Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Shanghai has welcomed the Year of the Dog with many a bang. Firecrackers have been going off all day and were in full force by 9 PM. It's now half past midnight, and the noise is just now starting to subside.
Not wanting to wrestle the crowds on the Bund, I watched the fireworks from my apartment window instead. I don't face the river and so couldn't see the spectacle downtown, but it seems each apartment complex has a fine show of its own. From my window, I could see four different sets of firework displays. Each of them was at least as long if not as large as any Fourth of July show I've seen. At the peak, I could see barely 5 feet from my window; the smoke was so thick that I could smell it through the glass of the sliding door. People also set off firecrackers in the apartment stairwells, and the noise ricocheted off the concrete so well that it sounded as if they were right outside my door. (Why do we pronounce "ricocheted" [rik-uh-shayd]?)
Nearly everybody in China goes home for Chinese New Year, so the government provides a week-long holiday to accommodate those who must travel long distances. We worked today (meaning Saturday) and will start again next Sunday in order to have the whole seven days in between as vacation. Travel is nearly impossible the days leading up to the New Year. I'm told that people who live in Hangzhou (a city very close to Shanghai) can normally buy train tickets the day of travel without worry, but for the New Year, they must buy tickets at least 10 days in advance!
We got a half day off today to start the New Year early. This afternoon I went to the Shanghai 'Book City,' a seven-floor book and media store with everything from "Marxism and Leninism texts" to Season 1 of Desperate Housewives on DVD (for less than 200 yuan!). Pirated media is widespread in China, and I always assumed that recording companies were especially upset because the cost of legitimate copies abroad is comparable to that in the States. Not the case - I saw several 'new release' CDs like Coldplay's X&Y and Moby's Hotel in Book City for 25 or 30 yuan a piece. I'm sure media companies still lose billions of dollars on pirated material in China - just far fewer billion than I thought!
By 4 or 5 o'clock this afternoon, pretty much everything was closed - banks, stores, restaurants, even taxis whose drivers were eager to get home for New Year's Eve dinner. Traditionally, people spend New Year's Eve with their families and have a huge home-cooked meal - so huge that they can't finish all the food. Thanksgiving or Christmas feasts in the States always mean a week's worth of boring leftovers, but leftovers after Chinese New Year signify an abundance of good fortune. I wonder what it means, then, that I pretty much skipped dinner today...
Not to worry! As a Dog, this year is supposed to be especially fateful for me. I just have to wear lots of red to ward off evil and encourage good fortune. Oh, and I've been meaning to cut my hair for some time, but now I have to wait a bit longer to do so. Chinese superstition warns against cutting away all one's luck and fortune right after the New Year. Well, superstition aside, if my experiences this past week have been any indication, I think the Year of the Dog will be for me a year full of challenge, excitement, and joy. Isn't it good fortune enough to have the opportunity to live and work in Shanghai?

cell phones for the masses

I bought a cell phone today at a place called CyberMart. It's a Nokia 6610, the same kind I used to have in the States. I bought it for 770 yuan, or about $95. I also bought a SIM card with the following plan: regardless of the number of calls you make, each month you must put down money for text messaging. The first month, you must deposit 20 yuan, and every month thereafter you can deposit just 10 yuan. Text messages are 0.05 yuan a piece. That means I have 400 text messages to use this first month. I've never sent a text message in my life; I don't know what I'm going to with 400. But if I don't use them, I'm only down $2.50, so no big loss. Calls are pay-as-you-go, which means I only have to pay for what I use. With this plan, daytime calls are 0.2 yuan/minute; nighttime calls are half that. That means for one US dollar, I can talk for 40 minutes during the day, or 80 minutes at night, which is when I'm most likely to use the phone anyway. International calls are more expensive - "expensive" being a relative term - and cost something like 0.6 yuan/minute, which is still cheaper than a lot of phone cards. Needless to say, it's no wonder even the poor, working class Chinese are walking around with the latest in cell phone technology.

"easy life" in Shanghai

I arrived in Shanghai last Friday night after 22 hours of traveling. I've since moved into my new apartment. It's an 11th floor, newly furnished, 60 sq. m. (~540 sq. ft.) bachelorette pad - even larger and nicer than the apartment I had in Austin - in a complex that is less than one year old. By complex, I mean at least a dozen 39-story buildings arranged in a circle around a garden, and a recreation center that includes a gym, reading room, card/chess rooms, ping pong tables, a mini-cinema, a golf simulator(!?), and even a couple piano rooms. Oh, and there's a shopping center just next door with restaurants, shops, hair salons, a supermarket, and access to the newest line on the subway. All this is just two minutes' walk from my front door. As a result, my building is called, so I'm told, the "Easy Life" building.

And, indeed, it is the easy - and extremely spoiled - life. If the buildings weren't so tall, I would be able to see from my 11th floor window the shanties, or "hutong", just outside the complex fence. In these brick shelters, people live whole families in one room with perhaps no electricity and a small stove to keep them warm. They wash communally from a line of faucets outside while little babies waddle around with the seats of their pants undone.

I've done this before. I've lived the whole spoiled expat life, with everything paid for and everything at my fingertips and everything easy enough if I choose to stay within my little circle of comfort. I managed to get through a year and a half in Beijing without much more knowledge of Mandarin than I had the first day I got there. I managed to walk across the street to the US imports grocery store where they had everything from Pop Tarts to Dr. Pepper. I managed to get chauffered everywhere I needed to go, from my army/embassy brat international school to all-you-can-eat sushi restaurants to my top-floor two-story apartment home. But I didn't manage to make friends with any local Chinese, or have a daily dumpling breakfast that filled my tummy for only 4 yuan, or even ride my bicycle to the park to watch the old people doing tai chi in the morning.

My parents' company paid for our way of life; now my company is doing the same. But I'm determined not to let this chance pass me by again. Sure, I'm still spoiled. I get paid more than my more talented and more experienced Chinese counterparts just because I'm from the US. My apartment is covered, as is a transportation allowance, an appliance allowance, and, of course, moving expenses to make my way over here. I have internet access in my apartment, satellite TV, oh, and not just a washer, but a dryer, too! This time, though, I plan to ride a bicycle to work and take the bus on rainy days. I plan to make good friends with my coworkers, who are all local Chinese except for one American who moved here when I did. And I definitely plan on leaving this city at least semi-fluent in Mandarin -- with maybe a hint of a Shanghainese accent.

That said, I began my exploration of Shanghai on Sunday after spending most of Saturday getting somewhat settled in my apartment. I took the subway downtown from my apartment and attempted to go to both the US Embassy and the bank, both of which were closed. The subways here are in surprisingly good condition. They are efficient and modern and look very much like the MTR in Hong Kong. Each trip can cost anywhere from 2 to 5 yuan, or about 25 to 50 cents, depending on how far you go. You also can buy a subway pass, like a debit card, for 30 yuan, or about $3.50, refundable if you return the card when you're done. A taxi, on the other hand, starts at 10 yuan and increases 2 yuan every half kilometer or something like that. I haven't used the buses yet, but I assume they cost about the same if not less than the subways. I also went to the Shanghai Library on Sunday. It's a giant building filled, of course, with books, periodicals, newspapers, etc., and on the ground floor is an internet room where I paid 2 yuan to use a computer for half an hour. 50 cents an hour -- not bad if you don't mind the censorship. On my way to the bank I passed the Oriental Pearl Tower, that iconic, gaudy, needle-shaped TV tower that's the fourth tallest in the world. Just for fun, I checked the price for going up to the top: 100 yuan. That's 25 hours of internet use! Near the tower is a 7-story mall called the Super Brand Mall that's got everything from Esprit to the San Francisco Steakhouse, which, ironically enough, is where an American coworker of mine contracted e coli on a visit this past October.

Anyway, I'm having fun doing silly price comparisons (it's the math major in me) and discovering things about China that I really should have discovered the last time I was here. I plan to make somewhat regular contributions to this as-yet-unused blog, so stay tuned for more about the "easy life" in Shanghai.