Half In Half Out: Shanghai

 The thought afterwards comes in a few week after I started the list. The thought is as follows: why do I have to love every city I live? Why is that every city I decided to live in has to conform to my dream? Maybe I can just enjoy Shanghai, enjoy it as a stop in my life, as how I enjoy the unfamiliarity I love in the towns I have wondered in my travel, as how I enjoy the difference in a new dish, cooked with a different philosophy, a taste I may not like but nevertheless an experience I delight? Maybe I can enjoy the city for all its ridiculousness - the pajamas on the streets, the serious faces the citizens took on the tinies affairs, even the construction that changes the city’s face everyday - laugh at it, understand it, sympathize it, maybe one day love it for who she is, maybe not, and why do I have to love it anyway? Enjoy it. Enjoy this city that is one of the fastest growing city in the world, and see how it grow, for better for worse, and recall this experience with fun, if not fondness, ten, twenty or forty years from now,  in my living room whichever city I live then, and say” When I lived in Shanghai 2008…”

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When I got off the plane in Shanghai, back from an otherwise unfortunate Christmas vacation, I was met by the grey sky and the noticeable dusty building, dusty cars, dusty people, and I was reminded of the dusty neighbors and dusty events unresolved from the renovation. I was surprised to see how clearly unhappy I was to come back. So I ask the question why I live in a city I am so unhappy with. Then in an effort to be positive, I ask the question in a different way, what are the reasons I live in Shanghai? Actually my heart cried,” Give me reasons, give me one reason, to justify moving to this city, to continue living in this city, and to persuade myself not moving away from it. ”

So I am starting a list of things I like about Shanghai. Maybe I can find my reasons.

1. In Shanghai people are conservative in promising others in term of time. People I’ve worked with very often deliver before the time they’ve promised. For example, they’d say” Oh, it is busy season, the fastest I can give you is next Wednesday.” But mostly likely the things get delivered or tasks get done by Monday. I have never had this happen to me anywhere else. So, cheers to Shanghai on this one.

2. Views of gingko trees from the bedroom window and the living room window. There aren’t any leaves on the branches now, but there are buds bursting with lives. At the first of the spring, they will turn to sprouts of green. Tender, fresh, lovely.

3. The French balony and the French window, with shutters outside and dark pink curtains inside, on the third floor of an old house on Ruijin Rd. between Yongjia Rd. and Fuxing Rd. , and the person who closed the curtain - seeing from the No. 145 bus going North, at six o’clock in a early spring evening getting dark.

A lot of time life seems a big taggle of worry to me. It starts from the basic mandane subject of clothes, food, job, house, transportation, to the higher-level subject in persistant pursuit of a true identity and eternal happiness. After I got a husband, such worries are doubled. After we got a baby, such worries are octopouled. For I have become a parent, and I worry about our parents, old now.

Outside my tiny world, the big world seems to have made itself a even bigger taggle of worries to itself. Everyday the headlines in New York Times are how many people died in Iraq. Sometimes, it is how many people died in Isreal. Sometimes in the other part of the world. There are worries on global warming and oil price, there are worries from the housing market, subprime credit market, medical insurance, drug safety, food safety, toy safety, divorce, scam… The local newspaper of course cover the 17th people’s representative meeting, but what people really enjoy are the “Nanny Kidnapped Baby!”, “Fire on top of the tallest building in Asia!”, “Paris embrassed herself, Again!”. People say all they want is happiness. But in reality, people seem to enjoy sufferings, others of course, but maybe even their own.

For me, worry have become a habit, something like brushing teeth in the morning. A subconscious things-to-worry list, aside from things-to-do list, have to be there in the back of my mind everyday. A few days ago, I suddenly noticed I was not worried about anything. I felt uneasy, I felt out of sorts about myself, as if I am not important enough, and I couldn’t find my self-worth.

 This morning, I noticed D is shorter. Oh, poor D, he worked too hard and he has shrinked into an old man. I exclamed:” What did you do to yourself? Why are you shorter? My head used to be on your shoulder, why is it on your eye level now? ”

“You are wearing slippers, and I am not.”

I kicked off my slippers. He pulled me in front of him and we stood up straight, face to face.

My head is indeed still at his shoulder level, my forehead the same level as his lips.

He took the opportunity and kissed my forhead, “See, it has always been here. Always.”

I felt heat coming to my eyes, and I hear that poem in my ears: ”They say happiness is not fair,  I don’t dare…”

He looked up at me, staring, quietly but intensely, studying my eyes, my nose, pondering, as if I am his whole world.

I noticed him, smiled and said,” why are you looking at me this way?”

He gave me a little smile. Little red lips. A hint of shyness. But kept looking, with such admiration.

Baby  cannot talk yet. But I think I heard him telling me, you are beautiful.

小小子儿， 坐门墩儿，

哭着喊着要媳妇儿。

要媳妇儿干吗？

点灯， 说话儿，

吹灯， 作伴儿，

早上起来梳小辫儿。

I did a bit sewingwork today. There are some extra fabric from making curtains earlier that I plan to make backdrops for the see-through closet doors. It is one of those tasks in the back of my mind for a long time. And today is the day.

No. 1: The noise of the bicyle break

In Northern China where I biked everywhere since when I was twelve, bicycle breaks are made of two pieces of rubber connected to the handle, via a wire and two ganggan. The rubber pieces are about 2cmx0.5cmx0.5cm in size, located on either side of the back tire, just inch away from the interior of the tire skeleton. When you grab the break at the handle, the rubber fasten on the tire and the bicycle stops.

In shanghai, bicycle breaks use a different mechanism. The break is a round steel box located

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Why do I feel I owe an explanation to Half In Half Out of me not writing from October 2006 to June 2007? Is there a rule that says I must be responsible for the consistency and reliability of new content coming out from this place in the digital sea that nobody knows? There isn’t.

I do want to introduce HIHO X. A five-month old baby of ours. Yes, I’ve split myself in two, HIHO X came out of me.

Yes, I have been busy living.

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I learned yesterday that Chopin died when he was 39, of pulmonary tubucolosis, after a “turbulent relationship” lasted for ten years.

When I told this to Y, she commented that it seems like many artists died young. I said true. This seems to be typical.

We had this conversation when Chopin was playing. This is part of the early education program for X.

It was a picture perfect homey scene yesterday afternoon. Clean airy cool house, beatiful baby X sat on the floor, satisfied after a good feeding of banana goo, Chopin playing, X listens and stares at the stereo.

I talked about Chopin and his young death with Don later. He tried to determine whether there is a statistical correlation between genius composer and young death. Chopin, died young; Bach, old; Handel, old, Mozart, young; Beethovan, middle aged. He concluded that with these five data points, we have a double-peak curve. It is not true that genius composer died young. I stared at him with amazement. There is really no subject that he couldn’t extrapolate into a large thesis.

The subject of music came out as important after X showed trace of genius at day five by being excalated by Arial’s music.

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Shanghai has been sunny, blue and warm straight for a month and a half. The omni-present cool sleeping weather during the night, the right combination of temperature, moisture and sun during the day provide so much comfort, one almost thinks about pardoning Shanghai for the impossible torching long summer…

Something is bothering me these days. And it took me a while to realize that I may be missing America.

That is a strange concept, isn’t it? I am a Chinese. I was born in China, I grew up in China, and although I spent ten years in America. I have never changed my nationality and all along have considered myself a Chinese. And here I am, living working breathing in China soil, poised to settle down, with a home, a husband, and now almost a baby. And I feel homesick.

Am I allowed to miss America? Am I allowed to miss the quiet lab life I spent in Minnesota? My quarky professor who experimented to use the liquid nitrogen to freeze down the corn in his feet? My friendly talktive labmate who tried to persuade me that a particular kind of packing peanut is bio-degradable by stuffing a bunch from the box and eating them? And the African dancing class, the driving in the forest, and the lake-side cabin covered in snow.

Am I allowed to miss the corner of 44th and 9th Ave. in a crisp autumn morning? Am I allowed to miss the purchuto mecerrela with fresh spinach and grilled red pepper? Am I allowed to miss the creativity, the luxury and the humor in the display window on upper fifth Ave? Am I allowed to miss the CBGB night with coworker’s band playing?

Our pasts are romantic. The present pain and suffering are usually over-emphasized as we focus on resolving the issues, overlooking the beautiful, the interesting, the touching aspects that asked for less attention. When that present became the long past, we wake up in small hours of the night, remembering those sweet little things, wishing we’d enjoy it more, wishing we’d cherish it more.

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I always wondered about the business models behind the tiny stores aligning the streets in Shanghai’s old neighborhood.

Most of these stores are literally holds in the wall, probably three meters wide, six meters deep. Some of them has the space above the two-meter mark built up as sleeping area. The fancier ones has glass window fronts with doors, the less fancy ones, like the ones near my apartment, has the whole interior open to the street, while the sidewalk becomes the extension of the stores.

Of the stores aligning my block of the street, three of them are fruit stands. One of them sells a variety of fruits all year around, which makes a lot of sense; another sells only watermellon - it is easy to tell because there is nothing but a pile of watermellon in it this summer; the third one sells only one kind of fruit too, but it changes. It was Wuxi peach for a while, then the peach was replaced by watermellon, now it is selling grapes.

Two stores are hardware stores. They seem to sell the same stuff, which are everything you can think of needed in a household. Mouse trap, mosquito net, paint, concrete power, wires. They’d refer to each other if one of them don’t have what you need, in the rare cases. However, neiter of them sells the filters for air conditioners though. I had to go to the air conditioner reparing shop between them for that. That shop however, don’t have filters to sell either. They don’t look like they are selling anything as all. As far as I can tell, every time I pass by, there are nothing but four young guys playing cards.

Other than fruit stands and hardware stores, we’ve got a man’s shoe stand selling old-fashioned leather shoes, a Kiti specialty store selling pencils, bags, and other little girly things with the Kitti face on, a clothing store selling clothes styled from 1980s, a store making wraths for dead people, a DVD store that sells pirated as well as non-pirated version of DVD movies, a specialty food store selling flavored cooked duck neck. Two stores right across from each other are copy-and-printing shops. Old computer, old copier and old printer. I’ve never seen customers in the store. When i used them, it would almost be a big deal. The lady inside would insist doing the photocopies for me, but left thick folding marks on my documents while unfolding them.

The largest and the most successful store on the block is the bicycle shop right outside our gate. Hundreds of bicycles aligned tidily in the space three or four times bigger than the regular store width. The bicycles include both old-fashioned Chinese brand such as Flying Pigeon and Revolution, but also mountain bikes and city bikes with foreigh brands such as Giant. The backwalls are filled with big advertisement posters with bright colors and modern logans. A lot of times one would see someone get their bicycle fixed, or have a new bicycle assembled. An old guy and a young lad around twenty keep the store. Both of them can play guitars. At times when the business is quiet, they’d play with the guitar. The young one has an electric guitar.

Selling or not selling, store owners hold a life. They don’t really close the store, many stores open till late, store keepers’ personal life just spread when meal times come. Late afternoon, vegetables and meats are being washed, peered and chopped. Usually one or two woman would be there preparing, and the rest people, guys and children would sit around on the sidewalk and watch. I watch them too on my way to the farmer’s market. The dishes they prepared always look so delicious, and they always seem to know what is the best vegetable of the day. So on the days I buy and cook, I watch and see what they are cooking, then i try to buy and make the same thing.

After dinner, when we take our after-dinner walk, their dinner was done a while ago, but people are still sitting around the folding table on the sidewalk, sometimes with the leftover dishes still on it. The TV stacked in a corner are always on. Rarely anyone would focus on it though. Of course the world cup is an exception.

There used to be a hot spicy noodle place at the corner of the next block. A few months ago, that block was totally torn down and now it is under construction for the No. 10 line subway station. Our side of the block, may escape the torning down. But across the street, construction stairs started to be set up.

(To be continued)

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