Susan's Shanghai Blog - Week 27

So this week, I'm going to start my blog out with actual "blog" material. Today on my way home from work, I followed the same path I've basically taken for 7 months ... Line 2 metro to DongChang, exit 4, walk up DongChang to DongTai, right turn, half a block to the apartment entrance. I decided today to make a few stops along the way. Since I'm not looking forward to the dinner I have planned for Tom, I decided to stop at my local fruit stand and buy some fruit...two bananas and two tangerines to be precise. The bill came to 5.99 RMB. Yes, you saw it .. 4 pieces of fresh fruit for less than 1 US Dollar (based in 6.31420 Chinese Yuan Renminbi to the dollar). I gave him 6, and he came me 10 cents back .. or tried to, I let him keep it. So, if you think you math is a little off ... they really don't use "pennies" here. Mind you, they have these little coins that are worth 0.01 RMB, but almost nobody uses them. My electric bill for example, if my actual bill comes to 70.33 RMB, the "what you owe" column says 70.30 (they round up or down depending on the amount). Obviously, my fruit-guys always rounds down. I let him keep the change, he smiled said Thank you in Chinese, I did also (since I haven't figured out how to say your welcome in Chinese) and I was on my merry way. Next, I walked by the newspaper guy. He is there every morning when I go to to work and every afternoon when I come home, normally there is a group of old Chinese guys around the newspaper stand. And "stand" may be pushing it .. it is more like 3 pieces of wood on top of saw horses with newspapers laid out on top. So for 7 months, I've past by and never looked, never stopped. Today I happened to glance down and saw a China Daily paper, which is one of the 2 main English-language newspapers (China Daily based in Beijing, Shanghai Daily based here locally). So I stopped and decided to buy the paper .. which I NEVER do! It was 1.50 RMB for the printed paper .. yea ... I know ... a newspaper for 28 cents. So I bought it and the newspaper guy gives me this big smile and again, off I go on my merry way. So what did I learn this week? Well, that for less than $1.25 US, I got 2 smiles and 2 thank you's, and I felt like part of the community.

Next, New Year's Eve! December 31st is not quite like a normal New Year's Eve for us Americans, nor is it really nothing. Chinese New Year is later this month and I'll cover that in another blog. But we decided to at least see what the Chinese (and expats) do for Solar New Year's Eve. We wanted to go to the Bund, but the ferries and metro stop running prior to midnight, and we figured trying to grab a taxi would be a nightmare. There also is no bridge to walk across the river, so we spent the night on our own side of the river. We got down there about 11:30 or so, and there were alot more people than we expected. We thought we'd see alot of expat's there, but most of the people we saw were Chinese. Some of them had things on their heads, like Minnie Mouse bows that light up!



What I'll show now is now a set of pictures we took, some better than others (we are still learning now to get the best night photo's out of our little camera). On the Bund side of the river, you could hear music that went with a light show that was on 2 of the buildings on the Bund. This was also all BEFORE the stroke of midnight. Started about 11:45 and lasted up until the countdown to midnight started. They did lights and then, what you hopefully will see in some, is they did pictures on the fronts of the buildings, Greek columns, colored buildings, wheels, and colored baloons.



























They did the countdown to midnight in the middle of the Oriental Pearl Tower. Then when midnight struck, the Aurora building had this big Happy New Year display, in both Chinese (or at least I assume that is what it says in Chinese) and English.





These are orange Chinese lanterns, also called sky lanterns or Kongming Lanterns. These are paper lanterns built on a wooden frame with a small candle or fuel cell in the middle. Supposedly they are much more used during Chinese New Year, but there were some people selling them this night and people setting them off. We saw one trying to go up ... you get a few people around it and hold the lantern sides so that it is expanded and light the candle or fuel cell. This burns and heats the air, causing the lantern to rise. It goes up and stays up until the candle or fuel runs out and then it falls back down. You can see a few of them here (the lights).

These are probably the worst 2 pictures of the bunch, but there was an old-style boat that was all lit up and I was really trying hard to capture it (and failed, as you can see!).



A heads-up to what is coming ... this up-coming week is Chinese New Year and so the next blog will cover all of the decorations and the Chinese New Year celebrations (or at least, whatever we see). Then we'll have a couple weeks that I'll cover our trip to Bangkok, Thailand.