Best and Worst of Shanghai Part One!

So I send you another blog part one:

Best and Worst of Shanghai Part One!

Top 5 Worst:

1.     Internet-

I am not sure if I have mentioned this yet or not but China does not have a lot of the freedoms that we are used to in America. One of the biggest one that I have noticed thus far is the Internet. People had warned me about the internet but I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I got here, and boy was I in for a rude awakening on how lucky America is. My daily routine at home includes Facebook, daily blogs, the news and Pinterest all of which I could not access over here. Yes that’s right Facebook, blog sites (how am I writing this you are now wondering?), most news sites, movie sites (i.e Hulu) and site with a chat site are just a few of the blocked sites over here. By blocking these simple sites I have noticed how addicted I have become to the Internet over the last 4 or so years using it as a forum of procrastination when I don’t want to do homework or other work. Oh yes this internet block is a bit annoying to my social life, but it is also a hassle when trying to do my project. Trying to do research it is a bit frustrating because sites that you are used to using for simple things do not work or are blocked, or are now in Chinese so you need to find another way of doing them.

Because of this lack of freedom I would now like to take a special moment to recognize all of those who have fought and died to give me all the rights that I have today as an American. Happy Veterans Day to all those in the Armed Forces both past and present.

2.     Traffic-

No one likes to drive in Boston, NYC or DC or do they?

I just took a moment to look up Boston, yes it’s my favorite City and I may talk about it a little much but this times it’s for a good cause, and this is what Wikipedia says about driving: “Driving is to be avoided if possible, due to traffic congestion, poor parking options, high driving-associated costs, the complexity of navigation, notoriously aggressive drivers, and difficult-to-follow city rules and signage.” Take the above paragraph add 100 times the confusion, aggression and cars and you have the roads of Shanghai!!

Since there are so many people living here, many choose to ride mopeds or bikes versus driving cars which only makes the roads more scary. Walking most places is frightening and dangerous! Walk on the sidewalk and you will get nearly killed by a crazy bicyclist, try and cross the road and you may be run over my someone turning, a moped or someone running a light. So it is always important to PAY attention, listening to music and walking is not a thing over here (at least for now).

The other thing with traffic is the horns!! Oh my do people like their horns over here. Half the time I do not know what they are honking at, they just honk and honk and honk at everything.

3.     Buses and Taxis-

Convenient √

Cheap √

Easy √

Scary √

Fast √

Among those listed, one is just not like the others! If you guessed scary you are correct! With the crowded roads, lack of speed limit (signs), and from what I can tell laws getting in one of these is a serious safety concern. Everyone weaves in and out of traffic happily honking at anything in his or her way.  When I say everyone I mean everyone even buses. Taking the bus home from another town yesterday was scary. Just as everyone fell asleep, we were thrown forward, almost launched from our seat due to a VERY quick stop to avoid at least our 5 near death accident in 30 minutes.

4.     Eating-

For any normal person they would be in heaven, meals are about $.50-$20 (and that expensive), on average about $3/4 which is a far cry from anything in the States. Not being able to digest anything due to my Crohn’s makes eating super, super difficult and frustrating. Everything over here is cooked together making cross contamination a large concern. It is also nearly all in soy sauce, which contains not only soy but wheat, if not drenched in it; it is cooked with it, making it again inedible. Going out I can only eat raw food, as long as there is no dressing, rice or sushi. This makes it a bit challenging but I have become a little creative with what I can cook in our microwave back at the dorm :)

5.     Spitting-

Apparently it is normal to just clear you throat and hock a loogie wherever, whenever. Enough Said

Check back tomorrow for the top 5 best things about Shanghai (I’m to tired to write it now :()

Old City

Today all 6 of us (Arm, Frank, Marissa, Matt, Nate and myself) went on a day trip to Old City I believe. We got there pretty early around 8:15 or so and just walked around the small shops waiting for Yuyuan Garden to open at 8:30. These Gardens were absolutely beautiful and huge you could easily get lost in them, which did.  With a student id they cost only 20 yuan to get in, however as Nate learned they check your ID at both the ticket booth and when ripping your ticket. Inside the garden there was a Chinese Band at 9:30, which was awesome we stayed a listened to that for a little wile and then went across the way for an early lunch.

One of my favorite rooms from the Garden, I don’t remember the name of it though.

One of my favorite rooms from the Garden

The group at lunch at Shanghai’s best Dim-Sun market, we had to go early because if you try and go any time after 10am you will be waiting in line for hours. The “market” has three flours; the first floor is take-out only and is good quality, the second floor is better quality but has only one flavor a day, and the third floor is the best. Since the middle floor only had meat today, we went to the third floor because Marissa is a vegetarian. The locals pointed us to the restaurant on the right, which was gorgeous we sat down looked through the menu and decided what we wanted only to find out that there is an 80 Yuan minimum a person, we quickly decided to go to the other one which had a 50 Yuan minimum a person. This second restaurant had a much less extensive menu, but the 5 of them were easily able to spend 50 Yuan a person, between drinks (Rice Wine, and Tea) and the Dumpling thingys. The coolest thing from the restaurant was the soup filled dumpling that Arm got.  Wile they all ate what was probably delicious (they attested it was), I ate a Lara Bar that I had packed from home in the States, and that a banana and peanut butter outside.

Cool soup filled dumpling Arm had.

Cool "Soup Filled" Dumpling

After lunch we ventured over to China’s best Tea House, which again was breath taking. Both Bill Clinton and the Queen of England have gone there so we knew it was a must. Only Arm, Marissa, Nate and myself got tea. I settle for a nice red tea coming in a 58 Yuan for the small pot, Marissa got Iron Goddess which was about 68, I don’t remember what Nate got, and Arm got a 138 Yuan cup of Tea (I guess go big or go home right). Out of all the tea’s Marissa’s was my favorite, mine was good too. The coolest part of the tea house was the snacks they gave us; fermented quail eggs and some sort of tofu where among them. Overall this was a pretty good time. This  is when my camera died, so sadly I do not have any photos for the rest of the day.

 

China's BEST Tea House

My favorite part of the day however was just walking around. I really enjoyed walking around the shops and seeing all the neat things for sale. However, for some reasons someone was not into that and only wanted to do things from the tourist book so we were a little rushed. One row that Marissa and I walked down was super  awesome. It was all hand made things; art from soda cans, paintings from fingerprints and the worlds smallest Chinese writing. We also walked in some temples, which we pretty neat minus the old women throwing elbows. After spending quit sometime in the old town we headed off to find another temple. We walked for what seemed like forever, down some back roads and finally made it back to a main road and went through one more temple. After this everyone but Arm called it a day and took the subway back to campus.

Getting onto our second transfer Frank dropped his backpack breaking the bottle of rice wine and spilling the remaining contents. If the aroma wasn’t bad enough, it smells like the strongest rice wine vinegar ever, it completely soaked Frank’s headphones and MP3 player. But lucky for us we are in the land of rice!! We ate a small dinner upon arriving back on campus, and then set out to find rice. We went to the school store, no luck, asked the German’s on our floor no luck, asked the front player is saving an MP3 player. The rest of the night we just kind of hung low and hung out in the dorm, and worked on Friday’s presentations.

Things I have learned so far:

1.      There are no napkins in China, there are wet naps but you must pay for them!

2.      A lot of places serve soup instead of drinks!

3.      Internet is awful, and we still haven’t gotten our own (we are using our Chinese partners)

4.      Cars won’t stop for anything!!!!!

5.      The Chinese really like the squat pottyies, and I should start carrying around toilet paper because 3 in 5 bathrooms don’t have any (like not even a dispenser)

I am sure the list is longer but I don’t remember right now (I’ll add to it everyday)

Caterpillar Visit

On Monday the two teams doing their MQPs with Caterpillar went to Shouzu to visit the plant and meet our sponsors. All four WPI students went on the trip, however only 2 members for SHU from each group were able to join us because the junior students has class. The trip started off by taking the subway at 8 am. Just like any major city 8 here is also rush hour. But believe me when I say this rush hour in Boston is nothing compared to Shanghai. Getting on to the subway was insane, not one more person could have fit on that thing we were packed so tight in there I am sure we broke the weight limit at least 3 times, you literally could not breath let alone meet. After about an hour and a half with a taxi ride and train ride we finally arrived at Caterpillar!!! First we meet our sponsor Brad the engineering supervisor and Danny engineer assigned to the project. Brad went over a small Caterpillar presentation, then the teams did presentations. After our presentation we found out, just how little work we actually had to do. Brad is really just looking for concepts from us with solid reasons as to why we choice them but noting crazy detailed and modeled out. We also learned that our project has really already been completed by Danny and is in the works to make it to production in 6 months, Brad just wants to see if we can come up with something better. After presentations we went to the café for lunch, nothing special I had an Iced Tea (that tasted like air freshener), a bowl of rice and an Orange. Once lunch was over was the exciting part, touring the plant. The tour of the plant was wicked awesome!! We walked through the entire production process starting with fabrication, then going to pain and assembly. Brad walked as down the line where we got to see every step in production occur right to the final built tractor. However the best part was going out in the yard and playing with the tractors. We got to climb around on the model and take photos for our project which was literally so much fun. Danny then brought us up to look at the CAD model of the tractor we will be working with for the rest of the day. After this we took a taxi back to the train station. This was one of the scariest experiences, the taxi driver was literally weaving in and out of traffic fighting through the smallest places. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. We went back to campus and went to a dinning hall and by that time it was already 6pm. After dinner Matt, Arm and Myself walked around town looking for a place to get Arm’s phone registered, since every phone in China needs to be registered to a real person or it will shut off within 3 days. We were unsuccessful however so we just went home. At home we tried a dragon fruit, which honestly just tasted like unflavored kiwi. Monday was a pretty eventful day:D Tuesday I spent most of the day sleeping as I was not feeling well, I did do some work on the project and plan our trip for Wednesday. Tomorrow morning the we are going to get up early to take the Subway into this old City to walk around for the day. This city has the best Teahouse in China, that George Bush and the Queen of London have gone too. It also has the best Dim-Son restaurant in all of Shanghai. I will be sure to take photos and post them for everyone. Have a good Tuesday :D

Shanghai First View

Today is the end of my second full day in Shanghai, and boy has it been interesting. I made it here on Friday the 25th at around 3:40, which was a little later than expected but not too much. Both flights were good nothing exciting. The one from Logan to Toronto was short only about an hour and half, and I had the seat right behind first class so there was a lot of extra legroom. The one from Shanghai was pretty good as well, just very long I think it turned out to be 15 hours total. The plane had a lot of movies which was really nice when the got working. I finally got to see The Internship, which was really exciting, and pretty good. Once, we landed it took about 20 minutes to finally get let off the plane and meet up with the two boys on my flight from school.

After getting off the plane we had to go through customs, which was much easier then when I went through customs in England it only took 20 or so minutes. After finding our luggage was the hard part Matt, JP and myself set out to find our partners who were anxiously wait for us with signs that read WPI.

After around 10 minutes of walking through rows and rows of people waiting to pick people up for the airport we found everyone. One of the other WPI students (Marissa) was already there with our Chinese partners waiting for us. We quickly got money from the ATM, and headed for the taxi to go to campus. The taxi was mildly frightening; there was a lot of honking and swerving. We go to campus, found and checked into our dorm and ate dinner. The first night I just ate some rice, then we headed to the market to buy some essentials like toilet paper towels and water. We were all pretty beat from traveling and it was around 9 pm at this point so we went home showered and unpacked and went to bed.

Saturday was a little more exciting. I met up with Marissa and Matt in the morning, two students from another group, and their Chinese partner in the morning. We got our cell phones, and went to a dumpling house for lunch (I didn’t eat at this point), and got our University Cards. I then had a meeting with my partners to prepare for a presentation. After the meeting Arm and I (my WPI partner), went and had dinner (which again I just had some rice), and Starbucks J (which if anyone knows me is a most at all times). We tried to go to a famous Chinese Acrobats with Marissa and Matt, but it was sold out. We ended up just exploring the shops and the grocery store. The grocery store is very different then anything you will ever see in America. They have all sorts of live fish, turtles, dried whole fish, many different snacks including chicken feet that are dried. After that we all just went back to the dorm because it was pretty late.

Sunday we had to be up pretty early for our final PQP presentations for all of our advisors. First we walked around the streets and everyone else got some breakfast, I packed a Lara bar with me and just ate that. We did our presentations, which went really well, especially because some of the students hadn’t spoken English much before. The WPI Professor brought everyone to lunch after that, I again just ate some rice. Lunch was pretty exciting out partners were super nice, and kept refilling you glass every time is was empty and doing cheers. The rest of the day my group prepared for our visit to Caterpillar tomorrow morning, and fixed our presentation. However the best part of the day was dinner!!! Arm and myself went to sushi, and it was the first actual meal I have eaten since Wednesday night. The sushi was wonderful, we sat at the middle table around the kitchen so we got to watch them make it, and around the inside of our table was a belt that the sushi passed by on and you could pick whatever you would like. I was a little adventurous and tried octopus and sea urchin, I didn’t like the Sea Urchin but the Octopus was very good. That’s most of what I have done so far it has been very exciting and a lot to take in. As I mentioned tomorrow morning we will be going to Caterpillar to meet with our sponsor and get a better understanding of what we will be doing. Tuesday Marissa and Matt found a Quiz Night at and Australian bar down town that we are going to check out, I let you know how that is.

That’s all for now and don’t forget to check out my flicker for pictures.

Good bye Boston!

The day that seemed like only only a dream is finally here! In less than an hour I board my first plane in my 17 hour journey to Shanghai, to go to Toronto. Canada. My flight from Boston to Toronto will be fairly painless only 2 hours, it is the next step of the trip I am worried about a 14 hour flight that takes off at 1pm and lands in Shanghai at 3:15 tomorrow afternoon (3:15 am here). Over-prepared as usual I think all will go well.

Getting to the airport was painless, we left the hotel around 6 and got here at 6:30 (just over two hours ahead of time). Lucky for me there was no line to check in so I walked right up and got down to business weighing my luggage. A little worried I put by giant L.L Bean Duffle on the scale, fingers crossed it wouldn't be overweight, and bam it was!! 53.5 pounds was the final verdict, the guy checking my bag was extremely nice and said it was fine, but it looks like I will be checking two bags on the way back oops.

Since it was only 6:40 at this point, I sat down got some Starbucks (which I spilled on myself) double checked I had everything wile my family was still here and waited two minutes before got through security. At 7 I went through security which was literally a 5 second walk from baggage drop off, lucky again. The women checking my bag again commented on wow you bag weighs a lot what do you have in that back-pack?? Over-prepared again, thats the coxswain in me, I armed myself with everything I could need in the next 17+ hours. One bag just full of clothes incase my luggage gets lost, and one with everything else including at least two days worth of food (yay being allergic to everything).

Well off to Canada I will let you all know when I get to China tomorrow, finger crossed everything goes well :)

Last 24 Hours

Today begins my last 24 hours in America for the next two months! As most of you know I will be leaving tomorrow morning to embark one a once in life time trip to Shanghai, China. Myself and five other students will be traveling to China as part of the WPI global studies program to complete our Major Qualifying Project (MQP). The MQP is similar to other universities senior capstone, it encompasses all previous study to solve problems or perform tasks in the major field with confidence, and communicate results effectively. For my project I am working with one other WPI student and four students for Shanghai University for Caterpillar Inc. redesigning a door to customer and company specifications.

Leaving tomorrow my nerves are high and there's a lot to do. I finished my packing yesterday other then a few last minute things which I will be getting later today, I drove to NY and dropped off my car with my dad, I said good bye to my teammates and family and most importantly meet my new puppy Sadie. If yesterday was busy today will prove twice as busy.

Today I will double and triple check to make sure I have everything, get my contacts (my mom had to get overnighted because I didn't notice I was nearly out until monday), and go to Boston my favorite city on earth, only fitting for my last day here. I am super excited for Boston tonight because it is the first game of the World Series and I will be spending it watching the Red Sox game in a bar. I'll keep you updated on today's adventures later this evening.

My Mom's new Puppy, Sadie, I'm not sure she liked me taking her photo.

Back to my trip, I will not have access to Facebook, it is banned in China, so I will keep everyone updated via my blog, and post photos on my flicker account which you can get to from the left side of the page. I cannot promise how often I will post, but I will try to as often as I can. I will also have access to email, so please please feel free to email me (jeprashaw@wpi.edu) every now and again :D

Check back tomorrow to see how everything went in my last 24 hours!