First Impressions

During my final weeks in Shanghai, I was obviously doing a lot of thinking. As a matter of fact, during the final month or two in China, my brain was riding a wicked rollercoaster. At times, I went through periods of being homesick. I missed my wonderful family that I had not seen in such a long time. I missed my friends and the college lifestyle that I had come to cherish and enjoy at UCSB. Even more so, I missed the American lifestyle, which is to say driving cars, open space, fresh air, good water, little pollution, no language barriers and the common factors of life that I had grown up with for the majority of my young life.

As I said though, I was riding a rollercoaster and my feelings rarely were in a state of equilibrium. I would have highs as well when China and the lifestyle were treating me well. I was enjoying myself, all of the great people, as I mentioned in my last blog entry, and most importantly, I was happy. These two very drastic emotional conditions were constantly competing in my mind and it was difficult to manage, physically and especially mentally.

As you can imagine, when I flew back from Shanghai to Los Angeles, I experienced a jolt of culture shock. At the time, I was in a state of sadness. My environment around me was completely and radically changing. It had taken a good deal of time, several months or more to get used to the Chinese lifestyle, and I had finally been comfortable. My mind in general was missing the great things that China gave me more than the great things the U.S. had not given me.

What I quickly realized was that my mind was thinking thoughts that never before entered my mind. I was noticing all of the cars. We just have an enormous amount of cars in the U.S. Cars are driving everywhere, there are roads everywhere, parking lots at every store and shop and mall and restaurant. You really never realize how much Americans love to drive until you visit China.

I was looking at people more too. I really had not seen so many different types of people in a long time. Due to the nature of my background and my childhood, I have an inherent and automatic mental process of distinguishing Western-looking people apart from each other. I do not really know the reason for this other than the fact that in my life, I have simply seen more Western-looking people. When I see people of Asian decent, it is a bit harder to distinguish one from the other. I will admit that after living in China for a long time, I was able to improve this mental process, but even now, Asian-looking people (and particularly Chinese-looking people) have more similarities than white people. The point of all of this is that I noticed so many different types of people and frankly, some people that just really looked quite strange to me (even though they probably do not look very strange to other Americans).

Additionally, I found myself fascinated by people of Asian decent speaking Native English. I know this might come off as a bit racist or plain crazy, but quite honestly, I had gone a long time seeing a lot of Chinese people. In my time in Shanghai, I came across only two people who were of Chinese decent but actually spoke Native English. Not very many in seven months, so you can imagine my awkwardness when I saw other Asian Americans who looked just as Chinese as a Chinese person and obviously spoke fluent and native English. I will note though that after several days, I got over this strange phenomenon.

More impressions to come tomorrow …

Thanks China

Let me begin by admitting that I should have continued using my blog more as my time in Shanghai neared its end. It seems that during the course of my life, I go through times when I feel very willing to discuss, penetrate, and isolate certain thoughts and experiences that happen with me, and other times when I just want to struggle through them without writing about them. For whatever reasons (some being difficult and sad times and others simply pure laziness), I did not write in the blog. There you have it. It has now been said.

My aim of this post was to matter-of-factly thank China for all the amazing times I had. Before I came to China, I was really ignorant and misinformed about what it had to offer. In fact, as a person, I was incredibly immature about so many things about life as a whole and living and learning in this competitive battlefield that we call the world. Life is a big place, especially after one visits China, and it takes a long time to grow mentally. When I came to China, I thought I was finally becoming an individual, a man with his own goals, desires, and dreams. When I left, I had a completely different impression of myself. In truth, I was a confused boy, with unrealistic dreams and a misunderstanding about my potential in the world. Still to this day, life confuses me.

Unsurprisingly, after seven months, I learned a great deal about China as a country. I can probably answer just about any strange question about China and Shanghai. Although the difference in food and eating habits was a bit stark at first, I deeply miss the Gong Bao Ji Ding, the Chao Fan, and the Huo Guo, among others. Of course I miss the great places I would enjoy in Shanghai like the interesting restaurants Kevin and JJ found, including the Brazilian buffet, the Korean BBQ, the Steak King, and even the nasty barbecue place near my apartment. And yes, I do miss the Bi Feng Tang Tea House, the 20 RMB per hour massage parlor, all of the various spas I went to (including the pool with the fish and the naked scrubbing which I detailed here), and the delicious Zhen Ju Nai Cha (Milk Tea) from Tea Storm, Jack Hut, and sometimes Bi Feng Tang if it was hot enough.

I think experience comes at all people differently. Some find, upon visiting another foreign country, that the most influential aspect of the place is the place itself. I am an information absorber. Like my father, I thrive on learning, whether it is useless information about some book I am reading, a description inside a museum about some archeological ruins, or even the way people handle certain situations in other environments and societies. I simply cannot get enough of this stuff. When it came to living and working and studying in China, it was really an eye-opening experience. For one, I learned a whole lot about the people of China, which I admit seemed a bit strange at first. In turn, these lessons taught me a great deal about myself, about why I make certain decisions, why I have specific emotions, and even why and how I have set goals for myself in the future. Understanding the minds of people in a far away place helped my brain understand itself a little bit better. I was able to have different examples and unique situations so that I could not simply follow the by-the-book decisions that my brains past experience had taught me. For once, I could be original. I could forgo the shyness that had corrupted my body for so long. I could forget about my embarrassment and my shame when I did something that was not necessarily popular. Being cool and acting a certain way was no longer important. The only important facet of life was being true to myself and I have carried this highly important condition of my personality with me back to the States.

More importantly though, I really did have a tremendous time and a life altering experience. I met so many wonderful and amazing people, some truly awesome friends and companions, and have relationships and contacts with people that I know will last a lifetime. True friends are hard to come by. In a lifetime, friends come and go all the time. Throughout one's life, a person experiences only a few real good friends they love and trust. One of the greatest lessons that I learned in China was what it means to be true friends with someone and how important these feelings are in the path of life. Material things like the tea house and the Great Wall were all wonderful do not get me wrong, but I feel China taught me more about feelings and people and reactions and generosity and love and hate and sensitivity and ambitiousness. These are the real emotions that matter and it takes truly wonderful people to learn this simple fact of life.

I thank everyone who helped me on this tremendous journey, you all know who you are. I will never forget you. Keep in touch and I will make it my goal to see you in the future.

Fireworks Video with Bonus

In a previous post, I discussed what it was like to experience my first Chinese New Year in Shanghai. Although I did not spend it like a traditional Chinese person, meeting with family, watching CCTV, and having a great big meal, I did spend it with friends had a fun time watching the amazing fireworks show.

When the clock struck midnight, there were bangs and explosions heard throughout the city. Luckily, several groups of people had committed themselves to paying for an enormous lot of fireworks and we so kind to light them up just in front of our balcony. The show was fantastic and as you can see from the video to the left, almost too close to the action. A lot of the footage I shot with my camera was too slow, too long and much of the same, so I decided to turn up the speed and make the movie shorter. I hope really feel the proximity of the fireworks from our apartment balcony. Enjoy!

BONUS: Bowling Night



BONUS: Ping Pong

Animal Families

I know this post has absolutely nothing to do with Shanghai or myself. I just felt like finding some interesting pictures on the internet and I settled on some very cute pictures on animal families. Here they are and more are in my album:

From Animal Families

From Animal Families

From Animal Families

From Animal Families

From Animal Families

From Animal Families

From Animal Families

From Animal Families

From Animal Families

From Animal Families

And of course, I need to add a picture I was given by EJ, one of my friends from UCSB. Pretty cute if I have to say so myself.

From Randoms...

Chinese New Year

The Chinese New Year took place this past weekend. You would never believe the kinds of celebrations that materialize in Shanghai.

The Chinese calendar is a lunar calendar and is mostly derived from the movement of the moon and sun. The start of the New Year takes place with a new moon and lasts for 15 days, ending on a full moon. New Year's Eve is a very important night for Chinese people and is usually spent with family eating a big feast. New Year's Day is also spent with more family and more food. The days following New Years Day are traditionally spent with with in-laws, son-in-laws paying respect to their wife's parents. There are even more traditional aspects of the Chinese New Year celebration for the rest of the 15 days, but the first customs are more common to honor.

Since a lot of people in Shanghai are from other parts of China, the train and plane system is a mad house. It becomes almost impossible to get a train ticket where you want to go and taking an airplane can be quite expensive for the average Chinese person. Just about everyone goes back home during this time if they are not from Shanghai. My roommate went back to his hometown in Fuzhou. My co-workers and boss went back to their hometown in Xi'an. Some of my friends are from Shanghai and they spent the time with their families in a setting very similar to how we celebrate Thanksgiving in the States.

On the night of New Year's Eve, there is a great celebration. The sale of fireworks can be found everywhere in the weeks before the Chinese New Year. In fact, although they are still pretty cheap in terms of U.S. standards, I think they are pretty expensive considering how many fireworks people buy for this one event. I did not buy any, just a small pack for $1.50 that contained 6 of the most pathetic fireworks I have ever seen.

That night, we went to a friend's house (Maciej from Poland) and watched from the baclony of his 12th floor apartment. He lives in a compound with several other buildings and there was a group of people on the ground floor of the building across from ours that was planning on lighting a bunch of firworks. We watched as they brought out box after box of enormous-looking fireworks, lighting them in succession and creating a personal show for a good 30 minutes. It was probably the most fantastic fireworks display I have ever seen. We were so close to the action that I think the fireworks shrapnel was coming close to landing on our apartment balcony. I made a video that I will post when I put it together.

It is now the year of the Pig. If you do not know your year, here is a guide: