in force for huge cookouts in the backyard, preceeded by friendly (or not-so-friendly) touch football games, and succeeded by watching the pros do it on television.  They cook and cook (and cook), and put more effort into the production and joy of Thanksgiving than any other day of the year.  And while I completely understand why, I am not one of those people.  I love Thanksgiving, but I'm not sure I would have ever classified myself as one of those people for whom a calendar year is simply the fourth Thursday of November...and 364 days that aren't Thanksgiving.  For me, it's always been about two things: my family (we tended to keep things small: Mom, Dad, Noah, and the grandparents), and more recently, my tight circle of friends, for whom Thanksgiving represented perhaps the only time of year when we would all descend back on New York City at the same time.

It's simpler than that, though.  I realize now that the value of Thanksgiving can be described in one word: home.  This marks the first Thanksgiving in my twenty-five years of life that I have not spent at home.  This is also true for many of my newly made American friends in Shanghai.  And even for the grizzled veterans, who have been abroad for several years, it seems the idea of Thanksgiving away from home never becomes normal.

Rather than wallow in the homesickness that naturally comes with spending Thanksgiving in Shanghai, 30 expats got together for a potluck Thanksgiving supper last night.  I was very lucky to be one of them.  It was hosted by four teacher colleagues of my roommate Franco, all of whom I had met several times before and would, at this point, count them as my own friends too.  You could tell from the slightly detached look in most of the guests' eyes that everyone was missing home at least a little bit.  So we focused instead on each other, and, of course, on food: there was turkey, and gravy, and several varieites of stuffing, sweet carrots, and pasta salad, macaroni and cheese, and fried mac n cheese balls (made by me and Franco), sweet potato mash, all sorts of delicious desserts, and more.  One girl pointed out that the food last night was miles better than anything her family ever made at Thanksgiving.  (Mom -- I can confidently say the same was NOT true for me, so don't get your knickers in a twist).

After eating our fill, the hosts called everyone into their spacious living room.  They graciously thanked all of us for coming, and asked that we go around the room and say briefly what we were thankful for.  The responses were heartfelt, honest, and open.  Some of them hilarious and some of them moving, almost all of them were driven by love.  That love manifested itself in an outpouring of appreciation for our friends in Shanghai, many of whom were sitting together in that living room last night, but it also extended away, in myriad directions, to the Thanksgiving dinners everyone knew they were missing.  Everyone, it seemed, felt they were exactly where they needed to be last night, while simultaneously wishing they could also be at home with their families.  It was powerful and it was real, and perhaps one of the more memorable Thanksgivings of my life despite not spending it with the people I love the most.  On a cold, rainy night in Shanghai, 30 people who chose to leave home created, together, a temporary home, and gave thanks for the collective fortune that allowed us to do so.

****

I promise there's still more coming from the Vietnam trip; I just haven't had time to sort through the pictures.  This weekend, for sure.

Vietnam: Hanoi Highlights

Well, it's been a while.  Happy Thanksgiving to the folks back home.  It's certainly a bit weird to be waking up this morning and have it just be another working Thursday.  Needless say I miss home, friends, family -- a running theme of this blog, to be sure -- but I've been getting much busier of late (to the unfortunate detriment of the frequency of my blog posts).  And I think this is precisely the right time to be getting busier.

I've been to Vietnam and back since I last posted -- my first trip abroad since moving to China -- and it was, in a word, great.  That's it for curbing my prolix tendencies, though; there's just too much to write about my trip to Hanoi and Halong Bay, and too many pictures to share to fit into one post.  So the next few posts, hopefully with greater frequency than they have been in recent weeks, will be about Vietnam: from Hanoi, to Halong Bay, to the food, to the Hanoi Hilton, to the people, to the language, and more.  If moving to China was primarily about immersing myself in a language and culture that intrigued me so much, then the ability to travel to faraway places that aren't so faraway to China was a close secondary reason.

So we'll start simple, with just a few highlights, in no order in particular, from walking the streets of Hanoi, the capital of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam:

Beer drinkers pay heed: the Vietnamese drink beer.  I wouldn't go so far as to say they drink a lot, but they do like their beer, and specifically this kind of beer: Bia Hoi.  Bia Hoi, which literally means "gas beer" in Vietnamese, is a government-owned brewing company that provides daily batches of light lager to many local establishments around town.  The beer is not brewed to keep -- the restaurants that serve the beer, which are also called Bia Hois, get fresh batches every morning, sell the beer until it's finished, and then rinse (I wouldn't be surprised if many skipped the rinsing step) and repeat the next day.  A beer costs anywhere from 25 cents to 40 cents US.  This will become a running theme: Vietnam is cheap.

This architectural oddity is known simply as the One Pillar Pagoda.  It was built over a millenium ago to a Buddhist Bodhisattva, and was destroyed by the French in 1954 after their colonial presence in the country was terminated.  It has since been rebuilt, and has become one of the go-to sites for tourists.

You all know this guy: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.  He stands prominently in the middle of a park (that is referred to simply as Lenin Park) on a main Hanoi drag.  I met a Latvian family who was eagerly taking pictures of themselves in front of the statue -- vestiges of former Soviet Union pride, I suppose.  They were somewhat surprised when they asked me whether I knew who this was and I said yes.

This is just one of many examples of the very palpable presence of communism in Vietnam.  The streets of Shanghai, glittered with the gold advertisements of international merchandisers, seems positively cosmopolitan and capitalist compared to Hanoi, which has very little in terms of commercial ads.  In their stead, they have standard communism signage calling for the prolonged life of the state, family harmony, and the like.  They also have a neighborhood watch, which comes around every morning and makes announcements, presumably promoting the same sort of ideals.  These announcements happen here too, but far more rarely.

This is one of my favorite pictures from the trip.  This street houses real people -- and real trains.  The track is live; in fact, it's the main artery into Hanoi Train Station.  Train traffic is low by Western or Chinese standards, but the residents of this drag must take cover whenever a train rumbles by.

Hong Kiem Lake -- the unofficial center of Hanoi.  It is situated in the center of the Old Quarter, a tight, compact neighborhood full of windy streets, street peddlers, backpacker hostels, bars, and restaurants.  Hanoi is full of lakes, and is sometimes referred to as the "city of lakes."  This one is the most famous, probably because of its cultural significance.  As the story goes, an emperor was boating on this lake when a turtle rose from the waters and snatched his sword.  The turtle dove back down into the depths, sword clutched between its teeth, and all of the emperor's search and rescue efforts failed to recover either turtle or sword.  The emperor decided that the turtle represented a messenger from the gods, who had granted him the sword to assist him in rebellion against the Chinese Ming Dynasty.  They were now reclaiming the heavenly sword.  The emperor erected a shrine to the turtle god, which now sits on an island in the center of the lake.  Turtles are quite revered in Vietnam, both because of this story and due to their representation of longevity.

On my first day in Hanoi, an old lady carrying this thing stopped and tried to sell me some bananas.  I hesitated -- I was hungry, and wanted a banana -- and she proceeded to put the bar on my shoulder and offer to take a picture of me.  Cool, I thought, a goofy picture to remember the trip.  Then, of course, she refused to let me go without buying not 1, but a whole bunch of bananas.  When I told her I only wanted to pay for one, she started hitting me, saying "I take picture, you pay! I take picture, you pay!"  This is, as they say, the oldest trick in the book.  Fruit peddlers use their devices to lure unsuspecting tourists into taking a picture, after which they guilt them into paying for the picture -- and a lot of fruit.

Nothing like a good old haircut in the park in Hanoi.  I was told by one of the roommates of the friend with whom I stayed while there, that this barely scrapes the surface of what you can see done on the street.  His most bizarre sighting: dental surgery.

This is Truc Bach Lake, another of the three lakes I walked around during my exploration of Hanoi.  This one has significance to Americans: it is the site where John McCain's plane crashed after being shot down in 1967.

This is West Lake, the granddaddy of Hanoi's many lakes.  Its shoreline winds around the lake for 17 kilometers (about 10 miles), making it Hanoi's largest lake by far.  This guy is in the lake, fishing.  In the 10 minutes I sat by the lake, I saw three separate successful fishing missions.  The water seemed to glow a bit, with either sewage or radiation or something bad, so I'm not sure how I feel about those fish.

This is the presidential palace.  Yeah, it's yellow.

After beloved leader Ho Chi Minh's death, his body was embalmed and preserved for viewing here, at the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum.  I'm told that every year, Ho takes a trip to Russia where his body undergoes formaldehyde treatment to help keep him "fresh."  It's supposed to be quite eerie, seeing him chilling there,  a la Jeremy Bentham at LSE.  Alas,  one of the (only) tragedies of my trip was that the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum was closed for viewing during the time I was free to see it.

More to come!  Happy Thanksgiving to all -- you are missed in Shanghai :)