Pictures!

Hi everyone!!!

So I have returned to the states, hanging out in LA for a little while. And... being back in the states, I have finally been able to upload tons of pictures! Yay!

Ok, so the pictures are on my picasa site (or facebook)

https://picasaweb.google.com/matthiastm

Enjoy!

Life in Shanghai

A week from today, I will be leaving Shanghai... Time is a funny thing, as I'm sure you all know. The only thing more surprising than how quickly the past three weeks has gone by is how used to this place I have become in those few weeks. I have my daily routine (or at least, as much of a routine as you can have when you only have two or three hours of class 4 days a week). I have my favorite cafe, my favorite place to get steamed pork buns, the dumpling place where they recognize me when I walk in... I even have a regular monday night drinking place... My routine most days involves going to class for a few hours, followed by wanderings around Shanghai in the afternoon. The evenings are either spent out at a bar, or back at the apartment watching a movie with roommates or reading or studying chinese...

My chinese is improving... slowly. Outside of class, I pretty much only use it in restaurants. I can ask for an english menu when the one they have is all in chinese. If they don't have an english menu, I can at least recognize the characters for pork, chicken, and noodles, so that I at least have some idea of what I'm ordering... and asking for rice is easy enough. And while in general I still can't understand what anyone says to me, I can at least understand the price... Pretty much everyone here is very patient and patient when I try to speak chinese, but (like most foreign cities) they are also quick to reply in English. It's understandable, since if they're working at a cafe or something, they have other customers to serve and things with me will certainly get done much more quickly in English, but it makes it harder to practice...

Today, while having dinner at the dumpling place, I saw someone walk in carrying some fried soup dumplings. I tried to ask him where he got them, since the only place I know of where you can get them isn't nearby... did not succeed. In the end, though, I merely succeeded in him giving me one to try, but not being able to figure out where he got them. Oh well. (To be honest, I like the regular soup dumplings better than the fried ones anyways...)

I have not managed to go on any excursions outside of Shanghai yet. Party because there is plenty here to see without leaving the city, and partly because the past few days that I have not had class have coincidentally been the exact same days that it has rained... and the excursions that I would take are all places that would involve a lot of walking around outside looking at beautiful lakes or canals or the such.... not exactly places you want to go in the rain. Oh well. If I don't get out of Shanghai, it will just give me that much more of a reason to come back and visit later!

I went last week to the World Financial Center, the tallest building in Shanghai and, in theory, has the highest observation deck in the world (despite the Burk Khalifa in Dubai being overall ridiculously taller, it's 'official observation deck' is apparently still lower than the World Financial Center). It was a hazy day, with the air pollution and everything, but it was still really cool to go around sunset and watch the amazing lights of the city's other buildings turn on one by one. Other things that I stumbled into include a really interesting market area in the winding alleyways of an old residential area. It felt like an upscale and hip version of a bazaar in India... I also, the other day, found a really cool development area called Red Town. An old industrial complex, it has since been turned into a center of art and design, hosting an art museum, various art galleries, office space for design companies, cafes, and an indoor/outdoor sculpture garden, all mixed in together. I wandered into one of the old warehouses that was full of sculptures, thinking I was in a free museum. It was about 30 minutes later that I realized that all the closed rooms I saw were not simply office space for the museum, but actual offices for individual companies inside this museum/warehouse/sculpture space. I didn't quite know what to make of it, but I have to say I would love to work in a office in a location like that!

I apologize for not posting pictures... I've had some problems with attachments, and google in general is pretty slow right now here. But I'll be out of here in a week, and I'll be sure to post some pictures then!

I heart Shanghai

Ok, so.... Shanghai rocks. Seriously.

Yesterday, I went to the river (aka "The Bund") and just walked around from late afternoon through sunset and into the evening. I really can't think of any other city that I have ever been to that has a more beautiful skyline. One one side of the river (Pu Dong, the east side) is a dazzling array of sky scrapers decked out with lights and buildings that put Times Square to shame. The other side of the river is comprised of a mile long stretch of a park on the bank of the river neighbored by old colonial-style buildings all lit up in a uniform golden-yellow light, while throughout the park you can watch an amazing blend of tourists and locals out for a stroll. It really is quite amazing.

Today I enjoyed the day in People's Square, and wandered around the Shanghai Museum, as well as some nice shopping areas in Shanghai like Xintiandi (for those of you that know about Din Tai Fung, it is in Xintiandi... I did not yet go in for any soup dumplings (mmmm... xiao long bao...), but I plan to go soon!) In the same day, I got some delicious Taiwanese wrap-thing for dinner, went to a bar that had an american bluegrass band (bluegrass in Shanghai!!), went dancing at a club, and then topped it all off with some meat-on-a-stick street food for a late night snack! (There are people on the sidewalk set up with grills and uncooked meat on sticks, everything from beef to chicken to sausage to who-knows-what. You pick the sticks you want and hand it to guy who grills it then and there, pay a few kuai, and you're good to go!

Earlier in the day I had lunch at a bakery. I love the bakeries here! I don't even know what I ate. I had one roll type thing with bacon and pineapple, and something else that was covered in some kind of spice... whatever they were, they were delicious!

Also, there's a park nearby where it seems like every night they have dancing in the middle of the park. I walked by the other evening and saw people doing the Viennese Waltz! I promised myself that I would go back some night and join in! After the Viennese Waltz, they followed with some other dance that was almost a waltz (it was the same time signature as a waltz) but the style they were dancing wasn't quite the standard waltz that I know... I'll have to watch one or two more songs, but I think I can pick it up pretty easily....

Maybe it's because I have a lot of chinese friends back in New York, or maybe it's because I just spent a month in India (which makes Shanghai feel relatively familiar to New York in comparison), or maybe it is in fact something specific about Shanghai, but whatever it is, I feel more comfortable here in such a short time than I have felt in any other city I've been to.... Most other foreign cities that I have been to, I feel at least some level of hesitation going into a restaurant and trying to order food.... But here, I just walk in and point to something on the menu and see what I get, without worry. I feel like I can spend the whole day just walking around town like I used to do in New York.

I found myself an apartment for the month. One of my roommates is half-taiwanese, half-jewish elementary school teacher who grew up in Brooklyn, and the other is an Ecuadorian girl who went to a German international school in Ecuador and is doing an internship here as part of her college studies in Konstanz, Germany (right on the border with Switzerland)

I'm also taking Mandarin classes during the week. Classes are enjoyable, only three students (including me), which actually almost makes things go by faster than I can learn.... The tones are, of course, difficult, but the grammar is quite simple.... We aren't learning any of the written characters, since that would simply be much too difficult to start out with, so we use pin yin instead (which uses roman letters to write out chinese words), but what frustrates me is that things like menus in restaurants are only written in chinese characters or english.... not pin yin. Since I don't know the characters, I'm forced to order food in English (which actually ends up with me pointing at something on on the menu, rather than any actual verbal communication).... if they wrote the pin yin along with the characters, I could at least try to order in Mandarin... Oh well... I guess that's just more motivation for me to try to learn some of the characters! (Which I am trying to do with some flash-card type apps on my iPhone!)

Ok, that's it for now! Time for bed!

First Impressions

Yay! It works! I can still update my blog!

Ok, so Shanghai.... I haven't done much sight-seeing in Shanghai yet. I think, however, that I will have plenty of time for that over the next month. I have decided, in preparation of moving to Taiwan, to start learning Mandarin! I found a school that had another beginner student who wanted to start on Monday, so it will just be two of us in the class, and it will just be monday through thursday, which will leave me with three day weekends if I want to try to go visit other cities in China on the weekends.

I arrived on Thursday, spent the day on Friday looking at a couple schools, didn't do much today because it was cold and rainy most of the day. Tomorrow, I have a few appointments to look at sublets nearby, so that I don't have to sleep on Liza and Collin's couch for a whole month. It has been really great hanging out with Liza and Collin! Plenty of opportunities to eat and drink, which I love. They have invited me to join their trivia-team at a bar nearby on Mondays, so I will once again have my traditional Monday-night-happy-hour! Yay!!!!

Admittedly, I have not seen much of Shanghai. Perhaps my first impressions of it may change after staying longer, and seeing some of the other neighborhoods... but my first impression of Shanghai is that it's AWESOME! Ok, ok, that may have been a bit oven-enthusiastic of an 'awesome', but still it has been great. The subway itself runs very smoothly and is very clean, but more importantly, as soon as I stepped out of the subway, I felt completely comfortable. Liza and Collin are staying in the French Concession neighborhood, which has lots of nice older buildings, and wide tree-lined roads. There is almost no honking and the traffic is so well behaved compared to India (except for the motorbikes, which don't seem to feel obliged to follow any rules or regulations whatsoever, and will even happily come up onto the sidewalk when they want to.... of course at least there are sidewalks, which is more than you can say about much of India...)

We walked through a mall or two, and I was extremely impressed and excited by the quantity and apparent quality of baked goods and sweets! Small dumpling and noodle shops are all around, and the bar scene is quite suitable. There is actually a micro-brewery nearby! And while in India the selection was usually either Kingfisher or nothing, the selection of bottled beer in many places actually includes such New York favorites as Brooklyn Lager and Saranac Pale Ale.

Some of the people I have talked to here describe their first experience as very overwhelming at how big the city is, or how crazy some of the people are, or how different it is from the US. I haven't seen that yet... I don't know if it's because I just spent a month in India, or because I'm staying with close friends who already know the area and speak Chinese, or because the area I'm in is atypical of the rest of Shanghai... It's probably a combination of all of them.

Anyways, I am very excited to get my own room, get started with classes, and start settling in to Shanghai!

Hello Shanghai!!!

Ok, so China does not allow me to access certain websites, such as this blog (or facebook). If I remember correctly, however, I can still post to the blog via e-mail, which China does allow. So this is an e-mail attempt to post to my blog. I want to make sure it works before I type a long thought-out blog about my last days in India and my first days in China, but of course I can't check my own blog to see if this works, so.... maybe someone could e-mail me to let me know that I got the e-mail address of the blog correct, and that you can in fact read this, and that everything worked? Awesome!

Thoughts on a Plane

As I sat in the terminal in Dehradun waiting for the plane that would take me to Delhi, where I would then catch a connecting flight to Bangalore, I was struck by an odd sensation. It was actually a very similar feeling to the one I had walking around a mall in Noida, outside Delhi a few weeks ago. The airport, like the mall, could have been any airport in America, and with that, so unlike everything else in India.

Take, for example, the trip to the airport. To get to the airport, I took an autorickshaw. The process of getting an autorickshaw to take you where you want to go for a price you want to pay is a small ordeal in itself, especially when you have to catch that rickshaw at a rickshaw stand in the middle of a popular tourist destination. How do you pick a rickshaw driver out of a crowd of 20 that are all trying to get you into theirs? How do you then convince that driver that you are not going to pay 400 rupees for a trip that you know shouldn’t cost more than 250? How, as a white tourist, do you get anyone to take you for the said price of 250? I finally ended up agreeing to pay 300, but that didn’t stop the driver from asking for 350 once we got to the airport. Of course, at that point, I’m the one with the money, and I don’t need the driver anymore, so he really has no grounds for haggling, and its not difficult to stick to 300. Just make sure you don’t give him the 500 rupee bill until he has 200 rupees in change in his hand. He was a nice driver, and I enjoyed the ride. I would have been tempted (despite already being overcharged) to tip him an extra 10. But as soon he asked for 350, that tip went right back in my pocket.

I ended up in a rickshaw with 4 other Indian passengers who didn’t look they were going to the airport, but seemed to enjoy having me ride with them. After about 10 minutes, we stopped somewhere, and they got off, which much smiling and hand shaking and wishing me good luck, and then I was by myself in the rickshaw for another 30 minute ride through the forest and past fields and farms to the airport. The ride was slow and bumpy, with the usual amount of honking, swerving, braking, and general physics-defying driving that I have come to expect in India. The dusty air blows through the open rickshaw and brings with it all the various scents and smells (good and bad, but mostly good) of the country side.

For the past three and a half weeks, all my travel has been by train, bus, rickshaw, and motorbike. While I never rode in one of the train cars you see in pictures of India with people on the roof and hanging off the sides, the transportation still all shares some distinctive characteristics, a certain shabbiness that you might normally associate with something worn with use, but at the same time impossible to picture new. It’s shabby and has always been shabby. The padding is mostly gone, the colors are faded, things are held together with string and wire. The train station is a chaotic mob of people, the busses may or may not go where their signs say they go, and god knows how the rickshaws stay on the road. It’s a system of chaos that somehow seems to work smoothly and efficiently (and cheaply) to get people where they need to go. After that, the organized, clean, and shiny new airport terminal seemed completely out of place.

If I put my face against the window and looked back as far as I could, I could see the sun-lit snow-capped Himalayas receding in the distance. I wish I hadn’t left my camera in my luggage! Although I don’t really know what kind of picture I would have been able to get anyways. Below me was a great plain filled with farms and dotted with houses, but filled and dotted in a way distinctly unlike the US. In the US, the farm plots of the plains are large and extremely geometric. Either large squares, or large circles depending on the irrigation system. The farm houses are spread out at regular intervals amoung the circles and squares.
The field of the Indian countryside is a much more intricate patch-work of small irregularly shaped plots of farmland. It’s difficult to judge size from the inside of a plane, but by comparing to buildings and roads, each patch of green or brown making up the quilt seemed about the size of a large-ish suburban back yard. The buildings, instead of being spread evenly through these plots, are all bunched up together in groups of anywhere from 50 to 1000, like herds crowding together in the middle of an open prairie. The resulting image of a green and brown quilt with clusters of houses reminded me of clusters of stars forming galaxies, and then the galaxies themselves clustering together, but each one still a distinct individual.

It made me wonder about the Indian notion of space and crowds. At first I thought that there are so many people in India that they are simply used to crowds, but I’m not sure anymore. I think maybe their culture actually feels more comfortable being as close to others as possible. In the US, everyone wants to get as far away from each other as possible in the given space. Take the subway, for example. Get on to a nearly empty subway in New York (preferably one like the C train, with long bench seats) and you will invariably see the same pattern of sitting. The very first spots to be taken are the spots at the very ends of the benches, right next to the doors. Once each end is full, the next spots occupied are those exactly in the middle of the benches. This pattern continues in almost mathematical consistency with each new person taking the spot in the middle of the empty space. On other trains, like the A-train, with it’s groups of benches that are 3-seats wide, with slight dips to delineate each seat, and each seat being just slightly too small, you will get people sitting on either end, but then people will stand rather than try to squeeze into the middle spot. Squeezing into the middle spot would require (gasp!) touching the other two people.

Watch, instead the subway in Delhi fill up (if you are ever lucky enough to get on a train that is not already filled to bursting). Given a bench with one person sitting at one end, the second person to sit down will often sit, not at the opposing end, but directly next to the first person, leaving the rest of the bench wide open. (although not for long, since the seats in a Delhi subway are rarely open for long). Furthermore, people would rarely if ever remain standing if there is any possible space to squeeze onto the bench, no matter how small or uncomfortable squeezing into that spot may be. To me, standing for a few stops is far more comfortable than half-sitting on someone’s lap. The fact that many Indians would choose the half sitting reflects not their discomfort with standing, but more closely reflects their discomfort with being alone. I don’t know, I’m not an anthropologist, and I’ve only been here for a few weeks, so I don’t presume to actually know what I’m talking about…

I’m reading a book (Shantaram) and found this quote that I find quite amusing. An Indian man is trying to explain to other Indians in his village what his white friend (30 years old) is doing there in the village.

“Where is he from?”

“New Zealand, in Europe”

“Why isn’t he there with his parents?”

“He’s traveling, he’s looking at the whole world.”

“Why?”

“Europeans do that. They work for a while, and then they travel around, lonely, for a while, with no family, until they get old, and then they get married, and become very serious.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Yes.”

“He must get lonely, without his mummy and his daddy, and with no wife and children.”

“Yes. But the Europeans don’t mind. They get a lot of practice being lonely.”


...When I get back to the states, my plan is to go to Seneca Lake to spend as much time there as I can before going to Taiwan. I’ll be as far away from people as I possible can (realistically and comfortably). I imagine many days will be spent without the company of anyone else the entire day. Lonely, maybe, but right now it sounds glorious!

There’s another quote from the book that I quite like, about the white guy’s first impressions as his arrives in Mumbai:

“The contrast between the familiar and the exceptional was everywhere around me. A bullock cart was drawn up beside a modern sports car at a traffic signal. A man squatted to relieve himself behind the discreet shelter of a satellite dish. An electric forklift truck was being used to unload goods from an ancient wooden cart with wooden wheels. The impression was of a plodding, indefatigable, and distant past that had crashed intact, through barriers of time, into its own future.”


Sorry for the long post. I wrote it on the flight from Delhi to Bangalore and didn’t really have much else to do. Plus I was feeling slightly sentimental about leaving India so soon when there is so much more to see and do and experience here. That’s the thing about traveling…. It often feels before you leave like each new country is a giant museum. You’ll go to one room, look at all the paintings, and then move on to the next. Each hour spent in a museum is one hour less that you need to see the whole museum and thus complete your trip. Obviously, a place like India is far too great a museum to see in one month, and you know that coming in, but you still think that one month now is one less month that I would have to spend later…. But that’s not the way it works. The truth is that each new country is not a museum at all. A museum is finite, a country infinite. One day spent in a country does not reduce the necessary time to “finish” the country, but instead opens up another week of days that you didn’t even know you needed before. A month in India does not lessen your desire to see India, but makes it even greater.

That’s the curse of traveling, but it is also a blessing. It’s a blessing because it’s impossible to see everything, and by understanding that and accepting that, you can let go of the pressure to cram everything in, and you can instead take your time and relax and enjoy the things you do see. It’s a blessing because you know that no matter how much traveling you do, and how much time you spend somewhere, there will ALWAYS be something different to see, something unique to experience, and something new to learn.

Last Day in Rishikesh

I have been at the ashram here for almost two weeks.

I feel like I should have more to say about it right now than I do, but to be honest the last week has been about the same as the first week. That's not a bad, thing. The ashram has been a very pleasant and peaceful stay. Every day at yoga I feel more stable and more flexible. I don't see myself taking classes regularly, although I might adapt some of it to personal use and do it myself. I picture myself staying at Seneca Lake and waking up in the morning and doing some yoga out on the dock facing the rising sun. It sounds like a nice way to start the day.... :)

Anyways, I'm off down south to Bangalore to spend a few days with my old roommate Vaibhav (whom I have not seen in almost 7 years!)

And, after Bangalore, I will be flying out to China to see Liza and Collin! (And hopefully spend a few weeks learning Mandarin in preparation for moving to Taiwan this summer)

In other news, I was accepted into Cornell for Architecture!!! I applied last fall, completely unsure about wether or not I actually wanted to go, but I figured I should keep my options open. (I also did not at all expect to be accepted, considering my complete lack of any design experience whatsoever) As you all know by now, I have since then already accepted a job teaching in Taiwan. So what do I do about architecture? I also don't have to decide until I hear back from the two other schools that I applied to (Berkeley and Oregon), but considering I already accepted the job, I won't be going to grad school this year. Perhaps I can defer my acceptance for a year (or two????) Or maybe I can simply re-apply in two years?

I really think I would enjoy learning all the different aspects that go into architecture. I am interested to see how I handle the challenge, as I'm sure architecture school would be a ridiculous amount of work. I'm not too excited about spending tons of money... and at the end of the day, I don't really know what the prospects for an architecture grad student will be out in the real world (they don't sound good at the moment....)