A Day in the Life
Greetings from Shanghai, the Paris of the East! After much talk and hype, I finally went through with my word and left the comfort of the country that raised and nurtured me for the last quarter-century to live in the country that raised and nurtured generations upon generations of little Hu’s for the past five thousand years. Needless to say, China needs another one to add to the mix.
Some travel details: I spent a good 15 hours surrounded by a horde of Japanese tourists with huge bags from the duty-free stores in the Las Vegas and Los Angeles airports. I learned a lot about the wonderful Japanese people from spending so much time with them in such a confined space, namely that if you inadvertently slap their faces around with your duffel bag while bumbling about in the aisle of the airplane, they tend to punch you in the ass. This happened on several occasions, but towards the end I kinda started enjoying the Japanese ass punch.
I finally arrived in Shanghai late Wednesday night, which would have been really early Wednesday morning for those of you back in the States. My mom and I were greeted by the wonderful site of our luggage locks broken open. Upon further inspection, I was steamed to find that one of my pairs of socks was missing. “Baggage robbing cretins!” I shouted and pumped my fist in the air. My mom tried to convince me that having her black pearl necklace fleeced was more painful than losing one of my socks, but I had to lecture her on what is valuable in this world and what isn’t. “Mom, if you were forced at gunpoint to emulate Tom Cruise in “Risky Business,” what would you rather have, your necklace or my socks!” She punched my ass.
I have to say that watching the movie “What a Girl Wants” starring the underrated Colin Firth and newcomer Amanda Bynes repeatedly on an airplane is a great way to prevent jet lag. I hardly slept on the plane, and when I finally got home, it was around 11 pm and the perfect time to sleep. I, of course, delayed my bedtime with a few intense games of Freecell, but that’s besides the point. The house that I’m staying in is located on the far west side of the city. It’s pretty modern with lots of hardwood floors for me to slide around in nothing but my socks. Everything is a little bit smaller than back in the states, but I suppose that makes sense since the people are a little smaller, too. We live in a bit of an enclosed community, and Mike later told me that this area is filled to the brim with expats like myself and triad members.
So yesterday was my first full day in Shanghai, and I made the best of it by watching a bootlegged copy of “The Transporter” at the house. Even sucky movies are fun to watch when they’re bootlegged! In the afternoon, I finally went out on my first Chinese mission ever: to open my own bank account. Good thing my mom was there to help me out, because get this: EVERYTHING IS IN CHINESE!! Isn’t that outrageous? You’d think that a country as big as China would finally get the picture and start to use English and sell Krispy Kremes!
After some lunch, Mom-Hu and I headed out to the local Carrefour, which is basically this huge department store that sells everything. In the home appliances section I promptly knocked down one of those hanging aisle signs that indicates what that aisle has in stock. Dude, the whole thing came crashing down and bounced off my head before knocking down a couple of wall fixtures. I had never done that before in the States, so I was pretty excited and started looking around for someone to high-five. Alas, all I saw were some pretty angry salespeople, so I hightailed it outta there and headed to, where else, the booze section.
At first, I was stoked because it all looked so cheap. They sold my favorite beer, Boddington’s Irish Pub Ale, in packs of four for less than $3…or so I was led to believe! Apparently, everything there is sold as an individual item, probably because there are so few people in China and there is no need for them to buy in bulk. So it was $3 a can, not for all four, and all of a sudden the liquor section wasn’t looking so rosy anymore.
I hung out around the spirits section, and was approached by a Caucasian salesperson. She started asking me what I was looking for in accented English, and I was a little taken back, since even though I’m an American, I look pretty goddamn Chinese! I wondered what about me made it so glaringly clear to her that I spoke English. So I took off my cowboy hat and the American-flag bandana that I usually wear, and asked back, “Where do y’all keep the port?”
At night, my new friend Judy (to whom I had been introduced by Cindy Ng a few months ago and who was also teaching in Shanghai) invited me out to go this club in downtown Shanghai called Pegasus. Naturally, this was going to be my first night out in my new home, and I was feeling some stage-fright. Would I be able to fit in? Did I have the dance-floor moves to cut it here in the big city? How do I say “The other guy grabbed your ass, not me” in Chinese? So many questions I had to ponder while heading towards the club, but I ended up falling asleep instead.
Turns out that Pegasus is just like any of the other clubs that I sporadically visited back in San Francisco. It appeared that about 70% of the crowd there were expats; you could have mixed any one of them with the Berkeley graduate crowd and no one would be able to tell the difference. And it wasn’t all Asian either, there was a much better mix of ethnicity than I had expected. Apparently, this was a pretty hot spot for expats, and on a Thursday night it was nearly impossible to do any respectable dancing with such limited space. After a few drinks, however, I found myself on stage shaking my tail feather in front of everyone. I’m surprised no one threw anything. The view from the below looked something like this, if you were to read the stage from right to left “Hot girl, hot girl, hot girl, hot girl, hot girl, hot girl….WHAT THE…!”
Sadly, I think the jet lag hit me, and something inside me crashed. I didn’t really want to move or do anything anymore, so I just kinda stood in the back absorbing the vibe. I was pretty surprised at how standard everything was; I swear I could have been at NV or the Velvet Lounge or any other decent club back in S.F.. It’s that similar of a scene. As of now, I’m sure how to feel about it, since I long ago realized that my affair with clubbing was over once I turned 24. If this is what the scene is like, then I might have more time updating this journal, cuz I’ll just be home all the time lamenting that there isn’t any other scene. It’s hard to get to know people or meet anyone at a place like that, and I’m hoping that Tina or Mike will be able to show me around the lounge/bar scene later on, which I prefer much better.
Anyway, I selfishly dragged Judy away from one of her many suitors and cabbed back home with her, since we live pretty close to each other. Then I crashed and dreamt about dinosaurs like I always do. My first day in Shanghai was over, and I felt that I had gotten a small taste of what my life will be like here, and where I was hoping to find some relief, I continue to feel trepidation and anxiety. Still, I think to myself, isn’t this what I came here for? For some IN-stability? Some kind of a test to see how I do in the face of strange and uncomfortable situations?
I realize I have only been here for a little more than a day, and there is a lot more to explore. I’m going out to dinner tonight with Tina; it’ll definitely be nice to see an old friend again in a city teeming with new strangers. In the meantime, I’ll do my best not to knock down any more signs, and I’m convinced I’ll need more to drink if I’m going to try to stand out from this expat crowd.
Some travel details: I spent a good 15 hours surrounded by a horde of Japanese tourists with huge bags from the duty-free stores in the Las Vegas and Los Angeles airports. I learned a lot about the wonderful Japanese people from spending so much time with them in such a confined space, namely that if you inadvertently slap their faces around with your duffel bag while bumbling about in the aisle of the airplane, they tend to punch you in the ass. This happened on several occasions, but towards the end I kinda started enjoying the Japanese ass punch.
I finally arrived in Shanghai late Wednesday night, which would have been really early Wednesday morning for those of you back in the States. My mom and I were greeted by the wonderful site of our luggage locks broken open. Upon further inspection, I was steamed to find that one of my pairs of socks was missing. “Baggage robbing cretins!” I shouted and pumped my fist in the air. My mom tried to convince me that having her black pearl necklace fleeced was more painful than losing one of my socks, but I had to lecture her on what is valuable in this world and what isn’t. “Mom, if you were forced at gunpoint to emulate Tom Cruise in “Risky Business,” what would you rather have, your necklace or my socks!” She punched my ass.
I have to say that watching the movie “What a Girl Wants” starring the underrated Colin Firth and newcomer Amanda Bynes repeatedly on an airplane is a great way to prevent jet lag. I hardly slept on the plane, and when I finally got home, it was around 11 pm and the perfect time to sleep. I, of course, delayed my bedtime with a few intense games of Freecell, but that’s besides the point. The house that I’m staying in is located on the far west side of the city. It’s pretty modern with lots of hardwood floors for me to slide around in nothing but my socks. Everything is a little bit smaller than back in the states, but I suppose that makes sense since the people are a little smaller, too. We live in a bit of an enclosed community, and Mike later told me that this area is filled to the brim with expats like myself and triad members.
So yesterday was my first full day in Shanghai, and I made the best of it by watching a bootlegged copy of “The Transporter” at the house. Even sucky movies are fun to watch when they’re bootlegged! In the afternoon, I finally went out on my first Chinese mission ever: to open my own bank account. Good thing my mom was there to help me out, because get this: EVERYTHING IS IN CHINESE!! Isn’t that outrageous? You’d think that a country as big as China would finally get the picture and start to use English and sell Krispy Kremes!
After some lunch, Mom-Hu and I headed out to the local Carrefour, which is basically this huge department store that sells everything. In the home appliances section I promptly knocked down one of those hanging aisle signs that indicates what that aisle has in stock. Dude, the whole thing came crashing down and bounced off my head before knocking down a couple of wall fixtures. I had never done that before in the States, so I was pretty excited and started looking around for someone to high-five. Alas, all I saw were some pretty angry salespeople, so I hightailed it outta there and headed to, where else, the booze section.
At first, I was stoked because it all looked so cheap. They sold my favorite beer, Boddington’s Irish Pub Ale, in packs of four for less than $3…or so I was led to believe! Apparently, everything there is sold as an individual item, probably because there are so few people in China and there is no need for them to buy in bulk. So it was $3 a can, not for all four, and all of a sudden the liquor section wasn’t looking so rosy anymore.
I hung out around the spirits section, and was approached by a Caucasian salesperson. She started asking me what I was looking for in accented English, and I was a little taken back, since even though I’m an American, I look pretty goddamn Chinese! I wondered what about me made it so glaringly clear to her that I spoke English. So I took off my cowboy hat and the American-flag bandana that I usually wear, and asked back, “Where do y’all keep the port?”
At night, my new friend Judy (to whom I had been introduced by Cindy Ng a few months ago and who was also teaching in Shanghai) invited me out to go this club in downtown Shanghai called Pegasus. Naturally, this was going to be my first night out in my new home, and I was feeling some stage-fright. Would I be able to fit in? Did I have the dance-floor moves to cut it here in the big city? How do I say “The other guy grabbed your ass, not me” in Chinese? So many questions I had to ponder while heading towards the club, but I ended up falling asleep instead.
Turns out that Pegasus is just like any of the other clubs that I sporadically visited back in San Francisco. It appeared that about 70% of the crowd there were expats; you could have mixed any one of them with the Berkeley graduate crowd and no one would be able to tell the difference. And it wasn’t all Asian either, there was a much better mix of ethnicity than I had expected. Apparently, this was a pretty hot spot for expats, and on a Thursday night it was nearly impossible to do any respectable dancing with such limited space. After a few drinks, however, I found myself on stage shaking my tail feather in front of everyone. I’m surprised no one threw anything. The view from the below looked something like this, if you were to read the stage from right to left “Hot girl, hot girl, hot girl, hot girl, hot girl, hot girl….WHAT THE…!”
Sadly, I think the jet lag hit me, and something inside me crashed. I didn’t really want to move or do anything anymore, so I just kinda stood in the back absorbing the vibe. I was pretty surprised at how standard everything was; I swear I could have been at NV or the Velvet Lounge or any other decent club back in S.F.. It’s that similar of a scene. As of now, I’m sure how to feel about it, since I long ago realized that my affair with clubbing was over once I turned 24. If this is what the scene is like, then I might have more time updating this journal, cuz I’ll just be home all the time lamenting that there isn’t any other scene. It’s hard to get to know people or meet anyone at a place like that, and I’m hoping that Tina or Mike will be able to show me around the lounge/bar scene later on, which I prefer much better.
Anyway, I selfishly dragged Judy away from one of her many suitors and cabbed back home with her, since we live pretty close to each other. Then I crashed and dreamt about dinosaurs like I always do. My first day in Shanghai was over, and I felt that I had gotten a small taste of what my life will be like here, and where I was hoping to find some relief, I continue to feel trepidation and anxiety. Still, I think to myself, isn’t this what I came here for? For some IN-stability? Some kind of a test to see how I do in the face of strange and uncomfortable situations?
I realize I have only been here for a little more than a day, and there is a lot more to explore. I’m going out to dinner tonight with Tina; it’ll definitely be nice to see an old friend again in a city teeming with new strangers. In the meantime, I’ll do my best not to knock down any more signs, and I’m convinced I’ll need more to drink if I’m going to try to stand out from this expat crowd.
posted by sushipanda at 3:44 AM
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