Shanghai & Me

here's a few pics courtesy of the ross harris collection

my arm on the shanghai subway

the pearl tower at night

shanghai food is AMAZING ! and more similar to what westerners typically think of chinese food.

Shanghai Day 3: Noche Buena

this day was a super tourist day for us. our first day was rainy and a little gross, but the weather got better the longer we stayed.

"dork with skyline"

i don't remember what this part of the city is called, but it was really pretty and packed with people and tourist shops. and a starbucks.

a korean tourist, one of the many at the yuyuan gardens near those giant red buildings.

in the yuyuan gardens, it'd be more magical and amazing if there weren't a jillion tourists.

one of many markets selling xmas things and other things.

Shanghai Day 2

this is another skyscraper area in the main center of the city called people's square. there are millions of stores, a big park, a bunch of tall buildings with bright lights ad giant tv's. the shanghai museum, and other fun things.

a lot of the city also consists of shikumen (pron. SHR-ku-MAen) which are 19th century housing with mixed european and chinese ideas and styles for urban living. shanghai's streets vary from these scenes to rich european art nouveau styles, and classic 30's and 40's art deco. there are also enormous areas with brand new giant luxury stores from every clothing brand you know from countries the world over

the shanghai museum was hands down the best museum i've seen in china. early on, when i first got here i mentioned in a previous post about the shoddy quality of beijing's museums but the very high quality of it's gallery scene. shanghai's the complete opposite, the museums have great items and impeccable presentation while the galleries seem mostly lacking.

arroz

a gallery with really amazing architecture but really wack art and a much to high entry fee. but it's a small example of the often eccentric but beautiful architecture the city constantly surprises you with.

Shanghai Day 1

lots and lots of light rain our first morning there but we walked a lot of the older part of the city for the first time

this is on the waterfront of the river dividing the city, it's an old part of the city packed with tall, ornate buildings ranging from the 1880's to the early 1940's.

above and below: this is what's across from those beautiful, old buildings. that is the new economic center of the city; and back in the rainy haze is the jin mao building, the tallest in china. we made a point to walk along here as often as possible on the trip just to believe it, it's so crazy to see a skyline like that exist.

Shanghai Surprise!

ross and i arrived in shanghai yesterday morning to celebrate christmas here. we couldn't make it home so we decided a vacation would be the second best way to celebrate it. this city is unreal beautiful and feels like the future somehow slipped into our realm... or something. pictures will come in the next few days, in the meanwhile i'll post again before x-mas, but just in case happy christmas and whatnot to everyone! :)

i've been pretty sick this week :(

i started my week pretty normally, but by tuesday afternoon my throat began to ache just a little. when i made it home i felt like i was about an hour away from a big, big cold. then within a few hours i got a fever. the medicine, o.j., and multi-vitamins came out and my temperature continued to shoot up and up. tuesday night was sleepless, and wednesday was one of those days where you experience life as if it was much slower and had a heavy fishbowl stuck over your head. wednesday night was sleepless, thursday was another obfuscated bed-ridden day. i finally lost the fever by saturday morning but the i still have really strong throat pain, and sought some crazy chinese cure. hopefully i'll feel 100% soon.
i did manage to do some book reading at home and newspaper reading online. i followed my tradition of watching fellini movies when sick, this time it was "la dolce vita" and "nights of cabiria". i also found a good article in sunday's new york times about beijing. they have a column on sunday's travel section called "36 hours" where they describe worthwhile things to do in a city if you happen to find yourself there over a weekend or something like that 36 hours in bejing here . silvia, ross, and i went xmas shopping today, which was weird to feel like the only ones here this time of year out looking for xmas presents. there are a few places to get xmas your stuff but it's all crappy and dollar store-tastic. i'll keep writing about how christmas progresses.





more of us

just a few fun pics

Beijing new and old

a few images of beijing modern and what's left of the ancient

these towers are one of beijing's newest malls and office buildings at the xizhimen ( pron. SI-jer-MAen) subway station. the mall just opened in october

this is the new cctv (the national television channel) tower. it's enormous and will be one of the most impressive new buildings in the beijing skyline. the two towers will meet horizontally at the middle creating a large negative space between them. i believe it'll open this summer.

yesterday ross took me to the summer palace, a large 18th century complex with a giant artificial lake, parks, and temples. it's where the last empress lived until the fall of the monarchy early in the 20th century and was spared by the maoists. it's really really beautiful and incredibly just within the modern city boundary though originally it was well outside old beijing

this is what a shoreline looks like as winter begins to freeze over the water. super crazy, i don't recall ever seeing this before. in my mind a shoreline is still a sort of beach. i still don't really get winter.

this is one of the bridges in the artificial lake within the summer palace leading to "the temple of fortunate rains and excessive moisture." kinda funny.

Thanksgiving news!

we will be having thanksgiving here in china on saturday evening! i suppose it will be less than than Rockwell-esque considering the surroundings, but we'll be sure to have fun never the less. some of our beijinger friends have never been to a thanksgiving before, so ross is hilariously driving himself crazy thinking about the exquisite 12 course dinner he'd ideally like to prepare. turkey is an import so it's way too expensive, there will be other little whispers from thanksgivings past however. ross will make stuffing and a pie of sorts, and i will eat them happily. there will be 3 cubans and 1 panamanian girl so we'll definitely listen to spanish music and more than likely dance. i believe this will be a thanksgiving to remember. pictures are sure to follow.
it's gotten very cold now, to the point where the mid-fifties felt pretty warm just the other afternoon. i think we all have a whole lot to be thankful for this year, i sure as f--k know i do! i miss everyone back home a whole lot, but i really couldn't feel any happier here. i want everyone to have a happy thanksgiving and to know i think about home every day and i smile and can't wait to share with you guys again soon :)

silvia in china

There are more pictures of silvia in ross and my cameras than almost anything else in all of china. these really are but a few.

Fall looks like...

this is my first real life autumn. trees suddenly change from green to all kinds of yellows and reds, then within days all fall to the ground. days switch between bright, sunny, and cool; to
gray, somber, short, and cold. the winds have picked up and everyone's dressed in layers.

it's funny to experience the cold in this more constant and unchanging way. miami has cold fronts that hit and dissipate within days, after which we can go back to the beach. i guess i've become wired over time to expect cold weather to follow that behavior. instead, i have 4 more months of this coming my way...

these last 3 pictures are from our weekly outing. we found this place a few weeks ago completely by accident that same day we found the abandoned hotel from a previous post. it's the dorms from a university here in beijing, but the buildings seem to be from the teens or 1920's. they aren't in the best shape but look really european and almost completely out of place here in china. they are really beautiful none the less, and i want to try and see if i can live there somehow in the future

We're all three at ross and my place drinking beer, painting, and watching funny english translation of indian music videos. watch and enjoy:)

so we found this apocalyptic dog park...

ross sees this park which faces an above ground subway station on the way to and from work every day. he wanted to turn it into a feild trip for us and we're all pretty glad he did. the park is super strange and packed full of copyright infringement, chinese weirdness, and mythologically themed kiddie rides. there's a small squatter community that actually lives in the abandoned park and the very back is a small dog park with very big dogs.

the entrance gate, and us photographing crazily in eerie disbelief

that brick area in the back is where the squatters live. just in front of that, on what used to be a race track, is a goat pen...i'm not sure if these are goats, or rams, or sheep. there's another area about 100 feet behind me with piles of corn husks. we assumed that's where the people who live there prepare their corn.

lots of overgrowth, and all kinds of poopy on the ground. you also hear a buzz from the power lines suspended above the park held by giant metal towers hundreds of feet tall on the messy fields adjacent to the park.

i'm pretty sure we'll return, we're also all posting about this neat place in the comping days so stay tuned.