Five-a- day – Gucun Forest Park

I had the pleasure of accompanying Sinead to her first half marathon.   In celebration I want to share a five-a-day of our trip to Gucun Forest Park.  It was a fine Saturday morning.   Luckily the pollution levels dropped and it was okay for her to run.  (The week before was a terrible pollution week for Shanghai and we were watching the level carefully all that morning.) 

1)  #2064.  Sinead gets ready for the race.    It was amazing watching Sinead do this run.  It was really hard, even for a kid who runs between 8-11K a day.  The weather started out kind of cool, but heated up pretty quickly.  I ran a 5K (ok --  I actually jogged a 5K. )

2)  It was lovely to experience Gucun park, which is only about a year old and is the largest park in Shanghai – 180 hectares.   You have to pay to get in, which makes it less crowded than some parks   The park is on the 7 line on the Metro.   Local families who come here seem to come for the whole day, which means bringing a  6-man tents, lots of food  and a few kites.  You can also barbecue in the park in designated areas.  There is a  creepy children’s carnival zone, which is kind of rusty – so I think it was there before the park was built.  The walkways and trails in the park are really nice though.  www.gucunpark.net

3)  Here she comes.  And there she goes…  Sinead is inspiring in that she is running to raise money for her National Honor Society charity “Run to the Sichuan.”  Run to The Sichuan Facebook page 

Here she comes...

There she goes.

4)  Family on an outing coming into the park.    I love the tutus on the twins. 

5) Gucan Park has a lot of amenities including these wacky four person or six person bikes.  They are kind of hard to steer, so everyone goes slowly and zigzags.  They reminded me of  the H.R. Pufnstuf show from when I was a kid.

Five-A-Day – Fruit

Yes, you heard me right.  I’m going to write about fruit today. 

 

This is the one of my favorite times of year in China.  It is really the volume and variety of the fruit that is impressive.   Don’t get me wrong – the strawberry season is fantastic – starts early – February or March -- and runs late – June.   The summer watermelon season is also awesome with these seedy babies available in yellow and red all summer long, with farmers selling off their trucks and carts across the city.  And well, peach season is passionate – sweet like Georgia’s best -- the Shanghai-ese wax poetically about their peaches, similar to Kramer on Steinfeld when he goes on about the fictional "Mackinaw peach" from Oregon, which are ripe for only two weeks a year.  

So, here are my top five choices for the Fall:

1) Tiny Mandarin Oranges – These are not canned babies you get with some crappy Oriental Chicken Salad from Wendy’s.  These are the real deal.  They peel like a Clementine but the taste is sweeter and they almost slide down your throat.  You can get them everywhere and they are cheap, cheap, cheap.  When we first came to Shanghai on our look-see the driver bought us a bag and it was this ice-breaking moment between us, the broker and the driver.   Them --  probably sick of us.  Us -- contemplating the decision we made to move to China.  We all sat there eating sweet little oranges in the car.

 

                                                                          

Mandarin Oranges and a lime for scale

2) Huge grapefruit with thick skins.  This grapefruit is incredible sweet – almost like that "Ruby Red" grapefruit juice.  The skin is insanely thick, which protects the fruit.  The fruit itself is sweet and the skin of the grapefruit segments is very tender.   

Grapefruit and lemon for scale

3) Dragon fruit.  Yes, it looks like a dragon but the white fruit with black dots is heaven.  I had never had it before moving to Asia. Think a cross between watermelon and a kiwi.  

4) Yellow pomegranates.  Juice baby juice.   I love pomegranates but the work – oh vey.  In Shanghai they toss them into a juicer on the street and make this fabulous pomegranate juice.  No worries about seeds.  They are tossed at least twice during the juicing process.  

5)     Mangoes.  Freakishly big and very yummy.  There is a season for very small mangoes in the spring – different variety.  The early fall brings these jumbo mangoes.  Sweet, they fall off the pit – no stringiness at all.  For my Yankee friends – these are the opposite of those stringy mangoes you get in a bodega.  The closest thing I’ve ever had to these are really expensive Florida mangoes.

Yellow and green mango with lemon for scale

 
 

The Lady from Shanghai Takes on Beijing -- Five-a-Day from the Imperial City

1)  Tea upon arrival

I enjoyed a little tea culture in Beijing when I arrived.  I had woken up at 4 AM to catch a plane and didn’t sleep much the whole night – for fear that I would miss my flight. 

There is nothing like a little sit down and a proper tea service to set you right, and get you going on the day. 

I’ve learned a bit about Chinese Tea Culture, which is very complicated.   Tea Culture is about how tea is made, the water temperature, the snacks you eat while drinking tea, and what you talk about while drinking team (you can talk about tea or ideas).  Tea houses, I read, were originally places for scholars to share their thinking.   

I grew up drinking black tea with milk and sugar, like a proper Irish-American girl.  My Auntie taught me to give the water a “good boil.”  Except at high altitudes, I’m not exactly sure what boiling the water for several minutes did to it. 

In China I have fallen in love with several new kinds of tea  -- white, jasmine, yellow, puer and quality green tea are among my favorites. ( I had of course had green tea before coming to China but tea is very serious business here and the green tea is nothing like I have had in the US.)  I am also quite fond of tea made from rose buds and chrysanthemum.  I don’t make a good pot of chrysanthemum tea yet.  I still make it too bitter.  I think my issue is the water temperature.

Chinese tea is not made with boiling water – it is just below boiling.  The tea is saturated with water and then that first batch of tea is tossed out.  The next batch and the next and the next are the quality tea to drink.  It is a bit like wine tasting.  The color, the smell, the temperature all matter in true tea culture. 

2) The IBM Office

Like 99% of the buildings in China, this one is designed after a dragon.  Unlike 96% of the buildings in China, which say they are inspired by dragons, this one actually does look like a dragon.  IBM is in the head of the dragon.  I heard that this office has excellent feng shui.  

3)  Olympic Park

Every morning that week we walked from the Intercontinental to the IBM offices.  It is actually a nice walk (except when you are carrying a laptop and all your training supplies.)  On this side of Olympic Park are nice views of the Bird’s Nest Building and the Cube Building, which housed the swimming and diving competitions.  I really do love both buildings.  Every weekend the Olympic mall is packed with Chinese and non-Chinese tourists, who come to take their pictures with these two iconic buildings.  I think for Chinese nationals that they hosted an Olympics will carry on as the point of pride for years to come.  

  

4) The Ling Long Pagoda

This broadcast tower was built for the Olympics and was the home for many Chinese and international broadcasters during the Olympics, including the Today Show broadcasting from the ground floor.  Ling Long means “Delicate Tower.”  It is really a very beautiful structure.  It has six pods and open spaces in between.  I’m not really sure what it is used for today.  At night it changes colors.  Next to the tower many people fly “night kites,” which have flashing lights on them.  Very cool to watch --- but impossible to take pictures of.

5) Photo Spot

Two days down – one to go.   Kathryn, Caroline and I finished coach training and one day of workshops.   Time for a much needed photo break at the end of the day.

"Five a Day" -- A walk down Yanging Road, one fine Saturday in the Fall

1) Shanghai weather can be a bit like New Orleans – hot and humid in the summer, cold and humid in the winter. So basically, it is kind of tropical and plants grow well here.  Shanghai loves flowers and the city uses them as --  well – traffic barricades.  The gorgeous hibiscus was one of hundreds planted in "barricade" planters on Huaihai and Changshu Roads to keep pedestrians from jay walking.  

2)  Yanging Road is bound by Changshu Road on one end and Donghu Road on the other end – both very busy streets.  Somehow Yanging Road is different.  There are times that there is almost no through traffic, except for scooters and bikes. The road hides many different lanes, so there are always lots of people but the scale is uniformly low.  

 

 3)  This is actually a mailbox on one of the 1930s lane houses that line one side of Yanging Road.  I thought the design was lovely.  Hope the rust doesn’t destroy it.  (see the humidity in post #1 above)

4)  I love the greens in this picture -- the ivy, the door, the sign, and even the weed in the sidewalk.   Sometimes a lane house will be beautifully renovated inside, but the outside will look as if the building has been abandoned.  There is no such thing as “curb appeal.” 

5)  The entrance to this building has always interested me.  Building street fronts and the road sometimes have nothing to do with each other.  Roads were built around houses or land was used in a way to maximize space.  While this green building looks like a little cleft of a building, this actually goes back a lot. 

Five a day

A blogger and writer I respect once wrote that she started her blog by promising herself she would post five pictures a day and five captions.  She felt that just the act of actively posting leads to the act of writing.  Since I have been such a paltry blogger, I have decided to try this technique.  I’m hoping to kick-start the writing process but hoping this is a way for me to always remember those things about living in Asia that have now  become quite ordinary. 

Here we go …..

 1) The view of the Pearl Tower from Morton’s Steak House --  Friday Night

The Pearl Tower is the most ridiculous and wonderful skyline landmark.  Quite simply put -- it is gaudy and silly in its “George Jetson” design.   And yet, while it is like a woman wearing jewelry that is too big -- you have to respect it (unlike the Space Needle tower in Seattle – sorry Seattle.)  Why?  Because it is iconic.   It stands for the next generation of Shanghai.  It opened the next chapter for the city and every night it lights up to say so.  Every day it catches the light.  (Well, every day that we don’t have Shanghai “mist.”)  

2) The Fabric Market on Saturday Afternoon –  

No “jokie” prices for me.  I have several places that now know me and they give us the “family price” on the first -- or maybe second -- offer.  Some of my favorite places in the fabric market are the button sellers.   They don’t negotiate.   My advice is the best way to shop in the fabric market is with patience.  It won’t fit right the first time.  You will go back.  Bring something to copy at first.  Making a copy is easier than anything else.  Also just accept it – we all have fabric market failures.  Throw them in the back of the closet and forget about it.  One day you will clean out the closet and donate them to some poor unsuspecting soul. 

 3) Beer at Kaiba -- Wuding Lu, near Shanxi Bei Lu

Beautiful glasses and delicious worldly beers.  Food was pretty good too.   I had the lamb burger and Craig had the fish tacos.  The beers are fabulous – more Belgians than anything else but they have Trappist, Abbey, Blondes, Trippels, and Red Largers.

 4)  PJ Time

Sitting outside – PJs and all --  is very common.  I will write more on the stories I have heard about WHY people wear their PJs outside in China.  I’ve heard several versions. 

5) Yanqing Road -- West Meets East

Hipsters and the shoe repair guy are all here. The best part is it is close to my house.  It is a narrow winding street that is a microcosm of Shanghai life.  

See is believing....

When we first moved to China, Craig and I were driving to the kids’ school for a meeting.  We had done this drive from the apartment to the school probably a half a dozen times already.   About half way there, I turned to Craig and said “I’ve never driven down this street before.”  He reminded me we had driven this way “about a half a dozen times.”  “Yes,” I said “but each time this street is so completely different.”

Is it me?  Or does  it seems that the streets of Shanghai perform some soft of scarf dance – peeling off layers or hiding behind veils, so each time I walk a lane or drive down a street -- something is different?   Streets, lanes, alleys, storefronts never look the same from one day to another.

Chalkboard in our lane changes every few months

Early Sat morning is different from Sat night

Youtaio -- a Shanghai breakfast food is only available in the  AM

Sometimes I think I can’t possibly gather up all the visual information available when I walk or drive down a street in Shanghai, but at other times I realize the streets really are different, depending on the time of day or night …. or day of the week. Some stores only seem to be open in the morning for rush hour (like the place that makes youtiao, which is essentially a breakfast cruller). Other stores seem to only open at night.  

Like New York, restaurants open and close all the time in Shanghai – or they re-open with a new décor or a new chef.  And then there are the vendors that change and move constantly -- both legal and illegal vendors with carts and wagons. For example, on our end of Haui Hai Road the vendors tend to be the illegal ones selling DVDs of movies still in the theaters, CDs, sketch books, and fake Long Champ bags.  On the other end of Haui Hai Road – closer to Hongqiao,  there tends to be more fruit vendors, who sell from wagons and carts, which look like they jumped off the pages of a Charles Dickens novel. 

This view of Shanghai will not be here in 20 years. 

With all the constant changing in Shanghai, you can become sentimental.  You can mourn the loss of your favorite noodle shop or a deco movie theatre, which will be closing soon.    Craig has an expression “The Shanghai you see is the Shanghai you get.”  Meaning, what is in front of you is where this ever changing city is today – so enjoy it as she is --  not how she was or how she will be.  

Many things have changed Shanghai – wars, occupations, and even expos have changed the Shanghai you see.

Shanghai was founded in the 10^th Century as nothing more than a swampy area east of Suzhou.  The total population until 1127 was only 12,000 households.   But in 1127 something happened that changed the trajectory of Shanghai forever.  In 1127 Kaigeng fell.  So why does this matter?  Well (and I didn’t know this until I started reading the history of Shanghia) Kaifeng was probably the largest city in the world from 1013 to 1127.  Kaifeng was the center point of four major canals and was a commercial and industrial center and had a population of 600,000 and 700,000. 

So in 1127 Kaifeng fell to Jurchen invaders and about 250,000 of those residents became refugees in Shanghai.  Shanghai was forever changed by migration and immigration. 

Last night I watched the movie Shanghai Calling (which I highly recommend).  The heroine, an American, comments on how we may call ourselves ex-Pats but really we are immigrants.  We may, in general, come to Shanghai in a different way from those Kaifeng citizens.  Most are not fleeing invaders. but we come.  We come for opportunity.  We come for love.  We come to be reborn – whether we are American Born Chinese (ABC), or returning home natives or third culture families.  We are part of Shanghai and the veils she wears and sheds. 

The Tale of the Nine Sleeping Dragons

Every culture has a flat bread (falafel, lavash, paratha, injera, naan, nang, tortilla, matzah) and every culture has stories or legends.   Cities have stories too -- real and urban legends.  Once we know them, these stories make us feel like insiders.  Do you know how to use the ceiling in Grand Central Terminal, outside the Oyster Bar, to tell a secret across the room?  Do you know the best fragrant garden in London, which is accessible even without the resident key?  (Clue it is in an unlikely Hackney location.)  Or that in Rome, some of the best Caravaggio painting are actually in a church near the Pantheon, 5th chapel on the left?  With each of these secret places comes a tale.    

Craig and I once found an old tattered book called New York in Sunshine and in Shadow, about NYC at the turn of the century.  The “sunshine” part of the book was very “Ragged Dick” --- “immigrates make good” stories – pull yourself up by your boot straps and make something of yourself.  The second half was a police blotter of sorts.  Every kidney harvesting internet tale you have ever read doesn’t come close to the warning tales of life the 1900s in NYC, where a drink in a bar you didn’t know, could land you under the floor boards penniless, naked and freezing.

I’ve started to seek out Shanghai “tales of the city,” albeit, not as exciting at "New York in Shadow."   One of the first ones I heard was the tale of the sleeping dragons or the tale of the nine dragons.  (Now, those doing their middle school research projects on Shanghai – this is a tale told to me second hand, so I don’t want to find this in your footnotes!) 

Isabel, our real estate agent told us this story one day in a van to distract us while stuck in mid-day traffic on the loop road at the Chengdu Bei Lu and Yan’an Lu intersection.  This intersection is a point in the city where “all the roads converge.”

As Isabel told me the story, the new elevated roads were being built at great speed, getting ready for the Expo. The massive construction project called the  Yan’an elevated highway was started in 1995 and completed in 1999.  To build this web of loop roads around the city, entire historic buildings were literally moved out of the way (e.g. The Russian neo-classical building, which is now the Shanghai International Exhibition Center was picked up and moved back.)

 

Everything was going well until they hit this central crossing point at Chengdu Lu.  A pillar needed to be placed on this site, yet no amount of blasting could help the crews get through the rock.  Finally a monk was called to the site.  He was very very old and wise.   He prayed for days and told the engineers he could not tell them the problem because of his vows at a monk.  But he now knew what the problem was.  The engineers begged the monk to tell them what to do, as grand plan for the city of Shanghai could not move forward without this road. 


Although he knew it was bad luck, he acquiesced and told them that under this spot slept nine dragons.  All of the banging of the construction had woken up the dragons and they would not let the road continue, since they had not been paid the right respect.  (Basically no one asked their opinion.)  The monk told the engineers that if they paid tribute to the dragons they might settle down and allow the construction to continue. 

So the city commissioned a noble monument to the nine sleeping dragons on the pillar, which would hold up the roads.  The sculpture was designed by Zhao Zhirong, the now-retired deputy director of Shanghai’s Oil Painting & Sculpture Institute.  (Some say the tale has nine dragons because the number nine (jiu) is a pun on the word ‘long lasting,” which is good for a pillar that literally holds up the whole Shanghai highway system.  


The monk was not so lucky.  He had broken his vow to keep what he knew about the dragon world secret and he died shortly afterwards, but the city was better off because of what he did.  

Now that I live here I pass the flying dragons every morning and knowing how they got there (or at least one version of how they got there) makes me feel a little bit more like an insider – even if it is only one tale of the city.  It is now becoming my city.