Thoughts on living in Shanghai and a couple recent stories

In so many respects, living in China is easy. I’m actually quite surprised with much of it. The subway is clean, fast and not over-crowded. Navigating the city is fairly easy with a good map and the center of town almost small enough to be walk-able. One can buy nearly anything found in the west including food, appliances, cars, and gadgets. The people are very warm and making friends is easy, even across language barriers. English is nearly an unofficial second language for many people so finding help isn’t as hard as we thought. Almost all signs are written in both Chinese characters and in English so finding specific locations isn’t too bad.

Despite all this, life is not easy here – for two main reasons. First is the weather. Shanghai is hot in August. And I mean really hot. We’re talking average temps in the 90’s with 100% humidity. Imagine walking outside and into a steam shower and you start to get the idea. Perspiration is immediate and intense without any physical exertion. Start walking or pedaling a bike and you feel as though you’ve just climbed out of a pool with all your clothes on. I can’t say I’ve ever sweated with this much ferocity before. Apparently, the heat doesn’t break until October at which time it gets cold and rainy. Then things heat up again around April and stay hot all summer. I can’t tell yet if it’s better than MI.

Even worse than the weather is the pollution. There was no way we could have possibly been prepared for the extent of the pollution here. There’s simply nothing like it anywhere I’ve ever travelled. Every day, the city is choked by thick, acrid smog that hovers over the metropolis. It’s caused by a combination of local traffic exhaust (much of which is unregulated) and nearby factories and power plants that spew chemicals into the air. The smog is thick enough that I haven’t seen the sun shine uninhibited since I arrived. Imagine a medium thick fog, color it a sickly yellow-brown and you have an idea of what the city looks like during the day. Looking at it is the least of our worries though. Stepping outside in the city brings an immediate discomfort in the back of your throat. It starts as a light tingle and the occasional cough comes a few minutes later. Pray that you don’t have far to go, or that you’re doing something remotely athletic because the irritation amplifies the longer you’re outside. I made the mistake of spending the afternoon walking the city the other day and was rewarded the next morning with a solid sore throat and a good, itchy cough. Then, just yesterday, I was on a bike trying to keep up with a friend of mine on his moped – not an easy task anywhere – and breathed in plenty of car exhaust fumes and other wonderful chemicals in the atmosphere. My cough has gotten deeper and more persistent and the only way to fight it is to stay indoors as much as possible. At least being outside is unpleasant anyway. There’s just nothing short of sucking on a tailpipe that compares to the heat and pollution in the air here.

Alexa has done a great job keeping everyone up to speed with our quotidian happenings but there are some gaps I can fill.

Some of the highlights of the past few days:

Friday night, Nancy and Lauren took us to meet an American friend of theirs who lives here in Shanghai. His name is Steven and he’s been living in China for about 3 years. We met him at a local Japanese place that he frequents for some great and very authentic tepanyaki. He is a wealth of knowledge about getting settled in the city and has already been helpful in translating for us over the phone. He’s very industrious and has made an interesting life for himself here. He said that there’s a fairly strong demand for foreigners to be models and he’s been doing that for the past couple years. It pays decent money for a side job and we had him connect us with his agents to see if we could get in on the action. I got in touch with his best agent who referred me to a photographer to get some professional portraits taken. So, on Monday evening, Alexa and I went to the studio and got some pictures taken. We did a couple different outfits (business, casual, etc) and got some really good shots. I’m posting some of the best ones here. We don’t know if it will result in any real work, but it was fun (and cheap) nonetheless.



Just yesterday (Tuesday), I was planning to meet a Chinese friend of mine for lunch. He works here at the community clubhouse and is a genuinely nice guy. He was the first Chinese person Alexa and I met who spoke some English when we arrived and we had had a nice talk with him at the restaurant where he works. His English name is Jimmy. At about 8:30, he called and woke me up wanting to know if I could meet him for breakfast. I obliged, thinking that we would simply substitute breakfast for lunch. I blitzed through the shower and hopped on the bike to meet him at the front gate. When I met him, it soon became clear that he had plans for us for most of the day. Now, don’t get me wrong, he’s a very nice guy but his English is only moderate and there’s quite a bit lost in the language and cultural gap and it gets tiring to be around him for more than an hour or so.
He had a moped and I had a bike. He also apparently has nerves of steel. All I could do was keep as close to him as I could and pray that I wasn’t run down by any of the cars and busses we skirted by. We rode for nearly 20 minutes and ended up at some hole-in-the-wall restaurant. I can almost guarantee that I was the first foreigner that had ever been there judging by the looks I got as I walked in. the menu was all in characters so Jimmy ordered for the two of us. He said that we would have a traditional Chinese breakfast. Now, I had just gotten off a bike after pedaling hard, sweating like crazy and breathing in the aforementioned pollution – all on an acutely empty stomach. Needless to say, I’ve felt better… The food arrives at our table and it’s two steaming bowls of bean curd soup and 3 baskets of steamed dumplings. Hardly the tall glass of orange juice I was wishing for. Under different circumstances, the food could have been good but given my condition and the food’s temperature and spiciness, I was less than satisfied. Add the fact that whenever he talked, bean curd spewed forth from his mouth and you start to understand the breakfast experience.
We continued on that day to see an apartment for Alexa and me to rent but it was in the wrong district and too small. We took the metro downtown and met Alexa for lunch and headed home. We picked up the bikes at the metro stop where we’d left them and Jimmy gave me directions to get home. Unfortunately, he mistook the street we were on for another and I ended up lost for the better part of an hour. By the time I made it back to the house I had inhaled more than my fair share of garbage and was feeling lousy. I cleaned up and enjoyed my newfound respiratory maladies. Not quite the best day of my life.

Over the past few days, Alexa and I have been looking at apartments. Almost all that we’ve looked at are brand new, modern and very impressive. Because of the relatively recent and explosive surge in productivity and capitalism in China, many of the buildings are newer and nicer than their equivalents in the US. They’ve also adopted US style prices as well. The new and nice apartments we’ve seen are quite expensive. We’ll probably end up in a 2 bedroom with a location near a metro line. As we’re coming to realize, commute time is very important to us. If we could walk or ride the metro to our respective work places, we could save a lot of time and money. The cabs are cheap here but the cost would certainly add up. We have to remember that we’re not earning dollars here… we have to adjust our spending accordingly. We’re not in a hurry to get into an apartment though. We’re living rent-free in a mini-mansion for the next month so there isn’t much of an incentive to leave.

Well, it’s 1am and I’m off to the American Chamber of Commerce tomorrow to drum up some new leads for jobs. I have one offer at the moment with another couple of opportunities in the works, but I’d like to have the luxury of choosing between as many offers as possible.

Sorry to be a downer today. I guess I’m just venting some of my frustrations. As Alexa and I always say, “No one said that moving to China would be easy.” I just couldn’t predict how difficult the climate is to deal with. I’m sure I’ll have more positive things to say next time. Just letting off some steam.