Susan's Shanghai Blog - Week 3

The rain has stopped and we now have hot and humid weather. It is similar weather as Raleigh, and the main difference is that the air conditioning doens't work as well here and places are not as "cold". Most places are air conditioned, but they don't seem to be AS air conditioned as the US. As well, we do alot more walking here than in the US with the car. So instead of the 2 minute walk from the car to the mall, we have a 12 minute walk from the apartment to the mall.

Again, more normal week and not all that much to talk about. Tuesday was the only unique day because I went back to the Immigration office to apply for yet another residence permit. It seems that I entered the country on the "wrong" visa and so I applied for and received my residence permit as a dependant of Tom, and then I got the work permit, and so now I have to get a residence permit based on my work permit. So I did that application on Tuesday and should have everything back this week and finally be "legal".

Saturday, Tom worked as the start of quarter close, and so I was on my own. I left semi-early and decided to do a few "firsts". Saturday was the first time that I took a city bus. I left the apartment and walked a couple blocks to the bus stop, which was pretty easy to find. I didn't know how many minutes between buses because the information was all in Chinese, and so I just waited, about 10 minutes (yea, in the heat, no air conditioning at the bus stop). The bus was air conditioned and I rode for about 4 stops and got off near the Shanghai Childrens Medical hospital. There is a street that goes between this hospital and WalMart, and on this street I did my 2nd "first" of the day ... a Chinese massage. I tried not to just go to a "spa" where everybody speaks English and I get the same thing I can get in the US. So this massage place, when you walk in, has the prices on the wall ... English and Chinese. The 60 minute Chinese massage is 68 RMB (a smidgen under 11 bucks) and a 60 minute foot massage is like 50 RMB. I'm trying to figure out what they are going to do with 2 feet for an entire hour ... that will be my next free day I guess. So I decide that the 60 minute Chinese massage will be for me, so I head up the stairs to the 2nd floor and walk into a dimly lit ... well ... I don't know how to describe it .. maybe like a bar with no people in it. So I go to the counter and I ask if they speak English (I really should stop asking, because the answer is invariably no), so I say "massage" ... seems to be a universal word, and he points to the sign for the foot massage and I signal the next one down at which he motions for me to follow him. He takes me to this little room with a massage bed and a shower in the corner ... shower I guess is for when you get the oil massage so that you can shower afterwards? I don't know. Anyway, the masseuse comes in and lays a sheet down on the massage table and motions for me to lay down. I've done a little bit of investigation and know that the Chinese massage is normally done clothed, so I just take my shoes off and lay, face down, on the bed. He proceeds to cover me with a piece of cloth and for the next hour, I get my first Chinese massage. It definatly is NOT the thereaputic massage you get in the states. It has pretty heavy pressure and I'm waiting to see the bruises appear across my entire body! After my hour, I head back about half a block to a nail salon and get a French Manicure, which including the "quick dry", sets me back 60 RMB (less than $10). This is my 3rd "first" of the day as it was my first manicure since moving to Shanghai. It's a quite nice little place, much more likely to get my return business than the massage place, and one of the 2 young girls working there spoke a little bit of English, although I guess manicures are manicures pretty much everywhere, as there wasn't anything really different here. They have a couple "hand treatments" which look interesting that I may try next time.

I then walked to a Lawson (think 7/11) and picked up an iced latte in a bottle and a "puff ball", which is a steamed bun with something in the middle... mine containing a pork meatball. These are very popular here and they have them everywhere. I sometimes pick one up at the Lawson that is in the 1st floor of my building at work for breakfast. Then to the end of the block and a quick left turn is the WalMart. I had a short list of household things that I wanted to pick up, like pot holders, some kitchen spoons that we didn't ship .. little things. Then my 4th "first" of the day, the WalMart shuttle. It seems a set of the larger stores (WalMart, a Lotus grocery store chain, Carrefour) all have shuttle service so that people can get to and from the store to various locations in town. There is also shuttle service from work to various parts of town as well, although I don't use it. So while I was waiting for the bus earlier, I had seen the WalMart shuttle #3 cruise by and stop the next block up and across the street. So I decided to see if I could catch the shuttle back. After finding someone who speaks a little bit of English, they pointed me to the back of the building where the shuttles were parked. Looks like there are 13 different shuttle routes, and I found bus #3 and only had 15 minutes to wait. So I sat there, waited, and then we left. I made notes of things that I saw, stores and things, as we came closer to where I had planned to get off. The driver seemed to get worried about me, and had someone ask which stop I needed to get off on. So I explained DongChang road, showed my map, and they seemed to be happy that the "poor little American" wasn't totally lost!

Back to the apartment and rested for a few hours, then headed back out again for another few errands. I headed down to WeiFang road where there is a DVD store that we had been in and picked up some DVDs and I was in need of Season 2 of The Good Wife, which I had saw the pilot for on the plane over and have now finished Season 1. I took a peek inside of an International Grocery (a few interesting things there) and then up to Suning, which is similar to Best Buy. There I proceeded to pick up a speakerphone (rather inexpensive one) that we can use when we have longer meetings at night, since holding the phone receiver for an hour or 2 started to become a pain.

Tom got done with work and we went out to dinner in the Super Brand Mall to a dumpling place, making it 2 dumpling days in a row. The dumplings were really good .... and is more of an indication why Tom has started calling me Dumpling Girl!

Sunday, we left early to head out to YuYuan Garden. This used to be a private garden, now a public tourist site, which is in the middle of the city. It was built in 1559 as a private garden and it encompasses about 5 acres. There are lots of "halls" or little pavillions all built in the traditional style (or what I assume is the traditional style). There is also a Rockery, which is made to resemble peaks, cliffs, gorges, and caves. There are a couple ponds and streams with goldfish that meander through the garden. We spent not quite 2 hours there, just walking around and taking pictures (which I'll post under the main pages later this week) and then we went to get lunch ..at a dumpling place! This is supposedly a really good dumpling place where there is both the seated restaurnat on the 3rd floor but also the take-out window on the main floor, and when you go by there is always a long line for the takeout window. We walked through the gazillions of shops (seemed like it at least) trying to sell everything from hair barettes to jade scuptures. We headed back home to rest before heading back out for dinner.

This week, I had bought a coupon book called "Enjoy Shanghai" that a collegue at work had mentioned to me. It is similar to the Enjoy the City or Entertainment books in Raleigh but in some cases, they seem to be for the more expensive places. But since we had eaten dumplings for 3 meals in 3 days, we decided to try something different, so we went over south of Peoples Square to a restaurant called "The Fat Olive". This is a Greek restaurant on the 6th floor of a building and it was 50% off of everything. The prices seemed semi-normal for us, although this iPhone app that I have for the Shanghai Taxi (you can look up various businesses and it shows the address in Chinese that you can show a taxi driver) calls it "overpriced finger food". We thought it was pretty good, having a sampler platter which had a pretty good selection. We went ahead and split desert (yogurt with truffle honey) and a couple cappacinos to top it off. Total bill was about $45 or so before the 50% off, which didn't seem outrageous to us, but with the 50% off coupon, it was quite nice!

Then we mosey'd on home for the rest of the evening and to get ready for the work week. We don't have the 4th of July off here, but I won't have any evening calls, so that will be quite nice.

Until next week.