Tag Archives: Shanghai

Small Eyes

It’s hot. So extremely hot and sticky outside. I can feel my hair follicles sticking to my scalp. As I’m walking in the streets around my campus in search of food, all I can think about is my makeup melting away.

I’m standing next to my friend. She has fair skin, a quirky smile, and a slight accent from where she’s from.

IMG_0845We look at each restaurant and see what tickles our fancy. They’re all pretty small, and lacking air conditioning, but we just stop at the busiest looking one.

As we reach an empty table, right away they look at me for some sort of response. I hear a bombardment of Chinese words. In my head I’m thinking once again they are assuming and mistaking me for someone else… 

And it is true. Each person that speaks to me in Chinese is thinking of me as someone that I am not. Just because of my appearance. Just because of my hair. My face. My little Chinese eyes. But as you probably guessed, I’m an American born Chinese. Raised in New Jersey. I took a couple classes to learn Chinese, but to be honest I took Spanish for 5 years instead. Yet for me, going to China was my chance to jumpstart my language growth, and to be more at one with my roots.

IMG_0868

But it is a challenge at times having people already have an impression of you even before you speak. It’s even worst when they realize their impression of you was wrong and they get disappointed.

I look up at the server speaking to me. I just wave my hands and say “Duibuqi, wo bu shou zhongwen”, which translates to “Sorry, I don’t speak Chinese”. Sigh, once again I use the only sentence I know in Chinese. But with time I hope to see things change. I hope to grow from this and take the shame I feel and use it to my advantage. To be stronger than I am now.

Stay tuned,

Jessica

 

So Many Dumplings, So Little Time

Tuesday morning we went to Shanghai’s Exxon Mobil facility. One of Xinli’s former students is currently working there and was able to help us get a tour and overview of their operation. When we got there, Jay, Xinli’s former student, and Mr. Liang gave us an overview of their company, what they do in Shanghai, and their products. They specialize in lubrication, mostly for engines. At this Exxon Mobil site, they are trying to work with local companies in China. Their plan for the future is to be able to spread the company’s reach to other countries in Asia.
We watched a safety video first, then we were introduced to the company and specifically the work that Exxon Mobil is doing in China. Once we learned more about their work, we learned more about their specilization, lubricants. Jay prepared a powerpoint for us and talked to us about lubricants. He said it was something he never learned about while in school, so it was cool to know that he was giving us an introduction to something we probably will never be taught otherwise.

After Jay explained in more detail the purpose and complexity of lubricants, we got to go upstairs to see the lab that the oil is tested in. There were many tests that they perform in the lab, but testing viscosity was the most important one. They had all sorts of equipment in the lab, and there was a huge atomic absorption spectroscope that they said cost $300,000. There was also an engine in the lab that they said was just a toy. I did not realize people had engines for toys, but it must be the geeky side of oil chemists.
After our tour, we returned to our hotel for the night. We were supposed to go see the skyline from an observation deck of a building, but it was unfortunately rainy and foggy, so we had to reschedule for the next day. I got more juicy dumplings. They are too good to resist.
Yesterday morning, I woke up and had a typical Shanghai breakfast. I have been getting a “pancake” every morning. It is an egg and dough bread and they put whatever you want inside of we it. I get sweet sauce that is the consistency of jelly and cabbage and then some type of meat. I have gotten chicken and pork. Some people are afraid of getting street food, but I think that it is part of the experience and as long as a lot of people are at the stand, I trust it. If local people are eating it a lot then I think that’s a good sign. I don’t want to limit my experience here by being afraid to try new things or by being too cautious.

We took the high speed train to Suzhou this morning. On the train we got a snack bag, even though the train ride was only 30 minutes. The train went 300 kph. That is about 187 miles per hour. So we traveled around 80 miles that quickly. The train uses special windows so the speed does not affect your vision. It looked like a magnifying glass in a way. It would be awesome if this existed in State College and you could get to Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York City, and D.C. that quickly.

You could tell that this study abroad program is for engineering students, because we talked about the acceleration of the train and momentum and the engine required to power it and I thought it was pretty hilarious that deep down we are all just curious about how the world around us works. It is cool to experience so many new things with a bunch of engineering students, because we question everything and are able to talk to each other about everything we see and how it works. I think I have gotten a better understanding of certain aspects of China and just all of the new things I have seen and experienced in general because everyone around me is so knowledgeable and is equally as curious as I am.

When we got to Suzhou, we all went to get food. Naturally, I got fried dumplings. I ate so many of them – probably 12. I love dumplings, but I will be deprived of them when I get back to the United States. I am not quite sure how I will recover.

In Suzhou we toured a garden that was made for an emperor in the Qing Dynasty. We found out that it took 3 years to construct the garden and then the emperor died only a year after it finished which is pretty unfortunate. We then went to get on a boat for a brief tour of the city. Suzhou has so many man-made canals, so you can take a boat around the city. It is definitely the Venice of China. It was beautiful. The canals were built in the Ming Dynasty, so they are really old. Rocks surrounded the edges and concrete was the predominant building material used. I noticed that at the base of some of the concrete pillars that supported motor vehicle bridges, there was some deterioration. I wonder if the pollution in the water got through the pores in the concrete and made the rebar expand. I will probably learn this in one of my classes, but for now I can only guess.

After visiting Suzhou, we took the bus back to Shanghai. The bus driver drove to Suzhou while we took the train, so he was able to bring us back. We then went to the Shanghai World Financial Center to see the view of Shanghai from above. I have seen New York City from the top of Rockefeller Building, but this view was even more amazing than that. The city is so big that you can’t even see everything from above. The buildings just keep going until they dissappear into the sky. The sun was almost completely set when we got to the top so the buildings were all starting to light up. It was very beautiful.

Today we will be visiting with local students who will be attending college in the United States next year and taking our final exam. We will then be having a final dinner together and saying goodbye to everyone, and to this lovely country we have spent the last month in.


Location: Sichuan Zhong Road, Shanghai, China

China’s New York

On Sunday we traveled for about 8 hours by bus to reach Shanghai.

When we arrived we were dropped off at our hotel and we dropped our luggage off before leaving to see the city. We walked a block away from our hotel to see the skyline of Shanghai lit up at night. It was hard to see some of the buildings because there was a lot of smog, but what we could see was beautiful.

After viewing the skyline, we went to eat and then headed back to our hotel. Shanghai is known for its nightlife so we decided to see what was around. We met up with a girl named Julia and she took us to two of the best clubs in Shanghai. There are a lot more foreigners in Shanghai. When we went to clubs with more Chinese people they danced a little bit more conservatively than how many Americans dance or people from a lot of other countries. It was fun to be able to interact with people from all over the world in just one place. There were people from China, America, Serbia, Nigeria, heck, we even ran into a Penn State graduate!

This morning, we woke up and went to visit the eco-city. We saw wetlands and ways that renewable energy will be used to hopefully run a completely green city. In China, electricity is much more expensive than it is in the United States. In the eco-city, if you generate more energy than necessary, you would be able to sell this energy to the power company, put it back into the grid, and actually make a decent profit from it. They hope that the eco-city will be one of many cities to be built in this manner and that soon they will be all over China.

After visiting the eco-city, we went to the temple in Shanghai, which is one of the oldest parts of the city. We walked around the street and we were able to do some bargaining again and we finally got to eat the famous juicy dumplings. Since arriving in Beijing, both Dean Masters and Xinli have mentioned how great the juicy dumplings were, so I had pretty high hopes for these dumplings from the time I sat down in the restaurant. When we were in Xian, Xinli took me and Nate to get food and we got some juicy dumplings, so he taught me the proper technique to eating them, but not everyone knew. When our dumplings came out, he said, “Watch! I’ll teach you how to eat juicy dumplings.”

When you eat a juicy dumpling, you first have to grab it by the top where all of the dough comes together. Then you have to dip it into your soy sauce. This is crucial so that the dough doesn’t get stuck to your mouth as you are making the first incision. You then have to bite into your juicy dumpling and suck the juice out of the dumpling. It is so delicious! You then dip the dumpling in your soy sauce and eat, repeating the process until the whole dumpling has been devoured.

I am glad Xinli has found such good places to get food over the years. Shanghai juicy dumplings will forever be in my heart.

After eating juicy dumplings, we went to Nanjing Street, the largest pedestrian walking street in China. There were a lot of shops and stores to visit. They had a mixture of name brand stores and local shops. After visiting Nanjing street we went back to the hotel and I ate more food. I had something that tasted like a hamburger in a way. It had pork on the inside and then a doughy bun wrapped around it. It was really good. So far, the food in Shanghai has been very good. Tomorrow we will be viewing the city from a skyscraper and visiting Exxon Mobil. We don’t get much sleep, but all of the great experiences are well worth it.

Unfortunately the WiFi at our hotel is not very good so I haven’t been able to upload any photos 🙁


Location: Shanghai, China