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Published: October 31st 2007
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I know this is not the entry most of you expected, but it remains a huge part of expat life in Shanghai and a good topic to get out of the way early. This is by no means my entire experience, but simply a fact of life in Shanghai. My address says China. The TV is in Chinese, as are the signs, menus and banter on the streets. However, if I really wanted, I wouldn't have to spend a single moment "in China." In any given day, I could eat breakfast at Steak & Eggs, watch the MLB playoffs, drink gin & tonics, eat burgers and speak nothing but English. I could limit my Chinese interactions to grunting street names to taxi drivers and being served $10 martinis by fluent English-speaking bartenders at nightclubs with cover charges. I could spend my free time shopping strip-malls, tracking down Gucci, Prada and the latest Milan fashion, while sipping Starbucks lattes, before heading out for some 3-on-3 basketball. To put it simply, this place can be as much or as little "China" as you choose. Shanghai is just as much 'Shanghai' as it is '上海'.
Upon my arrival, I had a whole slew
of American friends to romp around with waiting for me. Steve-o and I executed a perfect tag-team effort - teaming up for one weekend of debauchery before he headed back to Europe, while I stuck around and filled in for him. I can say now say I've seen a World Cup Soccer game live - because the Women's World Cup was here in China. I sat in "Shanghai's biggest typhoon in a decade" (which turned out to be just a rainy day) and watched my girl Lori Chalupny pound the back of the next as our ladies took down Nigeria 1-0. If that's not enough of a soccer fix for me, I can spend Saturday afternoons watching my roommate Kevin play with a bunch of English hooligans in the World's Most Serious Pickup League, then come home to check my Champions League fantasy team. Ladies night at the Mexican cantina Zapatas is the best deal in town - I still don't understand how a bar can make money when they offer free margaritas and beer on Wednesday nights, especially when they close down half the bar top to allow drunken Canadian girls to dance on it. Maybe they take a
cut from the prostitutes that hang around to pray on the drunk, horny, white men. Since I am still the FNG here, I tend to go where my friends say the action is and often that place is shooting pool at Windows Scoreboard.
When the NBA came to China, the stars were shining. And by stars, I mean myself, a bunch of American investment bankers with corporate luxury boxes and Kenny-G (yes, Kenny-G) chillin' courtside, high-fiving LeBron during a high stakes, preseason thriller. Dwight Howard's pregame speech of "Yo! What up, Shanghai? Ni hao! Ni hao!" was a classy moment of international relations and diplomacy. For all the fanfare and anticipation of seeing China's new favorite sport live, once the game started, it turned into a classic, typical boring NBA game. And the lack of free drinks and food in my $500/seat luxury suite, made leaving early a wise decision. What I'll never understand is why Yao Ming's Rockets or the Other Chinese Guy in the NBA's Other NBA Team didn't make the trip. The Chinese kids I play basketball with were all very impressed that I had not only gone to the game here, but that I had
seen a real NBA game in America. I've hung out with Scottish bagpipe players and Kiwi sheep-fuckers, watching the Rugby World Cup (Springboks!) and woken up early to watch my Red Sox march on to the World Series. By the way, the best part of watching baseball in China is when you stumble across a Chinese broadcast of the game and even the bewildering yelps of confusion from the 2 Chinese broadcaster muppets every time a ball is hit in play is still way better than listening to Joe Buck & Tim McCarver.
I've eaten burgers & fries, Mexican, horrible South American, Indian as well as generics like eggs, sandwiches and a worse version of the same exact food you get a home at inflated prices. And once you go Western, the prices skyrocket. A bottle of Qingdao that costs 80 cents in a noodle house is still the same bottle you get at Trader Vic's $9 Beer Night. I'm amazed that you can come to China, pay cover charges, rip tequila shots and watch stylish honeys booty-dance to engine, engine number 9, on the New York transit line puttin' their hands up cause they got a 20 yuan
bill. These Western places are practically honky ghettos: 99.9% of the faces you see on the streets are Chinese, but that number is reversed in an Irish pub - there's always a couple Chinese girls hanging around thinking how much cooler they are than the rest of China because they eat salad and drink martinis.
There are foreigners here who live this way of life everyday, with no desire to learn an ounce of the culture or word of the language. Many Westerners are sent here by their jobs and are only here to make money. Others have been worn out by Chinese culture fatigue in other cities and have come to Shanghai because they desire a more normal Western existence. Some even think Shanghai is as weird and crazy as China gets and have no idea how different the rest of the country is - a weekend trip to Nanjing (about 2 hours west of Shanghai) was proof enough of what an anomaly Shanghai is. Either way, it makes for a huge segment of the foreign contingent that have little desire to experience anything Chinese.
So is this a good thing or a bad thing? The easiest answer is both. Remember, for all my desire to learn Chinese and experience this culture, it ain't easy and it can definitely be no fun at times. What drew me to China was the desire for a unique experience and while I'm definitely getting it, it can be waaaaaay too easy to slip into a comfortable Western existence here. I've been advised to go check out other cities in China and been advised that other cities are great....if you want to have no fun and study all day. The flip side is that, oh man, is this place fun! Foreigners run around like we own the place (cause let's face it, we do) and since everyone you meet here has picked up and left it all behind, people are really friendly. And this standard of living is, for the most part, something only foreigners can enjoy so there is this sense of superiority that exudes from this city. Hell, even the Chinese here think they are better than everyone else because they have Burger King. Also, the Chinese don't have the same concept of "nightlife" we do. Instead of going to bars, they childishly haze each other with baijiu and cigarettes over dinner before heading to the massage parlor. So if you want to go out at night, you have to understand where you're going to find it.
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Kate
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You're my hero...
...just wanted to say that. And I agree about Buck and McCarver. I would have flown to China myself to be able to avoid listening to their commentary. I hate those guys.