The Weekend

It's early Sunday evening here, and I have had a relatively quiet but satisfying weekend. I and the other Americans made big plans for both Friday and Saturday night, but both times almost all of us bailed because of jetlag. So my weekend was pretty quiet, although both afternoons I kept pretty busy.

Saturday I mostly ate; there were a few other activities mixed into the day, but these mostly provided an excuse for eating. And it was great eating. For breakfast, we went to a restaurant very close to the apartment complex, where we had dumplings (specifically, the Shanghai specialty xiaolongbao, or "soup dumpling", which is a dumpling filled with pork and a steaming hot "soup" of pork fat reduction...they're amazingly, amazingly delicious, but they also will kill you, quickly, if consumed in large amounts) and buns, which I think I liked even more than the xiaolongbao. It was a delicious breakfast, and I know I'm going to return there many times, although I probably won't get xialongbao every time because I plan on returning to America with my arteries intact.

Saturday afternoon, my host mother said that my host father and sister would take me to Zhongshan Park, a major spot in Shanghai that is near our home. I was very happy about this, as I like parks, and I thought that fresh air would be excellent. However, by "Zhongshan Park," my host mother meant "the giant shopping mall next to Zhongshan Park." I wasn't too upset about the change in circumstances, as the mall was a sight in and of itself. This mall---called "Cloud Nine"---is definitely the largest mall I have ever seen. It puts the Natick Collection to shame. I am not kidding. It has 3 basement floors, 7 above-ground floors, and includes a cinema, a Carrefour Supermarket (2 levels, each the size of a Walmart), an electronics floor selling every single electronic item/brand you can think of, an arcade, and 6 floors of shops, including Starbucks, Cold Stone, Haagen Daz, Calvin Klein, H&M (!!!!), the "NBA Underwear" store (my favorite haha), North Face, Adidas, Nike, Columbia, Merrell, Esprit, and so many others. It was absolutely packed with people. After walking around a few levels, we headed, at the insistence of Judy, to the 6th floor, home of the arcade, child heaven. Unlike the dark and dingy arcade of Americana, this arcade was all pink and yellow neon, filled with flashing lights, games, and even rides. My host father dutifully handed Judy 200 yuan (about $30, a lot of money in China where you can get a meal for 30 yuan), which she eagerly exchanged for tokens. We (really, mostly Judy) then wandered around the arcade playing different games, trying to turn those tokens into as many tickets as possible, in order to get a prize. I think Judy is saving up for something because she turned in her tickets (about 700 of them) and got a plastic card with the record of the tickets in return. The prizes ranged from blenders to other electronics to little toys, ranging in "price" from 120 tickets to 10,000. The arcade was filled with kids and parents, interspersed with a few young people, and was really quite an experience.

After the arcade, we went and got lunch at a hotpot restaurant, which was another delicious meal. In case you don't know, hotpot is when diners put vegetables and different types of meat or seafood into a communal pot filled with a boiling soup, and then garnish their creations with sauces of their choosing. I feasted on spinach, which I discovered is delicious when cooked a little bit and then dipped into soy sauce mixed with green onion. After lunch, we went to the largest bookstore in Shanghai (across the street from the mall). The bookstore provided a good summary of the many facets of modern Chinese society; there were huge stacks of Miley Cyrus's book "Miles to Go," along with many self-help/how-I-got-rich books, as well as English lesson books, Chinese classics, and many others. If this bookstore is typical, it seems to be commonplace for Chinese to sit on the floor or stairway of a bookstore and just read a book they've picked out. All in all, a very commercial but interesting afternoon.

The late afternoon and evening were very quiet; I spent them trying to brush up on my Chinese characters and reading my Shanghai "Program Guide," and trying to fight back jet lag and not fall asleep.

Today, Sunday, was my adventure day! I met up with two other girls in the program at 11:30, and we made our way to another part of the city to get lunch and go to church. I'm very proud of us; using our limited Chinese skills, we bought rechargeable metro cards, navigated the metro (we had to change lines twice!), found a restaurant, and ordered lunch. We went to the 2 pm English service at one of two international Protestant churches in Shanghai; open only to people holding foreign passports, the congregation was a mix of Asian (mostly from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau, apparently), African, European and American. The church was non-denominational, and the service was very simple (from an Episcopalian's perspective): we sang, we prayed, we listened to a very long but very good sermon, we sang, we prayed, we left. No scripture, no liturgy, no Communion, not even a Lord's Prayer. But it was still a lovely service, and the music was very nice (and included a rousing rendition of Chris Tomlin's "Indescribable", and it was fun to hear a familiar song in such an unfamiliar setting). Of course, the church being directly across the street from a Starbucks, after the service ended we just had to check out a Chinese Starbucks. Just this once.

I started writing this post at 5:30, before dinner, but got interrupted after ten minutes for dinner. At dinner, my host father explained that Judy's out-of-school English class was hosting a "trading game" tonight that I could go to. I said I would be happy to go, not knowing that our mode of transport to the school was via the family servant's moped, through the dark streets, with Judy crouched between the handlebars and the driver's seat, and me on the passenger seat behind the driver, all of us without helmets (of course). But I survived. And it was fun to see 7 little Chinese girls and their parents participate in the "Flea Market," where each student brought some toys they were willing to trade. First they learned the vocabulary and phrases for bartering in English (much of it was Chinglish, or at least highly stilted English, such as the closing line "Thank you for your help. I am very happy with the trade. I will keep it well," or the very cute "OK, deal."). Then they each explained what they had brought. Some of the girls were very young, maybe 4 or 5, and the teacher had to explain for them. All in all, it was basically totally adorable, between the little girls with their squeaky voices and broken English (and cute outfits, including a pair of identical twins wearing identical clothes), the doting parents (who clapped at every opportunity), and the incredibly peppy young female teachers, who could not have been older than 20.

And after another hair-raising moped ride, I'm home, and ready for a quiet evening of Skype, reading, and studying Chinese.