Shocked

These cartoons were made by my students. Earlier this year they had an assignment. Write a letter as if your friend was coming to Shanghai from a western country, how would they experience culture shock? They had good answers so when it came to write the exams the other teacher and I decided to add a little twist and put ourselves in the picture. I especially liked these. One I like because my facial hair is out of control.  Another I like because of the last frame with people walking around someone that is hurt (that happens). One I like other because of the phrase, “what in the name of Chiang Kai Shek!” and the last one because it was thoughtful. There you can see I am experiencing shock as someone eats spiders and I point, then I see people pushing to get on the subway and I point. Finally in the third frame you see a bus driver seeing me pointing and thinking, “I thought pointing was rude?” A great example of the different ways that people see behavior.  Culture shock has abounded for me here in Shanghai, mainly in a negative way. Most things I have gotten used to. Spitting, peeing in bushes in plain view, picking your nose in plain view, talking at volume 10, littering, standing in doorways/stopping at the mouths of escalators are all things I think are uncouth, but I quickly get over them. Probably the one thing that does continue to bother me is the way people push to get on the subway. Maybe this is because I am often directly involved. I would think pushing to get a seat would be rude, but perhaps rational. Pushing to get into a subway car when the people in your way are the ones coming out is just stupid.  In any case, I won’t have to deal with these things much longer. In two months I will be finishing here in Shanghai and then heading to the Canada and the US for some conferences and time with family. After that, we are heading to Penang. I’m sure a whole host of new annoyances await me, but at least for now I can imagine that nothing will bother me. Just to freshen up, I have order Culture Shock: Malaysia to get a handle on customs. I remember looking for customs for China and some of them are very true, like savings face, but most of the things I dealt with everyday I never learned in a guidebook. Thinking back, there are very few things I will miss about Shanghai, but I will miss my students. They have been some of the best students I have ever had. There is something about the Confucianism in East Asia which makes the students some of the best from a teacher’s point of view. Sometimes I think about teaching in the U.S. again and it makes me wonder if I ever can after being so spoiled in East Asia.  The whole Malaysia experience will be a fresh one. Neither Aya nor I have ever been to Malaysia and the job I am taking will be a new experience as it is in the IB system. We are probably heading in other new territory as we intend to stay for a while and to start a family, but I think that is all better saved for a future post.  For now I will enjoy the things I do about Shanghai, especially my students, and dream of the summer. It is almost here. 

Malthusian Nightmare

"This natural inequality of the two powers, of population, and of production of the earth, and that great law of our nature which must constantly keep their effects equal, form the great difficulty that appears to me insurmountable in the way to the perfectibility of society." Thomas Malthus wrote those words hundreds of years ago and if he were alive today, standing on Nanjing rd. in Shanghai, during the peak of the October holiday, we would be shocked at the very least. China is a nation of people, that is China’s strength. The flood of cheap labor pouring into the cities from the country side powers the supply of goods that enter the global market at a fraction of the cost of other country’s production. It is that mass of people that most people think of when they think of China and I am sure now that my mother has been here and literally pressed the flesh, she would agree. I think more than the great wall at Mutianyu, more than the Forbidden City, more than being at the top of the Shanghai Financial Center, my mother will remember the massive amount of people she encountered in China. People, people, everywhere. Of course it was holiday break and we were going to some of the most popular tourist sites, popular for foreign and domestic tourists alike. She had come to spend some time seeing where I was living and working, but also to meet up with my wife’s parents. It was great for killing two birds with one stone, or really three in this case. We got to see our parents, have them see each other, and do some sight seeing around Shanghai that we probably wouldn’t have done on our own. My mother came about a week before Aya’s parents so we spent some time here in Shanghai getting her adjusted to the time difference, which I don’t think ever really took. Then we spent a few days in Beijing. Beijing, as usual, was crowded and dirty. Going to see the sights felt mostly like an exercise of pushing and shoving Chinese people, but we did get to a few places. One day we even hired a driver, who was polite, but oddly uncooperative at times. We had booked him to take us to the Great Wall at Mutianyu, then back to Beijing and to a kung fu show later in the day. As it turned out my mother got sick on the ride back. Luckily she had a plastic bag from a "I climbed the great wall" t-shirt. Later, she jokingly said it might have been more fitting had it said, "I puked on the great wall". She went to go rest in the hotel when we returned to Beijing. Faced with 2.5 hours until the show I asked the driver to take me to lunch near the Lama Temple. He said I should take the subway and then asked if I was sure I had enough time. Well, I certainly would have if he would have just driven me there. I did end up having enough time, but just barely, to go have lunch and then make it back to collect my mother and go to the show, but as it turned out she was still ill. I ended up canceling the show and returning to spend the night in the hotel room. I was actually kind of relieved to be sharing a 15X10 ft space with less than 15X10 people. The next day we got up bright and early to make our way back to Shanghai, but because of my negligence we went to the wrong terminal and missed our flight. This is the first time, out of 80 or so flights I have taken, that this has happened. At least now I can say that I don’t spend too much time in airports . We got another flight and made our way back to Shanghai where Aya’s parents were soon to be arriving. Unfortunately my mom was exhausted from being sick and traveling and so missed out on the “cannonball” taxi ride from the airport that I took with Aya’s parents. Apparently there are some rules involving the distance of a fare and your place in the queue when you return to the airport. Our driver was a bit reluctant to take our fare, but determined to get rid of us as fast as possible and so drove at 150 on the highway back to our apartment (that is about 93 miles an hour, for you km to miles folks).The next few days were a blur of breakfasts at our apartment followed by trips around the city and to nearby cities, dinners, river cruise, and other sight seeing. It seemed to go by very fast and as we sat at home Sunday night, having delivered both sets of parents to the airport, we reflected on the past week of activity. It’s always nice to have family, but also nice to see them go. My mother, despite getting very sick, held up pretty well. Aya and I started talking about the future and taking care of our parents in their old age, the conclusion of which was this; I hope my mother can be resilient enough spend her old age in a new location.

Fun Facts about Shanghai

Some days I hate living here, some days I love it. Most days Shanghai is out of my mind, I just go to work, come home, and have a normal day. Other days I get pushed on the subway, listen to people hawking and spitting, and breathe the heavy air. Yet other days I think, wow, what a hungry and amazing people I live with. What a city!
Shanghai, and China generally, is terribly crowded. It is something that I don’t really like, but I can see how it has contributed to China’s strength. Shanghai is a symbol of that progression. A jewel at the turn of the century, marred in the communist revolution, aim of ambition when China started to welcome capitalism, today, Shanghai is the largest city in the most populated country on Earth. The sheer size and speed at which the city has expanded is amazing. It’s location in the delta of the Yangtze and on the Yellow River helped the city flourish into a major center of commerce between the east and the west, and in 2005, Shanghai became the world’s largest cargo port. Shanghai has the world's most extensive bus system, but honestly I only take the subway because the buses are too complicated for me.
Shanghai is one of the most populated cities in China. it has a permanent resident population of over 14 million, of which 12 million live in the urban areas. Shanghai population accounts for 1.1% of the Chinese population which in the most populous country on earth is really saying something. The average density of 2059 inhabitants per square kilometers (3854 in the urban areas) is phenomenal. Add on to that a huge population of itinerant workers, probably numbering two million and you have human soup. I feel like I never have a moment alone in this city and when I read numbers like that I can be pretty sure that it’s more than a feeling. (Boston anyone?)
The tallest skyscraper in Shanghai, the Shanghai World Financial Center, is now the third tallest in the world. The second tallest building in the world, which is now under construction, will be the Shanghai Tower. It will come in at a height of 2,073 feet when it’s completed.
I often hear that China aims to make Shanghai a “world city”. The way things are going, I think it already is.