Great Minds...

A couple of posts back I mentioned that we were going to be doing a little bit of an apartment swap.  What we didn't realize was that the move would be pushed until two days before our company arrived.

That was exciting. Here's the new set up.

 

 

I guess the saying is true that great minds think alike, because the same week of June my sister-in-law and niece, Sarah and Reed, Bill and Jessica (cousins) and Jon and Mary Catherine (friends!) all decided to come to Shanghai. We had the honor and delight of hosting Sarah, Reed, Bill and Jess here at our apartment. I can't begin to tell you how much fun it was being surrounded by family.

We tried our best to give Sarah a good smattering of the sites of Shanghai. Out we would venture, day after rainy day into the city, umbrellas in hand and little Roo nestled happily in her carrier on Sarah's back. We went to all the markets, our favorite restaurants. Sarah even went with me to buy vegetables from my regular vendors to witness my mediocre Mandarin skills first hand.

Now I must tell you about my favorite new China-life discovery.  Think with me for a moment...how many times have you gone to get your hair cut and while sitting at the shampooing sink thought to yourself, "This really would be so delightful if..." If the water weren't so cold/hot. If your neck didn't have to rest right on the rim of that blasted basin. If the person washing your hair weren't quite so harsh with the washing. Well, here in China, I was very pleased to realize that hair washing is a salon offering all of its own, and they have it down to quite the art. Obviously I had to go try it once I heard of its existence.

After carefully rehearsing and memorizing the phrases necessary to request my hair washing, I strode confidently into the salon and said my peace to the obliging salon hostesses who stand in matching Jetsons-esqe outfits at the door to take your hair order, so to speak.  I was quite pleased with myself, until I saw that they were sitting me down at a chair in the middle of the salon far away from the sinks at the other end. Drat! Foiled. I hailed a nearby worker and attempted to correct the mistake, but was told no mistake had been made. Before I had time to protest another space-suited employee appeared at my side with gobs of shampoo in one hand and a tiny bottle of water in the other.

Mystified, I watched as she began to slowly lather a small bit of my hair, then more, then more, until I thought my hair could not possibly get any bigger or sudsier-and yet she kept going. More water, more shampoo, until I had the Mt. Everest of suds atop my head, and still no sink in sight! Then, she did the most fantastic thing. She proceeded to make some deft motion and extricated the vast majority of the sudsy mountain into her hands then walked away with it, leaving me alone and still very sudsy in the middle of the salon. Soon after she returned with, you guessed it, more water and more shampoo. Rinse and Repeat. So, yet again I was lathered into a foamy helmet. Eventually it did become necessary to rise all the suds. Once again my spacegirl scooped up handfuls of my suds and I was instructed to follow her (and my suds) back to another room that had the sinks. I was surprised to find even during the rinse I was perfectly comfortable. It sounds very odd I'm sure, but they hold your head with one hand and rinse with the little spout with the other so you don't have to strain to hold your neck up. A few times I instinctively lifted my head so she could rinse the back of my head and I was chastised. "You must relax! " I was told. Ok, if you say so.

After all the suds were gone, and my hair was thoroughly scrubbed to a cleanliness I could never before have fathomed possible, I was led back to my original seat for a five to ten minute neck, shoulder and arm massage.  Then, just when I was feeling so relaxed I could have fallen asleep in my chair, I was met with the horrible intrusion of another person spinning a q-tip into my ear. I didn't know what to do with that, so I just sat as still as possible and hoped I wouldn't have any permanent hearing or brain damage. I have since learned how to politely decline this portion of the service, even though I forgot to warn Sarah before we went. Unluckily, she was q-tip attacked while I was still in the rinse portion at the back of the salon, but so far she seems to have survived any permanent damage.

Action Shot

I like it, add more bows and I'll love it.

As promised I'm continuing the list I started to share the quirkier aspects of life here.  And, I have to tell you, I had no idea how controversial that pea-popsicle was going to be. Here that's like a one on the scale of strangeness. There are corn popsicles and red-bean paste popsicles, milk popsicle with raisins, popsicles that have only a thin layer of actual popsicle carefully wrapped around a "tongue" of gelatin. I got that one once by accident. I thought it was lime then got really freaked out when the inside wasn't popsicle but some goo. I ran up to two youths that looked like they would speak English (I have a good sense for these things) and demanded that they translate the wrapper so I would know what I had just bitten into. It's called "Green Tongue" because when you lick it, the gelatin starts to look like a tongue. Personally, I wouldn't consider that a marketable feature, but there you go.

Fashion (#6) "I like it, but I'm going to need about ten more bows added before I'll wear it."
This is pretty self explanatory. China style is something of an enigma to me. I know it exists, but it's hard to see any true trends. What I have discovered I'll share here. Rule #1: More bows, more bows, more bows. We want bows in the hair, bows on the shoulders, bows on our backs, big bows on dresses, small bows flanking the sides of cardigans. The more bows the better. You'd think there was some sort of monetary compensation for the number of bows you wear in public.

The main window display of the "Gap" of China- it's called Uniglow

All the shirts are Carebears or Barbie

Rule #2  Clothes with animals-yes!  This fashion mentality mirrors my feelings about cheese. Mainly, everything is better when you add it. Why wear regular earmuffs when you could have bunny rabbit earmuffs? Why have a regular jacket when the hood could have cat ears and the back could have a tail? Why have a regular umbrella when you could get on in the shape of a frog with eyeballs sticking out of the top? Why? Why? Why?

Bunny rabbit earmuffs

Ok, that's all. Just two rules. Well, there is the heels rule- mainly you're an low-life idiot if you're a girl who doesn't wear six-inch tall heels everywhere you go. Riding your bike. Climbing the Great Wall. Whatever. But that one just makes me feel bad about myself for not wearing heels, so we'll move on.

I'm Allergic to My Air Conditioner (#15)
This was a really fun one to find out. I include it to make you all appreciate your clean air conditioners, clean drinking water and smog-free skies. To put it in perspective, I can stare directly into the sun here in the middle of the day without sunglasses and not even squint. Regarding the air conditioner, basically what happens is when we turn it on, I lose the ability to keep food in my stomach for any length of time. You were probably thinking that I sneeze a lot or something, nope. Nothing that fun. It happened last summer but we didn't make the association because we'd just moved here and we thought China itself was the enemy of my stomach. Now that hot weather is back and our air is on it's become painfully clear that it's our AC. I'll spare you the details, but you can trust me. Joel is unfazed. And it's never bothered anyone else, last fall or now, so I think you're safe if you're not me. (Just in case I'm terrifying future guests...Welcome to our amazing apartment!)

Who Farted? (#43)
I knew when I moved here that the manners wouldn't be the same. I knew there would be shoving and the hawking and spitting of gross things on the street, but what I didn't know was that people burp and fart without apology or shame. Let me tell you- the first time you see a lady tooting her heart out in an office and nobody bats and eye it is both shocking and hilarious, and unfortunately you pick up quickly on the "laughing now would be like laughing during a prayer" vibe. You really don't want to do it, but the fact that you aren't supposed to makes it harder to contain and ultimately you end up giggling despite yourself while everyone else looks at you like you're the immature one. Whatever, she farted. I just laughed about it. It's still a struggle not to make a face whenever my bus driver or my bus monitor burp and toot out their own little symphonies on the way to school and back each day.

Sorry, Mom. You raised me better than to converse about people's bodily functions, but I felt it was my journalistic duty to share it.

A Few Quirks of Life in China

After some thought, I've decided to start a mini-blog segment devoted to sharing some of the smaller idiosyncrasies of life here: the things that I carelessly let fall through the cracks because at the time I was too overwhelmed with singing mushrooms or haggling for amazing kitchenware or backpacking through Laos, Thailand or Cambodia. Now that our number of remaining days in China have dropped into the double digit range, I thought it was time for some serious "China-quirk blog cramming." After all, it's now or never.

left to right: rabbits in cages, three bowls turtles, one bowl ?, one styrofoam crate of fish

 
#36 Turtles in a Mixing Bowl: pet or lunch?

I'm getting mixed messages. The first time I came across this street display I was emerging from a subway stop on my way to IKEA. I saw the turtles swimming around in their bowl and then my eyes traveled to the fluffy baseball-sized Floppsy, Mopsy and Cottontails nestled in stacked cages just beside them.

My first reaction was the joyful elation of any warm-hearted child who in the first moments of laying eyes on a fluffy friend can offer no resistance to the overpowering, pre-programmed desire to a) hold it! b) take it home, where it will inevitably c) grow old with me and be my best friend for life. I estimate that this process takes about three seconds (including visualizations) and only ends for adult-children when d) I'm adult and I know better [than to buy animals on the street in China], I can't possibly care for this animal, must regain pre-animal sighting composure mode kicks in.

But then I got scared.

Another, smaller display. Turtles in bowl on left, rabbits on the right

This is China. They eat everything here. Wait a minute...are these animals friends or table toppers? After months of agonizing over this completely unnecessarily, I'm choosing to believe that the answer is friends. That's what everyone seems to try to sell me on anyway, and they have no idea I already had a name picked out for my rabbit.

#61 Whatcha' Readin?

On the subway, if you are reading a book plan on sharing it. Pull an English title from your bag and you're sure to make some new friends fast. They won't talk to you, but they will read over your shoulder. And they don't stop when you look at them when a face that says, "what are you doing?" They just stare back at you and wait for you to turn the page so they can hunker down next to you for more pairs reading. The same rule applies to text messages and emails.

# 14 Pea Popsicles

Please note the sunglasses

 These delectable/horrendous frozen treats have been a point of conflict here between my spouse and me.  He thinks they're disgusting. I think they're amazing. Yes, they are made with peas, but I don't think they taste like peas. As a rule, I'm not very fond of peas. I eat them, but they're not my favorite; so I don't think this is a factor. It's just a tasty popsicle. The wrapper is also fabulous. Couldn't find that in America.

That's all for today, but there will be more later.