Opening Up

During my time abroad, I've had a considerable transformation in what I will and will not eat. There have also been a few common foods that I haven't had the opportunity to try since I finally stopped being picky. To show you how picky I was and how adventurous I've become, I present to you a list of the things I've either tried for the first time or finally started to enjoy. I've ordered them from what I deem to be the most to the least picky as compared to the general population.

Oranges, Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Celery, Sweet Potatoes, Fish, Shrimp, Clams, Calamari, Pigeon Eggs, Frog, Duck Blood, Ox Tongue, Red Ants

In the future, once I have pictures, I'll write a little more about some of these encounters.

Hangzhou Tour with Pictures

These are the pictures from my first trip outside of Shanghai. I visited the city of Hangzhou. The city is most famous for West Lake. My friends and I  arrived on Friday night. We went out for dinner and visited the night market. The next day it was raining but we visited the famous West Lake.  Eventually we wandered away from West Lake to explore the surrounding area. That night we returned home since the rain did not let up. Photos are out of order. Sorry about that.

Bird cage in the middle of the woods. 

There were many interesting paths that led off into the woods. 

Chinese people like to take pictures without asking for permission.

Perfect example of horrible driving. Guy tried to make a u-turn on a highway.

Woman washing clothes in the river.

Chickens in the backyard!

This was along one of the bridges that we crossed.

For some crazy price you could tour West Lake from this.

So much going on here.

First time leaving Shanghai!

Coasta Coffee right in the middle of nowhere.

West Lake

Pathway that runs through the middle of the lake.

Tea is found in most hotel rooms.

Walk along the night market.

English words on the menu! Except everything says "home style cooking." Oh well. 

Gas powered boats you could rent. Except they were closed.

A Suitable Gift: Part 1

I originally introduced this blog to talk of my interesting encounters in China. I’ve slightly staggered away from that path. To venture back on to that path, if only for a brief moment, I’d like to discuss one of my favorite experiences to date. 

When one goes to a faraway place, it is custom to return home with interesting things from the journey. This problem plagued me since my arrival in China. I ventured from shop to shop, week to week, unable to locate suitable gifts for my family. Like the United States, China is also full of cheap “Made in China” things and many of these shops didn’t offer anything of a higher quality. Not wishing to purchase such things for my family, I was stuck in a rut. As my mind wandered I thought of several potential gifts but each were quickly dismissed for various reasons. One day while sitting at my desk working it hit me. The answer had been literally under my nose the entire time, Chinese tea. 

In my pursuit of interesting places to visit within Shanghai, the Datong Lu Tea Market had continuously popped up. I’d never been but I figured it was finally time for me to make the trek. 

Early one Saturday, I located the market on my computer, 598 Datong Lu near Zhongshan Bei Lu, and headed out the door. The oh so frugal shopper that China has made me, I opted for the subway instead of a taxi, believing that Shanghai was now my city and I could easily find the market. I navigated the subway to my destination and then emerged in to a bright and busy market place. The street sign pointed me along the proper heading and off I went. 

I counted down the numbers as I walked, still a good five minutes to my destination. At about this moment I had arrived at the Zhongshan Bei Lu intersection. A little surprised that the numbers had dropped so quickly, I took a look around but did not see any signs of the tea market. To my horror, I looked across the road and found that Datong Lu was no where near the number 598 and whoever’s instructions I decided to trust were wrong. Or maybe I was. I gave my friend a call and he verified that the address I had was indeed correct. The first straw of hopelessness was cast upon the camel’s back. 

Determined not to let Shanghai conquer me so soon, I trudged on, still a slight hope that my address was correct. This could be possible with the use of the one ambiguous word contained within my directions, “near.” I crisscrossed all the surrounding intersections looking all about for any hope of a tea market. On one street, I found a giant billboard with “Datong Lu Tea Market” with an arrow pointing in “that” direction, wherever that may be I couldn’t understand because I found nothing. 

The camel was looking rather exhausted from the weight of the straw but I continued on. Number 598 Datong Lu must be the location. I retraced my steps back to Datong Lu and continued south. With each passing intersection the crowds died down and so too did my hopes of a tea market. The path I was on eventually turned into a tunnel, with 600 on one side. Surely my answer lay upon the other side of the tunnel! I crossed through to the other side, walked up the stairs, and as I stepped upon the last step, the camel’s back broke. I’d arrived at 590 Datong Lu.

Pictures on a Bike

I decided last night to take a quick ride to my favorite Chinese restaurant to grab dinner. A quick ride turned into an hour and a half bike ride with my headphones in, relaxing and flowing along with the bicycles, mopeds, motorcycles, and bicycle/truck hybrids. I had no particular aim so I just took the path that looked most interesting. Somewhere along this ride I realized that my blog was lacking in pictures. What better way to use my bike than to incorporate it into my blog posts. Like something out of an activities catalog filled with such things as underwater basket weaving, photographing while biking was born. Sadly I do not trust myself to take my phone, camera, music player, wallet, and keys along for a bike ride, I had to make a sacrifice. If you thought I’d keep the camera you’re wrong. My music player has a camera that will suffice, albeit very blurry. Here are my pictures of the random happenings within Shanghai that I don’t have to motivation to write long posts about. Expect a few new pictures every time I ride. Maybe they’ll be blurry, maybe they’ll be clear, you never know!

Here is a picture of a bicycle/truck hybrid with way too much stuff piled on. Sitting on top of the pile is a man with another man driving. These seem to be much more the norm that regular trucks. The most interesting I've seen is one of these carrying a huge pile of Styrofoam which was roughly 10x12x15 feet in size. 

The dog situation in Shanghai is pretty weird. Dogs here for the most part go without leashes. They seem to be better trained than their American counterparts. While on the subject of dogs, there are lots of stray dogs roaming about. The interesting thing about them is that they've learned to adapt to the city. One day I was curious so I followed a stray dog around for a few minutes and he would stop and wait for the light to change to red so he could go. 

Battle of the Firewall

It's been tough trying to post these last few days since the program I use to connect to Blogger, Facebook, Youtube, etc has been giving me problems. I finally bit the bullet and purchased a program with a monthly fee that is much more stable. Blog posts should occur more often now. 

Wo bu ming bai ni!

I have to say, I’m glad I started this blog because I’m scared to think about where my English would be today without it. The people I interact with on a daily basis are Chinese, French, German, and Indian. Missing from this list are American, British, Australian, etc. Thankfully almost all of the people I interact with on a daily basis can speak English, but not all of them can speak it well. This leads to me greatly simplifying my grammar and vocabulary and slowing the rate at which I speak. After eight months here, I can only hope this blog and my limited interactions with my friends and family back home will be able to lessen the blow to my grasp of the English language.

P.S. the other day I was writing some stuff down and wrote “word” as “yord” and “check” as “chek.” …Uh oh.

America Town

Whenever I’m missing American food and want to pay four times the average price of a Chinese meal, I head to Munchies. This restaurant is about the closest you can come to American food without being in America. It’s got hamburgers, wraps, sandwiches, and Mexican. Not feeling too adventurous after my run in with Mexican food, I decided it would be best to stick to my friend’s suggestion of hamburgers which was a good one because they’re amazing. Sadly, my hamburger isn’t accompanied by the smells of barbeque, the sounds of football, and the sight of red, white, and blue but for now they are a good enough. (And no I didn’t get paid to write that.)

I went to China to become an Engineer and Came Back a Teacher

I think the best thing about China is that they don’t drink coffee and as a result I’m not in charge of coffee runs. The printer is also about two feet away so I’m not in charge of making copies of documents either. Thanks to being born in a native English speaking country, I’ve been given the chance to partake in some projects with a much larger role than a typical intern. One such project was being in charge of writing the final document for the standards of design for my engineering group. Outside of engineering, I’ve been picked to lead an English discussion three hours each week. By the time I finish my internship I’ll be qualified for ESL teaching positions. Sadly, not everything is positive but fortunately the negative isn’t so negative. Not being able to speak Chinese has led to me missing just about every word spoken in meetings except for the rare occasions where the presenter speaks English or one of my coworkers translates. Outside of meetings we sit in an open environment with four desks facing each other. I managed to get placed with the youngest and best English speaking people in my group so time spent outside meetings are generally pleasant. Overall, being a native English speaker in a Chinese company has led to many great experiences and opportunities that I would not have found in an equivalent American company. 

Uncomforting Foods

For those of you that don’t know, Mexican food is by far the best kind of food. It’s got meat, and salsa, and vegetables. Most importantly though it has cheese and sour cream, two things that failed to make the cut for the Chinese diet. Since arriving in China I’ve attempted to find good Mexican food. On one of the first nights in my apartment I accompanied my roommate to a local European sports bar. Originally I had no intentions of ordering food but my eyes lit up after finding a chicken quesadilla on the menu, something I’d been craving but  had not had in over a month. With my mind changed and my order made I turned my attention to the tennis match to pass the time and keep my mind occupied. The tennis match had the desired effect and before I knew it the glorious quesadilla was set down in front of me. Less than a second later, the first bite was had, and it was glorious. Good feelings of home washed over me and I knew it would be a great night. Except the good feelings kept washing over me and eventually I was drowning in them. Hidden within the waves of good feelings was the true taste of the quesadilla. I think the taste could best be described by disappointment. It’s like a European, who knows little of Mexican food, took Chinese ingredients and tried to make what he thought was a decent quesadilla. Somewhere along the way he got lost and I ended up with the dish in front of me. I think that night has scarred me from ever attempting to try Mexican food again while in China. Only a few more months and I’ll be stepping off a plane in New York City, quickly hugging my family, and then making a mad dash for a good Mexican restaurant. 

That About Sums it Up

Similar

Thanks to the internet, my (and possibly yours) expectation of China was menus consisting of such wonderful things as dog and insects. The reality is that, at least for Shanghai, these foods are not very common. Just like in America, there’s the usuals of  chicken, beef, pork, fish, and vegetables.

Cheap

I’ve gotten rather used to the prices here and sure will miss them when I move home. On average I’m spending about $38 a week food shopping and my coworkers say I still pay too much. In America, I’ve come to the realization many years ago that eating out is expensive and for the most part will not be of a similar price to buying  the food in the food store. I took this with me to China and would bring my breakfast everyday to work. For about 85 cents I would eat a banana and a breakfast bar. The problem with this is that this meal is both not filling and American. To kill these two problems with one breakfast, I decided to give the street vendor outside the subway a try. For 70 cents, I could get two meat steamed dumplings and a soy milk. I must say that I’m a little embarrassed that it took me two months of work to give these a try because they are amazing. Just goes to show what can happen if you decide to step out of your comfort zone to try new things.

Awesome

So I originally intended to put pictures of awesome food here. Two things happened. First I only took one picture. Second, I cut the English description off. These are supposed to be Blueberry Lay's. I promise I will take more awesome(and weird) pictures on my next adventure to the food store.

Weird

While dog isn’t common, there are some other equally bizarre things that are. The meat section of the food store could be equated to the beyond of Bed, Bath, and Beyond. I've wandered in there a few times on accident to find random animal parts just piled up in their respective open freezers with no plastic covering. I’d like to believe that I’m more adventurous now with new foods but I don’t think that adventurousness will ever drive me to buy meat in China. However, I have motivated myself to try chicken heart and duck blood. I was also tricked into eating cow tongue. Sadly, I believe that my motivation stops somewhat short of foods like this and I did not enjoy them. I’ve failed of my dream to be able to compete with the openness of a garbage disposal to new foods but that’s ok; I’m happy where I am.

Chicken Nuggets to China

Today I realized that I’ve strayed somewhat from the original path of my blog. I like the direction it is heading so I will not alter that but I feel an explanation for the title of my blog is in order.

As a young child and into my early teens, I was an obnoxiously picky eater. To better understand what exactly this means, I present to you a stereotypical adventure to get food with my family. One night my mother decided to take me and my sister to go eat at our usual restaurant. As we arrived, I decided a trip to the toy store around the corner was in order while the rest of my family went in to sit down. Lacking foresight at such a young age, I didn’t realize my absence during ordering would hinder my ability to pick something edible from the menu. My ignorantly blissful state of mind was quickly shattered after returning to the table. To my horror, my family had ordered me chicken fingers. Any normal person would either like or dislike both chicken nuggets and chicken fingers. I was the special anomaly to the statistic in that chicken fingers did not resemble the same shape as chicken nuggets and were thus inedible. It was only after several minutes of fussing that I was finally convinced to eat the chicken nuggets.

Several years later found me being presented with my first opportunity to travel abroad to China for three weeks with my sister and our friend. This would be my first extended stay in a place that didn’t regularly consider chicken fingers and other similar American delicacies to be important enough to end up on the menu. Not content with such a situation, I decided to add my own items to the menu. Into my suitcase went forty health bars, enough to last my three week stay so that I would not have to try anything new. 

The first few days went rather successfully with me generally consuming only rice and health bars. Any ‘weird’ foods passed my way were discretely disposed of to my traveling companions. Around day five I took an inventory check of my health bars and found that I still had twenty bars left. Twenty bars!? At this rate I’d be eating nothing but rice for the last ten days of the trip.

Something had to change and fast or else starvation would slowly take over. I found my solution in a few words of wisdom passed on to be by my sister. “It’s only a mental thing, nothing more.” I tried to take these words to heart but a transition from chicken nuggets to chicken fingers does no way compare to a transition from chicken nuggets to chicken feet. In hindsight there probably isn’t much difference between the two except maybe a trip through the blender, but hopefully you get the point. Thankfully, I halfheartedly took these words to heart and managed to finish off the three weeks with no loss of weight or signs of malnutrition.

I can’t say that my trip ended exactly the way I wanted it to but it did spark my shift towards being more open to new foods. The gradual transition however did take its toll and four years later I was ready to go again to China, this time with a more open mind.

Three Months Down Part 1

Two days from now will mark three months since I boarded a plane and left everything I knew behind. While this statement is of a very dramatic nature, the reality of the situation is not so shocking.

When it's one o'clock here, it's one o'clock there, what's the difference? Twelve hours.

While there is the obvious fact of distance separating me from my home, there is also the time difference. I couldn’t exactly comprehend what a twelve hour time difference meant until I lived it myself. Family members are not home when I leave for work and when I get home from work they’ve already left for work. Generally this means that communication with family is reserved for the weekend only. As far as friends go, generally only after 10pm will I have a chance to talk to them. You can take this how you like; personally I think it’s not so bad. I’m grateful to have the chance to talk to these people with the time I have.

I thought all you could eat was dog and snake...

The foods I miss are slowly starting to fill up my thoughts more and more with each passing day. I would love to be sitting at Qdoba or an all you can eat breakfast buffet right now. Sadly, these are not popular food choices among Chinese people. Luckily, Shanghai is home to just about every other food imaginable. Since arriving, I've managed to find suitable restaurants for Greek, German, Spanish, Mexican, Italian, American, Korean, Brazilian, Indian, and Mongolian. In terms of food stores, I know of several places to buy almost all of the foods I could possibly want. Sadly, this solution for food cravings comes with a markup of between two hundred and four hundred percent. For now I've managed my desire to buy these foods, preferring instead to save for travel. Although the desire to save for travel is strong, I expect at least once or twice I’ll cave in and spend $3 on a drink that costs $1 in America.

Try and Guess what I ate!

If you couldn't tell, it's duck blood. I'll add a more detailed post later but for now this is all.

The War Zone in your Stomach

Before I begin I must make a note, if you’re only traveling for a short amount of time, if you follow this advice you’ll return home with great stories of the bathroom’s wallpaper and interesting tile design.

With that said, not everything you touch is out to kill you. If the natives are doing it, then so can you. However, there’s a reason the natives can do it, they’re natives. Don’t go around thinking that the first day off the plane you can live like a native and eat and drink everything in sight. The key to transitioning is baby steps. I’m still somewhat hesitant about the water situation but so are a decent amount of natives. This doesn’t mean however that I bathe and brush my teeth with bottled water, that’s a little too over the top. As far as food goes, I believe this is self explanatory but use your gut feeling on where to eat. Hopefully, that gut feeling isn’t telling you to go to McDonalds or Starbucks but if it is, it probably didn’t tell you to go to China in the first place.

Of course there is the fact that you’re most likely going to get sick since you’ve never been introduced to the bacteria that call foreign lands their home. Luckily, modern medicine has a solution for you. Another great fact is that the human body is amazing and within a week or two you should be over most of the bacteria declaring war on your body. At this it’s time to relax and enjoy the new land and enjoy it to its fullest. 

The Great Shanghai Scavenger Hunt!

Since I cannot post so often now that work has started, pictures with have to suffice. Without further ado, I present to you, pigs' feet. (At least that's what I think it is.)

Hopefully the Picture Tastes Good

 Buried somewhere in the streets surrounding the Yuyuan Gardens metro stop lies Old Shanghai. However, I did not know this because I thought the subway stop was right in the middle and ended up on some random street that was not in fact Old Shanghai. Unable to locate it and strongly desiring food I gave up my search for Old Shanghai and replaced it with the nearest restaurant. Still, not quite comfortable with the city, I spotted a place where two foreigners were eating and decided to give it a try. Upon entering, I stood and waited for several minutes to be seated before realizing that customers seat themselves.

My menu arrived shortly thereafter and I opened to the first page to find a menu lacking in English words. That's not so bad I guess, I can just look at the pictures and should be able to find something to try. Contained within the first page was not a single thing that looked appetizing. The next several pages went by with the same conclusion. As the last page approached the fear of not being able to find something to eat steadily rose. Thankfully, on the last page there was a picture of a dish of potatoes, not my proudest moment but I am not about to order something random and potentially make a fool of myself by gagging while trying to eat it. So potatoes it is, and what better to accompany them than a beer since that is the only drink I can figure out how to order.

After deciding what to order I spend the next ten minutes sitting around waiting for my order to be taken. It is not until later that I realize that since these waiters are not tipped, there is a difference in what the waiters will do. Thankfully my waiter realized this and eventually came over to take my order. The conclusion of this meal resulted in a full stomach and a bad story ending.

Lesson Learned: Do your best to try and understand others and the differences by which they live their lives. Failing to do so will probably have you ending up looking like an idiot.

Been There, Didn't do That

My first morning in this new place found me waking up to a vacant apartment. My friend was out for the night and would be returning in the afternoon.  The fridge was empty and so was my stomach and it demanded a remedy fast. My journey took me wondering through several large shopping centers, eventually finding a suitable location for breakfast. I apologize in advance but my first breakfast ended up being a coffee from Starbucks and a glorified ham and cheese sandwich.  Progress is steady but slow and I aim to move beyond my western comforts to more interesting selections.

My pocket contained a list of items that needed to be purchased, so with a full belly I set off in search of locating each of these items. As I wondered into an electronics superstore, think Best Buy(by the way they’ve completely pulled out of China since they are unable to compete with the place I walked into) but five times larger and with lots of little shops instead of a giant store, I started to realize how materialistic the people of Shanghai are. In America you’d walk into a Best Buy and see maybe fifteen different laptops to look at. Here, there were easily five hundred laptops on this one floor. Unable to locate anything on my list I moved to the next floor where I was able to cross two items off my list, recharable batteries and a computer mouse. With the purchase of these items came a valuable lesson, unless you want to be broke long before you expect to be, you’ve got to learn to haggle. I easily spent twice what I could have gotten for these items but I didn’t know.

I had left a note saying I would return to the apartment to meet up with my friend so with two items off my list I headed home to meet up with him. We spent the next few hours touring his neighborhood.  This ended up with a cheap and awesome massage and another new and interesting meal Shanghai has to offer. Dinner was cheese and beef noodles as well as dumplings. A quick note while we’re on the subject of dumplings, several years ago while traveling in China I got my first taste of real dumplings and they were amazing. We’d go about our day, stay out until about 5am and then wake up to Coke and dumplings. Upon returning to the United States I had no desire to corrupt myself and avoided dumplings ever since. The moment the dumplings were set before, I knew it was time well spent waiting.

After dinner we set off in search of a cell phone for me to use. Another glimpse into the materialistic society came during the search for a cell phone. There was an entire floor, which was huge, dedicated to nothing but cell phones in all varieties. With the help of my friend, I managed to wade through the sea of phones and locate one, probably designed around the year 2000, to use for the next six months. You could call, you could text, and that was it. Sadly the next step up was $200 and not justifiable at all so I went with the $50 time capsule of a phone.  With jet lag poking in to say hello, we decided it was best to retire for the night.

Lesson Learned: What's the point of flying half way across the world to get Starbucks? Explore, try something new, and save the Starbucks for when you're two months in and feeling home sick. Five dollars for breakfast is a joke and you deserve to be laughed at when you can walk around the corner, find an interesting and tasty breakfast food, and pay twenty cents for it. 

A Little Bit of Background

In my youth my diet was rather limited to foods such as hot dogs, pasta, and chicken nuggets. One evening, I went out to eat with my family and left them to order my food while I went to check out the magic shop. What I returned to was horrifying at the time, chicken fingers. They were not chicken nuggets and thus inedible. After a five minute fight with my family I reluctantly decided to try them. Now that you have this impression of me, imagine my young self being invited to spend three weeks in China, traveling with my sister and her friend to visit her friend's extended family.

With forty health bars in suitcase we set off for China. I was no where prepared for what awaited. Every meal involved extended family watching me use chopsticks and offering me every dish on the table, which usually averaged about about ten different things.Within the first week I'd eaten two-thirds of my supply of health bars.  It took some time but I slowly managed to improve my outlook on these new foods. I arrived home with a somewhat more open view on the food. 

Several months ago, I contacted the friend who I had previous traveled with for an internship. He had since moved to Shanghai for a full time job and was in a position to offer me an internship of six months. I happily accepted and purchased my ticket for May 21st. What awaits me will be seen in the months to come.