Shanghai Nightlife

May 17, 2010

The Bund

Chinese nightlife is quite different than American nightlife. The Chinese do not like dancing. They like sitting at tables and paying for expensive bottle service and being seen.

Chinese clubs in Shanghai reflect this cultural difference. The clubs have a very small dance floor if any at all. They are filled with tables and stools. If you don’t reserve a table at which to sit, there is no place for you to stand. Waiters, ayis sweeping the floor, security guards, and other club-goers will be bumping into you all night. You simply don’t matter if you haven’t bought an inflated bottle of black label.

88

Once at a table, Chinese people like to order their favorite type of whiskey – Johnny Walker and Chivas are popular choices. The waiters will bring pitchers with ice and several bottles of cold green tea. The whiskey, ice, and green tea is mixed in the pitcher and then served. Whiskey lovers everywhere scoff disgustedly. While drinking, Chinese people usually like to play the dice game featured in Pirates of the Caribbean 2. They will also be served a platter of watermelon triangles and cherry tomatoes.

Phebe

The atmosphere of the clubs is incredibly loud and in-your-face. They are decorated to the max. There isn’t an inch of empty space on the walls. There are lights blinking and blinding you. The music the clubs play is almost exclusively top 40 pop and hip hop, and every song is played for about 30 seconds.

Another common sight at Chinese clubs is go-go dancers. Both boy and girl dancers will get up on stage with coordinated outfits and do choreographed or sexy spontaneous dancing. Sometimes they lip-synch to the music; sometimes they sing. Sometimes they are only wearing a thong.

Soho

Manpower

May 5, 2010

A domestic population that exceeds 1 billion people has several noteworthy effects on Chinese society.

1. The Chinese are INCREDIBLY fast at getting construction done. They simply have the man power to work around the clock with an abundance of workers. Here in Shanghai, when there was only one month left until Expo and nobody thought they would get it done, the Chinese miraculously pulled it off. My roommate arrived in Shanghai 2.5 years ago. At that time there were 4 subway lines. Today there are 13. Currently, Los Angeles plans on extending one of its subway lines from Korea Town to Santa Monica. That project is estimated to be completed in 20 years. Today is the two-year anniversary of the catastrophic earthquake in Sichuan province that killed 90,000 people and left 5 million people without housing. Since that time, the Chinese have built 250,000 new residential buildings in that area. What has the U.S. done for New Orleans thus far?

2. It’s dog eat dog. It’s every man for himself here in China. The large population creates an intense competition between people. That is evident in the way people push their way onto the subway without waiting for people to get off first, young people rarely get up to give older people their seats, everyone, including little old ladies, will push and shove you on the street without saying ‘excuse me’ or ‘sorry’, and there is a serious lack of standing in lines in favor of cutting in front of folks.

The competition has some benefits for consumers. Any vacuum that is found in the business market will be filled. Basically, if you are willing to pay money for something in China, you can get it. And you can get it delivered to your door. The Chinese ebay – taobao.com, sells everything from blue cheese to condoms to real live people. Delivery usually takes 1-2 days. If you want something mailed, you can call someone and they will come pick it up from your house or wherever you are, wrap or box it, and get it to the delivery address by the next day if the address is in China. We have a contact here that will deliver hard-to-find avocados to our door for 10 kuai each ($1.50) with no delivery charge. We know a person who will deliver copious amounts of ice to our door for the same price. Almost every restaurant has free delivery. McDonald’s has 24-hour delivery with a minimal charge. I have one friend who had her double cheeseburger meal delivered to the bar we were at.

3. Education. The education system in China is set up in such a way to crank out large numbers of students. Questions, creativity, and individuality are not valued. Students spend their entire academic careers studying and memorizing material for a test that is taken at the end of high school that will determine whether they can get into college. If they do not pass the test, they cannot escape a life of blue collar work. In addition, students that do not go to school in big cities are at a serious disadvantage to passing the test. Rural places do not attract good teachers so the education is worse. On top of that, I recently found out that Chinese people need a permit to live in Shanghai, and I’m assuming other large cities, which is expensive and difficult to obtain, and also another barrier to getting a quality education that would allow a student to pass this college-entrance exam.

If we were to compare the U.S. and China economically, I would say that what the U.S. has going for it is creativity and entrepreneurship. China has sheer man power.

Choose an English name

April 20, 2010

In China, there is an abundance of Chinese people who have given themselves strange English names. I’m not sure if they don’t know what a normal English name is or they just find a word that sounds good or translates well from Chinese and use it for a name. Here is a list of the weirdest ones my friends and I have heard:

Men

Fox, Sword, Metal, Golden, Yoyo, Tennis, Running, Adidas, Fish, Snake, Aloho

Women

Rain, Cinderella, Hello Kitty, Ding Ding, Juju, Bobo, Ripple, Cleopatra, Apple, Cherry, Seven, Rainbow, Nanny, Little Punk

Yin Yang balance in food

April 15, 2010

A few days ago I had the flu. My Chinese friend, CK called me. I told him I was sick and had a fever. He told me, “It’s because you have too much ‘hot’ in your body.”

The Chinese have a philosophy when it comes to food consumption that is very different than America’s conception of “healthy eating”. Chinese food therapy, as it is referred to on Wikipedia, is the delicate balance of yin and yang when eating. Yin foods are considered ‘cold’. Yang foods are considered ‘hot’. One should strive to not eat too much of either food. Hot and cold are not related to temperature. For instance, ice cream is considered hot.

This philosophy is a division of Chinese medicine and is used for the treatment of any ailment, although Chinese people try to maintain the balance at all times. If you have zits, a Chinese person will say you are eating too much hot. My friend’s Chinese mother tries to maintain the balance on a daily basis. If she is eating something hot, she will add vinegar, which is cold, to cool it down. There is a hairy crab season in China when it is very popular to eat hairy crabs. Chinese people always pair these crabs with Shaoxing wine because the crabs are a very cold food, and the hot Shaoxing wine balances that cold.

Wikipedia says, “As a generalization, Yang foods tend to be dense in food energy, especially energy from fat, while Yin foods tend to have high water content.” I really can’t tell the difference between hot and cold foods. For example a mango is hot, but an apple is cold. Lamb is hot; snake is cold. I tend to like hot foods more. Maybe they are tastier and fattier.

Another interesting thing I’ve heard about about Chinese food philosophy is the reasoning behind eating spicy food. The cuisines of the Sichuan and Hunan provinces are very spicy. Chinese people have told me that the reason Sichuanese and Hunanese people eat such spicy food is because these provinces have very wet climates. The dampness seeps into their bodies. They eat the spicy food to dry their bodies out. It another example of a yin yang balance.

Here are some examples of hot and cold foods:

Hot:

deep fried food, chilies, pineapple, cherry, lychee, black tea, squid, chicken, apricots, barley, grapes, olives, onion, walnut, celery

Cold:

watermelon, cantaloupe, green tea, bean curd, banana, duck, cucumber, eggplant, lettuce, mung beans, oranges

Seoul has hills, Shanghai does not

April 6, 2010

I just got back from a 5-day trip to Seoul, South Korea. Here are a few things that I noticed about Seoul:

-Seoul has hills. It feels like it sits in a sort of valley. The hills make it charming and dynamic. Shanghai does not have hills. It is very flat. I didn’t see any bicyclists in Seoul. There are tons in Shanghai.

Have you seen the Korean movie, The Host? You should!

-People in Seoul are soft spoken. When sitting in a restaurant or cafe, I couldn’t hear other people’s conversations. Chinese people yell and yell often. They especially love to yell on their phones.

-Many people in Seoul can speak some English. This is not the case in China.

-Seoul has very large boulevards and highways. Shanghai has small and winding streets and raised freeways.

-Koreans love coffee, and there is an abundance of cafes in Seoul.

Banchan for days

-Koreans are GORGEOUS. They are easily the most beautiful race I’ve ever seen. Men and women.

-Some may attribute their beauty to the popularity of plastic surgery in the country. There are literally vacation tours where women will go to Korea to get plastic surgery.

-Seoul has hipsters. China does not. These hipsters like vintage fashion and they have great style. They really nail it.

-Seoul has street performers including rock bands, tap dancers, and break dancers. I noticed that people were more outgoing and daring in Seoul than in Shanghai. While I was there I went to a risque dance performance. Seoul has an appreciation for the arts that I don’t see in China.

-Seoul has lots of western food. They have On the Border and will soon have Taco Bell.

-There is an area of Seoul called Itaewon, which is considered the foreigners’ district. Its right near the U.S. army base. It was a very strange place to be.

-South Koreans do not want to go to war with North Korea. They want reunification. Right before I got there, a North Korean ship “accidentally” hit and sunk a South Korean ship with a torpedo. 46 died. South Korea does not want to go to war. In this situation, the U.S. probably would.

-Most Korean food has that red, spicy vinegar flavor of kimchi. By the last day I was a little sick of it. I’m still not sick of Chinese food.

Sundubu

-I went to the Korean War Memorial Museum while I was there. It was surprising to see how easily the North Koreans were willing to kill their South Korean brothers in the name of communism. I was also surprised to find out that when the North Koreans first attacked South Korea, the South Koreans were armed with essentially spears, while the Northerners were provided with Soviet guns and tanks. At the time when Japan left Korea, the north was much more industrialized than the South. The South was mostly farmland. I went to the museum with my Chinese friend, Tong. He thought it was weird to be at the museum because he is on the North Korean side and we, Americans, are on the South Korean side. Tong was taught in school that the reason the Soviets beat the Nazis was because communism has a bonding effect between people. In capitalism, you don’t care about your brothers. Its every man for himself, so how could you fight alongside each other successfully? He attributes the success of the North Koreans to this same principle. He also believes that communism is the best system for a developing country.

Passion 5 in Itaewon. Totes amazeballs.

-Restaurants and cafes in Seoul have a niceness, a classiness to them that is not yet found in China. The Chinese right now have so much disposable money that they throw it at things that might seem nice or look expensive but end up looking cheesy. We went to a dessert emporium called Passion 5 in Seoul that was just incredible. I asked my Korean friend, Min about this. He said 10 years ago Seoul was just like Shanghai. Shanghai will get there soon. When I talked about this in front of Tong, he said that I only think this because my standards of “niceness” or “classiness” are American-based, and Seoul is similar to America. Maybe the Chinese have different taste. He is right. I see the world through U.S.-colored glasses.

-Koreans can pay for things with their cell phones. Their cell phones get scanned in stores or taxis like credit cards. Brilliant.

-Koreans like dancing. Their clubs are not crowded with tables of people flaunting their money with bottle service like in Shanghai. There aren’t tables in clubs in Seoul. They like dancing. And they sing. They know the words to many American hip hop songs. It’s so great.

-It is incredibly hard to find public trash cans in Seoul. Apparently, Koreans are afraid of bombs being dropped in trash cans, so they simply do away with them. If you have trash, you can give it to a convenience store owner, and they will dispose of it for you.

I don't care how cheesy this is. We look fantastic!

Beans

March 31, 2010

Red bean soup. Yum! Dessert!

I took my friend, Alex, from home, to get hot pot. Hot pot is China’s version of fondue. At the restaurant we went, Dolar Shop, each person gets their own personal boiling bowl of broth with a variety of flavors to choose from. You then order off a menu of raw vegetables and meats. There is a sauce bar. Once your bowl is boiling, you cook the crudite and raw meat and then dip it in your sauce. It is quite fantastic.

At the end of the meal, everyone was served a red bean pudding. Zach, who has been in China for 2 years, devoured his. Alex looked at hers, then looked at me.

“What is this?”

“It’s red bean.” I looked at Zach, slurping his down. 

“Do you guys remember when we didn’t think beans were a dessert?” Refried beans flashed into my head.

Red bean bun

Red bean is just something that is part of Asian desserts. I suppose it sounds very strange to people who have never encountered it. “Ugh you want me to eat this paste made of beans?! For dessert?!”

Chinese people do not have the same palate as Americans or other Westerners when it comes to dessert especially. They don’t like anything too sweet. Many desserts are rice-based and can be quite sticky. They usually have a very diluted sweet taste, or may not be sweet at all. I’m wary of ever making cookies for Chinese people because they usually turn them down unless they are accustomed to western desserts.

Another place that beans are prevalent in China is in soy milk. One of my students was explaining to me that he makes a drink made of beans every morning in a machine designed especially for this purpose. He asked me what this drink was called. I was so confused. I said, “I don’t know? Bean juice?” It only came to me much later that he was making soy milk. I had never heard of anyone making soy milk before.

When I went to Shaoxing to celebrate Chinese New Year, Tong’s dad made us soy milk every morning. He makes it from a bean mixture that he picks himself. He first soaks the beans for an hour or two, then puts them in a soy milk maker, which I assume boils them and then mushes them. The resulting soy milk is not like anything I’ve had before. It is very thick and purple and hearty. It tastes really great though and seems healthy. Its very filling.

Bing sha covered in red bean, boiled peanuts, and sweetened condensed milk

Foot massage

March 29, 2010

My friend, Alex, recently visited me in Shanghai on a business trip. One of the things I did with her was get foot massages from a very upscale massage parlor. The masseuses were well-versed in reflexology. From feeling our legs, necks, and feet, they could tell these things:

Me: I have a knot in my neck that is making me more tired than normal. I need a good night’s sleep. At one point, the masseuse pressed on a certain spot on the bottom of my foot, and as I writhed in pain he said, “Oh you must like drinking. That is your liver.”

Alex: She likes eating meat. She is very tired and needs to sleep more (jet lag). She never wears socks (she is from LA). She likes beer. She needs to drink more water.

All of these things are true.