As mentioned in my previous post, Nik and I have taken to the game we call “Feather”. The rest of China knows the game as Jianzi, meaning “little shuttlecock”. Here is a video our friend Mike took last weekend, and then Nik added audio.

GIANT bike

I must admit. Life is good when you can bicycle through a city and not be too concerned with being killed. Since I bought my new bike on Tuesday, that’s pretty much all I have been doing.

What’s that Nik? We need to go to the grocery store? No problem, I’ll just go to the one across town instead of the one across the street because it will only take 15 minutes to get there.

What? You want to go to a park? There’s one on the other side of the river that looks cool, let’s go there. It should take an hour.

Do we need to get subway tickets? Nope, our ride is locked up just outside.

The red glove and a doozy of a bike bell*

Shanghai is flat, the weather has been amazing (except Thursday), there are bike lanes everywhere, the streets aren’t potholed (most of them anyways) and traffic generally goes pretty slowly. It is one of many perfect towns to bike in. My personal favorites have been Portland, Copenhagen, Denver, Beijing and Yangshuo, but I am certain that there are more.

The one downside to biking is that because I am going a little bit faster and am on the street instead of the sidewalk, I tend to pass up little nooks and crannies that I would explore on foot. Our plan, though, is to start riding to areas that are farther away, and then walk around and explore. That way, we’ll have the best of both worlds. For now, our bikes are too precious to leave on any old sidewalk, so we’ll be sticking to the streets.

That's my riding hat. With my new 'do, I need it to keep the hair out of my face. And it gets me plenty of weird stares!!*

I bought my bike from the GIANT retail store at the corner of Jianguo Lu and Hengshan Lu. It is a basic 24″ women’s single-speed bike with a great bell. It cost about ¥600 ($88) including a good lock and the front basket. Nik inherited a STRONG men’s single-speed bike from a co-worker for free that I’m sure he will pass along when we leave.

I guess it’s not true that I’ve been riding my bike constantly for the entire week. We have done some other noteworthy things.

We are slowly discovering the amazing food that can be found in Shanghai.

All you can eat sushi with a group of 24

We had a decent breakfast and delicious coffee at A:Mokka, but perhaps my favorite part of this restaurant is the 2nd floor dining room and modern gas fireplace. I was very pleased that they skipped the cheesy fake logs. The furniture isn't too bad either!

Lillian's Cake Shop at Zhoajiabang Rd. & Hengshan Rd. does these great little egg tarts and coffee, and that's all they do. Pure, simple and amazing!

Of course, the best food can be found in our kitchen!! We actually eat at home most weeknights and it typically consists of rice, vegetables and dumplings. Fresh and tasty.

Then one day, we found Nik’s Chinese twin.

Grown out buzz cut, check. Nikon camera, check. Faded brown jacket, check. Faded blue jeans, check. The biggest things Nik has on this guy is his amazing girlfriend and better posture.

We’ve also seen plenty of examples of how this city is busting at the seams with people.

Saturday traffic seen from above

Nanjing Road during the sunset shopping hour

Barely enough room on the lawn at Zhongshan Park to fly a kite or sit with your family.

This pup knows that barges in the river are the only place to get away.

We have also been practicing a little game we call “Feather”

Nik and Mike show us how it's done

And sometimes, we visit the local newspaper board with our friends.

Rainy day news

Three weeks in, and it’s all still pretty amazing. Spring is in the air, and the city seems more alive every day. Nik’s enjoying his work, we’re making new friends, we’re eating well, we’re discovering new things every day and we’re having fun! What more can we ask?

* Photos taken by Nik, who did a tandem post. Get it? Tandem. As in a bicycle: Biking Shanghai, Luxun Park, Food, Poisoning

Shadows means there's sun.

Today was a good day. We had breakfast at the apartment while sun was streaming through the windows. Then Nik left for work, I got myself together, and I went out and conquered my fear of taking photos in our neighborhood! The sun was out for the first time in two weeks so everyone decided that it was laundry day. Granted, in Shanghai, there is always laundry hanging from bamboo poles cantilevered over the sidewalks, but today was different. Today EVERY bamboo pole was filled with trousers and socks and shirts and jackets and blankets and sheets and shoes. The garments covered the entire rainbow so the opportunity for color was amazing…and I took advantage of it. I didn’t take much time on each shot because I’m still a little self concious about taking photos of people’s houses while their neighbors are walking past me, but I think I captured what was going on. I hope it doesn’t bore you to see lots of laundry, but we never see this in America, so I find it fascinating.

Laundry 1

Laundry 2

Kids playing with laundry behind

Laundry 4

High Rise Laundry

Low Rise Laundry

Bedspreads on the Sidewalk

Bedspreads on the Basketball Court

Pink Pajamas

Yellow Pajamas

Blue Shirt

Shirts in Trees

Laundry over Bike Parking

Panties on a Pole

People walking under Laundry

Walking Shoes on Window Sill

Sheets over Concrete Poles

I also saw some other random interesting stuff…

Toilet

Steel Screen

Neighborhood Thermometer/Clock

Yellow Building

This is the city of apartments we live in.

Something about these clovers was great. So green.

Here's a pretty cool new building on the Fuxan Medical Campus.

And this little Ford Focus was posing in front of it.

This afternoon I was going to use the curling iron…but I guess the voltage here is a little different than at home! The black gewy stuff is plastic and the white strings are the heating wires. I simply picked up the handle and the curling part fell off.

**Don't do this at home**

Kites

Today marks the beginning of our second week in China, which means we are still new here, but not so new that we don’t know anything. We know the names of the major roads within an hour’s walk from the apartment. We know where the grocery store and some local markets are. We know where the biggest tourist trap is, and therefor know how to avoid it. We know where a big park is that isn’t too far away. Most importantly, we know how to get home and we know we are going to like it here.

Of course, there are still plenty of things we don’t know. We don’t know how to speak Chinese (that might take a while). We don’t know what to do once the water in our big jug runs out. We don’t know when I will have a job. We don’t know of many casual restaurants with good food within five minutes of the apartment. We don’t know where we are going to play our feather-kick game. And although there are still unknowns, it’s no big deal. We’ll figure everything out eventually and we’re simply determined to have a good time while we’re at it.

Over the past week I have noticed little things here and there that are worth mentioning, so here is a list of my first impressions/observations.

1. It’s harder to find street produce here than it was in Thailand.
2. Locals don’t smile much, but they smile more than I expected.
3. Everyone is extremely curious. Saturday, Nik and I stopped to watch four cats eat some food that a lady had set out for them, and within five minutes there were ten other people gathered around watching as well.
4. The Super Brand Mall in Pudong is what every shopping mall strives to be.
5. Trains on Subway Line 4 come every twelve minutes.
6. I like having a washing machine.
7. Every supermarket employs five times as many people as it needs to.
8. I suspect that a lot more people speak English here than they admit to.
9. I don’t like asking for favors.
10. Rain doesn’t only fall in Portland and Thailand. It falls in China too.
11. While having my hair cut in a foreign country is fun, the results aren’t always good.
12. This city is impeccably clean.
13. All you can eat and drink Japanese Teppanyaki for 160¥ ($23) is a nice deal by American standards and oh so good!!
14. I am pretty sure I could shop all day every day for at least two weeks before I got sick of it…but…
15. Not having a job limits me to window shopping only, which is a good thing.
16. I don’t like being home while Nik works all day.
17. American hair care companies don’t print any english on their Chinese products.
18. You can find everything here.
19. This city goes on and on and on forever and ever and ever and ever.
20. It will take much more than six months to uncover all the gems in this city.

Yesterday, Nik and I explored the Pudong area of Shanghai a little bit by going to Century Park and then walking down Century Avenue to the Super Brand Mall. Century Park is a huge plot of land that has been set aside in the midst of never ending high-rise residential towers. It has a large lake with paddle boats and fishing, an extensive trail system, a miniature theme park for kids with bumper cars and roller coasters, an amphitheater, a cafe and it even has a pigeon coop with a man selling corn that kids can feed to them. The park was pretty full yesterday since it was the first day all week without rain, but it was still too cold to really enjoy sitting idle outside.

Lakeside Promenade

Pigeons Roosting

Topiary beginning to bloom

Sweet scented Crisanthamums

Me in front of the pink cherry blossoms*

White cherry blossoms

Dad and daughter having fun in the bumper cars

Pinwheels, pinwheels spinning around

After about two hours, we left the park and decided to walk along Century Avenue all the way back to downtown. The route was about 5.8km/3.6miles and we were nearly exhausted at the half way point and were tempted to jump on the subway to go the rest of the way, but the walk was worth it. Instead of standing in an underground train where all you can see is the person standing next to you, we walked along a huge boulevard with miniature walled parks on every block and plenty of trees that skewered through all of the prime real estate of the newly developed area. It was like walking through a park that happened to be the main road through the city where tons of people fly kites on Sunday!!

View towards downtown from Century Avenue

We eventually made it to the Jin Mao Tower where I wanted to go in to see the 38-story Grand Hyatt hotel atrium. Nik was a little skeptical about going in, but I convinced him that it wouldn’t be a big deal. Hotels occupy flashy buildings because they want people to see them and want to stay there, so for all they know we were looking for a place to stay. I convinced him that they wanted us to go in, so we did and it was worth it! We didn’t stay for long because we were tired and hungry, but we did get a nice peak out the lobby windows onto the vast city below and have decided that we would come back sometime soon. Who knows, maybe breakfast on the 56th floor of the Grand Hyatt might become our little Sunday ritual. Why not?

Grand Hyatt Atrium image courtesy of Wikipedia

Our final stop for the day was the Super Brand Mall. We wanted to go there for two reasons. First, we needed to get an electrical adapter for Nik’s cell phone charger, and second, I wanted to see what a SUPER Brand Mall was. We also needed to have lunch, so we found a huge and empty Thai restaurant that served mediocre curry and pad thai. Then Nik went into Best Buy to find the adapter, and I went exploring. The mall really isn’t much different than all of the other malls in China, but it did seem extremely popular. It has most of the major international brands with the international price tags. There was plenty of eye candy, and I’m sure I’ll be back again but next time I’ll try not to be on my feet for six hours before stepping foot inside.

Happy we're here, and sad I haven't taken any good photos of Nik yet.*

Nik took all of the photos with the * and just posted about our weekend: First Weekend in Shanghai

We arrived in Shanghai yesterday and so far we have gone to the grocery store, unpacked, slept, bought coffee from McDonald’s, walked to Nik’s new office, taken the subway back from Nik’s office, found a good pastry shop, hung out at the apartment waiting for the rain to stop, eaten lunch at a decent chain restaurant, walked through a rose garden, gone the grocery store again, purchased an umbrella, come home again, and written our first China blog posts.

The apartment *

We probably won’t leave the apartment again for the rest of the night as we struggle to stay awake past 7pm so that we can sleep later than 1am. Then tomorrow morning, Nik will leave for his first day of work and I will spend my day researching the city and deciding what to do next.

I want to write about my first impressions of the city as a resident, but I am too tired to develop my ideas completely. So as a consolation, I will leave you with a few photos of our apartment. It is a huge complex (400+ serviced apartments) in the Luwan neighborhood of downtown Shanghai just south of the French Concession and North of the Lupu bridge over the Huangpu River. The buildings are newish, and the interiors seem like they were furnished within the past 5 years. The apartment is a good size…not too big, not too small. It is a one bedroom with a good sized kitchenette, small living room, balcony and nice sized bathroom. The furniture is too big for the space, but it’s comfortable and simple. Basically, we are living in a nice hotel room. I could have just said that, and you would have understood!

The apartment entrance *

View from balcony *

Courtyard between buildings

Kitchen

Bedroom

And the best part...we have a washing machine *

Nik has also done a blog post about the apartment: Back in Shanghai

* Photos by Nik