Susan's Shanghai Blog - Week 89

There are two "Golden Weeks" in China, which are 7-day national holidays: Chinese Lunar New Year Golden Week (January or February, depending on the Lunar Calendar) and Naitonal Day Golden Week (normally starting on October 1st). National Day commemorates the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) on October 1st, 1949. It is celebrated throughout mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau with a variety of government-organised festivities, including fireworks and concerts. Public places, such as Tiananmen Square in Beijing, are decorated in a festive theme.

These 7-day national holiday blocks were started in 1999 and their main goal was to have longer holiday blocks, which makes it easier for people to travel longer distances to visit family. Most of the local Chinese that I work with who's families are not in Shanghai travel home to visit family. It seems like alot of people do, since statistics gathered in 2012 indicated that 86 million people traveled by road (national highways were toll free), 7.6 million people travelled by domestic airlines, and 60.9 million people travelled by rail. And yes, those numbers are mind-boggling for most Americans who have a bit of a problem thinking about 60 million people.

I was off for a week but Tom ended up working (financial calendars didn't seem to take the holiday off), and so I was looking for something to do with my time, in addition to relaxing and catching up on my sleep. I happened to see an email from the American Women's Club of Shanghai about a tour of a migrant neighborhood, so I figured that would be an interesting day.

A little background on what exactly a "migrant neighborhood" would be. Let's start with the Hukou, or household registration. In 1958, the Chinese government began using the Hukou to control movement of people between rural and urban areas by categorizing them into those two categories. This categorization is also used in determining any type of government assistance, health care, education, employment, etc. Many people who live in the rural/agricultural areas move to the cities in search of work and, hopefully, a better life for themselves and their families. In 2011, there were almost 253 MILLION migrant workers in China.

As these people move from the countryside to the cities in search of work, they tend to congregate in areas and neighborhoods with others who have moved, in many cases from their same area. I've mentioned before that there are multiple dialects of "Chinese" spoken and so it is easier to live in an area where the others speak your same dialect. This is similar to what happened in the US as well, where you have an Italian neighborhood, a Vietnamese neighborhood, a Russian neighborhood ... these people who immigrated feel more at home in a neighborhood with people they can talk to and have things in common with.

So, this tour took us through a migrant neighborhood on the outskirts of the Pudong are of Shanghai. They explained alot of what I mentioned about, including alot of details on the Hukou system. One of the tour guides is a Chinese gentleman who moved from another area to Shanghai and he explain how his Hukou works.

This was our first short stop and we had to guess what this was (since none of us actually read Simplified Chinese). All of us were wrong! This is an illegal employment agency, which you see around alot of places. These are advertisements for work, many of which they said where "under the table" type of jobs, since they do not require valid working papers. There are some here where a company will advertise with one of these agencies and include that the company will pay to get the proper paperwork for the new employees.

They we headed on into the neighborhood. We stopped at a place that makes cotton blankets and sells them to the neighborhood families. They had moved here from one of the other areas including moving all of the special equipment needed to make these. She demonstrated how they make these blankets. They roll out the cotton from rolls, going back and forth until they get the right amount.

This next part you have to look closely for. Using something looking like a fly-fishing technique, they work together to string the red yarns across the top (you can see them if you look closely).

Then a topping mesh goes on top and then smash everything together.

They turn up the edges, do additional stitching, and, voila, a set of cotton blankets all ready for a nice local family. We were able to put in our order for one if we wanted, and they would hand-make it and deliver it to our homes.

The next business was a bakery that made all kinds of cakes. This was in a market and it was REALLY a tiny place (especially when you try to pack 20 foreigners in the room). This baker and his family moved to Shanghai and started out working in other bakeries until they had enough money to break out and start his own business. He had a cake ready to decorate that he decorated in front of us.

Here you can see how he makes the roses (that you see on top on the 2nd photo) by hand, and then he moves them onto the top of the cake. We all got to taste and while you can tell it is cake (it is like a sponge cake), it is not as sweet as what we normally have as cake and frosting. Similar to the blankets, he also takes orders and delivers them.

This one was a bit depressing for me ... not all of the houses or apartments have hot water, or in some cases, running water. If you don't have hot water, you can come to one of these little "stores" to buy a small tank of hot water that you then carry home.

Next stop was a little food street and this small noodle place. This is very similar to the noodles that I can get at the cafeteria area at work, where they PULL the noodles and then cook them fresh right in front of you. There is an area in China where these come from, and the people who own this little store migrated to Shanghai and opened a restaurant. We got to taste his noodles, and they were really good. As with alot of the small food restaurants, they provide the "local cuisine" for the migrants from their home towns.

At the end of the street was a place cooking these flat, sesame seed bread-things, in a deep wood-fired pit. For me, this was probably the best of all of the little things that we had gotten to taste. Very simple, but simple obviously isn't bad in this case.