The Pre-Departure Lounge
My road to Shanghai began over a year ago, even before I moved to New York. I was still living in Milan at the time and I phone interviewed for a couple of jobs in Shanghai but the timing just wasn’t right. After a couple of years in Italy, I was hungry for the comforts and conveniences of life in the US. Dial the calendar forward after busting my butt for a year in New York, partying like no tomorrow and gorging on digital cable and order-in food, and I was once again restless. I went back to Italy for the summer but knew that wouldn’t suffice. Europe, like North America, with all it’s beautiful places and people had become all too familiar. This time I wanted to REALLY go abroad. To test the limits of the unfamiliar by going to a continent I’d never laid eyes on before, to really push the edges of my psychological map. I wanted to learn to decipher (at least a few) characters in an alphabet totally different from my own, eat food I’d never imagined, swim in unknown seas, travel to cities whose names I couldn’t pronounce. I had a vision of Shanghai as a mysterious and exotic place of idyllic streets, secretive ancient buildings, grand pagodas and incredible nightlife. So this time around, when after a couple of weeks of applying and interviewing for jobs, the offers started rolling in, I decided to accept one, teaching at a university.
It wasn’t until after I had figuratively signed on the dotted line that I began to do my homework on this city of the orient. 20 million people. One fourth of the world’s construction cranes. The world’s tallest hotel. Wait a minute. This didn’t sound like the red-silk swathed metropolis I had envisioned. What about the quaint 1000-year old pagodas? The ladies in kimonos? (wait, that’s actually Japan) The mysterious lanes leading to more mysterious teahouses and secret bars? I felt a fleeting sense of disappointment. After researching further, it seemed that the Shanghai I had in my mind’s eye was more related to the 1930s version, although even that wasn’t quite on par, I discover from skimming a website that told of the brothels, opium dens, and other general chaos that composed the city during that period. A missionary to the city during the early part of the 20th century had written that “If God allows Shanghai to survive, He owes Soddom and Gomorrah an apology.” Oh my. That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind either. Perhaps I’d read too many Corto Maltese comic books and watched too many Disney movies- I really had no idea what kind of place I was headed off to.
Realizing that shattering the stereotypes I had about this part of the world was going to be a big part of this adventure, I decided I had better start getting my information from somewhere, oh say, a bit factual, rather than just drawing from my own imagination. So I fell back on the method that’s rarely failed me elsewhere in my travels: I bought a lonely planet guidebook and dove in. The more I read about this new place I would be traveling to, the more I was simultaneously intimidated and intrigued. There was so much to do, so much to see. The guidebook reported that there were so many restaurants in the French concession alone that one could eat at a different one almost every night for a year and have a very different experience each time. (Okay technically not that impressive after living in New York for a year. But still. More than I was expecting.)
There was the Bund, with it’s chic bars and slick stores. Pudong, the new economic district. The canal towns (ah maybe here I would find some of that ancient charm) to explore. The Shanghai Art Museum. Shopping in Nanjing Road. Shopping in Huahai Road. Shopping in Dongjiadumarket. Did I mention the shopping? Parks, botanical gardens, swimming pools, clubs, golf courses, fitness centers, galleries, yacht clubs. My head began to spin with trying to take it all in and remember it and I found that my eager anticipation of the new horizon had returned.
My thoughts then turned to preparation for the journey. The position I had at the university was structured in such a way that I taught for 4 months, then had two months off in the winter, and then taught for another 4 months before the summer vacation. The first stint would begin in late August and finish around Christmas. 30 seconds of research on the temperatures during this period revealed that I would need to more or less pack as though I were going to be in Virginia. Easy enough , I thought, mentally checking that part off my list. And then my eyes fell on the average rainfall section of the weather, with it’s accompanying description. Apparently I would be arriving during typhoon season. The heat of late August combined with the heavy rains of August/early September made being outside in Shanghai an experience equivocal to taking a shower with a fire hose inside a sauna. I decided to shrug it off. Some people love spending hours in steam rooms, right? Maybe it will be good for my skin. I added rainboots to my list and moved on.
Electrical outlets. Research on this subject produced nothing very conclusive, although I can now explain to you all of the differences and peculiarities of the 11 different electrical plugs currently utilized throughout the world. From the best I could tell, China utilizes seven of them. The guide book was not of much help either, advising that I bring all of my adapters. Okay, I could do that. From traveling to the UK and Europe and with my plugs being US, I figured I had at least four of them covered. So, check and check. As long as I could figure out a way to plug in my computer I would be in good shape. All my other appliances were cheaply reaplacable anyway.
Next I decided to familiarize myself with the Shanghai public transport system. I peered at the mass of spidery colored lines that had materialized on my screen when I clicked for a metro map. It was freckled with numbers inside of circles and I wondered if I had accidentally clicked on some kind of abstract work of art before I saw the table that represented a guide to each of the numbers. So maybe I wouldn’t totally master this one before arriving. I skimmed the line that the university was on and found the main stops for the French Concession and the Bund. Feeling accomplished that I had at least deciphered something on this map that resembled some very diligent etch-e-sketching, I decided to call it a night on my research.
And now, a couple of weeks later and all my pre-departure reading is complete and last minute shopping done. Tonight I’ll say my last few good-byes said and down those farewells drinks and in the morning it will really and truly be go time. In a couple of hours I’ll jump. Well, from the curb to the airport taxi that is. See you on the other side of the world.
It wasn’t until after I had figuratively signed on the dotted line that I began to do my homework on this city of the orient. 20 million people. One fourth of the world’s construction cranes. The world’s tallest hotel. Wait a minute. This didn’t sound like the red-silk swathed metropolis I had envisioned. What about the quaint 1000-year old pagodas? The ladies in kimonos? (wait, that’s actually Japan) The mysterious lanes leading to more mysterious teahouses and secret bars? I felt a fleeting sense of disappointment. After researching further, it seemed that the Shanghai I had in my mind’s eye was more related to the 1930s version, although even that wasn’t quite on par, I discover from skimming a website that told of the brothels, opium dens, and other general chaos that composed the city during that period. A missionary to the city during the early part of the 20th century had written that “If God allows Shanghai to survive, He owes Soddom and Gomorrah an apology.” Oh my. That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind either. Perhaps I’d read too many Corto Maltese comic books and watched too many Disney movies- I really had no idea what kind of place I was headed off to.
Realizing that shattering the stereotypes I had about this part of the world was going to be a big part of this adventure, I decided I had better start getting my information from somewhere, oh say, a bit factual, rather than just drawing from my own imagination. So I fell back on the method that’s rarely failed me elsewhere in my travels: I bought a lonely planet guidebook and dove in. The more I read about this new place I would be traveling to, the more I was simultaneously intimidated and intrigued. There was so much to do, so much to see. The guidebook reported that there were so many restaurants in the French concession alone that one could eat at a different one almost every night for a year and have a very different experience each time. (Okay technically not that impressive after living in New York for a year. But still. More than I was expecting.)
There was the Bund, with it’s chic bars and slick stores. Pudong, the new economic district. The canal towns (ah maybe here I would find some of that ancient charm) to explore. The Shanghai Art Museum. Shopping in Nanjing Road. Shopping in Huahai Road. Shopping in Dongjiadumarket. Did I mention the shopping? Parks, botanical gardens, swimming pools, clubs, golf courses, fitness centers, galleries, yacht clubs. My head began to spin with trying to take it all in and remember it and I found that my eager anticipation of the new horizon had returned.
My thoughts then turned to preparation for the journey. The position I had at the university was structured in such a way that I taught for 4 months, then had two months off in the winter, and then taught for another 4 months before the summer vacation. The first stint would begin in late August and finish around Christmas. 30 seconds of research on the temperatures during this period revealed that I would need to more or less pack as though I were going to be in Virginia. Easy enough , I thought, mentally checking that part off my list. And then my eyes fell on the average rainfall section of the weather, with it’s accompanying description. Apparently I would be arriving during typhoon season. The heat of late August combined with the heavy rains of August/early September made being outside in Shanghai an experience equivocal to taking a shower with a fire hose inside a sauna. I decided to shrug it off. Some people love spending hours in steam rooms, right? Maybe it will be good for my skin. I added rainboots to my list and moved on.
Electrical outlets. Research on this subject produced nothing very conclusive, although I can now explain to you all of the differences and peculiarities of the 11 different electrical plugs currently utilized throughout the world. From the best I could tell, China utilizes seven of them. The guide book was not of much help either, advising that I bring all of my adapters. Okay, I could do that. From traveling to the UK and Europe and with my plugs being US, I figured I had at least four of them covered. So, check and check. As long as I could figure out a way to plug in my computer I would be in good shape. All my other appliances were cheaply reaplacable anyway.
Next I decided to familiarize myself with the Shanghai public transport system. I peered at the mass of spidery colored lines that had materialized on my screen when I clicked for a metro map. It was freckled with numbers inside of circles and I wondered if I had accidentally clicked on some kind of abstract work of art before I saw the table that represented a guide to each of the numbers. So maybe I wouldn’t totally master this one before arriving. I skimmed the line that the university was on and found the main stops for the French Concession and the Bund. Feeling accomplished that I had at least deciphered something on this map that resembled some very diligent etch-e-sketching, I decided to call it a night on my research.
And now, a couple of weeks later and all my pre-departure reading is complete and last minute shopping done. Tonight I’ll say my last few good-byes said and down those farewells drinks and in the morning it will really and truly be go time. In a couple of hours I’ll jump. Well, from the curb to the airport taxi that is. See you on the other side of the world.
posted by le poisson rouge at
3:04 PM
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