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.