Exit Interviews

Well, it's here. It's finally time to pack our bags and head home.  Actually, I've always been a little overzealous in the way of packing--I just can't help myself; I really love it--so we're already packed, technically. Anyway, when we tell people that it's time for us to go we get a lot of the same questions, so I thought it might be helpful to answer a few here.

FAQs:

You're going home after one year. Are you sick of China already?
No! Not at all. It took some initial adjusting, to be sure, but I love it here. There are so many things that we will miss about our life here. The city, our friends, the food, my refrigerator to name a few.

If you like it so much then why are you leaving?
The simplest answer is graduate school. We knew when we decided to come here that we could only stay one year, or two at the most, but we both agreed it was better to come for one year than not to have the experience at all. The tipping point to go home was my decision to go back to school. With both of us pursuing degrees instead of just one, we decided it was time to get started.

Reason #2- Beginning in December, we have at least three weddings to attend this coming year, and the price of flying home for those events would completely wipe us out. And no, crazy incredulous person, I cannot possibly miss any of them. The very idea!

What have you missed the most about America? What are you looking forward to the most about coming home?
Aside from the obvious answer which is people, our families and friends that we've missed like crazy, I would say...the grocery store and my oven. (One does me little to no good without the other). I love to cook, and in many ways living here has made me a much better cook, or at least a more knowledgeable one. Having so few of the things we're accustomed to in America forces you to ameliorate yourself with all kinds of substitutions and new recipe quests, and opens up another world of ingredients. But truth be told, I'd trade the challenge for the conveniences of home in a heartbeat. The idea of walking into a clean, nice or non-smelling grocery store where I can read labels and price tags and buy cheese and cereal whenever I want...that just sounds like heaven to me right now. And Target.

What do you think you will miss the most about living in Shanghai?
Honestly, this is a fabulous life. I love walking around the corner to buy my vegetables in an open air market. I enjoy knowing that prices are never fixed, if you have a will to bargain. I will dearly miss the public transit here. The metro is great, and cabs are cheap too. I'll miss having a fabric market and a country full of tailors at my disposal, even if I don't utilize them very often. I'll miss not tipping and not paying sales tax. I'll miss the marketplaces that spring into existence every day around lunch in our neighborhood and every weekend. I'll miss buying flowers off the back of someone's bike, and I'll miss the rice. It's just different here. I'll miss having Thailand and Cambodia a few hours away. I'll miss our flexible schedules, and of course our friends.


When do you come home, and what are you doing?
Joel and I arrive back in Memphis on Monday, July 11th. We'll scramble around to see everyone and find an apartment to move into in Knoxville before school starts August 17th.  Joel is starting his graduate degree in English. My programs is for Speech Pathology.

Are you going to keep up your blog when you come home?
I'm not sure.  Here there's just so much to write about. So much time for travel, so many hilariously unusual things....but home is home, and you know it as well as I do.

So how did I do? If you have a question I didn't cover please let me know. I'm happy to answer all inquiries. And if by chance, you're reading this as someone about to move to Shanghai or any part of China, I've compiled a little list of things you might find helpful. Email me and I'll send it your way.

The countdown has begun. We are 13 days away from flying out and 15 days away from arriving home to Memphis. Frankly, I'm perplexed by the two day lag seeing as we're traveling backwards through time, but there you have it. See you soon.

Tailor-Made

Last time we talked I mentioned the fact that I had, after months of abstaining, finally decided to go and get measured for a tailor-made coat in the market that I'd had my eye on for some months past.  To some of you, the thought that I could be living amid a sea of readily accessible and extremely affordable tailors and NOT be running out to have suits, coats, rain jackets and dresses made to my specifications is no doubt shocking.

I know because I was one of you.

Ever since that fateful day years ago when Bill and Jessica first told me that in China you could have clothes tailor-made at the push of a button, I'd dreamed of going there. I envisioned myself walking through the rows and rows of shops brimming over with multitudes of beautiful bolts of fabric all waiting for my approving nod to be turned into the creations of my mind.

I fancied myself quite the fashion designer after Kate and I watched and re-watched "If The Shoe Fits" a really terrible 90s version of the Cinderella story where "Cinderella" was the scullery-maid equivalent of...whatever that would be in the fashion industry.  We liked to sketch our own things after that. My magnum opus was my wedding dress. It was dragon-purple (just trust me) made of raw silk with vines of embroidered flowers racing up the side. Sadly, even by the time I was engaged in 2009 the world just wasn't ready.

Or if my own imagination ran dry, I could bring in magazines--or my stash of Anthropologie catalogs--and they would copy whatever I pleased.

It seems like this never happens: the dreamed-of thing actually living up to your glistening expectations, but however unlikely that's exactly what happened when I came to China. It was all true.  I arrived here and strolled through the fabric markets, eyes wide at the realization of my dreams. There really were rows and rows of shops bursting with fabrics and tailors waiting to take your pictures and turn them into clothes. The only thing I didn't account for was...well two things.

1. Just because a tailor makes something for you doesn't mean it fits and it definitely doesn't mean it looks awesome. (Who knew, right?)

2. In China, you have to bargain for [practically] everything. Which means those affordable tailor-made clothes are only affordable if you fight for them to be.

The later is not a problem for me. I have my "walk away" perfected, so that just leaves the former: When tailor-made starts looking like homemade.  When I first got here I rushed to the market and picked the tailor that gave me the lowest price to commission myself a new coat. I waited excitedly for a week to pick it up and when the day finally came I couldn't believe my eyes. The coat looked nothing like the adorable picture I had given the tailor to copy. What I had was a lopsided man's jacket in a girl's size. One shoulder sticks out awkwardly too far to the left and the other fits correctly, which leaves the impression that I'm oddly disproportionate and always on the verge of tipping over. I've worn the coat all winter long, but let's just say it's unlikely at best that it will earn the suitcase space it would require to bring it back.

To keep myself far from repeating this sad end I took on the only mission I knew to solve it: I must find the perfect tailor.  And after weeks of research, I did.

Exhibit A

What do you think?

Different kind of Christmas

The holidays will be different this year. There's just no getting around it. Forgetting for a moment the fact that we're living in a culture that doesn't observe Christmas, it's also a first for celebrating away from our families.  So, feeling a little down, I set out in search of a flower market that I had heard would be selling Christmas decorations. I wasn't expecting much, maybe a tiny snowman or a box of candy canes, anything to make the apartment feel more like home at Christmas.

We didn't know exactly where we were going.  Since it was more than an hour's trip away from the apartment I had dragged Joel out with me for the expedition. I had a general idea of which metro stop to take and from there I was relying on a rough translation of the words "flower" and "market" to get us there in a taxi.

We hail the first cab we see upon exiting the subway. We recite the prepared words we've studied that we think mean "flower market" and after a few minutes of confused arguing we get back out of the cab. Seeing that plan A didn't work (and we can't say we were surprised, really) we decide to phone a friend. We hail a second cab, more confident this time because we have a native Shanghai-er on the phone to translate for us. With a few rough grunts that indicate he has at least understood what we want we're off. Our friend told us to expect a 20 minute taxi ride, so when we get dropped off in the middle of the road not 5 minutes later we're a little wary. At any rate, with no other options to speak of we enter under the arch the driver is pointing to and find this:

The market

The arch. Not very promising is it?

Really loud birds.

The clump of white in the blue cage is a bunch of rabbits.

It's an animal market. Full of birds and dogs and rabbits huddled together for warmth. We search high and low looking for a secret entrance to the flower market that I know must exist, but to no avail.

We exited the market and walk around for another half an hour looking for any sign of it.  I'll admit that at this point I was a bit...distressed. It was one of those days when disappointment over something small instantaneously floods into something bigger, missing home, missing friends, feeling like you're completely lost in the middle of a huge city with no way to communicate with anyone. And just like that, I was crying in the middle of the sidewalk surrounded by Chinese people.

Honestly, it wasn't so much a woe-is-me cry as an I'm-furious-and-there's-nothing-else-I-can-do-about-it-right-now cry. Nevertheless, I took a few moments to get it out of my system, and set back towards the metro to go home. We must have asked a dozen people where to find the market and no one knew what we were talking about. Finally I happened on a tiny boutique store that had some interesting looking things in the window, so I slipped inside hoping to find something to make my journey worthwhile.

The shop owner was friendly, and I bought items that fit the bill. As we were leaving I decided to try one last time for the flower market. Low and behold- he knew! He said we were just five minutes away. [I had him write down the address in Chinese to be safe].

And we found this...

A winter wonderland of Christmas! They had giant trees and tinsel and snowflakes. I was in heaven! It was all completely ridiculous, of course, none of it quite made sense. Like, the angels would have bows and arrows or the snowmen salt and pepper shakers would all be for Pepper, no salt, but it was so much fun to explore. I got some ribbon and a couple of strings of lights to put on our little tree that mom brought over. And then there were the flowers...

Stalls and stalls full of fresh cut flowers waiting to be arranged! Entire shops full of orchids or other exotic plants. It was delightful. On the way out a grabbed some white ranunculous, a purple cabbage flower, a few stems of eucalyptus and some lavender wax flower to make a nice wintery arrangement. So here's the end result. Our "Christmas apartment."

Our tiny Christmas tree

Our hand painted Shanghai ornament, snowman, and assortment of hot cocoa from mom :)

New wintery votives and on the table behind you can see a glimpse of the flowers.

China or no China, Merry Christmas from the Coxes!

The Twelve Hour Tour

Earlier this week we had the delightful surprise of a visit from Cliff. It's very difficult to surprise someone with an international visit, so I have to hand it to him on that. 

Originally he wasn't going to tell us that he was flying through Shanghai, because it was too sad for him to be so close and not be able to leave the airport (since he doesn't have a visa). Come to find out customs doesn't care about the visa if you're on a layover, even if it's overnight. They let you right on through! So it was our pleasure to host Cliff here for the twelve hours he was in Shanghai. Here are a few pictures from our twelve hour tour. 

.

There were blue lights everywhere downtown. Christmas? Perhaps.

In front of the Pearl Tower.

We ate at one of our favorite places. You can't tell it from our faces but we had a lovely time.

That's Cliff with part of our skyline.

Nothing fancy

Between my parents visit and the hectic work schedule that followed (and let's be honest, the onset of my reading the Hunger Games trilogy in a five day span) I haven't had much time for blogging. Well, I suppose that's not entirely true, I've had time to spit a few words out but every time I've tried so far I've been so tired that I find myself trying to write posts so dull that I can't finish typing them out of sheer boredom.  So I'll spare you the in between bits that never made it to publishing and summarize:

We had a fantastic time showing my parents around Shanghai. They were the perfect house guests, and we loved every minute of having them here. We saw some sights and took them to our favorite restaurants and markets but the best part was meals together at home or out, because just like at home we're all happiest when we're sitting around a table together enjoying our food and the delightful conversation and easiness that can only be had with the people closest to your heart. We miss them already, but we've been busy enough that we didn't have to wallow around in sadness (that last part was for mom's benefit- did you like it?)

There is only one thing that I genuinely felt the need to share between then and now. It was one of those whoa China moments that stopped me dead in my tracks. You need a little back story to appreciate it properly though so I'll begin by saying that just this week I have finally overcome my fear of going to the grocery store. This is not due to some strengthening act on my part, but the sheer memorization of where the "scary things" lie so that I can now construct paths through the grocery store without having to encounter the fish that splash me in their tanks while their beheaded counterparts stare at me from the ice mere millimeters from their tanks, the stretched, dried flesh of various sea creatures menacingly dangling from the ceiling, and above all, the enormous, me-sized cuts of meat that hang from hooks smothering me with their scent as I pass by.

Just this week I've finally committed to memory where not to go in all four grocery stores that I frequent. [In this case, memorization is the only option, if you're not sure you can stumble right into the butchers block and then we're back to square one.] It can still get a little dicey when you absolutely have to walk by something horrific to get to the thing you need. In those instances I transition to plan B which allows my feet to go on the path but my eyes are not allowed to, say look left once you pass the plastic doors.

I'm feeling pretty good. I've successfully navigated all my shopping, and I decide to take a trip to my local Lianhua for a coke. (Our Lianhua is basically like a glorified Chinese Tigermart, but they don't sell fuel outside). I ran into a friend on the steps of the store and we stopped to chat for a minute when I did a doubletake at a bike parked in the street out front. There, in front of God and everyone, a large, black fish appeared to be writhing around in a plastic bag that was dangling precariously from the handlebars of a rusty bike. I stared more closely, sure that it couldn't actually be moving when it happened. The fish FLOPPED OUT of the bag like the killer whale at the end of Free Willy only to have gravity wrench him back into his waterless, plastic death suit. He flopped! Right in front of me! Good grief people. It just goes to show you, make as many grocery store maps as you like, but if you're in China-the food will sneak up on you sooner or later. Literally.