Shanghai Expat: May 2010

I had only five days in Shanghai in May before I was to return to the states. These five days were actually all a holiday in Shanghai. Beside the weekend (two days), one was labor day, and two were to celebrate the opening of the latest World's Fair: the Shanghai Expo.

Di Yin and I kept thinking about traveling elsewhere in China during our last few weeks in Shanghai (late April and especially this long weekend right before I left). I wanted to exploit my location (China) to see more of the country's highlights (without having to fly across an ocean to do it). Yet, we didn't manage to put together a trip. There was one place we almost went to but found train tickets were sold out. :( Instead, rather risking travel right before taking an international flight, I ended up working most of those five days in May. Incidentally, I'll list my remaining China places to visit in the next post.

At the beginning of May, it got warm all of a sudden. By the fourth day, it was downright hot.

Outings
Sorry, I just didn't feel like taking pictures this month. Di Yin claims, likely rightly, that it's simply because I was ready to go home.

During these five days, I ended up playing a bit more of the expat lifestyle. We went twice to a cafe/bakery, Paul's, the Shanghai outpost of an international French chain. One day we went for breakfast goods. Another day we went for lunch. I had a decent sandwich made with flute bread (longer, narrower than a baguette). Along the way we stopped by another bakery, selecting a potato curry roll from that one. The highlight of the day, however, was joining one of Di Yin's family friends to visit a local art gallery. The gallery was showing paintings of local buildings, buildings that I've walked by every day. (Recall that we lived in an older part of town, the French Concession, so some buildings have history and/or character.)

One evening, we had a generally mediocre dinner with Di Yin's family friends, wishing us off.

The next day we had to venture out from work for lunch (recall our offices were officially closed); we had a meal of similarly merely okay Japanese food.

Sometime in late April, I realized I'd been in Shanghai for many months but hadn't sampled its jazz club scene. Hence, I grabbed some friends (A and B) and we went to JZ Club, one of the supposedly better ones and one which happens to be not far from our apartment. It had a nice atmosphere; we relaxed, chatting and listening to the Spanish guitarist. I sipped a lychee margarita.

One day I returned to one of the Hong-Kong style joints that I like and tried a mixed dish with BBQ pork, roasted duck, fried clam meat, vegetables, and a thin Chinese pancake.

On May 4, Di Yin and I went for xiao long bao (soup dumplings) at the ever-dependable Jia Jia Tang Bao, the best place for them (in my opinion) in Shanghai. They were great, and a wonderful meal for my last day in Shanghai for now. In addition to the dumplings, we also had a good seaweed-based soup.

Leaving Shanghai was stressful. First, I had to get to the airport in the rain. It took forever to find a taxi; we eventually gave up and took a bus to Japanese mall and then the airport bus to the airport. (Di Yin accompanied me to the airport.) Once at the airport, I learned my bag was overweight. I managed to repack it successfully. Then, after I did so, one of my bags needed to be inspected by hand.

On the plus side, once I boarded my flight to California, it felt like the flight went fast.

Observations
China manages security for travel well. All bags on trains get x-rayed, which never happens in the states. In the last couple of months I was in China, in preparation for the expo they also started x-raying all bags in the subway. Furthermore, airport security is also laid out well. Like in the states, you go through a passport/id check and then security. Unlike in the states, the id check is the bottleneck. This means the long line is for passport control. Because the passport control is orderly and regularly paced, you always feel like you're making progress (compared to the states, where you're waiting in the security line for a long time and it's haphazardly and unpredictably paced). Then, in China, because the id control happens at a slow rate, there's little or no line for security. It's a much more pleasant, less chaotic experience than security in other countries.