LoveJY

“I can tell you are a good person from your kind eyes. I hope we meet again someday!”

I was Yonghe Gong Lama Temple, and this lady came up to me. She wanted me to take a picture of her, first asking if there was a fee. When I told her no, she kept saying that she could tell I was a good person. She thanked me profusely after I took this photo, and then repeated that first line while holding my hand. I was a little wary that she might be trying to con me into something, but after a few more emphatic repetitions, she just smiled and walked away.

Today is my 270th day in Shanghai. My slowness in updating has been partly due to my indecisiveness on what to blog about. At first this was a place for me to write about my feelings and my revelations, then a place for fun pictures, then a place for dreams and goals, and things I’ve learned. I guess it could be a place for all of the above, but for now, I’m going back to posting visual tidbits. Let’s just say there’s a ton on my mind, but until I can put all those thoughts together, I’m going to go back to my secret project while listening to old school Norah Jones along with the cracking thunder and pouring rain.

caught in a summer storm on bike, second time. first time we didn’t have umbrellas and got completely soaked riding home. this time i had my very small umbrella from japan, and we still got soaked. we heard a couple people laugh when we rode past them.

these little buggers are the background choralists for summer’s soundtrack here. it doesn’t feel right on the hot days without hearing the constant buzzing of the cicadas.

random cute baby.

i brought my underwater camera to the gym, and we used it in the pool. yes, cap and goggles are mandatory for all the pools here.

no, just one pack will be fine, thanks.

took the wrong bus to a beach that should’ve been only an hour away, but it took us two hours. two hours. to a beach with hot water, imported sand, no waves, and jay chou on the loudspeakers. alas, we were had at “beach” and couldn’t resist.

this was about half an hour ago, when it was pouring.

this is now, as the french say, “il pleut comme la vache pisser”. storm on!

Went to Zhujiajiao yesterday with Ricky and his friend visiting from the States. It’s a small water town, kind of like a little Venice of Shanghai, but quiet and quaint. You can walk along the river, but you can also venture into the residential alleyways, where we saw this little guy. It looked like he was planting something in a small pot. Anyway, we saw into the homes through countless open doors and windows. Lots of people playing majang or hanging up laundry. Life seemed so simple and uncomplicated here that I couldn’t help but wonder…

a random collection of some of the more memorable moments in may…

i thought about just leaving all of these little pictures without any explanation, but i thought it’d be more fun if you actually knew what was going on in all of these. maybe next time, i’ll just leave a slew of photos for your viewing and guessing pleasure, hehe.

for the may 1st holiday, ricky and i went to visit my parents in chengdu. it appears that in preparation of the expo, pudong airport suddenly became the popular place for strange silver people. we also saw a couple sitting in some of the waiting area seats with their silver laptops.

in chengdu, we visited the excavation site of the jinsha ancient civilation (discovered in 2001), which is estimated to have existed about 3000 years with a sudden disappearance, comparable to the inca’s. 

there ricky found an interactive touch-screen which wasn’t running the proper informational software. he managed to find his way to ‘paint’ and proceeded to create his own version of …   what should’ve looked something like this:   .

engrish in chengdu. 

we also visited my parents’ new apartment on the 33rd floor! this is the view looking down from their laundry room.

back in shanghai, i usually cross the suzhou river  on the way to work, and from the bridge i saw a group of migrant workers playing cards and laughing in the early morning. 

this was actually one of the first nice weather days we had, so you can guess how much we miss sunshine, if this is considered a nice day.   

we went to the expo, and this was on the way to one of the entrances. (almost) completely empty. 

there were tons of people once we got in though, and we heard that to get into the chinese pavilion, you have to wait at 6 in the morning for a reservation ticket that gets passed out at 9. we settled for a picture on the outside, except it wouldn’t fit in the picture even though we kept backing up, because it was just too darn huge. our estimation was that it was about 40-50 stories high. 

didn’t get inside too many other pavilions, but we made it into spain, which was cool for the most part until we got to the end where a giant baby god-robot stared down upon us all.  

really cool concept for the uk pavilion, but being as it was very small and not informative about the uk at all, it makes us wonder if england is just good for having 60,000 seeds (which were actually provided by the kunming institute of botany) 

i also permed my hair the day before. tada, uk pavilion from the back, on gray astro-turf. 

we had dinner one night at a xinjiang restaurant where at about 9pm a few studly xinjiang men came upstairs to sing and make us dance with them. quite the unexpected exciting night.  

on a rainy night, ricky and i randomly stopped at an outdoor cafe outside jing’an park. see previous post. 

mouse at work! apparently it ate a poison pill and so it was slowly dying my coworker tried to sweep it onto a dustpan but it had a second wind and started scampering away. the girls screamed and i chased it down with a trashcan. the janitor later came to take it away. 

maybe i should bring my kitty to work. all the fruit shops here have cats to keep away the mice and other pests. my kitty is a weirdo; i found him chilling on the side of my bed with half of his body hanging off the edge.

i woke up one morning at 5 because i had to pee, walked into the living room and got blinded by the rising sun. while i was taking this picture, i had a feeling my aptmate was going to come home, as he often does at crazy hours. strangely enough, as soon i clicked the button, i heard his key in the door. 

ricky and i got an electric scooter! well i’m planning to take this one so ricky can get a bigger and faster one. i rode it home for the first time tonight, and it was really fun but scary maneuvering through people and odd obstacles, not to mention other scooterists on the sidewalk. yes, we all ride on the sidewalk. 

Since my last post.

I seriously cannot believe how time flies. The days go by so much quicker when you have a job. And even though there are so many more things I want to post about, the longer I wait, the longer I postpone, and then I end up forgetting what I wanted to post in the first place.

Starting to think maybe I should go back to posting more photos, especially since even though I’ve been learning about and improving my studio shooting, I really miss shooting outdoors.

With that, here’s to Chengdu, a beautifully comfortable place to live, also known as home of the pandas.

Before I forget, I need to post this photo that I shot in the Beijing Aquarium. Most tanks were fairly normal, but I guess they thought it wouldn’t be uniquely Chinese sans at least one tank complete with the rainbow lights.

Also, on my way to the airport, my taxi driver picked up two 1rmb coins from the change bin when we were stopped at a light, and he started pinching at his chin. I couldn’t tell exactly what he was doing because there’s a clear plastic separater between him and all the passenger seats, but it wasn’t long before I realized he was tweezing his beard hairs. When the light turned green, he tossed the coins back in the change bin, started driving again, and everything proceeded as normal.

If you didn’t know already, T.I.C. means THIS IS CHINA. Not everything goes the way you’d expect or even imagine, but hey, life only gets richer from here on out.

Something about that city really makes me want to go back. I think it’s partly because I feel like I didn’t get to see the whole thing (and even those parts that I saw, I would go see again!), and partly because I experienced an exceptional amount of tremendous family hospitality.

Anyway, I’m back in Shanghai now, and I’ve started my new part-time job! I’m working at Barefoot Portraits, doing client and production coordination, and soon to be working on some marketing plans. At first I was a little disappointed that I didn’t have a more photographer-centered position, but I’m pretty sure the time and energy spent on doing my job well now offer me more to learn from in terms of soft skills and business thinking. My first few days and already I have so much information in my head to be sorted and mastered.

I end my short post tonight with the philosophical question of the day:

Is it worth losing good things in life, in pursuit of other good things?

one of many overpass networks. this is near a huge column that has dragon carvings all over it. according to rumors, it was done because the construction workers couldn’t drill through the ground for the foundation, so superstition called upon the power of the dragon. story doesn’t end there. supposedly it was to be kept a secret otherwise the power would disappear; legend says the guy who let the cat out of the bag died within a few days. or something like that.

randomly wandered into an underground boutique area where we found a booth with a few guys who had started their own line of guitars and had just opened shop.

dust dust everywhere. i really hope i don’t contract a respiratory disease. all the plants outside have a thick layer of dust on their leaves. ricky’s cousin said she can’t recall ever seeing a plant in shanghai without this kind of dusty layer.

passed by a table with bowls of turtles. this one’s furry! hehe

pepper, not really. hippo, definitely.

a glimpse at the expo. the building for china looks like a certain library.

unsettling name for an elementary school.

with a smile on his face

hyper little bugger, but he can sit still for a long watching the bubbles pop after i finish washing the dishes.

I spent a week in Taiwan; usually a week is not worth it, flying an expensive 13-ish hours from LA, but this time, it was only 1.5 from Shanghai. Although it does take about another 1.5 hours to get to the airport, it’s all by public transportation, which is cheap and within walking distance. 5 minutes from my door is the metro, which takes me to the maglev station, which shuttles me right into Pudong airport.

Anyway, here’s one of my favorite things about Taiwan: going to 姥姥’s house. There is never a shortage of food, and there are always, always, always freshly made 狮子头 (i.e. GIANT meatballs) that she makes with a special recipe to make them super soft and tasty. My mom now has the recipe, and I’m determined to learn how to make them too. Our 姥姥, who is actually my mom’s godmother but has become so close to the family we consider her our grandma as well, used to make star-shaped chicken nuggets for my brother and me when we were younger. A little disappointed that there weren’t any this time, but only in a selfishly childish way.

The view from another one of my favorite places in Taiwan: DanShui. Beautiful scenery, irresistable shops with billions of cheap things, or claw games (think alien squeaky toy from Toy Story)! Last time Ricky and I won 30+ stuffed animals and little things from the claw games. This time, I only got a mini pack of cards. As much as I love Taiwan and the people there, I have to admit it felt weird after getting used to the way things work in China. I guess I really am starting to become familiar with Shanghai and considering it my home.

The speed of the maglev from the airport. 30km in 7min 20sec.

Back in China. Saw this in an old-town area, behind the place where we got our custom (partial-) cashmere coats.

Same area as last time, where I took the picture of the rubble in the foreground with the cranes and high rises in the back. The place has been pretty much cleared out, with the exception of 2 tiny shack-sized homes, and we saw workers laying foundations for new high rises.

No Spitting!

Just dinner on a normal night. 58rmb to stuff ourselves with enough leftovers for lunch!

Last night, I was bringing Cheesepuff back to my place, since Ricky was taking care of him for me while I was in Taiwan.  The taxi driver was the nicest one I’ve had yet.  Most of them just say “到哪儿?” (Where to?) when you get in the cab, but he said “你好!” (Hello!), and cheerfully too. He was easy to talk to, but what surprised me the most was whenever the cat meowed, the taxi driver meowed right back! Chinese people don’t usually do things like that, especially in front of strangers, but he just laughed and said “它有同伴了!” (Now he has a companion!)

I think it’s because of things like that, that make me realize I don’t feel so out of place here anymore. It’s not so much seeing someone exhibit the “nice” behavior that we’re used to in westernized places, but learning to recognize the good hearts of the people here, no matter how they express themselves.

It’s been such a long time, and so much has happened since my last post. Here’re just a few snippets:

This is one of the designs for the metro tickets; our favorite. There are supposed to be 12 fully functional lines + a section of the 13th line by the expo in May 2010. Today, Metro Line 1 actually stopped because of a minor collision. Traffic everywhere, no one got to work on time. Ricky had to walk 2+ miles (3.2 km for the metric savvy) to work.

The best 生煎包s that we’ve had so far.

Outside the fabric market at Lujiabang, with quail eggs. They’re hardboiled here, fried in Taiwan, delicious either way!

Ricky with 玉米 or, as he calls it, 包谷.

Lady selling potstickers and 小龙包s. We saw some foreigners eating in front of her cart, and Ricky asked her how much. She discreetly raised three fingers behing her bamboo steamers, out of the foreigners’ sight. I’m guessing they paid 10RMB. It pays to speak Chinese, is what I’m learning. Also, notice the 老干妈. If you don’t know what 老干妈 is, go to 99 Ranch. You will not regret.

Directed by Ricky. Lots being torn down before the Expo. Destructive or Progressive, that’s not for us to decide.

A cat started following us because it smelled our food. I was sad to leave it, since I was about to pick up an orange tabby the next day.

This is the little guy that I did get to take home. The lady who saved him called him 朋友, and said his favorite toy is a tampon.

So far, it’s true. We think he was feral, so he doesn’t like to held too much, but he follows and sits next to us a lot. I’m thinking of naming him 地铁, to remember this crazy metro-less day.