Well life is moving pretty quick here in Shanghai. The weather has started to turn from summer to winter. Last Saturday I was enjoying wearing shorts, t-shirts, and flip flops. Waking up this morning did not have the same pleasant feeling. The temperature has dropped from a wonderful 70 degrees to a cool 32. However, I do take some comfort in the Shanghai wind. Large gusts of wind take me back to the cold walks home from class at the University of Wyoming. I didn’t believe native residents when they said the weather would change overnight. I guess I was wrong! Lots of great things have happened since my last post in October. Before I dive into my stories from different areas of China I wanted to continue my observations about life here in China versus the United States.
I had quite the experience the other day sending a package to the United States. I may have mentioned before, but Chinese people lack orga
nization skills. For example when the international students go to the cafeteria the process is much like chaos. You get in line for food, but there is no insurance of people stepping infront of you or being run into at any given moment. So I went to the post office with my package and a friend you speaks fluent Chinese. I sent my contents to be inspected before shipping out. The lady at the post office proceeded for twenty minutes to look for an appropriate size both. She started by putting my contents in an extremely small box squishing the contents inside. Then she decided to try the second size box and with a 
little clever thinking I was able to fit the contents in the box. The lady then refuses to send it in the box and finds a big box. Which was too large, but I still offered to buy the box in order to send the package. Once again the lady created a convenient excuse of the box now being to big to send. She then orders the two of us out of the post office in search of an appropriate box. We walked over to a local market convinced the shop owner to sell us a used box and returned to the post office. The lady then tells us she could not send the box she told us in the first place to go get. So I left frustrated and still with my box determined to find a post office that could send my package. Finally, we came to a large post office which put my package into the exact same medium sized box and shipped my package within a few minutes. This looking back is a great example of how organizations function in China. Things simply don’t make since. People can refuse service without explanation and frequently do. Every time I run into examples like this I get more and more frustrated. Sometimes I feel China create large financial gains not by using efficient techniques, but by shire man power. Hard to imagine sometimes how the country functions at all with the lowest level of government and business functioning in this manner. The pictures I have included in this paragraph are the student canteen/cafeteria (right) and the international dorm (left). There are five canteens located throughout the campus along with almost 20 dorms the same size as ours.
The other observation I wanted to comment on is the ability for humans to adapt to very different situations. Most of the 
students here are from the western world where we have become accustom to certain processes and procedures. Things like minimum wage, clean eating environments, and higher commodity prices. Here in China most of these comforts are nonexistent here. Wages here are far lower than in the United States. After talking with a few native Chinese students they have suggested a common wage for a person with a bachelor degree will earn between 2-4 thousand Yuan a month. This is equivalent to about $500 USD, where the average graduate in the United States can be expected to make between 3-4 Thousand USD a month. Granted everything is much cheaper here. Living in the dorms including internet, food, and all other services costs 200 USD a month. Eating outside the university costs between 10-15 Yuan a meal which is equivalent to about 2 USD. As to the clean eating environments this seems to be a foreign concept, at least around the university. When visiting downtown most western restaurants include clean floors and bathrooms. But in our neck of the woods this is nowhere near true. The streets are load, dirty, and full of people. Eating usually occurs outside on tables. Sidewalks are rarely swept and garbage can be found throughout the city. I have commented before about the smells of China, but I can never seem to get use to it. Most days include a haze only understood by those who have lived in Shanghai. The haze has been getting better with the colder weather. I don’t know if that’s because the city is less busy or pollution doesn’t carry as well in the cold. Finally the last observation I have for this post is the cheap Chinese goods found throughout the city. Around the university you can find most house hold products for very low prices. There are some American bran
ds like Crest, Pantene Pro-v, and common U.S. candy products. All are a fraction of the costs compared to the United States. The largest shock however are the markets located downtown. I will talk later about my experiences, but the fake markets are huge. You can find products like North face, Nike, and Coach for a fraction of their price in the United States. Most of the fake products are good quality and most people cannot see the differences between the two. Stores are endless and people flood the streets with thousands of products. If you ever get a chance to visit Shanghai they are well worth observing! I included a few pictures from downtown the first is from People’s Square looking toward the river (left) and the crowded market streets (left).
Alright now to the fun stuff! I have had several great experiences over the 
last few weeks. The first and perhaps the funniest was our visit to the ATP tennis tournament in Shanghai on October 14th. For the first in recent history the Shanghai tournament was added to the championship track for tennis. This tournament was supposed to attract some the largest names in tennis from around the world. Unfortunately most were unable to show up due to injury and the Beijing classic held the weekend before. Traveling to the tournament took nearly two hours. When looking at a map of Shanghai our campus is almost on the
direct opposite side of the city as the stadium. We took a taxi and a long subway trip to get there and then another taxi to go from the station to the stadium. Traveling there took me back to the United States. We crossed out of the university into the western world with high paid sports players, expensive tickets, and large crowds enjoying watching sports. Once we entered the gate we were greeted by pretty Chinese women and expensive food and drinks. A buddy and I d
ecided to enjoy a Heineken as a nice change from cheap Chinese beer. We walked around watching different matches outside. There were two large stadiums and eight outdoor courts set up for ticket holders to watch different matches. The main event for the day wasn’t u
ntil later so we killed time by walking around and talking to different people at the tournament. Although I don’t know anything tennis I enjoyed watching sports besides soccer again. Table tennis is also big here, but it does match watching American Football games on television or going to the Rockies game. Around 6pm we headed into the large stadium for the main event for the night. We watched Nedal (Spain) and Blake (USA) face off in a very early round in the tournament. It was a great match Nedal ended up winning, but Blake had a great second game. Funny to be in Shanghai watching some of the world’s top players in action. I never thought I would be at a tennis match in China. Everybody enjoyed themselves. The weather was nice and the competition was a lot of fun to watch. The pictures I included are from around the complex. The first is the large stadium where the main events took place (right). The second picture is the front entrance and I’m holding my ticket in front of the sign (left). Finally our favorite mascot was at the event (right). We proceeded home tired and satisfied with expensive concession food.
A few days after we visited the ATP a few of use decided we were sick of Chinese food and wanted to experience an American burger in China. We were told the best place to experience a little sli
ce of America was downtown at a restaurant called Blue Frog. Also, we were told Monday’s were the best day to travel to the restaurant because burgers and drinks are two for one. We headed out on October 19th to the restaurant with high expectations. Its located in the center of a very modern shopping area complete with famous American stores like Starbucks, KFC, and other shops. Blue Frog upon walking in felt like I walked back into the United States. The music was much like Chilies, a very modern mix of easy listening music. Seating is a lot like Chilies as well with bar and floor seating for all different sizes of parties. We showed up with ten people so we took up a goo
d portion of the restaurant. We proceeded to get a menu, which was complete with appetizers, salads, burgers, and steaks. There were several burgers to choose from so we took our sweet time deciding what sounded the best. I ended up setting for the Montana, which included fries and a drink (just like home). After finishing our meal each one of us were satisfied with our meal decisions and preceded to head home. We took the public bus an hour back to the campus. Although this was not an international event it felt good to enjoy a good American style food again. The prices were relatively high for Shanghai, but it was worth every penny! I included a few pictures from the event.
A few more days passed by. Time goes pretty quick between classes and studying. Chinese language is pretty difficult. It’s almost like learning three languages at once. They have a written language, which is different than the spoken language. Also you have to worry about the tons of each word so it takes time to get use to. I spend lots of time in the library trying to memorize a laundry list of words and characters. Along the way the students learned about a 
German band coming to the university to play for the students. The concert ended up being on the night of October 21st. We got tickets and headed over after class. It was an amazing experience. I couldn’t tell you leaving for Shanghai I would experience so many different things. The band was from a university in Germany accompanied by a famous composer. The members of the band appeared to be undergraduates. They played for almost two hours with a wide variety of songs both contemporary and modern. There were even songs requiring audience participation. I have been saving tickets and stubs from everywhere I go so I look forward to sharing the memorabilia when I get home. I included pictures from the stage. Unfortunately we didn’t get any group pictures so none with me in them. These are good reference for the size of the band though. This experience took me back to my band days in middle school. Although I didn’t stick with it I feel I have some appreciation for the amount of work it takes for the members to get on a stage of this size. Hopefully you can see the full image on the blog. I really enjoyed this opportunity to experience international student exchanges in liberal arts.
This next experience was something else. A few of us were hanging downtown on October 23rd and heard about possible job opportunities as extras in a Chinese movie. We ended up packing our bags and getting on a bus destined for movie fame early Saturday morning. Little did we know what we had in store for the entire weekend. Upon arriving at the movie sight around 9am we were immediately rushed to an area with thousands of suits for men and a changing room. The theme of the movie was a 1920’s boxing match between a Chinese and English man. We were dressed in old (very grubby) suits. Then moved along into hairstyling were all of our hairs was either gelded down and parted to the side or pulled up (like an old time greaser in the Grease movies). This took about an hour and we then began our work as movie extras. They moved us into the shooting scene where there was a large boxing ring surrounded by dim lighting and several other Chinese extras located on the opposite side of us. We spent the first day sitting as the audience and creating back ground noise based on 
what was happening to the characters in the scene. This was one of the craziest experiences I have ever had. First to create the atmosphere they burned what looked like charcoal into the air constantly. Small Chinese duds would light the product in a pan and shortly behind him would be others with what looked like cardboard to fan the dust into the rest of the room. Unfortunately, they burned way to much each time and we got dusted with chemicals that burned the lungs as you breathed it in. Every once and awhile if you were not paying attention the guys with cardboard were known to smack people in the back of the head (by accident I guess…). As the day progressed we got a few breaks outside of the run down movie filming building. This was the real experience. As you walked out the side entrance of the movie scene there was nothing but trash, dust, and people outside. Each time you walked by the bathroom you were overcome with an ungodly stench. I ventured once into the unknown bathroom and its not a pretty site. There were no stalls or dividers you basically did your business in areas along the side of the rooms that had a small amount of running water pushing the by products away. This experience alone changed how I view modernized bathroom facilities. We went in and out of scenes the whole day. Lunch came around, which didn’t make the situation a whole lot better. We were served rice and well lets just call it chicken (can’t say I really know what the food was). The majority of the weekend food was peanuts and Pepsi. The first day finally came to an end after 16 hours of shooting. They provided a hotel that night, which was okay (nothing special). A few of us caught some much needed dinner and sleep to prepare for another long day.
The second day was not much different from the first day. Although, fatigue was playing a large role only a few hours in on the second day. You could tell everybody was tired and ready to be back at the university. I learned a lot about movie making and how much movies spend alone on extras in the background. The work is not glorious it was downright draining. Little food, sleep, and massive amounts of toxins in the air created an atmosphere for sickness. Most of us got sick the following week. It was a fun experience, but the way I view China has significantly changed from what I saw at the movie shooting. The movie is eventually suppose to come out on Chinese Dvd so I will be looking hard for it, but in some cases I may not want to remember what happened during the weekend. It was long and tiring for the money. Unfortunately at the end of the trip me and one of my friends got in a dispute with one of the other international students over his attempt to charge us commission for the opportunity (it’s a long story). Everything turned out okay, but I learned a very valuable lesson in the nature of people when it comes to money (even a low amount of RMB’s). I included one picture from this weekend with all of us in our suits and hairstyling. This will be one of the memories I will never forget from my experiences in Shanghai.
Last, but not least, I want to talk about experiencing a market called Qipu lu. It’s full of fake goods like Nike, Omega, Coach, North Face, etc. Here you will find thousands of people fighting to get through endless goods for the cheapest deal. Most of the products are great quality, which in many cases you can’t tell the difference between the real and fake products. The market is an entir
e street with several story tall buildings lining the street. Each one contains different kinds of products. Every shop is privately owned and there are no set prices. You essentially walk along the street and in the buildings looking at millions of products. Once you find something you are interested in the bargaining begins. The trick however is to be able to walk away. Once you state a price most owners at first will say no deal, but when walking away prices drop quickly. Each owner knows their goods can be found around the corner and they want your business so if you are good at bargaining you are in heaven. We bought a few different products and we found a great shop that sells flags from around the world. I’m going to buy a flag from China and a few other places I have traveled to. We finished up the night of October 31st by walking down People’s Square and eating at an Italian restaurant. We stopped by the Hersey’s store to pick up candy to celebrate Halloween. Altogether the last few weeks have been good. It’s been chucked full of life long experiences and learning. I look forward to the upcoming weeks. The last picture I included is from peoples square on top of the Starbucks.
Hope all is doing well!
Sincerely,
Travis
