Susan's Shanghai Blog - Week 39

This may be a somewhat a boring blog, since it has been a bit of a boring couple weeks in Shanghai.

It is Dragonboat Festival time again in Shanghai, which to us is the start of summer and of the rainy season. The Dragonboat Festival is also known as the Duanwu or Double Fifth Festival, and is a day to ward off pests, illness, and evil. The "double fifth" comes from the fact that it is the fifth day of the fifth month on the Chinese lunar calendar. In many cities that have rivers, there are dragonboat races and people eat traditional zongzi, which are glutinous rice dumplings. The legend on how these zongzi are related to this festival is related to the death of Qu Yuan, a poet during the Warring States period (475-221 BC). Legend has it that he had advised the emporer against going to war, for which he was criticized and then exiled. When the emperor went to war and was defeated, Qu is said to have committed suicide by throwing himself into the Miluo River in the Hunan Province of central China. People who admired him rushed to retrieve his body and threw rice into the river so that the fish would eat the rice instead of Qu's body.

There are also other traditions related to this day, one being a love story of the Lady White Snake which ends on Duanwu. It is the story of a young scholar who falls in love with a beautiful woman, unaware that she is a thousand-year-old white snake that has taken human form. In the legend, it is on Duanwu that Lady White Snake is forced to reveal her true serpent form when she is obliged to drink realgar, which is an arsenic sulfide wine, which breaks the spell. Her husband dies of horror but then she brings him back to life. In ancient times, it was customary to drink yellow wine with some realgar and powdered cinnabar, which then turns the wine red, which signifies power. Both arsenic and cinnabar also had medicinal purposes and were used to ward off evil, toxins, ghosts, and insects.

Many people today will buy red sachet bags filled with herbs like wormwood and mugwart, as well as realgar and cinnabar. They are supposed to repel pests and protect the wearer from illness and evil. Throughout China, pharmacies sell colorful sachets and charms as well as paper bags of herbs for burning in the home.

Now to the zongzi! The Dragonboat festival is also a time to eat these pyramid-shaped zongzi, which are glutinouse rice dumplings stuffed with something rich (sweet red beans, lotus seeds, dates, chestnuts, or the golden yolk of a salted duck egg) and wrapped in leaves and steamed. Familites would make and wrap the zongzi themselves and supposedly the older generation still prefers to wrap the zongzi themselves as that is the only way to insure the purity of the ingredients.

And last but not least, the actual dragonboat races. In Chinese culture, it is much more than just seeing which crew is the quickest. Instead, it is a way to commemorate the death in 278 BC of Qu Yuan (the same one above with the rice and the fish). The locals paddling out, either to retrieve the body or to scare off the fish) gave rise to the dragonboat races. There was an article in a local paper that interviewed a team from the Baoshan District of Shanghai. There are 3 sizes of dragon boats in Baoshan: 6, 8, and 12 meters in length, painted in colors including white, yellow, blue, purple, jade, and green. A wooden dragon head is attached at the bow and the dragon tail at the stern. A drum seat is located in front of the first 2 paddlers. At the stern, a helmsman guides the boat with the steering oar. One of the guys I work with sent me this video of the Dragon Boat competition in his hometown during the DragonBoat Festival and will give everybody a good view into it. Link to video.

We did a little walking tour around Western Shanghai, one section we hadn't been to before. First up is Xujiahui Cathedral, also known as the St. Ignatius Cathedral. It was designed by English architect William Doyle in 1904 and built by French Jesuits from 1906 to 1910. The building has a cross-shaped plan and it is main from brick and wood. At the front of the building are the 2 belfries which are 57 meters high each. We snuck inside quickly (although no pictures were allowed) but they were getting setup for a wedding so we didn't stay long.



We then walked over towards a section called "Metro City" and we took a few pictures .. Tom in front of a statue, and of a new Toyota that was being shown. Metro City is in the Xujiahui section and it is a huge shopping and entertainment center where supposedly you can get pretty much any electronic device you can imagine ... except for an iPad 3, which I don't believe has come to China yet :-).







Next up was Jiaotong University, which used to be called Nanyang College. The buildings were built in 1896 and Nanyang College was founded by Sheng Xuanhuai as the first university founded by the Chinese in the modern times. It was renamed in 1921 to Jiaotong University.

As we walked by, we saw this cool building, which basically has Mao built into the architecture of the building.

Near there, were buildings that reminded us very much of the French Haussman design. It has the shopping arcades on the main floor with what looks like a tiny little 2nd floor which would be where the shop owners stayed. The 3rd floor has nice architectural features and a railing, and then at the very top is another railing and smaller places that looked somewhat like they would be the servants/maids quarters.

Then we stopped by the former residence in Shanghai of Soong Ching Ling. Soong Ching Ling is the widow of Dr. Sun Yat-sen who was the founder of the Chinese Republic. Soong Ching-ling was born in 1893 and was one of the three Soong sisters who, along with their husbands, were among China's most significant political figures of the early 20th century. She was the Vice Chairman of the People's Republic of China. She was the first non-royal woman to officially become head of state of China, acting as Co-Chairman of the Republic from 1968 until 1972. She again became head of state in 1981, briefly before her death in 1981, as the Honorary President of the People's Republic of China. She is interesting in that she seemed to change political sides based on who was in power. She, with her husband Sun Yat-sen, founded the Kuomintang (KMT). However, during the Chinese Civil War, she sided with the Communist party and was a guest in Tiananmen Square that marked the birth of the People's Republic of China. This led the Kuomingtag to issue an arrest warrent for her in 1949 although nothing really came of it since the KMT quickly retreated from mainland China to Taiwan soon after this. After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, she became one of two Vice Chairman of the People's Republic of China (now named the "Vice President"), and in 1951 she was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize. On 16 May 1981, two weeks before her death, she was admitted to the Communist Party and was named Honorary President of the People's Republic of China. She is the only person ever to hold this title.













Although hard to see, this is the Chinese Railroad Workers Memorial, which is next to a park near to the former residence of Soon Ching Ling. Interestingly enough, this memorial tower was given by the US, presented to China by the State of Illinois. It is made up of 3,000 railroad spikes and commemorates the deeds of some 13,000 Chinese railroad workers in building the railrods that linked the Eastern and Western US. It was placed in Xujiahui Park in 1991.

This is the Spring of Hope, which was placed in Xujiahui Park in 2005 as a gift from Marseille, France, which is a sister city to Shanghai. It is supposed to look like an unfolding book with a cross section of a stainless steel tree on one of its' pages. Personally .. I don't see it.

Xujiahui Park itself is a quaint little park and the day we were there, there were lots of families, especially little kids learning to roller blade.



We also had a celebration at work recently for some software products that we put out, and we had cakes in the office to celebrate.



Here I have to say THANK YOU to Kelly and Maria Mitchum (and Kelly's parents) for sending this piece of Mongolian currency. What does Susan need with Mongolian currency you ask?? Well ... we have friends here (Carrie and Jason) who have a niece and they are putting together this "box" of currency from alot of different countries. As all of us travel around, we bring back a small bill that we give to Carrie to put in the box. Mongolia is not one of those places on the top of most of the vacation plans of the Expatriates here, and so I knew that Kelly's parents were missionaries living in Mongolia. They were nice enough to send a piece of Mongolian currency over to China that will then get packaged into a gift box for Carrie and Jason's niece.



This week was also the PGA National Championship and our golf coach, Kelly Mitchum, placed T2 and earned entry into the PGA Championship tournament. There is a short Pinehurst article on the web about it. CONGRATS!!!

Normally these would get put into our "Shanghai Tower" blog, but I decided to add them here. We were up in the JinMao Tower where Tom works and took these other pictures, which show a slight different view, and more of a closeup than we normally take.





Now, for those of you who are following our "pond saga" .. they seem to have gotten it FINISHED finally!. Here are some early pictures as they were starting to fill the water again. They got it filled, then emptied it, then filled it again. The last 3 pictures shows what I hope is the final version, fountains going and all.











And lastly, I was going to work on Friday and went buy this guy with a bike that was selling all these little cages with crickets in them. Some looked like little bird cages, the others were small round balls with crickets inside.