One Week In

Well, I've been nine days in China now, and it's been quite the time! I'm really enjoying myself here. The food is amazing, and the city sights are incredible. I'll try to give you an accurate vision of what life is like here.

School

Currently, I have four classes I am taking: Chinese Culture, Chinese Language, Intercultural Teamwork, and System Dynamics and Modeling. The two Chinese classes are taught in the same classroom here on campus. The other two classes are online.

The Chinese Culture class teaches us mostly about modern culture, but some historical things that have present day significance. So far we've talked about a few food traditions. One thing to remember never to do is stick your chopsticks vertically into your rice. Also, it is impolite to point with your chopsticks. This is one rule I've broken multiple times, as I am very prone to talk with my hands and gesture to people and things.

I've only had one language class so far. I've learned how to introduce myself in Chinese and to ask a few questions as to who other people are. There are two main ways to introduce yourself. I could say "Wǒ shì Evan," which means "I am Evan." I could also say "Wǒ jiào Evan," which means "I'm called Evan." On Friday, I ordered my food in Chinese saying, "Wǒ yào zhège." This simply means, "I want this." We do a lot of pointing and nodding when it comes to ordering food here.

The Intercultural Teamwork class hasn't really picked up yet, but it will be a good amount of writing about our time here and how we react to the culture. We'll have to do a lot small things and take pictures to document. For example, I have to have a picture of myself riding the subway and another one of me riding a bus.

System Dynamics and Modeling hasn't really started either. Our first homework is due next week on Thursday. I'll probably talk more on that in a later blog post.

After the Chinese New Year in February, We'll move from the Xuhui Campus to the Minhang Campus. Both are campuses of Jiao Tong University, just different locations in Shanghai. By that time, my Chinese Culture, Chinese Language, and Intercultural Teamwork classes will be finished and I'll start up two engineering classes at the Minhang Campus: Thermodynamics II and Heat & Mass Transfer.

Food

As I said, the food is amazing. My favorite thing so far is probably any variation of beef and rice. The little hole-in-the-wall that I mentioned in my last post has been a fairly common place for our group. I've eaten there three times myself already in the first week. I find those kind of places fun to visit, as there is usually good food for not very much money.

The first Saturday night, we had our welcome dinner at a nice restaurant. We got to try all sorts of interesting Chinese foods. The most out-there foods were pig intestine, pork belly, and crab ovaries with tofu. The intestine was really chewy, which didn't really bother me, but I wasn't a huge fan of the flavor. The pork belly was absolutely delicious! Very tender meat. The crab (I didn't know more than just crab at the time I ate it) was quite tasty, but the consistency of the tofu was a little weird to me, so I didn't have more than a couple spoonfuls of it. The rest of the food was pretty normal. Oh, there was also a whole fish. I have never personally had fish served to me with the head still on it, but that didn't bother me any. (My mom would say otherwise. She doesn't like her food looking back at her.) Either way, the fish was delicious, you just had to look out for the many bones in it.

Breakfast here is probably my favorite meal. In the dining court, they have a really good rice pudding. It's kind of plain, but still good. I like to add a small bit of sugar to it.

There's also these pancake looking things (they're not really pancakes, but I'm not sure what they are), some plain and some with egg and bell pepper on top. It's more of a bread than a pancake really. I don't have a picture of it, but it's definitely a favorite among the entire group of us foreigners. Unfortunately, they don't have any real milk here, which is quite a sad tale for me. They do have some milk from powder and some soy bean "milk", but it's definitely not the same, although the soy bean "milk" (juice--it's not milk, people) is good in its own way. They also have some yogurt, which is more liquid that the yogurt back home and is consumed through a straw. I had some corn bread the other day, too, and that stuff is absolutely delicious! Some days, I just buy something from a store and eat it the next morning for breakfast instead of going to the dining court.

On Friday, I went to a place with Chris that serves soup-filled dumplings, one of the foods Shanghai is well-known for. We got some dumplings to share and each got some soup as well.

 

A small amount of slurping is acceptable in Chinese culture

Last night I stopped by a small fresh fruit shop and bought a few oranges. It was a pretty cool place, with lots of different kinds of fruit. Scott bought some Australian navel oranges and found out they are quite expensive. I've had a slight cold for the week I've been here so far, and it's only gotten worse, so getting some vitamin C in the form of a fresh orange was much appreciated. For the first time, I felt better in the morning than the night before.

There are many small shops like this scattered around the city, all with a large variety of fruit

The Pedestrian Street

Traveling around the city has been an absolute blast! Saturday evening, a small group of us went to the Nanjing Pedestrian Street. Getting off the metro, we walked a short way and were greeted with the sight of this building

The Chinese New Year is celebrated later than the Gregorian New Year. This year it's in early February.

The picture doesn't quite do it justice, but it was a huge, gold-lit building. Just next to the building was quite the happy surprise. To my joy and delight, I found that the circular arrangement of bricks below me was indeed a clapping circle like the one at Purdue! When standing in the center and clap, you can hear a little chirp/squeak.

We entered the pedestrian street on one end and looked down to see an amazing sight. There are so many shops and lights.

 


 

Back Row: Raffy, Me, Melissa, Tom, Cai, Lin, Sagar, Samuel, Marshall

Front Row: Anny, Srijit, Shaadwal, Matt

We visited M&M World, which was really neat. We had a lot of fun posing by the M&M statues.

                                                         Sagar with the panda M&M

Me with the panda M&M

Samuel with the Terracotta Warrior M&M

Melissa with the Bride from Kill Bill M&M

Company Visits

During the first week here, we visited three American companies that have branches near Shanghai. On Wednesday, we went to American Axel & Manufacturing, Inc. They make everything dealing with transferring power from the engine to the wheels. We weren't allowed to take pictures on the tour of the facility, so these two pictures are all you get to see of our visit there.

At the entrance

With the plant manager, a Purdue graduate (on the far left)

Friday we had no class and instead visited two different companies: Novelis and Caterpillar.
Novelis manufactures aluminum for the automotive industry. The coolest thing there was two robots and a laser cutter. One robot moved a sheet of aluminum to the laser table, the laser cutter cut the sheet, and then the second robot grabbed the sheet and stacked it in a perfect stack. After our tour of Caterpillar, we were each given a little scale model of one of their machines. I got a 315C L Excavator. It's pretty sweet. The arm has two degrees of motion and the it can also rotate at the base. On the bus ride home from Caterpillar, we were all super excited about our little models, and someone noted that only a bus full of engineers would be so thrilled about being given toy models of earth moving equipment.

I think I'm going to hold on to this little guy for quite a while

The Fake Market

If you want to buy cheap things in Shanghai, the fake markets are the places to go. And by cheap, I mean both price and quality. Well, the quality isn't always horrible. Some stuff is actually pretty decent. The fake market we went to had three floors of shops with anything from clothing to electronics to jewelry to toys. Everything is based on the barter system, which is kind of fun. They'll start at a ridiculously high price and you'll counter with a ridiculously low price. You'll go back and forth for a while until settling at an agreeable price. Some of their initial prices are completely laughable. And remember, most of the stuff there is fake knock-offs of the real thing. They all like to say "Give maximum price," and then laugh at your offer, saying, "Ohh! Haha! Much too low! Look. Good quality. This *gesture to similar item* much worse. You getting good quality. I guarantee." In my two trips to the fake market, I bought a really cool laser light, a belt, a fake pair of converse, and two fake Under Armor quarter zips.

After nine days in China, I can say I'm thoroughly enjoying my time here. There's lots to do, lots to see, and adventure to be had.

Have a Splendiferous day!