Clementine Was Here!!

Our 19 month old granddaughter was here for the last two weeks. We invited her parents, Anne and James , also. C was the queen of China. It was impossible to walk anywhere without being mobbed by all kind of chinese people. With Clementine's golden locks and blue eyes, she was the bearer of good karma, good luck, prosperity and longevity to all of those who saw her and touched her and had their picture taken with her. Every parent wanted their children to be photographed with Clementine. I told Anne and James before the trip that I could get maybe $20,000-$30,000 for her but after seeing her in action, the price went way up. But no deal was struck and Clementine returned happily with her parents to America.
I am going to insert smaller pictures but you can double-click on them to enlarge. I am learning new tricks with Flickr and compression and will be enhancing the blog in the future. Send any suggestions you may have and don't forget to sign up as a "follower" so you will be notified of new postings.
Without further ado, here is Clementine in China.

 

Technology and Innovation meet Practicality

This facility is very close to our apartment and handy in a pinch! It is part of a meticulously manicured ( as they all are) smaller park and built into the ground, solar powered and always clean. It is still one of the non westernized "squat" toilets, but as evident by the happy customer coming out of the bowels of the unit, it fulfills it's purpose.

The Way It Is.

The above picture was taken near center city downtown Shanghai-Puxi side. There are still people living in these "structures". This is not a picture of poverty but one of perseverance. Although the family does not own the property, they are being offered $50,000 per family member to relocate. The government has authorized new residences/office space and all the old buildings are being knocked down. These people believe they can get more money if they stay. Maybe--usually not. They also do not want to leave the old neighborhood and be relocated sometimes many miles away.
This has been happening to much of Shanghai over the years. Knock down the old and build new. The Pudong side ( new financial district) and been completely built up from nothing over the last 15 years. Building has started to slow because of The Expo and new Government policies trying to restrict growth.
The information I got about the residencies was from a local fellow who is now a famous photograper/artist in Shanghai by the name of Gang Fang Wang. He lived in one of these same buildings as a child and I was able to take a walk with him one day and tour a local building  currently being demolished. He told me the funny story of a resourceful newly married couple who found out in 2003 one of the residential blocks was scheduled for demolition and, thus, tenant relocation and remuneration. The fellow had a cousin living there and the couple convinced him to let him move in as part of his " family". Six months later the government made the announcement that the building was going to be destroyed and all people would get $50,000 each to move. The couple readily and happily agreed to accept the offer. They quickly bought their own apartment which has now gone up 4 times in value! Ah, the joyous melding of communism and capitalism. Gotta love it.

More photos of our First Neighborhood

This was directly across from the entrance to our house. 54 Chongqing became a museum in honor of Zou Taofen who lived there in the 1920's  30's and 40's.. He was an important writer, critic and and journalist. He was editor of the best selling weekly magazine back then and used his pen to try and save China from the invasion of the Japanese.

And, of course, our local Starbucks ( Xingbake). There are 121 Starbucks in Shanghai and over 600 in China. So even though the language is difficult and we are far from friends and family, there are still some of the comforts of home ( still not in Manchester, Vt, though-- I had to come to Shanghai to get my Starbucks!).

Photos of our First Neighborhood

Well, these two pictures have nothing to do with China but they are most important to us as this is our first grandchild, Clementine! Already be-bopping on the I-pod. Hey, look, this is my blog. I can put anything on here I want.








Back to China. Here are some pictures of our neighbors and scenes within the lane where we first lived as described in my most recent post. This first picture is of my friend , Mary ( names have been changed to protect the innocent). She would regale me for hours with tales of old Shanghai, the Communist take over, The Cultural Revolution and now economic prosperity. Unfortunately, I am only up to about 200 mandarin words so I had to fill in the blanks, but here body movements were very expressive.

These are the girls in the 'hood. We had some wicked mahjong games.

Settling Out

So this is "more on that later" part from my first posting regarding the many people working on our house when we first arrived. Our newly renovated home was looking chic but the utilities were strictly Lower East side. To make a short story out of 3 painful weeks, the following events occurred:

   1. We lost the heat 4 times-- even though this is Shanghai and it is approximately on a parallel with say
       South Carolina, it was the middle of winter and the temps do get to slightly below freezing occasionally. We had to call the landlord , who was very gracious and timely about our requests and wait for the repair guy to arrive. Another thing. We in the US are use to the big truck full of tools and spare parts with the repair guys pulling up in front of the house. We quickly found out that there was one guy, Mr. Tang, who arrived on a beat up scooter with a handful of tools. Now , Mr. Tang , a great guy, was able to get the heat going but it kept failing and he kept coming over. Maybe he wanted to work on his english.
   2. We lost power the 2nd night we were there. After spending our second day at Ikea getting household supplies, we loaded the dishwasher with our new dishes and pressed start. Within 4 minutes soapsuds and bubbles started coming out of the bottom of the machine and at the 6 minute mark, power in the entire house went out. BTW, this was New Years Eve. Another call to the landlord. Guess who shows up--- Mr. Tang! Hell of a nice guy. Turns out the circuit "box" was cut out of a concrete wall that was over the fireplace behind a 125 lb. mirror that was bolted to the wall. It was not bolted there anymore after Mr. Tang and I took care of it. Also turns out the entire kitchen was on one circuit and when it blew it took out everything. The power came back on in time for us and Mr. Tang to welcome in the new year.
   3. As part of the lease signing, the landlord signed us up to a local gym so Jane could work out prior to work and I could go there during the day. During the initial week of power outages and 40 degree internal temperatures, we decided to find our new gym-- ( jian shen fang) Lesson 1-- chinese for gym-- which we were told was just down the street. After many attempts we finally found what we thought was our gym. With no mandarin on our part and basically no english on the receptionist's part , we were toured through our new gym by our lovely hostess. I was wondering" why is  our guide wearing a slinky gold dress that stops maybe 10" above her knees?". I was suddenly thinking I was going to be going to the gym every single day but I also noticed the bemusement on Jane's face. Her expression was quickly turning to concern as we were shown  a series of cigar smoking rooms, billard rooms and bars. Now, China has not done very well at the last two Olympics and I can understand why if this is the way they train. After finally seeing a small workout area we were ushered out the door with a warm goodbye. We went back to our cold house and sat on the couch watching reruns of chinese soap operas not saying much to each other as we contemplated our new lives in China.
  4. Last straw-- We took a brisk walk and did some exercises upon rising one morning and when we came back to the house the heat was off again. Jane went to take a shower and the pipes were frozen! She sprinkled some Listerine under her armpits and went off to work saying " Something has got to change". I assumed that she was referring to our living situation and not our marriage so I called our realtor to look for a new place. In the meantime, I called the landlord and he sent--- Mr. Tang. Mr. Tang, one of the best people on earth, was able to fix the pipes but by then it too late. We were off to a new apartment and I am off to a new posting.

Banking

This is the bank ( 5th largest in China) we decided to store our chinese investments. For the princely sum of 1 yuan ( about $.14) we were able to open an account. Since this bank has an affiliation with BankofAmerica (  our accounts ), we can use the ATMs without any additional banking or currency fees. I feel our $.14 is very safe at China Construction Bank.