Golden Week in Shanghai

Lights at our Apartment Complex in honour of Golden Week

We're enjoying the last day of our "Golden Week" holiday. The Chinese Mid Autumn Festival - think Moon Cakes and a billion people on holiday simultaneously! Oh and lots of lights and lanterns.

We learned of this holiday a week or so after we arrived, and the general advice from other expats was "Get out of China if you can!" as the place is teeming with people on holiday. We were amused to find this article in the Sydney Morning Herald, documenting the phenomenon. Golden Week: The worst time to visit China.  That being said, with us busy planning a trip to the USA in Dec/Jan, we weren't up for spending much on this October holiday, so we stayed put (almost!).

A canal in the nearby city of Suzhou

Sienna by the pond in the Garden of the Master of the Nets

In a curious twist, in order for Ian to enjoy this last week off, he had to work last Saturday, but then had 8 days until his next work day.  We visited the neighbouring city of Suzhou (pronounced "Sue-Joe" or Shoe-Joe" depending on your accent!) on Wednesday. It is a city of about 6.5 million - a similar size to Sydney? It is famous for its traditional gardens and we visited one of the smallest, yet most famous ones "Garden of the Master of the Nets" - it is now a world heritage area. Really a Chinese version of a stately home, it is quite compact, but consists of about 20 small buildings (each just a room or a few rooms) set about a lovely pond and gardens. Each room has glimpses of the exterior through wooden lattice-work windows - always thoughtfully designed so that what is seen through them indicates much more space than is really there.

We then took a boat tour, cruising part of the city's 28km moat, and exploring some of the city's canals, which have earned it the name of the "Venice of the East". It was fascinating to see the back of so many houses that had their rear exit to the canal. I snapped someone cleaning boots on their backdoor step - a logical place when you live on a canal!

After the cruise we visited a silk factory, as Suzhou is famous for producing Silk. It was very interesting to see how the silk is actually produced from the cocoons, and particularly to hear how 20% of cocoons are "doubles" spun by two caterpillars together. These are used to make silk stuffing for quilts and are not exported as the Chinese love them so much that there is not enough for the overseas market. We purchased a silk quilt for our bed, and I must say it is lovely - though still a little warm, as temps here are still in the low 20s at night.

Leafy Seadragons at Shanghai Ocean Aquarium

After a rest day, we visited the Shanghai Ocean Aquarium. Though we went to see the fish, we really saw a display of Chinese crowds! There were several glass viewing tunnels, and there were so many people in them that they looked like sardines! Lots of pushing and shoving in order to get to see anything, but there really were lots of lovely creatures to see. One of my favorites was the leafy seadragons. I've been having fun using the whiz-bang camera Ian got me for my birthday- all the photos on the blog were taken with it, and it does an amazing job of making me look like a competent photographer!

It was with some trepidation that we headed out for the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum the following day - we really didn't feel like another day trapped in small, dark places with lots of people, but we were pleasantly surprised. Probably because it is so huge, the Museum felt busy, but not crowded. We saw a 4D movie on the Sabre-Tooth Tiger - Ian did very well to get us tickets, as the person who sold them spoke no English, and Ian's Chinese didn't really stretch so far as to specify a 4D movie! The movie was all in Chinese, but full of surprises - 3D visuals (with polarized glasses), wind, "fog", "snow" and seats that thumped down, when a kill was brought to ground giving us all quite a surprise. Their hands-on science exploration room was a huge hit with the kids - James said that it would be his ideal bedroom - only about 6 times the size of our house in Normanhurst! We only saw a fraction of the exhibits before going home for lunch. We certainly plan to return!

Fireworks in Century Park as seen from our balcony

We were horrified when we exited the Museum to find it was raining outside - because we had tickets to see the fireworks show in Century Park that night.  We had been in anticipation of the "13th Annual International Fireworks Festival" as we had seen, and heard, the shows on 2 previous nights from our balcony on the 25th floor. The thought of the show being rained out was very sad. Thankfully the rain cleared and everything had dried out by the time we were taking our seats for the show.

After a quick dinner at home, we raced to a taxi and after quite a bit of impressive jogging from everyone, we got to the park just on 6pm, when we thought our tickets stated the show started. Once we got there it was clear from the number of unoccupied seats that we were early. Closer inspection of the tickets with the aid of a wonderful Optical Chinese Character Recognition app on my iPhone, told us that the writing on the tickets had said that the park opens at 6pm, while the show was to start at 7:30. We had plenty of time for an ice-cream while we waited! (Magnums and Cornettos are both available).

Fireworks at Century Park

The show was in 2 parts, and consisted of Music with fireworks choreographed to accompany it. The first half was from Italy - Italian music and Firework design, the next half Belgian. Century Park has a huge lake, and this was to be the launch site for the pyrotechnics. We had great seats - there must have been at least 5 sections, were were in Section C in the middle, 15 rows behind the VIP seating. It really was the most spectacular fireworks any of us had seen. The show lasted for an hour! There were spiral fireworks, flowers, heart-shapes, bouquets that changed colour as they expanded, and it just kept getting bigger and better. It was just extraordinary.  After years of thinking that Sydney's NY Eve and Australia Day fireworks were spectacular, this left them for dead - and there would have been more fireworks set off for that one show that would have been set off in the whole of Sydney Harbour on New Years Eve. I actually felt sorry for all those "clever" expats who left Shanghai for Golden Week - they don't know what they missed!  Certainly worth braving the crowds for.  We were all on such a high after the show we managed to walk several km all the way home (Taren did get piggy-backed quite a bit of the way)

On a less ecstatic note, we all tried our hands at Badminton this morning, renting a court at our sport club. We are all pretty terrible, but are considering getting some coaching - I am sure the Badminton pro in the court next to us was doing his best not to laugh (or cry) at our playing!  We are also continuing our "training" for the grand canyon by trying to climb the 20 flights of stairs to our apartment every day. (By dint of avoiding "unlucky" numbers such as 4 -the word for 4 in Chinese sounds like the word for death- and 13, we have 20 flights to get to the 25th floor!).

Thanks for tuning in to our adventures!  Would love to hear about yours...

4th September 2012

Well, tomorrow we will have been in Shanghai 3 weeks. In that time the kids have started at 2 different schools and 3 different campuses, we have found a place to live, a church, worked out where to shop and almost got our internet working well.

Sienna and Taren started school a week after we arrived. Although they both attend Yew Chung International School, they are at different campuses, about a 12 minute drive apart. Yew Chung has a very good reputation for teaching Chinese, and already we can see they are learning a lot. James started his school just over a week ago, and is settling in. Here’s a photo of him and Taren at the bus stop where they all catch buses to school at this point Sienna had already caught her bus. Each school has their own buses, so I spend about 20 minutes at the bus stop morning and afternoon getting kids onto or off their respective buses. James doesn’t usually look this worried – I think he was embarrassed that I was taking his photo!  Also, he doesn’t usually wear his blazer, as the average temperature during the day has been in the mid thirties since we arrived. Fortunately, it is much cooler today and rainy, with a forecast maximum of 27 °C.

The photo on the right shows part of our complex, and the lake that divides the apartment blocks from the “villa” accommodation. We have a 4 bedroom apartment on the 25^th floor. Although we were originally disappointed that our first 2 choices for accommodation in 5 bedroom town-houses fell through, we can see God’s hand in us living here – we are about a 15 minute walk from the shops and 25 minute walk to church. Much closer than the larger places were to facilities.

 
There are many canoes tied up around the lake and Taren is very keen to get out and about in one. Although it is nice to go walking in the grounds of our apartment compound, I think I’m the only one to have done it, as the kids are pretty tired after school, and hanging around at the bus stop, and usually want to go straight upstairs as soon as they can. 

The compound has a good sports club, and we joined up yesterday, so now we will try and get swimming on a regular basis.

 
The walking here is very pleasant as Pudong is spacious and well set out because it is the newest area in Shanghai – 30 years ago it was all just farmland. There are wide bicycle paths, and footpaths along all the streets as you can see from this photo – the 4 lane divided road is visible to the right of the bikepath Here the red is for pedestrians, the other side of the line is for bicycles and electric motorbikes. I took this picture as I was walking from our apartment to our closest supermarket. SUPER is the word – it is enormous – think of Kmart and Woolworths rolled into one, then double the size, and there you have it – there would be about 40 checkouts at the exit! 

I’m looking forward to getting a bike as the paths are so nice and uncrowded and there are no hills at all. I think that before too long we will all be biking to church – so what are we doing for church you ask? Well, we have now been to Abundant Grace International Fellowship at 3pm on Sunday twice, and think we will probably make it home, though the volume of the music temps Ian to try the more traditional and liturgical Trinity service, Sundays at Noon – though the real drawback with that is the absence of a children’s programme. Both Ian and I have started at BSF, where we will be studying Genesis – yes, I am looking forward to seeing what God will be teaching me after a sermon series at CABC (our church in Sydney) and our bible studies for the last several months were also on Genesis!!

I had my first 2 Chinese lessons last week and can now say:

"I am very happy" - wŏ hĕn gāo xìng

and "I am learning Chinese" wŏ xué zhōng wén.

Other helpful phrases I have learned are: My name is Terena     wŏ jiào Terena. I am Australian           wŏ shì àu dà lì yà rén. Pleased to meet you    hĕn gāo xìng rèn shi nĭ. Good morning!            zăo shùng hăo!

Goodbye!        zài jàin

Which, of course is a great way to finish this pseudoblog - zài jàin!

 

2 out of 3 in school and we have a home (nearly!)

Just a quick note - to be followed up by a more extensive post later on with full details.

Sienna and Taren started school yesterday. Both have settled in well, and have at least one friend. James is all set for school Monday, we picked up his new uniform yesterday and he'll have orientation tomorrow.

After much to-ing and fro-ing it looks like we will get the keys to our apartment tomorrow! Although it is smaller (4 bed) than our original first two choices (5 bed townhouses), we are very thankful, as we definitely feel God has guided us to where we will be living.

More details later - now we are off to bed as schools start early here - 8am!

Arrived Safely!

Well, we finally made it to Shanghai.

I don't know how we would have done all the house packing up, cleaning and tidying without the help of our fabulous friends and family.  Annette, John and Mardi, and our Mums, Dawn and Lyn, deserve special mention for their herculean efforts.

We did quite a lot in our first 24 hours here. We've settled in to our temporary home at the Kerry Hotel, a short walk from Taren's school. We spent most of yesterday looking at 8 different apartments in 4 compounds, and found a couple we like - in particular a 5 Br townhouse with a garden! In the late afternoon we picked up school uniforms for Taren and Sienna and organised their school lunches for the term.  And boy, was it hot! It felt about 35 °C - and humid too, quite a change from the cool of a Sydney winter.

So far today we've looked at another two apartments, and Ian has headed off for a half day at work while the rest of us do a bit of exploring and enjoy some of the "perks" of the hotel - namely the Kids Adventure Zone...

Packing Panic

In 3 weeks and 2 days we will be flying out to Shanghai! There is so much to do. At least we have our hotel booked for the first 10 days - hopefully this will be long enough for us to sort out an apartment that is convenient to the kids' schools and Ian's work.

Only 3 weekends left, and they are pretty much full.

Today I have sorted through most of my clothes. Pretty much everything we own has to be sorted into one of 4 destinations: throw/give away, store in roof, ship to China in a box, take to China with us in a suitcase. It is a long and hard process sorting stuff, particularly since we still have to live, and function in winter for the next few weeks, while it will be high summer when we arrive in Shanghai.

I'm hoping this blog will be a good way to stay in touch with friends and family around the world - let's see if this first entry works...