One Last Expo Post

I worked with a lot of amazing performers from all over the US and China.  I’m not going to make a long post about each group, so I’m posting photos from some of performances just to give you an idea.

Black Violin

A group that mixes hip-hop with classical strings.

US Army Band

We worked with both one of the Army’s touring marching bands and this brass group.

The Govenator

Arni!

Paper Doll

An indie rock/pop band from NYC.

Peter Wu and other USAP staff rockin' out to Paper Doll

Sesame Street

The Otis Clay Soul Revue

Iconic soul from Chicago.

Chico Lobo

Brazilian folk music from Minas Gerais.

Chico Lobo was brought to Expo by the Brazilian Pavilion, but since the Brazilian Pavilion did not have its own stage, the performance was done in collaboration with the USAP Entertainment Department.

Andy and Wang working on tech with Chico Lobo's road manager.

Clearly I work my interns hard.

When Chico Lobo heard that Andy could play the harmonica, he immediately invited Andy to play with him!

Party in the street!

Hank gettin' down.

My time at Expo was a lot of hard work (not always made clear by my photos), but it was also extremely rewarding.  All in all, not a bad way to spend a summer.

Breaking into the Theatre Scene

In January, 2011, I began assistant producing with the Shanghai Repertory Theatre (SRT), a semi-professional Western theatre company based in Shanghai.  I started out as a techie for their March play which helped me to be involved more artistically in the June Extravaganza, SRT’s yearly play festival.  In the festival I acted in play readings, the Vagina Monologues, and directed an original 10 minute one act.  Did I mention I was also Technical Director of the entire festival?

Here’s Barbara, doing a fabulous job of stabilizing this scaffolding.  I didn’t take this picture because I was busy climbing up the scaffolding to fix a light.

Leading up to the June Extravaganza, SRT held a 10 minute one act competition.  The 2nd and 3rd place plays were given staged readings at Glamour Bar and the winning play was fully produced in the festival (directed by me).  We took a break during the tech set-up for our fully produced plays to do the reading at Glamour Bar.  I read for the play “Happily Sometimes After,” a talk-show that interviews various fairytale characters with various kinds of neurosis.

Here I am interviewing Prince Charming.  As dashing as our Prince may be, ladies, Paul is a happily married man and his wife is hotter and cooler than you are.  From this day forward, if I mention Paul in my blog, it will be as Prince Charming.

The winning play was “The Translator” by Audrey Murray.  Though I didn’t get to choose the play I was directing, or the cast for that matter, I still really enjoyed the process and was pleased with the end result.  Here are some pics I snapped during our last dress rehearsal.

I had a lot of fun working with these actors.  As you can see, Barbara was one of them!  Barbara is a part-time student of Chinese and a part-time English teacher.  She’s originally Slovakian, grew up in Slovenia, speaks a billion languages and ended up in Shanghai.  The fella is Julien.  Julien is French and teaches high school English at the French highschool in Shanghai.  Amanda, the blond in the middle, is Canadian and teaches preschool at an international preschool.

During our final dress rehearsal, we had time to do a second run-thru.  Some actors from another play decided they wanted to jump into our play.

What's Prince Charming doing in our play?

 

The couple of hours before our opening night was our “tech rehearsal” where we figure out how to change the set between scenes.  It was then that it dawned on me that there was no stage manager for the evening.  I became the last minute stage manager and staged how the set would be changed between plays.  Oh, wait, I was also operating the lights for the evening and couldn’t be backstage to help organize the changes.  All I could do was hope it worked.

There were three plays during our Night of One Acts.  There were “The Translator,” “A Minor Case of Murder,” and Samuel Beckett’s “Catastrophe,” performed in that order.  The night was supposed to keep flowing with no intermission and very short scene changes under blackout.  During our opening night, someone turned on the house lights (the audience lights) after “The Translator,” and there was nothing I could do.  I was stuck in the light booth without a walkie-talkie.  Keep in mind at this point I have been solving an escalating series of minor crisis for several days on little sleep and too much caffeine.  For the previous 24 hours I have had 3 different directors yelling at me about what I had to do for their individual plays.  I also had to finish rehearsing my own play and rehearse the sound and light cues with my actors and all the other actors in the Night of One Acts, rehearse “Vagina Monologues,” and climb up the 30 foot scaffolding between the one acts and VM rehearsal to move a stage light (ERS) and refocus it because we didn’t have enough lights to do the light plot for both evenings with the number lights we had available.  I’m usually okay with heights, but that scaffolding scared the crap out of me.  You know how animals can smell fear?  Well, apparently so can I because each time I climbed the scaffolding I stank of it.  ugh.  Long story short, I was already really stressed when the whole turning-on-the-house-lights-during-the-middle-of-an-event occurred.  Thankfully, someone on the ground caught the mistake and fixed it… after a very long, awkward pause during which the audience and the actors in the next show weren’t sure what was happening.

Anyway, enough complaining.

Here’s a pic of “A Minor Case of Murder.”  Remember Prince Charming?  He wrote this play.  And acted in it.  He’s in the shadows on the right, so you can’t really make him out.  It was hilarious.  Do you recognize the actors in this play?

That’s right!  They were the intruders in my last dress rehearsal.  Arran on the left side of the couch and JP on the right.

Here’s a pic from “Catastrophe.”  During several of the “Catastrophe” rehearsals I acted as a substitute Stage Manager/Assistant Director.  I also sourced the costumes…  I did a lot during this festival.

After the last performance of the Night of One Acts, I moved the stage light for the last time, huzzah!  I was so relieved, all I had to do for the rest of the festival was act!  I was so relieved, in fact, that I forgot to take pictures of ”Vagina Monologues.”

I had my Shanghai acting debut and directorial debut in the same week.  Not bad.  I also learned that if I’m going to be acting in or directing a play, I want someone else to be technical director!!!

I am Expo: Part 2

I am writing this entry over a year after my previous post and a year and a half after these events occurred.  I felt compelled to complete this post because of the previous post’s title.  How could I write a “Part 1″ if I had no “Part 2″?  While the Expo lasted 6 months (May-October 2010), the events I am about to recount occurred in June.  I am contemplating writing at least one other post after this one, but I might end up being too lazy.

The Texas Board of Tourism was one of the USA Pavilion sponsors and had a weeklong celebration as a PR event.  Texas brought with them the Marshall Ford Swing Band (Texas swing, that is), Kevin Fitzgerald (trick roper extrodinair), Dr. Ellen Baker (NASA Astronaut), and Gov. Rick Perry (I think you know who he is).  Yeehaw!

Pictured above is Caleb Ford, one of my interns.  Thank God Caleb was on my team.  He performed for several years in a touring band and knew how to use a soundboard as well as set up microphones.  Caleb and another intern, Eli (professional DJ), taught me how to use our equipment.

Pictured below are two wonderful gentlemen.  The fella on the left is Jason Meek, and my former boss.  I didn’t know Jason very well at this point because I was still rather “new” to Expo. Jason is one of the hardest working people I have ever met.  That being said, he has no idea how to work with his hands.  My first week on the job, I asked him if USAP had a stud finder, he asked me what a stud was.  The man on the right is Casey Monahan.  At the time of this photo, Casey was the director of the Texas Music Office, a branch of the Governor’s Office.  Casey spoiled me.  He was an excellent road manager and made my job super easy.  Little did I know how poorly managed the vast majority of the groups would be.  In short, Casey is the man!

At the time, I didn’t know who Gov. Rick Perry was until I set up his microphone for him.  I thought he looked like Charles Bronson, appropriate for a Texan governor.  A year later he would be campaigning for the Republican presidential primary.

Here is Joy Xu introducing Dr. Ellen Baker.  Joy started out as a volunteer at the Mexican Pavilion.  I stole her.  She wanted to volunteer at the USA Pavilion because she speakes English (not Spanish) and goes to school in Massachusetts.  I made sure that Joy worked for the Entertainment Department.  Joy stayed with us for the rest of Expo, which required her to take a semester off!  Joy was an amazing help and an essential part of our team.

Dr. Baker is AWESOME!  Look, I stood next to a woman WHO HAS WALKED IN SPACE!!!  She was very nice and had the patience of a saint.

Here is the Marshall Ford Swing Band: Greg Harkins on guitar, Kris Wade on bass, and Emily Gimble on the keyboard.  I loved this group.  They were fun, laid back, and having a blast!  I gave their CD to my dad for Christmas.  He loves listening to it on the way to work in the morning.

Here I am, chillin’ with a NASA astronaut, listening to Texas swing in China.

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I introduce to you one of the greatest living trick ropers, Kevin Fitzpatrick!

I’m having difficulty adding text between each photo, so this paragraph refers to all the trick rope pics.  Being lassoed is fun, I recommend it.  After getting tied up, I, um, “volunteered” one of my interns to be bull whipped.  Thankfully he was a good sport about it (note: no interns were hurt during this photo shoot).  Half-way through the show, our Commissioner General Jose Villareal came down for a visit, and I “volunteered” him to get tied up as well.  He was also a good sport.

I shall leave you with this sign posted on the entrance to a restaurant across the street from my apartment.

I am Expo: Part 1

 Hello All!

I am sorry for the multi-month hiatus.  In truth, I have been working on this post for about 5 months.  My last post introduced everyone to the phenomena that is (was) the Shanghai 2010 World Expo.  Shortly after that post, I interviewed to work for the USA Pavilion (USAP)( http://www.usapavilion2010.com/index.php) at World Expo and was hired as a Stage and Events Manager for the Entertainment Department.  The next 6 months of my life were so busy and full that I never seemed to have time to sit down and finish this post, let alone write the multiple posts I have been planning to write.  Here begins a series of posts dedicated to my Expo Experience.

Flash back to May, 2010.  I was young, eager and unemployed.  (Currently I am slightly less young, still eager, and once more unemployed.)  I already had a phone interview with Allison, my friend who was working for the USAP Entertainment Department, and she said that she would pass my resume along to her boss.  On May 10th, Allison’s boss Jason gave me a phone call which quickly turned into an interview.  He asked me about my experience in performance to which I replied that I had a degree in theatre arts and that I had been performing in various musical and theatrical groups since I was in pre-school.  He asked me how my Chinese was, and I said it was enough (note: he didn’t actually test my Chinese, just took me at my say-so).  I didn’t realize how desperate his department was for staff with actual performance experience.  I was hired and started on May 14th.

My first day was a little chaotic.  I came onto the scene, the new kid, assuming that I would observe my new colleagues and figure out where I could fit into the already established Entertainment Department machina.  In actuality, our entire program was still being developed and no one really knew what he/she was doing. 

My first week saw the arrival of the USAP portable outdoor stage.  There had been much anticipation of this stage, yet all I had seen of it was this picture taken in a big warehouse.

It looked like a giant metal lunchbox.

Because of Expo operational procedures, we could only have the stage arrive and be installed between midnight and 6am.  For 3 days in a row I spent every a.m. hour at the pavilion working on the stage installation (that is I arrived at 9pm and left at 1pm).

Once the stage was up and running, we began to have our house dance group, Dance America, perform 5 to 8 times a day.  Two teams of 5 dancers would dance on alternating days to fill up our schedule.

Within the first week of shows, I encountered what was to be the biggest headache of my entire summer, rain.   Because of the surface of our stage floor, the slightest precipitation would cause the cancellation of a Dance America show.  If you know Shanghai in the summertime, it rains more than it doesn’t.

May was mostly the arrival of our stage and getting Dance America up and running.  The first week of June saw my introduction to working with our dear sponsors.  FYI, the USA Pavilion was the ONLY national pavilion not sponsored by its respective government, which meant that much of my time was spent kissing corporate sponsorship behind. 

The first sponsor was the Hawaiian Board of Tourism.  I really enjoyed this week, and with it have many photos!

Here I am at our simple little 8-channel analog mixing board doing a quick sound check for the Hawaiian instrumentalists.  I like this picture because it makes me look professional.  You’ll notice in these early weeks I usually wore a pencil skirt and a nice blouse to work.  That only lasted until mid-July.

For Hawaii Week, we had two hula groups perform over several days.  The first group, Tihati Productions (http://www.tihati.com/), brought along instrumentalists to perform with the dancers.

Here’s one of the guitarists chilling behind the stage before the show.

Tihati Productions also invited Grammy Award Winner Slack-key Guitarist Jeff Peterson. (http://jeffpetersonguitar.com/?page_id=2)

Jeff was really cool and, as you would expect from a Grammy winner, an amazing guitarist.  He arranged his own Hawaiian version of a well-known Chinese folk song called “Moli Hua,” or “Jasmine Flower.”  This being the first time I had ever heard “Moli Hua” I was really impressed that he had prepared something that connected well with the Chinese audience.  Little did I know that every choir and youth orchestra thereafter would also play “Moli Hua.”  I now despise that song.  It got to the point where if the conductor announced that they would be singing it next, I hoped someone would pass me a bucked of boiling wax so I could pour in my ears.  Anything to make it stop.

Above you see the Tihati bass player plugging his guitar into a direct box.  I now know what a direct box is.  Before Expo I knew nothing about microphones or sound equipment, yet was expected to be an expert.  By necessity I learned quickly.  If you were to graph my learning curve, it would be f(x)=x^2.

Now onto Hula Dancers!

The Chinese really liked the dancers.  Chinese audiences love anything that is flashy and has colorful costumes.  If it’s slow, but masterful, you won’t have an audience.  Joshua Bell could be playing and no one would pay attention (unless he’s playing Paganini, which is way too sexy to ignore).

Look just past this dancer’s legs.

See the little kids.  I always loved having little kids in the audience.

Not just kids were in the audience.

Meet Ed.  I’ve never seen Ed wear anything other than a dark suit, although I do dig the yellow tie in this picture.  Ed was head of security for the USA Pavilion.  In this photo he looks like a secret service agent scanning the crowd, but actually he was watching hula.  The security guard next to him is probably making a personal call. 

If you ladies think that the hula performance was skewed in favor of a male audience, you would be wrong.

There were a lot of perks to my job!

More hanging out behind the stage between shows.

Now we move onto Kumu Blaine, Kia, and Ka Laua’e Foundation. (http://www.kaleihula.com/klh/blaine-kamalani-kia)  I really loved this group.  They were a wonderful group of people and very personable.  I enjoyed every minute working with this group.  They performed on the USAP stage as well as another stage that I would get to know very well, Americas Square.

The national pavilions were arranged by continent and each continent had an outdoor stage that the countries from that region could share (i.e. Europe Square, Africa Square, etc.).  Working at Americas Square was an exercise in patience and self-control. 

Did you notice that Canada was right next to the Square?  I visited the Canadian pavilion 4 times, including a guided tour.  I visited the USA Pavilion in its entirety only once.

In the beginning it was difficult to get the Shanghainese stage crew at Americas Square to work.  For a month I had to almost bully them until they realized that it was easier to help me than it was to argue with me.  Not all the stage crew was sluggish, just enough of them.  The other issue with Americas Square was if our performance started 1 minute late, I would be screamed at.  Not yelled at, screamed at.  If our performance went over our time by 1 minute, I would also get screamed at.  That also got better as the summer went by because I got to know the screamers and they started to like working with me more.

The Laua’e hula show was really cute.  They incorporated the entire family, including the little one in the middle.

All in all, I really enjoyed Hawaii Week.  It broke me in to the workings of Americas Square and gave me confidence for much of what was to come.

I’ll leave you with one last photo.  This young man was one of the Americas Square hard-working stage crew. 

World Expo 2010 Shanghai

For those of you who don’t know, and I presume most of you don’t for I sure didn’t before I came here, this year Shanghai is hosting the World Expo.  World Expo is the new fancy name of the World’s Fair.  All of Shanghai has been in a flurry preparing for the Expo, and the Expo begins on May 1.  I have a couple of friends working at Expo, so I like to think that I have VIP status.  One of my VIP perks is that I was allowed to attend the first “soft openning” of Expo where 200,000 people were allowed to preview Expo and give the pavilions a chance to practice before the actual openning.   I went with two friends, Niamh and Chahin, both of whom I’ve mentioned before on this blog.    Also, Niamh and I had befriended an Irish project manager for the building of an Irish pub on the Expo site, and the pub was openning that day.  The soft openning of Expo was a big mess.  Most of the pavilons weren’t prepared and therefore not open.  The handfull that were open (and really, you could count the open pavillions on your hands and still not use all your fingers) had to contend with 200,000 people trying to get inside.  Niamh, Chahin, and I didn’t go inside a single pavilion, so we walked around and looked at the exteriors of the pavillions.   That would have been fine and dandy, except that it was also pouring down rain.  All in all, not the best experience . . . but I shall tell you of it anyway!

There was a lot of security getting into Expo, but I have a feeling that the security is more for show than effect.  At one point, we had to pass our tickets through a ticket reader.  Chahin’s ticket got stuck inside the machine.  Niamh and I were quite amused.

The picture below is of us still feeling optimistic about our day.  We took the subway to get to Expo.  Shanghai has built several new subway lines to prepare for Expo and two of them pass directly through the site.  The subway exit brought us directly to the Chinese Pavillion, so that is where we started.

This is the China Pavilion.  It is truly amazing to behold, and no wonder since China is hosting the Expo.  It wants to look good!

This is the Macau Pavilion, or as I like to call it, the Trojan Bunny.  Behind it is the Hong Kong Pavilion.  These three pavilions were open, but the line was horrendously long to get in.

Waiting in line outside the China Pavilion, I ran into my Canadian buddy Max.  He was there with another Canadian friend (I think the friend’s name is Tom). 

We waited in line with them to get into the China Pavilion for half an hour until we learned that you had to arrive at Expo at 9am to reserve a special ticket.  The ticket allowed you to come back in the afternoon and wait in line.  Then, after waiting in line in the morning, and  waiting in line in the afternoon, you were allowed to enter the pavilion.  We did not get to go inside.

The Expo is organized by continent.  China, being in Asia, was near the Middle East, so we headed that way.  Here is the Sultanate of Oman.

Near the Sultanate of Oman was this room.  It’s hard to read, but the sign says that it is the Expo Nursery and Baby Caring Room.  I would not leave my baby here.

A view of the China Pavilion from afar.  Below the China Pavilion is the Pakistan Pavilion and on the right you can see a portion of the Israel Pavilion.  I have a friend working for the United Arab Emirates Pavilion, and he  says they joke a lot about how the Israel Pavilion is stuck in the middle of all the other Middle Eastern pavilions.  Just like in real life!

We had heard that the Saudi Arabia Pavilion was open, so we trekked toward it, Niamh, Chahin, the Canadians, and myself.  The rain had started to pour at this point and we only had one umbrella between the five of us.  The Canadians thought it worth the 2 hour wait in line to see the inside of one pavilion, but Niamh, Chahin and I decided to split.  I wanted to go to the USA Pavilion and see if I could get a job and Niamh wanted to get to the pub.  I didn’t take anymore pictures because it was raining so hard. 

To get to the USA Pavilion, we had to get on a bus and travel across the entire Expo site.  On the way to the bus we passed Nepal.

I took a picture of the Nepalese Pavilion not only because it looked so cool, but also because I could stand underneath a raised causeway and not get rained on.  A class of little kids on a school fieldtrip had the same idea.

The bus was stuffed with hot, annoyed, wet Expo visitors.  I hate taking public busses.  I don’t mind the subway, but I hate busses.  This one was no exception.

Our stop was at the end of the line, but during some of the earlier stops, Niamh, Chahin and I were able to score some seats.

Notice my wet, stringy hair.  That’s because our only umbrella was Niamh’s.

Here’s a map of Expo.  If you look in the upper left hand corner of the map, you’ll see a macro version of the whole site.  The red zone is Asia, where we began.  The yellowish-orange area was the Americas and Europe.  This is Chahin trying to figure out where we are and where we are trying to go.

I didn’t take a picture of the USA Pavilion because it looked like a warehouse.  The USA Pavilion is the only pavilion at Expo that is not endorsed by its respective government, so it has to rely on donations.  That’s stupid.  Expo is a great opportunity to spread goodwill among people of all nations, particularly China and the Far East since that is from where most of the visitors will come.  President Kennedy created the Peace Corps to do the same, couldn’t our government have thrown a few bones to the USA Pavillion?  Chahin has a friend who works for the pavilion and she has passed my resume on to her higher ups, but since they have such a limited budget, she doesn’t know if they can hire me.

That’s the interesting thing about the pavilions here.  The most grandiose pavilions do not necesarily belong to the countries with the largest economies or highest GDPs.  They belong to the countries that threw the most money into them.  For instance, in the Middle East, some of the pavilions are massive and amazing because so much oil money went into them.  In the Americas zone, there is a large building with several countries’ pavilions inside because they didn’t have enough money to have their own separate pavilion.  I was somewhat surprised the USA had its own free-standing pavillion.

Near the USA Pavilion was the Peruvian Pavilion.  I took this picture for Marisa.

After the USA Pavilion, we decided to just go straight to the pub.  Niamh called our friend, Brian (or Brian the Builder, as I like to call him, since he built the bar), and he told us it was next to the Belgium Pavilion.  Off we go!

Along the way we passed a lot of really cool pavilions.  I don’t know the country for the next three, but I thought they looked really cool.

This last one makes me happy.

As a tribute to all my new francophile friends, here is the French Pavilion.

All around the front of the pavilion were pictures of children.  I thought it was hilarious that some of the portraits were of crying and screaming children.  Welcome to France!

Here’s the German Pavilion.  Being Germany, they openned on time. 

As we passed the German Pavilion, one shift was getting off, so Chahin stopped one of the German guys to ask where the Belgium Pavilion was.  A simple question, you either answer, “Oh, it’s over there,” or “I don’t know.”  This guy was tired and eager to escape. He wouldn’t stop going on about how he was getting off his shift and bla bla bla.  Fine, don’t actually answer our question, that’s okay.  At least I don’t have to wear that uniform!

Here’s the Spanish Pavilion.  It was amazing (not to mention massive).  The building’s facade is made of overlapping wicker mats.

At this point we gave up and called Brian again.  We told him we were infront of Spain.  He came and fetched us.  Turns out the Belgium Pavilion was only two lots over from the German Pavilion.

Presenting Brian Murphy and the Porterhouse Bar.

Brian is a 49 year old foreman from Dublin, or as they call foremen in Ireland, he’s a builder.  Brian has spent the past 4 months in Shanghai building the Porterhouse, and it has been the most aggrivating and stressful project he’s ever done.  Brian speaks no Chinese; the workers speak no English.  Needless to say he had communication problems.  Even with his translator, it was hard to get anything done because the Western mindset and the Chinese mindset are so different.  The Chinese like to follow the original instructions of everything exactly as it was written, even if the wall frames and other adornments shipped from Ireland aren’t the same dimensions as the plans said they would be.  “It’s 2 meters long.” But the plans say it’s supposed to be 1.5 meters. “I don’t care about the bloody plans, measure the piece yourself!  It’s 2 meters long!” 

After all the headache, Brian did a fantastic job.  We arrived at about 3pm and spent the rest of the day there.

Only the downstairs was open because the upstairs wasn’t finished yet.

But because we knew Brian, we got a full tour even though the upstairs was closed.

Me and Brian.  Brian was joking that he had to make sure he looked taller than me in the photo.

More shots of the bar.

Brian nicknamed the bar “Heaven” because it so often felt like the opposite.  Here’s Brian personifying some of his more hellish moments on the jobsite.

The Porterhouse is a chain in Ireland, so it imported some of its staff.  Here is the bar manager, Dave.  I thought Dave was really hot (and it didn’t hurt that he has a Dublin accent), but alas, Dave has a girlfriend.  I like this picture because he’s moving, but his reflexion in the mirror is still.

On the right is Dave’s girlfriend, Crystal.  Crystal is actually from Texas, but lived in Brooklyn for a long time.  She met Dave in NY and ended up travelling to Shanghai with him for this gig.  I can’t remember the name of the guy on her left, but he was one of the assistant architects of the bar and is now working at the bar itself as a side job.

Later the Canadians joined up with us at the bar.  They waited forever to get into the Saudi Arabia Pavilion.  They thought it was really cool, but had no idea what any of it had to do with Saudia Arabia. 

Here’s Brian telling a story.

We left the bar well after the soft openning was supposedly closed.  Interesting how careful the security was getting us in, but how little they cared about getting us out. 

On the way out we passed some other pavilions.  I don’t know what this one is, maybe Norway.

Can you guess which one this is?

This one is Thai Land. 

After Expo, we all went to another pub and had dinner.  All in all, it was a good day even if the soft openning was kind of a bust.  I’d like to go back to Expo again, but not until August.  Let them figure everything out and get everything up and running before I go back. 

As I said, I did send my resume to the USA Pavil\lion.  Chahin’s friend, Allison, told me not to expect any response until after the May 1 openning of Expo, so there’s still a chance I might get hired on.  They need more people, but they are mostly looking for volunteers, not hired employees.  Sorry, but from all the nightmares I’ve heard about working at Expo, you need to pay me to get me.

That’s enough of Expo, how about I leave you with some interesting Chinese products?  I went shopping in Carrefour one day to get body lotion.  Carrefour is the French version of Walmart, so I figured that they might have some decent, westerner friendly body lotion.  This is what I found.

Don’t you just want to rub it all over your skin?

The New New Apartment

This post is about my new, new apartment.  Since arriving in Shanghai I have had two apartments in as many months.  Soon after moving in with Frank and Bastien, the boys informed me that they would not be renewing the lease at the end of March.  Not long after Frank decided to get an apartment on his hown, so Bastien and I were left to find a place by ourselves.  We started apartment hunting at the end of February with no luck at all.  We were shown one unacceptable apartment after another.  Finally, one day in my Chinese class, I lamented to my teacher that we were having no luck.  That’s when she told me that her younger brother is a realestate agent . . . and the magic began!

Her brother showed us two apartments, and we made an immediate offer on one of them.  We signed the contract the very next day.

See the cheerful little girl?  That’s Whinney, the daughter of our landlords.   She’s 5 years old and in love with me–definitely a bonus for the landlord-tenant relationship.  If you look at the bottom of the picture, you’ll see our lease contract.  It’s completely in Chinese, no English.  Thankfully my teacher came to the lease signing and read over the contract for us.

Below is the happy family of landlords and tenants.  Our landlords, the Zhuangs, are really cool.  Many, many foreigners have horror stories about conniving landlords who make their lives much more frustrating than necesary.  Our landlords are pleased to have foreign tenants and spent a while telling us about their vacation to France earlier in the year.

Introducing Jiang Qiusha and her little brother Jiang Yong.  Qiusha, or as I call her, Jiang laoshi (Teacher Jiang), loves to go apartment hunting with her brother and jumped at the opportunity to apartment hunt with us.  She has a wicked sense of humor and only agreed to help me if I promised to invite her to our parties so she can meet my handsome friends. 

When I said that Whinney loved me, I wasn’t kidding.

She stole her parents’ phone and spent the entire afternoon taking pictures of me.  It being early Sunday afternoon, I was somewhat of a mess after a wonderful Saturday night and much in need of a shower.  Let’s just say I felt less than photogenic.

Here’s the dining room.

The living room.

The view out our living room window. 

Next to our apartment is a middle school.  Every school day from about 8:30 am until the middle of the afternoon there are children playing and making lots of noise.  I actually don’t mind.  I much prefer the sound of happy children to the sound of traffic any day.  Our apartment building is far enough into our compound that we aren’t next to any busy streets.  However, I am going to tire soon of hearing the Chinese national anthem every morning as well as an instrumental version of the first refrain of “Jingle Bells” played every passing period.

The kitchen.

Notice in the right corner that the refrigerator is inside the kitchen!  There is no oven, but there is a lot more space. 

My bedroom.

My bedroom is huge!  I have a king size bed with accompanying bedframe!  You can’t see it in this picture, but my wardrobe is also quite sizeable.  The big windows lead out onto an enclosed patio where the washing machine is.  It is a little irksome to have to go through my bedroom to get to the washing machine, but there is no other place for it.  We tried to move it into the kitchen, but there isn’t the appropriate plumbing to move it there.

Bastien’s bedroom.

Don’t feel sorry for Bastien for having the smaller bedroom; he also gets his own private study.

When I show people our new place, I refer to Bastien’s bedroom/office as France and my bedroom as the US.  I don’t trespass in France and Bastien stays out of the US.  We haven’t chosen a name for our apartment yet, but we’re brainstorming.

That concludes the tour of our new apartment and the introduction of the Zhuang family and the Jiang family.  Not the most witty post, I must confess, but an update nonetheless.

I have no interesting product this post, but I do have an interesting store.  This picture is for you Americans reading my blog.  In Chinese, “Zhou” is pronounced “Joe.”  Get it?

The Young and the Restless Entrepreneurs

“In China, everything is possible, but nothing is easy.” 

When two ex-pats meet, there are three basic introduction questions that always get asked.  Where are you from?  How long have you been in Shanghai?  What are you doing here?  Personally, I think my answers to these questions are rather blasé and not telling of myself as a person, “I’m from the States.  I’ve been here about 3 months.  I’m studying Chinese.”  Some people, however, have a much more interesting response to the third question, “What are you doing here?”  One of the first persons I befriended in Shanghai gave this as his answer, “I’m opening a French bakery.”

For those of you who knew me in college, you remember well my obsession with baking and can understand the personal sacrifice I made in moving to a country that does not know what an oven does.   There are plenty of Chinese bakeries in Shanghai, but it’s as if they don’t quite “get it.”   Go into a Chinese bakery and pick out something, anything, and it will be the absolute opposite of what you are expecting.  Oh, that looks like a tasty fruit danish . . . why is there pork in it?   Learning of the immenent opening of a real French bakery operated by a real Frenchman gave me hope that I might actually survive in Shanghai.

Introducing Laurent Meffre (left) and David (I can’t remember his last name, but it’s something super Frenchie) (right).

Laurent is the third friend I made in Shanghai and has the distinction of being the first Frenchman that I have known for more than 2 hours.  Considering that over 75% of the people I know in Shanghai are French, that is quite an accomplishment.  Laurent is from some-small-city-in-France-near-Lyon, but he lived in Arizona for 3 years during high school, which means he speaks impeccable American.  The quote at the top of this post is Laurent’s.  I was asking him about how things were progressing with his bakery, and that was his response.  It think it apropos.

The shop is a combination French bakery and French butchery in one cute bundle of French gastronomical goodness.  The bakery portion (and Laurent’s domain) is named La Boulangerie.  The butchery is named Les Garcons Bouchers.   Enter David.  David is the general manager of  Les Garcons Bouchers.  I don’t know David too well, but he’s an old-timer here in China, having been here over 5 years.

I do not envy Laurent and David the amount of time and hard work they have put into this shop.  In the weeks leading up to its opening, they were at work early, early in the morning (about the time I go to bed on a Saturday night) and working until midnight or later (about the time I go out on a Saturday night).

I went to the opening day of La Boulangerie with my friend Nina Herbort.

Introducing Nina Herbort.

Nina and I met in January through my language school and she shares my displeasure with Chinese bakeries.  She’s a law student from Berlin, Germany, and took a little break from school to be in Shanghai.  Her boyfriend, Tom, has an internship with a German law firm here in Shanghai, and she is staying with him while studying Chinese.  Nina and I have had many small adventures together over the past 2 months, and I will be sad to say goodbye when she returns to Germany next week. 

Time for some photos of the shop!

(When I was looking through these pictures, the one above reminded me of the scene in the movie  Young Sherlock Holmes when young Watson is hallucinating that he is being attacked by cream puffs.  I can only think of two possible readers who will get that reference.)

I don’t have any photos of the butchery because the refrigerated display for the meat broke the day of the opening, so the butchery could not open.  Also, the coffee machine that had been working perfectly for 2 weeks decided to stop working on opening day.   When things like this happen, as they often do, all you can do is shake your head and mumble something like, “that’s China.”

I ate an obscene amount of food that day . . . and it was delicious.

Wait, what?  Real chocolate?  A strawberry tart that doesn’t have tomatoes hiding in it?  Am I still in Shanghai?

I like to think of this as the first review of La Boulangerie, and thus was allowed a full tour of the onsite operation, a.k.a. the back room.

All of the baked goods are baked daily at a different location then delivered to the shop.  The original Boulangerie is a tiny shop just down the street from my current apartment, but it mostly just bakes bread for and delivers to local French restaurants.  The success of this first shop lead to the opening of the café proper.

Nina and I were there when the sign maker arrived to put the lettering on the window.  It’s exciting to witness your friend’s hard work come to fruition.

Now for something completely unrelated to the rest of the post.  Bastien and I have found a new apartment and we are thrilled.  I’m going to do a post about moving in . . . when I move in.  Also, I’ve begun tutoring English to make some money.  I’m looking to make between ¥7,000 and ¥8,000 a month.  My monthly rent is  ¥3,500, so my tutoring income is enough to cover my rent and bar tab.

That’s all for now.  Now go salivate over pictures of pastries.

Chinese New Year and Chips

Happy Chinese New Year!  It’s the Year of the Tiger, and since I was born in the year of the Tiger, it’s my year!  That also means I have to wear red at all times for luck.  Most lucky would be to wear red underwear, which in China means the most unattractive red granny-panties you can find!

I spent Chinese New Year in Shanghai.  Both of my roommates were out of the country, so I was home alone.  I had the week off of school and all I did was hang out with friends, a mixture of Lebonese, French, and Colommbians.  The holiday spans the entire week and many Shanghai residents use this time to travel back to their home towns and be with family, consequently the city was nearly empty.  It was so bizar to not be crushed on the subway and to have no problem catching a cab.  Those who remained in Shanghai celebrated in style.  If there are laws about shooting fireworks, they were not observed.   The kind of fireworks that you need a permit to use in the States anyone can buy here-and they do–and they fire them all week long.  On Chinese New Year’s Eve, some friends and I went to a bar high up in a high rise to watch the fireworks.  It looked as though the entire city were exploding. 

This picture was taken from my apartment balcony.  The minerals in the explosion were still burning when they landed on the rooftops below, but amazingly none of the houses caught on fire.

People shot fireworks in any space that was 15′ by 15′ of free space:  courtyards, rooftops, apartment balconies, the middle of the street, etc.  The time of day didn’t matter.  I was often woken at 7am by firecrackers outside my bedroom window.  All I could do was shake my head and mutter something about China, then fall back asleep.  One evening some of my friends were taking a cab and the cab had to drive in the bike lane because firecrackers were exploding in the middle of the street.  The Chinese sure love their fireworks.

They also love their potato chips, (or crisps if you are from the UK).  This next section is another example of the many diverse and diverting products one may find in a Chinese grocery store.  Some of the potato chip flavors are similar to what we have in the States . . . and some are not.  My goal is to try them all. 

American Classic Flavor

Lime Flavor

Texas Grilled Barbeque Flavor

Mexican Tomato Chicken Flavor

Italian Red Meat Flavor

French Chicken Flavor

Cucumber Flavor

Blueberry Flavor

Kiwi Flavor

Lychee Flavor

While I want to try them all, Frank for some strange reason doesn’t want to try blueberry, kiwi, or lychee flavored.  Classic American Flavor is another way of saying Bland Flavor.  The chips aren’t even salted. 

I was inspired to do this potato chip photo shoot today while shopping with Frank.  During the shoot one of the store attendants told me that I couldn’t take pictures.   I said, “Okay.”   Frank then grabbed the last few bags that I hadn’t photographed, and we went into another isle where I finished the photo shoot.  The people in this grocery store don’t like me very much, or rather they just don’ t like people in general. 

In other news, I will be moving into a new apartment in about a month.  Our lease ends at the end of March and our landlord wants to sell the apartment, so we must relocate.  Frank wants to get his own apartment closer to his work, so Bastien and I are looking for a two bedroom flat.  We looked at three different places today and the third was wonderful.  We had a fun time trying to explain that we aren’t boyfriend and girlfriend and that we need to have two separate bedrooms with actual beds in them.  We’re going to look at more tomorrow, so it will be a long day. 

Also, I’ve started tutoring English.  One of my students is a 12 year old girl and the other is a 26 year old guy who works for an online video game server.  Both want me to travel to Pudong to teach them, which means at least a 45 minute commute in each direction.  The upside is it will force me to become familiar with even more of the city. 

Well, that’s all I can think of to post about for now.  It is becoming increasingly apparent that I will only be updating this blog once every two weeks or so.  Maybe I’ll get spunky and post a week from now.  Until then, have a Happy Year of the Tiger!

The Apartment

Dear Readers, I am sorry to have taken so long in writing this post.  Some of you have mentioned that it has been a while since my last post, which is awesome because it means you like my blog!

This post is going to be a tour of my apartment.  I found this apartment by going to a club.  Yep, that’s right, dancing at the discotech got me a cool apartment with great roommates.

Below is the communal space (dining/living rooms).  When I moved in, the apartment was very much a guy’s apartment.  I have been stealthily introducing elements of feminine.  Note the tulips on the dining table.

Below is another shot of the living room.  If you look closely, you’ll see two stylish candles on the coffee table.  The first time I lit the candles, Bastien came home and immediately commented on  how nice the apartment smelled.  That is a big deal in China.  When describing how an environment smells, common adjectives include bad and not bad.  Delicious may be applied to a restaurant, but not always.  Nice is rarely employed. 

Here’s the kitchen!  When Bastien was showing me the apartment, he said that the kitchen has everything I could possibly need.  Never believe a man when he says the kitchen has everything you could possibly need.  I’m going to list some items, and you tell me if you can find them.  Oven, kettle, toaster, pots and pans. 

Did you find them?  No.  Why?  Because they aren’t there.    We have 2 woks, which is what Bastien uses to boil tea water.  You can’t see it, but there is a microwave.  I suppose when a man says that the kitchen has everything you need, he means that there is a sink, microwave, and trash can.  There is also one really necessary appliance missing.  Yes, even more necessary than an oven (and most of you know how much I like to bake).  Can you figure out what it is?  I’ll reveal the answer later in the post!

On to my bedroom!  When I first saw the bedroom, there was a mattress on the floor with hideous, smelly bedding.  Now I have a mattress on the floor with stylish, nice smelling bedding (not to mention comfort, I’m really big on beds being comfortable).  I was originally going to buy a bed frame for the bed, but changed my mind.  I’ll explain why later.

This is my wardrobe.  Why am  I showing you a picture of my wardrobe?  Because it is the first piece of furniture I ever bought in China!  The clothing storage provided by the landlord was a really cheap, flimsy frame made out of 1×2 white pine boards (white pine is a really soft wood, it breaks if you look at it too hard).  The whole thing was covered in a garish circus-tent-esque tarp.  That was where I was supposed to store my clothes.  I declined and purchased this instead.

I’m sure you all don’t really care about my wardrobe, but you might once you see where I bought it!

This lovely used furniture store is about a 15 minute walk from my apartment.  The man wanted ¥450 for it ($68USD), but I bargained him down to ¥300 ($45USD).

Have you figured out what the missing kitchen appliance was?  If you guessed the refrigerator, then you were correct!  That’s because the fridge isn’t in the kitchen, it’s in the dining room!  Classy.

To answer the question as to why I decided not to buy a bed frame.  Our apartment lease is up at the end of March, and both of my roommates have expressed the desire to find a different place.  What’s more, we think our landlord is trying to sell the apartment, which means we’d be kicked out anyway!  Since most apartments come furnished, the new apartment would probably provide a bed frame for me (both Bastien and Frank have bed frames, I’m the only one without one).

At first I thought, “Crap!  I just found a nice apartment and I’m already getting booted out!”  But the best part about finding this place isn’t the apartment, it’s the roommates, and those I get to keep when we move!

Introducing Bastien and Niamh.

Bastien is the reason I found this place.  He’s from Paris, France and teaches business at an international high school here in Shanghai.  He also has hooked me up with the French Connection.  I have met tons of French expats either directly or indirectly because of Bastien.  Next to Bastien is one of the best friends I’ve made here, Niamh.  She’s not a roommate, but she is a frequent guest.  Niamh (pronounced “Neve”) is from Cork, Ireland.  She’s here on a fellowship through August.  What’s great about meeting her is American humor and Irish humour are very similar and we get eachother’s jokes.  (Yes, I changed the spelling on humor/humour on purpose).

Now for some pictures of the Roomies. 

Here’s Frank enjoying a cold one after a long day at the office.

At first he complained about me taking a picture of him when he was this tired, but I reminded him that I’ve already posted the worst picture ever taken of him and any others would only be an improvement.

Right now I’m home alone.  Frank is in Bolivia visiting his dad and Bastien is in the Phillipines, staying in a bamboo hut on the beach, swimming, fishing, and getting massively sunburned.   I’m jealous.

That’s all for the Apartment Post.  I do have one more thing that I’d like to share with you.  From time to time I will include pictures of the amazingly diverse products you can buy in China.  This post’s product is …  Yak Marrow Powder!  Mmmmm, I could sure go for some Yak Marrow Powder right now.

Frankie’s Magical Shanghai Tour

I am in my new apartment and am thoroughly content.  It’s a really nice place, the location is brilliant, I’m okay with the price, and my roommates are great.  I’m sure you all would love to hear more about my apartment, however, that’s not what this post is about.  This post is about Frankie’s Magical Shanghai Tour.

First, let me introduce you to Frank.

Introducing Frank Fuentes

 This is quite possibly the worst photo of Frank ever taken, which is why I love it and have used it as his introduction photo.  He’s eating some kind of Chinese-egg-tortilla-thing with hot sauce.  Don’t worry, I will include several terrible photos of myself for your enjoyment throughout this blog.  Frank is one of my roommates.  He was born in Bolivia and moved to California when he was very young.  He grew up in the U.S. and has been living in China for about two years.  I’m not exactly sure what his work is, but he works very long hours and has to take calls from the U.S. at midnight a couple of nights a week.  He works hard.  He also plays hard, and his Chinese is superb. 

Last weekend his friend Alfi was visiting from Beijing.  Alfi was born in Spain and moved to Bolivia when he was young.  Frank is ethnically Latino, but was raised gringo.  Alfi is ethnically gringo, but was raised Latino.  They make fun of eachother a lot for this. 

Alfi

 If you look by Alfi’s hands in the picture above, you will see a little pastry in a plastic bag.  This is a pumpkin pastry and tastes divine.  I’m addicted.

Because Alfi was visiting, Frank gave him a whorl-wind tour of Shanghai.  I tagged along for the last leg of the tour.  This post isn’t about any actual tourist sites in Shanghai, but all these places are within a 20 minute walk from my apartment, except for People’s Park which is a short subway ride.  I live in an area called the French Concession, but just north is Jing’an District, named after Jing’an Temple.  Most of the tour was in Jing’an.

To start our tour, Alfi and I decided we needed to take a picture of us admiring the sites.

Our first stop was to walk past the police station where I would eventually have to register.  If you’re a foreigner, you have to register where you are staying/living within 24 hrs of arrival.  If you are staying in a hotel, they do it for you.  If you are in an apartment, like I am, you have to do it at the police station.  I went to the police station today, 10 days late.  The policewoman helping me mentioned that I was 10 days late.  In Chinese I replied, “My bad,” and we continued registering without any issue.

This is the “Famous” Portman Center.  Why is it “famous?”  Because everything is famous in China.  That building is famous.  This tree is famous.  That restaurant is famous for its noodles.  This manhole cover is famous.  That cloud of smog is famous.   Thus, the Portman Center is famous.  Recently it was honored because inside the Center is the Shanghai Ritz Carlton where President Obama stayed when he visited.

Below is a picture from inside the Portman Center, right infront of the Ritz Carlton facing outward.  That elevated structure in the picture is named “The Long Bar.”  It’s famous.  Supposedly President Obama drank a beer there.  I mainly took this picture because I thought the bellhop’s gold velvet jacket was glorious.

After the Portman Center we walked along Nanjing xi lu (West Nanjing Rd), one of the main thoroughfares in Shanghai.  Along this stretch of Nanjing xi lu are all the really fancy couture brands such as Coach, Burberry, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, etc.

Nanjing xi lu eventually led us to Jing’an Temple.  We didn’t actually go into the temple because you had to buy a ticket and the temple was going to close soon, so we thought it better to go back to the temple on another day when we had more time.

For those who read my first travel blog, http://www.kirsten-china.blogspot.com/, and remember the post about Shanghai, you may recognize the building rising above Jing’an Temple in the upper right hand corner with the curl ontop.  That’s the building where my friend Richard used to work and serves as a landmark for me in Jing’an District.

Next to the temple is a very nice indoor shopping center, which includes the famous Burger King behind Jing’an Temple.  If you stroll around the outside of this very classy shopping center, you’ll find some street vendors showing off their irresistible products.  How could you not buy them?

After the temple, we took the subway to People’s Park.  Back in the 1920′s when England, France, and a bunch of other European countries all had their fingers in the Shanghai cookie jar, People’s Park used to be a horse racing track.  After the Chinese Revolution in 1949 such bourgeois pastimes ended, and the race track became People’s Park.  People’s Park is really large, not as large as Central Park, but still impressive.  Frank told us that this is where the “Magical” part of the tour began . . . little did he know.

We entered the park at a carnival type-place.  There was one of those rocking pirate ships and flying swings, as well as other rides that looked like they could have come from the Indiana State Fair.  I didn’t take a picture, for shame.

Now why are all these people standing around in the park at dusk?

This is why!

Welcome to the Shanghai version of eharmony!

“Single female, 1.68 meters tall, born in 1972.  Virtuous and dutiful.  Good and kind.  Honest and true.  Takes care of her family.  Works as a shop staffer.  Looking for a man within 10 years of her age with his own place and a stable job. Tel: 13816035163″

Women will post fliers like this, or their mothers will, and men peruse them looking for someone who seems interesting.  It really is like using the classifieds or an internet dating service.

Frank didn’t understand some of the characters (he looked them up for me later) so he asked the gentleman in the baseball hat and glasses to tell him what they mean.  This is when the magic happened.

This man proceeded to advise Frank for over 20 minutes on what kind of wife to buy.  Frank shouldn’t look for a Shanghai wife, all they care about is money, cost about ¥300,000 (about $44,000 USD), and have small breasts.  He should get a nice virgin, rural girl who is obedient and only costs about ¥200,000 (about $29,400 USD).

At one point the man asked me what I look for in a man: a house, a car, or money.  I replied that in American women have their own house, their own car, and their own money, so I look for someone handsome.  He didn’t hear the handsome part because he was so happy that there was at least one woman in the world not interested in money.  For about 3 minutes he exclaimed how wonderful it was that I look for love and not money.

Well, that concludes Frankie’s Magical Shanghai Tour.   I promise to post about my apartment sometime soon.