Daily Life + The Bund

This post will be split into two sections: Daily Life in Shanghai, and The Bund, which is an area in downtown Shanghai.

Daily Life:
I don't exactly know where to start.  It's basically like daily life in America, but there are differences, and I will focus on these differences.  First of all, between being a student here and at UM, I am taking about half the course load that I am taking at Michigan, so I do not have any classes on Tuesday or Thursday.  It's nice to have those days to explore the city or do other things near campus.

The dorm is fairly nice, albeit the room is a bit smaller than I am used to, but this is fine.  The bathrooms are squatter toilets in the dorms, which are essentially a hole in the ground and you squat.  Although we might consider it weird, to Chinese people, this is actually considered more sanitary since you don't actually need to touch the toilet seat.  You also need to carry around toilet paper, which come in small packets like you can see on the picture to the right.

Air Conditioning Unit: Very Important

It is very hot in Shanghai.  Certain days, it gets up to 90 Fahrenheit and is very muggy.  The good news is we have an air conditioning unit in the dorm, which makes life a lot more pleasant.  For a couple of days, we could not figure out how to turn it on, but once we did, it was instantly set to 17 Celsius which is like 60 Fahrenheit.  Our room is on the 5th floor, and we have to use the stairs as there is no elevator.  However, in a way, this is a good thing since there are fewer mosquitoes on the 5th floor.  We were provided with a bug net to wade off mosquitoes but I never used mine because from my experience at camp, bug nets are useless.

Yes, these really are Chicken flavored
Cheetos and you can be jealous of
me starting right now.

FOOD!!!

If there is one major adjustment that I had to make, it is with the food.  Some of it is really delicious, and some of it is, shall we say, not for me. (See the stinky tofu incident in one of my previous posts)  One of the best foods I've had here is an egg pancake.  Basically, what it is is a grilled pita like bread, then the cut a hole in the center of it to form an envelope and put egg in the hole.  Then they flip the pita.  The fold it in half and add any number of ingredients including chicken, bacon, or vegetables in the middle.  If anyone at Michigan opens a shop serving these, please let me know!

Other very common foods include rice and noodles in some sort of soup or broth.  These are generally very safe and good options.  The rice is usually served with everything, especially more traditional Chinese food and it is sticky, so it is very easy to eat with chopsticks.  I have become very good at using chopsticks, and I think they make a lot of sense for certain foods.

American food here is also different.  It's kind of like how our Chinese food is very different from what food actually is here.  For example, they have something called New Orleans Chicken, which is served Chinese style with a not very spicy Chinese/Creole spice.  I suppose it is their version of General Tso's Chicken.

The Bund:

View of Pudong (The area across the river from the Bund) including the Pearl Tower during a misty night in Shanghai.  You cannot even see the World Financial Center, which is the tallest building in Shanghai, because of the Mist.

When we arrived at the Bund last night walking from Nanjing Street, the first thing I noticed was the stunning view of Pudong, shown above.  The second thing I noticed on the street was a beautiful new red Ferrari passing by.  In this time, I apparently missed a Chinese model walking by with 5 photographers   Go figure, I'm a sucker for amazing views of big cities and fancy cars.

This is the glitz of the Bund; it's crazy.  It's also a very Western influenced area, and most of the buildings look like they could come directly out of early 20th century Europe or US, partially because they did.  In terms of people, it seems like at least half of the people walking the Bund are not Chinese, probably from France, Germany, UK, Australia, The U.S. or elsewhere.  It results in a strange mix of European and Chinese culture.  There are plenty of fancy hotels and bars for every type of patron willing to dish out at least couple hundred RMB ($30 USD), and some are much more expensive. I've been to many cities and downtown areas, and the style of the Bund leaves everything else behind.