"Eau de Ascenseur"

Since I live on the 11^th floor of an apartment building I have to take an utterly slow elevator every morning and evening when I go to or come from work. Two facts about this elevator are really remarkable. The first fact is his speed. It is so damn slow that I sometimes think it would be faster to take stairs backwards or to crawl them downstairs. Anyway…the second fact is the smell in the elevator.

The dear elevator can offer two fragrances: Urine or cigarette smoke. Cigarette smoke comes in two sub-fragrances: Fresh and strong or cold and pungent.

Every time I enter the elevator there is some guessing, betting, speculations and so on even international parliament debates about which fragrance will say “Welcome back” or “Goodbye” to me. I normally go with “Eau de Urinal” in the morning and in the evening go “Eau de Cigarette”. Why? Easy to explain:

Chinese people are notorious early wake-ups. Why? Well, lets say it takes approximately 10 hours to get to work and if they don’t want to be late they should get up early enough to be stuck in a traffic jam for 2 hours and still make in time for work. As its common knowledge that Chinese people are NOT a population of zipper-headed supermen (I don’t want to be a racist, I am only quoting Clint Eastwood in “Gran Torino”…and honestly don’t know how to call people with narrow eyes properly without describing them like I do now), so they don’t get along with 2 hours of sleep every night. It is only natural that once in a while they more or less unintentionally fall asleep and what is better than a nap on the long way down to the first floor. Since in all the hurry some of the people forget to use the bathroom in the morning to “pass water” it is hard to control oneself so…lets say sometimes there are accidents about controlling the need to go to the bathroom and its is scientifically proofed that it is even harder to control that need during a slow elevator ride. It sounds really unbelievable, doesn’t it?

But what else could there be as an explanation for this urine note in the elevator? Should someone intentionally urinate in elevator? This guy must have a really boring life to do it over and over again!

Not to the “Eau de Cigarette”: Chinese people are not only notorious early wake-ups but also notorious smokers. Actually it is pretty understandable if you take a look at the price of the cigarettes. The cheapest ones are something like 4 RMB (46 Cents) the pack + lung cancer after two cigs. So after work the occasional “After work-cigarette” light up everywhere and since there is no such thing as “no smoking areas” it is totally common to smoke in such places like restaurants, pubs, supermarkets and of course: elevators. Sleeping in the morning doesn’t leave time to light up a cig in the elevator so in the evening it is even more appreciated. Some people even say it the smell of smoke covers the smell of “passed water”.

No you know why I go with “Eau de Urinal” in the morning and “Eau de Cigarette” in the Evening!

But why am I even writing about this?

Simple! There was a surprise this morning.

Someone actually made the effort to clean the elevator properly and it smelled wonderful like “Eau de Fleur”. I was so shocked that I thought that I HAD to tell you about it.

If I won´t forget it I will start counting today what fragrance will occur and will tell you at the end of the year :-)

Maybe I will forget it but maybe not…be tensed!

Friday is New Years Eve so I think you will also totally be tensed about my experiences of an Chinese Western New Years celebration! Till then

Cheers,

L.

The Christmas Report

Merry Christmas…belated!

Did I feel it coming?

Well, when I was at McDonalds, KFC or Burger King I did. Why? Because they played Christmas songs the whole time and the staff was doomed to wear Christmas hats. They probably still do. Ah, yes, from mid of November also at Starbucks. Why? The staff was also forced to wear Christmas hats and they started selling approximately 239 “X-mas specials”. At least at Starbucks they wore their hats like they would actually know what Christmas is. Now when I think about it…I should probably feel it anywhere because even the crappy hairstylist next to my office who plays “Get Down On It” by “Kool & The Gang” over and over again had Christmas decoration and tried to write something like “Merry Christmas” in cursive (Effort: A Outcome: D-). But I really didn’t feel it like I used to feel it in Germany. Maybe it’s the 16 degree during lunchtime or the fact that I am in China and not in Germany. Christmas = Christian holiday, China = 5 Christians out of 1.3 billion people.

It´s not like this is first time doing this math but I am still wondering why they make such big fuzz about Christmas. If it´s not anyhow emotional, what is all that about?

The answer is pretty easy and frustrating: Money, money and surprisingly some more money. Christmas is the perfect occasion to have some promotions and sales. When I asked my supervisor if she is going to celebrate Christmas she answered: “Yes, it’s a good time to buy some things because of the good sale!”

Isn´t that a good way of celebrating Christmas? Going into a shopping mall, buy a sweater, look at the decoration, take a picture with Santa Claus, go to Starbucks and purchase a “Cinnamon Special Latte”, go back home, sit on the couch and watch the newest season of “China got Talent” and be happy to have celebrated a merry Christmas. Sounds like a fair Christmas to 90% of the Chinese population, maybe even far more!

So as you can see Christmas in China is completely different to the one I celebrate in Germany. In China it is non-emotional at all but 100%-commercial. To be fair I think Christmas is in most of the western countries also big time money and everybody is using some kind of Christmas atmosphere to get some of the big-money-Christmas-cake. But at least the people know why they are celebrating Christmas. And for anyone who didn’t know it is NOT about getting presents from an old, white bearded mate who wears a red costume. It’s the celebration of the birth of Jesus. I don’t expect every Chinese to know but at least then they shouldn’t try to pretend to celebrate it. What would the Chinese people think when they would hear we that there are MASSIVE discounts, decoration, parties and everybody gives money in red bags to each other (Hong bao – Red bags, a tradition mainly given to children during the Chinese New Year) at the 2^nd of February in Europe (the date of the Chinese New Year 2011) only because they know they do so in China and not even know why they have a different calendar then we do and what-so-ever. They wouldn’t be happy so why should I be happy to see random Chinese people running around in Santa costumes and scream “Merry Christmas” in any nearly-western shop/restaurant at you.

Anyway, it pissed me off but isn’t Christmas the feast of love…shouldn’t I tolerate they Chinese effort of celebrating Christmas, yet even honor it?

Nah, I am not sure about that.

My Christmas Eve was all about the Chinese Christmas. On the 23^rd I flew to Beijing to stay at a Chinese family my family is friends with. They really took good care of me and on Christmas Eve I even attended some kind of Christmas show. But before that I got the privilege to attend a service in German at the German Embassy School. It was very, very nice and it made me feeling like I am home but you know afterwards there was the show…The show looked like this: First there was a massive buffet with more or less eatable European food (Theme of the evening was: “Fantastic European Palace”). Second we sat on round tables all over the ball room and on the one end there was a stage. As I started eating suddenly music made me nearly deaf!!! Another of Chinas specialties: Suddenly turning on the music without testing the volume and they obviously don’t care if half of the audience is really troubled not to scream out of pain and run straight of the room. The other half is already deaf by the way…Two hosts were leading us trough the nights program. It started with Russian dancers who were smiling like they were threatened to be shot if they wouldn’t do so and with an expression in their eyes like their already have been shot. Belly dancing, Chinese pop-songs, a singing and traditional dancing drag queen, a magician, comedians, a lottery…everything possible was given to us on stage! Fabulous, trashy, shitty, surprisingly good, funny, classy…”roller-coaster of emotions” was my personal theme for the night. Anyway I kind of enjoyed it ‘cause I could laugh fuckin’ lots!

It was a totally different Christmas but it was not only negative to be far away from home and nearly everything that was related to a, in my eyes, “real” Christmas. It was an experience to be made and I enjoyed it in a weird way though I would have loved to spend the Christmas time with my family and friends.

In the end I am kind of happy that Christmas is over now. This half-Christmas half-WTF feeling is going away and looking back it was pretty funny.

Christmas is dead, long live Christmas!

Cheers,

L.

Henan?...He...what?

Me: “Do you think Henan is a nice place?”

W.: “No!”

Good thing to know before going to Henan for my midstay. First of all I will explain what a midstay is. As I was sent by the exchange organization “AFS” this midstay was also an activity by them. The midstay is a time for the participants of “cross-cultural exchange” programs to reflect their current situation and hear about what is going to happen next and of course time to complain about the situations in order to think about how the problem can be solved. To get an environment where everybody can talk with some distance of their daily life the midstay is often also combined with some travelling and sightseeing. In our case the actual midstay wasn’t really planned as it supposed to be. I don’t want to complain but talk about my overall experience…but let´s say it is not thaaaat good to reflect if the whole attention of a city is drawn upon on you being an attraction or if you have to stay in a host family. In those cases it was kind of fun but not how a midstay is supposed to be.

Anyway, the trip started last Friday afternoon with entering the train to Zhengzhou, capital of Henan Province in the north-east-centre of China. We had beds to sleep in for the over-night, 15 hours train ride. In one wagon were probably 20 “stacks” of each three beds with two building one cabin, of course no doors. At exactly 10 pm the light is switched of and it stays this way till 6 am. At this time you are forced to sleep because any kind of too loud communication will have a harsh demand to lower the voice by the train staff or banging on the partition walls involved.

As we arrived, stinky, tired and starving (wait…not me: I prepared sandwiches with wholegrain bread, salami and cheese. It is seriously hard to get all those ingredients in China) we were separated into host families, with standing in group surrounded by the future host families and we were picked by them like we were some kind of goods on a market. Luckily as it turns out I had big luck with my host family. They had a quite big apartment and surprisingly it was warm!!! Yes, it was of the heating they are allowed to have since they are north of the Yangtze River. All cities south of the Yangtze are not allowed to have heaters in their houses! That is the main reason why it´s outside 0 degree and inside as well in SH.

My host brother turned out to be pretty cool and his friends seemed so much more mature than Shanghainese children in their age, 15 to 16. In the group of German volunteers with discussed this matter and we came to the conclusion that the more loose school system is the reason. Different than in Shanghai the school doesn’t seem to be so important. Of course they still start their lesson at 7 am and have school till late but it seems not to be that serious as it is back here in Shanghai. They even have girl- or boyfriends and are flirting in public…….in SH this is probably comparable with the pope committing one of the seven deadly sins. During the day we often played Basketball or pool. They were a pretty cool crowd and it was fun. When we played basketball I thought that I OF COURSE would be superior due to my height…no, I wasn´t and it is still not easy for me to talk about how my ass got kicked by these 1.50 meter “tall” fast and skillful mates. Anyway I had a lot of fun with them and even though their English was really shit communicating was easy. We even went into some kind of Turkish bath where my host bro, his best friend and went and I really enjoyed the sauna, the hot bath and the Pingpong game afterwards in one of the many relax-areas: NOW I kicked their ass…Chinese people are sooo overrated regarding table tennis ;-)

 Altogether all were very open and completely friendly. The reason for that may be explained when you regard me the first foreigner they have ever seen in their life (ATTENTION: exaggeration). Anyway my host mum was probably the most caring person ever! In a good way though, not too much annoying and a terrific cook. She really made great dumplings, great spicy noodles (Henan is famous for their thick noodles) and her good choice for restaurants was also remarkable. But one thing will stick in my head, ok let´s say tongue: Hunan food is the m***erf***ing spiciest food ever!!! I really like spicy food but this…I can´t even describe. It totally killed me and I had to drink much beer to have the pain reduced!

Anyway after my time in the host family all Germans moved into a “Family Inn” hotel. One really remarkable thing about the hotel was that the 5^th floor was pretty much the “home/office” to several prostitutes and even the security guard praised them several times. Of course we also got an offer, 200 RMB and we even could first look at the hooker. Isn´t that called good service? In the end nobody actually got with a hooker because the price seemed too high ;-)

I don’t want to bore any of you with the details of our actual mid-stay meetings. Lets say they were successful and we had a good time. On the last day of our travel the big sight-seeing began: First the famous Shaolin temple and then some ancient Buddha grottoes’. Both places where pretty remarkable and even though it was freeeeezing (down to -7 degree) I pretty much enjoyed the sights. Especially the Kongfu School next to the Shaolin temple was impressive. Hundreds of students had their training session on a bid plain field and a lot of them even had some kind of test where they had to present choreography of Kongfu moves. I wondered what these guys will do for a living after their school education since there are not 1000 open places to be filled as the next Bruce Lee, Jet Li or Jackie Chan. Actually they all WILL go into the movie business, as stuntmen for the enormously big movie industry in Hong Kong! So maybe some of those guys will actually be punched in the face by one of the listed Kongfu movie-stars, you never know.

By the way: In the Shaolin Temple I bought a knife for 80 RMB (about 8 €). His name is “Jungle King 1” and it looks pretty much like the one Rambo uses. Just to let you know, “JK1” and me together will get the power over the world latest till June 2016. And yes I am REALLY confident about it. Just google “Rambo+Knife” and you will know why ;-)

After we visited the sights we went to Luoyang to catch our train back to Shanghai where we arrived on Thursday midday. The train ride was the usual, only with the exception that we started our trip at about 9:11 pm and we had 49 minutes till we were forced to shut up, both by the “friendly” demand of the staff and some banging on the partition wall by our dear neighbors who thought that 10 pm is too late for grownups to be awake!

As for now that’s it! Shanghai is turning Christmas. Is it? Maybe…so be tensed :-)

Cheers

L.

Me? A Teacher???

While I am managing my future career, being a teacher is number 38 in my list of future professions, right after being a tightrope artist but still in front of being a human minesweeper. I don’t want to insult any teacher while I´m writing this but I just don’t think being a teacher is a profession I would see myself in 10 or something years. But maybe being a teacher is not so bad after all!

To this conclusion I came nearly one week ago. Last Friday I gave my first lesson in “Environmental-Water Education”. Ok let´s say I got a part of lesson. I shared the time with my dear “Green Oasis” colleague Xiao Du.

We are teaching at a primary school in the Xu Hui District (it is actually pretty close to my old high school Wei Yu) and this school is regarded as the best primary school in Shanghai. So you see I just roll with da best ;-) Our class contains 24 students age about 7. Our class is about everything related to their newly build “Eco-pond”. So of course a lot of things are related (surprise) to water.

And that is exactly what our first lessons contained: Information about German and Italian water. The first one who tells me which one was Xiao Dus part will get some candy…

I don’t want to bore you with the details about my no-questionable great PPT but just want to tell you how the presentation went down. When I stood in front of the “audience” and start talking I felt that these children were really focused and were listening to what I said. I really enjoyed it and I felt like I could teach them something and they were giving something back to me. This kind of communication was pretty exciting and it was fun talking to them and seeing how much they liked to participate, especially in my experiment: Which kind of water they would like more, German sparkling water “Appolinaris” or Chinese flat water “Nongfu Spring”. Appolinaris won 2:1of votes.

So in the end I felt some kind of happiness to see those children having fun or I hope they had! The laughing face of one of the girls who asked her teacher for permission to shake hands with me after the lesson or the young boy who said “Thank You” after he received “Rocher” for participating in the experiment (and damn, Rocher is frickin expensive here) in his nice Chinese accent that this time didn’t annoy me like it does when someone is praising his “cheap/original” Gucci bags on the streets. This time it filled me with some kinda joy!

There is always the possibility that the students didn’t like me at all and I am just to self obsessed to admit it but I´m pretty sure it was real :-)

Being a teacher just popped one place in my personal career ranking and is now No. 37. Since I will have the lesson regularly on Friday it may be even possible that being a teacher will outrun No. 36: human cannonball. We will see…

From tomorrow on I will be on my midstay in Henan! It is a trip where I and my fellow German volunteers will reflect our time so far and think about what is happening next or what kind of wishes we have. We will go to Henan, a province in the middle of China. It´s cold over there and I am very curious what is going to happen there…who knows! As far as I know we will be visiting a Shoalin temple. Sounds nice but we are in China…there is always a little surprise somewhere ;-)

Till than take care and a nice third Advent!

L.

In MY Face

Yesterday morning I wasn’t (surprisingly) woken up by the extremely loud TV but from rain drops hammering on my window! It is raining in Shanghai. And with the rain the massive crowds on the streets pull out their umbrellas.

I think some of you might have noticed that I could be a LITTLE taller than the average Chinaman! So imagine me (1.95) with my umbrella and Xiao Wang (1.65) with his umbrella. His size is equal to the size of me without head and half my chest. Imagine further that he probably carries his umbrella 20 cm above his head. That makes 1.85. 1.85 is me somewhere in my face. Conclusion of everything together: Xiao Wang´s umbrella is in my face!!!! Do I like him rubbing his umbrella in my face? No, certainly not. But it´s not only Xiao Wang because Xiao Wang brought his friends, his 20 million Shanghai-friends who are mostly happen to be as “tall” as Xiao Wang. 20 million POTENTIALLY umbrella-in-my-face-rubber!

Second thing is that during the rush-hour in the morning exactly this crowd of 20 million people is moving to all the metro stations and I cannot fight them anyhow but to run as fast as I can. In the end I didn’t do so. I just walked along the streets getting forced to taste 20 million (maybe a little less, sometimes they also share one umbrella) umbrellas and that only because of my height! Am I not a miserable person?

Hope my first teaching class tomorrow will give me some more cheerful experience! Be tensed to hear if or if not :-)

Cheers

L.

Scream As Loud As You CAN!

“A scream, shout, holler, vociferation, yell, outcry, or steven is a loud vocalization in which air is passed through the vocal cords with greater force than is used in regular or close-distance vocalization. Though technically this process can be performed by any creature possessing lungs, the preceding terms are usually applied specifically to human vocalization.”

-       Wikipedia on “Vociferation”

Great to know, but if you are in China rules of nature, physics or anything else are useless regarding to a scream, shout, holler, vociferation, yell outcry or steven (I didn’t even know there existed a word like this…). They are just louder then everything or everybody else. The record for the loudest “group-screaming” was set at the grounds of Toivala's Metsäkoulu, Siilinjärvi, Finland on 16 April 2005 by a group of Finnish scouts (Thanks Wikipedia, always good to know) with 127.2 decibels. First of all I give those guys a lot of credit…BUT they have never been on a Chinese market or at a place where many Chinese people talk on the phone. They are so loud that it seriously hurts. Imagine yourself wandering through the streets of Shanghai and you are about to enter a supermarket to get just a bottle of water and as soon as you are entering some starts to talk on his phone: “WEI…AH…AH…HAO…….AHAH…(not understandable what-so-ever)…AH…ZAI TIAN!”

What you read up there was a typical and very common talk between two Chinese people on the phone. The content can be translated like this: “HELLO…AH…AH…OK…AHAH……..AH…BYE!” But now to the sound intensity: I would guess about 100 decibels compared with Anna Kurnikowas screaming during a tennis match was a little bit more than 100. So just imagine walking into a room and suddenly somebody screams at you like Anna Kurnikowa! Jeez the risk of a heart attack rises extremely. But know think of some screaming that loud for whole 10 minutes. It gives you a headache for sure. Maybe you realized that there is no real content in their calls since both of them just talk like in the given example.

 So I thought a little while about this matter and I came to a solution that GOTTA be right: China is a communist…ähm, yeah…democracy (or something else starting with “D” and ends with something like “ship” but because I was brainwashed I forgot). The USA is a capitalistic democracy. Communism and capitalism are not really getting along with each other on some points. So to the Chinese government was/is very afraid of being bucked and too much confidential information get out of the country to the US, which are of course are planning to invade China at some point and so it is very important to get as much information about the Chinese lifestyle and habits as possible. A short talk on the phone could be very useful for the American intelligence. But the Chinese were aware of this problem and started a super secret and till now denied program to teach the Chinese people some kind of tone language so they could talk without the fear of the evil capitalists understanding and invading the beloved fatherland. They fo shizzle succeeded. Praise the party ;-)

But it´s not only that they scream like that when they are on the phone, no, otherwise it would be just fine…in some weird way. No, they also “talk” to each other like this. So for European ears it is kinda hard to judge whether the two talking persons are talking about their grandchildren or about the committed murder of one of them. Even if you are able to speak or understand Chinese this doesn’t help at all because during their loud talk they often switch into the local accent which is in my opinion not-understandable for any man-kind other than locals. They keep on screaming and screaming and screaming and you are getting terribly confused by it and no seldom a huuuge terrible headache is the result of listening, no matter in- or unintentional. Maybe another counter-intelligence strategy…who knows?

Just to come to an end. If you haven’t been to China just don’t say you know anything about loud screams, hollers, stevens (I like this word even though I don’t really know if it actually exists) etc. unless you actually have been to China.

One last thing: I am sorry if I am back in May and I talk with a very loud voice…keep it in your mind: It is not MY fault but the Chinese “super-secret-noise-campaign-starting” government!

Cheers and honor the word “steven”

L.

Wake Up, Sweet Buttercup

Beep…(My first thought was a fire alarm)…Beep…(what the…)…Beeeeeeeep! “It is now 6 am Beijing time.” (Utterly terrible loud noise aka. entrance jingle of the news at 6 am that made bed vibrating and me wanting to punch somebody in the face)”Welcome to Shanghais morning news!”

Goooood Morning Shanghai! Screw you big time! What I had to witness yesterday morning was the alarm clock /TV of my host family at 6 in the morning. Just for your consideration: I have to get up at 7 and I really need every minute of my sleep. I live in a two stories apartment with me and the “A yi” living on the first, the mother, dad and my host sister living on the second one. The TV/alarm clock is standing in the living room of the first floor pretty much right in front of my room. I really don’t know why but why in world do they have to set an alarm clock on a TV in the living room when they are sleeping on floor upstairs and my “A yi” has its own TV in her room. I really don’t get it and it makes fricking furious. They pulled up the volume to some extend I have never heard before. It is ok if it´s just for 5 minutes, maybe 10…wait no it is not OK to wake me an hour before I have to get up. Anyway they left the TV switched on with no change of volume for the damn long time of 45 minutes. During that time screaming (the biggest hobby of them Chinese people I will write something about it sometime) entered the “background noise”, breakfast was taking with of course no change of volume. Even me with one not so thick wall that protected me against the noise of the TV was nearly made deaf and I don’t understand how they even tried to communicate with each other…the screaming explains a lot but basically they are screaming the whole time. It seems they are not concerned at all with my sleep and whatever. Nevertheless I don’t want to complain too much, they are actually they are having me for no profit and I get free meals and stuff.

In the end I woke up with the wish to kill someone but everybody left, even the A yi so I went embittered to the bathroom to take a shower, which many Chinese people actually are not doing in the morning

Sorry for me being such a pussy but it made me seriously very angry and I really wanted to kick somebody’s face or butt or just hurt somebody. Had to get this one of my chest!

Enjoy and never ever use your TV-alarm clock when you are having some guests. Please just do me this one favor.

L.

How to marry in Yangzhou

Good for you, bad for me…I am suffering again. Nasty “Tonsillitis” . But good for you so I definitely have time to tell you about my last weekend at Yangzhou and the wedding.

I should just put in one word and never say anything else…it was SPECTACULAR. Not even close comparable to anything I have ever seen before!

It is actually really hard to describe how the wedding was like because you won´t believe it unless you have seen it yourself. But I will try my best:-)

When I first arrived in Yangzhou after 5 hour train ride my first thought at the Yangzhou train station was: “Where are the people????” Yangzhou has just about 800 000 citizens when I believe what a cab driver told me or I understood him right me, for Chinese standard nearly nothing.

But it was nice in fact to be in a little bit smaller town to get a little bit more relaxed. I think it is really possible in Yangzhou…certainly not if you´re invited to such a wedding as I was!

After I got into my suit and got a taxi I went to the “Yangzhou State Guesthouse” where the wedding was held. I had no idea how big the compound of the “Guesthouse” is. It is consists of several villas and a big central building all embedded in a big park. The former Chinese president Jiang Zemin was born in Yangzhou and every time he comes back to his hometown he lives in one of the villas on the compound. So as you can imagine the staff is pretty experienced to hold banquets due to uncountable communist party meeting and similar occasions. The actual wedding was held in the “Huafang Garden Room”, a huge ball room where more than 80 tables where brought inside. So overall I would guess there where about 1000 guests. Each of the tables had two bottles of orange juice, two bottles of fairish Chinese red wine, packs of zigs lying around and zwo bottles of “Moutai”, which is rather expensive and deadly strong liquor with about 56%...strong stuff I gotta admit.

I shared my table with five Westerners and another four Chinese people. Spoken language was (of course) English. The tables and chairs were all covered with white cloth and flowers were placed in the middle of the table. An aisle lead through the middle of the room (of course also in white) up to an stage that was more like a runway at some fashion show, probably 20 metres long. At the end of the “runway” there was a stairway with three steps up and there the bride and groom stood in front of an enormously HUGE screen (probably bigger than in many cinemas). Right and left of this big screen were also small screens to which I am coming later on.

The wedding started was supposed to start 6 pm but it was planed that the actual event with presentation of the marrying couple wouldn’t start until 7 pm. Till then everybody was seated and on this enormously big screen a countdown of 60 minutes were seen.

When the actual ceremony started the whole room went dark and some kind of light-show finally focused on the big screen. What now started was nothing less than a Hollywood movie about the love story of Emily and Brian Wang, starring themselves. It was unbelievable how the movie was like! It was no trash self-made You Tube video, it was an actual movie. Decent camera, decent cut…fabulous! The movie was about 35 minutes long and afterwards the REAL show began: First they both performed something equal to a Broadway musical and then someone professional sung a love song while playing the piano. Afterwards it went even more weird/crazy/nice/spectacular! The bride’s father brought her along the aisle to the stage where Bryan, the groom, was waiting for her. On the stage Bryan took over and they went together up the stairs so that they stood right in front of the huge screen. On the screen there was the inside of a church displayed in black in white so that it looked like they were really standing in the church. They start reading their vows and exchanged rings…then finally they kissed and the whole black’n’white church burst into a golden shiny one! Everybody stood up and “Gan Bei” (“Cheers”-with emptying your glas) was shouted all over!!

Just spectacular and now the really good part started…the food ;-) The food was exquisite, the red wine and Moutai did the rest and a real good wedding was created. During the celebration there was a kinda showmaster who introduced games the whole time…only drinking games! Funny as when most of the audience is already completely smashed and they still had to compete!

When I left the wedding to get a drink somewhere with several foreigners I left with a mixture of feelings. I got to admit: This was the by far and probably will be the most spectacular wedding of all times for me. But it wasn’t really traditional, it seemed even that it was completely focused on being “European” or “Western”. That was a little bit sad but I think that is the new movement in China und you can not only see this during weddings but in nearly every aspect of your daily life.

The second thing I didn’t really like (or about what I felt a little bit pitty) was that it was practically just a business wedding with business partners of the family Wang (I can´t complain I was there as a business invitee as well) and I did only see some friends of the bride but just about two or three.

Never the less it was a great experience I did spend another great day in Yangzhou with perfect weather and a lot of nice people! It is really much smaller than Shanghai but it has some charm :-) To live there I wouldn’t change it with SH…never…this city is too good. In my opinion (and I believe there are some more folks out there who think the same) SH is the new NY.

And, Yes, I will convince you during my next posts ;-)

Cheers

L.

Transportation in Chinese

What are really creating the picture of the city are the many bikes and scooters. As Katie Melua sung “There are 9 Million Bicycles in Beijing”. But I am in Shanghai and Shanghai is cooler than Beijing and there are definitely more bicycles here ;-) Double it and you should be fine.

But the really great thing is that there not just bikes everywhere, no, they have EVERYTHING on them as well. Have you ever seen a refrigerator on a bike??? I definitely felt sorry for this guy but he actually thought it was kind of funny to see me staring at him, and I am definitely not this type of staring guy when something strange comes along. But that time I seriously had to stare!

Though you might think “Refrigerator is pretty heavy they won´t carry anything bigger” it doesn’t end with refrigerators.

As Shanghai is an expanding city where buildings are built over night, they often first have to knock down the existing buildings.  After they knocked down the building there is an incredible amount things lying around it and there are seldom professional companies who take care of the stuff. Often the people with their “bikes” come and collect as much as they can carry. But those bikes are not normal bikes. They have three wheels and some kind of cart on the back axle. It´s pretty much a very small one where you can but some things on it but never should put as much on it as they do in China. They seriously put stuff up to 5 meters high on it. When I see them driving through the crazy Shanghainese traffic I always want to run along them and help them. Of course they are not respecting any traffic rules, as like they don’t care about their own life and of the life’s of others.

I always wonder how they actually get stuff on top of the carts, with an height of approximately 1,50 m. And the second point is how they actually get the stuff NOT to fall down. These people should better work as structural engineers than picking crap up from construction zones.

So that’s it for Transportation inChinese. I actually hope I get some pics of these “cyclist”.

By the way I am invited to a wedding on Saturday in Yangzhou, a place north of Shanghai. It will take me about 5 hours to get there by train. So be curious about my train ride and the Chinese wedding.

Enjoy

L.

Cold as Ice

Dear people,

Yes I am still alive! But I have to admit, I was close on not being able to talk to you for a loooong time. To be fair, I had some nasty mixture of a flu and tonsillitis. I had to stay in my bed for the whole last week. Some of you might think that would be pretty relaxed but I got to tell you guys it´s not relaxed at all to boil like a crab when it´s cooked. 39.5 degree was kind of too hot. But never the less I am now perfectly alright…with one exception: IT IS GETTING REALLY COLD!

I have no clue why the weather changed so rapidly but it happened too fast if you would ask me. Suddenly whole Shanghai puts out its winter clothes and is running through the streets trembling, me the worst of all. The worst is that it´s not like in Europe where it is damn freezing during the winter but you have heating in every building and you never need to freeze seriously for a long time, noooo every city south of the Yangtze River is forbidden by the government to have heating. So your only “heating” is the air-con and if it´s a rather old one, like I am lucky to have in my room, sometimes it is not working at all. But not only that I am punished by not having a hot room, my office has no, or they won´t turn it on because of something I-have-no-idea-why, air-condition. So practically the warmest time of the day for me is when I am in the metro and that’s just because I wear my thick winter jacket and there are about 10 million people who want to “cuddle” with you during rush-hour.

But why am I acting like a wimpy child. As my father always tells me “What doesn´t kill you just makes you stronger” ;-)

 So right know I am sitting in my office and I practically do nothing. Fortunately just today is like this. Normally I have to do a lot, ok not a lot but something and I even like it. At the moment I have two tasks. On Saturday my organization is hosting a workshop at our organic farm for about 20 UPS-volunteers. The will learn how to plant organically AND my big task is to tell them something about composting. We will actually build a compost heap and this all as me as the man who is in charge. To be well prepared I read nearly everything about “composting” and “how to build a proper compost” available in the World Wide Web. I hope won´t screw things up too bad ;-)

My second task these days is also related to our organic farm. My superior really wants to have the selling of organic food as a solid financing for our NGO. So I have to do a lot of research, share some ideas and experiences and just do everything related to organic food in China or Germany (as a kind of role model). Sometimes it is a little bit boring but I am looking forward to actually help Summer (my boss) to sel the food and so I see the reason behind all the work :-)

So that’s status quo right know in my life. AHH one thing I nearly forgot…tomorrow two weeks ago I was at a “Boys Noize” concert with a really good line-up as starters. It was so incredible good and I had a hell of night…though I had a bad morning after ;-)

Weekend is Halloween and I am very disappointed that I can´t go around the street and ask for sweets :-( Lets all be tensed about what Halloween is going to be like and how I will figure out to compensate the non-“trick or treat” time!

Now I gotta leave…out of the cold office, on the cold street and finally in the warm metro :-)

Cheers

L.

Vital Signs

Hey there everybody! Today I am going to release all of you who were waiting for my new blog-post. I know you couldn’t think of anything else so I am doing you guys the favor so give some vital sign ;-)

As you know I had a week of holiday and I really enjoyed them. Even though I am quite enjoying staying at my host-family (there are ups and downs of course) it was quite nice to see to enjoy the city as long as I wanted to without thinking about “will I be home on time” or “do I have to eat art home”. Wandering to around the streets of one of the most exciting cities in the world, searching for small alleys where you find so many so unique shops or restaurants and of course…exploring Shanghais night-life. Since my last stay in Shanghai 2007/2008 something changed about nightlife. The huge clubs were dominating the scene and small and as well good clubs were seldom to be found. Nowadays it has changed: More and more smaller so called “underground clubs” opened and established. But enough…I don’t want to disappear into enthusiasm for SH´s nightlife.

Something changed at work. I actually have a task!;-) Last Friday was my first work-day after the holiday and I talked with my boss Summer about what I am going to do the following 8 month. The result was that I am going to work with a school project featuring lessons about a newly constructed “Eco pond” and the general awareness for the environment. The “Eco pond” was build with an initiative by “Green Oasis” (the NGO I am working for) and two Shanghainese schools. During this project the schools change their old school ponds into environmental friendly ones.

The main problem of the old ponds was that they getting dirtier over time and it were expensive to exchange the water frequently. The water was getting this dirty in the first place because the feed for the Koi in the pond that they didn’t eat was left in the water. So the non-eaten feed worked like a kind of fertilizer to algae in the pond. So after a while many algae in the pond where “stealing” the fishes oxygen and they were making the water look dirty. AND of course (otherwise it wouldn’t be to consider to change into an “Eco pond”) the costs for changing the water were high.

Long story short…I am going to become some kind of a teacher for environment subjects. I wouldn’t imagined that when I left good old Germany. But you never know, maybe it´s my dream job but I don’t know about it yet…hopefully not!;-) Even though I might won´t be a teacher for my whole life I am looking forward for this task, even when it´s just for having something to do other than writing for my magnificent blog…;-)

Tomorrow me and my boss, who will be teaching with me together if I got it right, will be visiting the school for the first time. So I am going back to high school…again! Thought I left  that s**t behind me…

So be tensed how my day in the school was and what is happening on the weekend! Got a HUUUGE highlight coming up!

Take Care

L.

What about work?!?

First day of work…I was seriously a little bit nervous about this day since it decides whether I am having a good or maybe not so good time here in China.

At ten in the morning I met my program coordinator Catherine from “Roots&Shoots” at a train station in Pudong, the part of the city which is located east of the Huangpu River. The train ride took me about 50 minutes so the distance is ok. Together we went to the office of my new employer. On the way to the office Catherine explained to me that it is a local NGO so they don’t really speak English. After the first shock was over I thought about why my organization would place me somewhere I can´t understand what my tasks are.

As we entered the office (a very small one with five people working there fulltime) Summer introduced herself as my new “boss”. Surprisingly she could speak English but pretty shitty one. In a small conference room she gave me a introduction about what their NGO is doing but to be honest…I didn’t really get it. What I understood was that they are having a organic farm in the Qingpu District in the so called “Communitiy Shared Agriculture” (CSA) style. A CSA farm is practically a bio-farm where you have some “shareholders” who are paying a certain amount of money to the farmer at the beginning of the year without knowing what exactly they get. They trust the farmer that he is having a good harvest and they will get their e. g. vegetables frequently delivered or they can pick them up. The farmer will just provide the food he is harvesting. The whole work is just for providing excellent vegetable or fruits and not for any economical reasons. Sounds a little bit like Hippie-style farming (in fact it was that in the beginning) but it is actually quite environmental friendly.

But back to the essential…on this farm my organization, which is called “Green Oasis”, is providing some kind of lessons for school classes to learn more about environmental sustainability and environmental protection. I hope I got it right, if not I will tell you later.

So I got back to the office and sat down on what will be my desk for the next 8 month. After I installed all the Wi-Fi stuff I got my first task: reading, reading about what my organization is doing AND a PowerPoint-presentation about how harmful “bad” food (too much sugar, additives, with chemical fertilizer cultivate etc.) is to everybody…in CHINESE! So please if somebody knows how to say “chemical fertilizer is changing cell-structure of a potato” it’s the right time to speak up…I didn’t and I most certainly forgot it after I let my iPod translate it. As you can imagine it was kind of hard translating and verifying all the example and facts in the presentation. But I hope in some weird way it helped me improving my Chinese, if not I probably going to kill myself ;-)

At 5:30 pm usually my day in the office would and but I had to work a little longer. They told me that the working hours are from 9 to 5:30 so it is not that bad. AND for Shanghai-level an hour to get to work is pretty short timeJ

So that’s it. I could tell you some more about how my second work day was (I visited the organic-farm…it was pretty cool to see actually a little bit more green than the green of the cabs) but I won´t! ;-) BUT what I can tell you is how my third day of working was…not working! Got free the whole day. Great start in my first week of work.

As its national holiday from tomorrow on maybe won´t be able to provide information about my magnificent life here in SH. But maybe will prove different…first I gotta tell Shanghai that I am really back ;-)

Till than have a good one!

L.

Haaave you met Jane Goodall?!

…I have! On last Friday during the annual “Roots&Shoots” festival that was held at the Gezhi Highschool in the centre of Shanghai. The festival started at 3 pm. From 3 to 5 pm we had do help at several workshops and at the registration. I myself had to “help” at a “Do-it-Yourself” T-shirt design workshop. But in the end my help was not needed and I only stood around doing nothing. Actually was this “DIY” workshop a contest what I didn’t know till the end ;-)

During those workshops Dr. Jane Goodall visit several activities and presentations by school classes or sub-organizations of “Roots&Shoots”. It was quite funny walking next to her and she was friendly to everybody and very, very interested in all the volunteers work.

But of course the best thing about her visiting our organization (actually it is hers) was her speech she gave at 6 pm. Before she started several volunteers or programs were awarded and an introduction was given. We celebrated the 50^th anniversary of Jane Goodalls “Gombe” chimpanzees project in Tanzania and the 11^th anniversary of “Roots&Shoots – Shanghai”. In a short video the “Gombe” project was explained with wonderful pictures of Jane Goodall in the Tanzanian jungle.

Afterwards her speech FINALLY started. Jane Goodall is now 76 years old and you can see that she has been up in the world her whole life, but as soon as she starts to speak I forgot about her being about four times older than I am. She still has a very nice sense of humors and she started with some little jokes. But when she came to environmental protection something changed both in her eyes and her voice. She became serious and not just an addressing, faking serious but an honest and purely concerned serious. As I looked in her eyes I saw that she meant every single word coming out of her mouth like it was meant to be. I can imagine that she really puts her lifeblood in all of her projects. One of her points was that there is no line between animals/the nature and human beings.

As simple as it sounds and even widely used (too often for my taste) her main message was: Never give up! Because it’s so often used it starts to kinda annoy me but as Jane Goodall said it I really thought that this is the right way of dealing with environmental protection. Maybe it is the way with it you should deal with everything but it still had in some strange way an impact on me when Dr. Jane Goodall said this. To encourage us all she gave a wonderful example: When you seed just a little grain after some time it is growing ROOTS and SHOOTS. Those tiny little roots manage to get to the water deep down in the earth and on their way down into the earth they are so powerful that they can even move rocks. It´s the same when you look at the shoots. As small and tiny this shoot might be in the end it is able to burst through the soil, even when it´s full of rocks. The “moral” of this story connected with the “Never give up” stuff she said made her attempt to “rescue” the environment very clear.

When I arrived in Shanghai at first I wasn’t sure if my work in a NGO would have any impact but after Jane Goodalls speech I had hope that I can do something helpful. In the end I even got to touch her arm when we had a group picture with many volunteers…I felt very enlighten after I touched her arm ;-)

If I was seriously inspired by Jane Goodall or not and if I really can have an impact in some way…we will see when I start to work! So be tensed about tomorrow’s first working day reportJ

Cheers!

L.

Where there is a Goodbye there is a Hello

The final day arrived: Yesterday I left my “Welcome-Family” to move to my permanent host-family. At about 10 am my new family picked me up to take me to their home. On the evening before I had a great time with my “Welcome-Family”. I really felt like I would be a real family member and not just a stranger staying at their home. They even offered me to stay at their home whenever I need a place to crash or when I am visiting China. As they said this it was not like the usual politeness of Chinese people but honest sympathy for me as their “host-SON”. I got to admit that I missing them a little.

But finally I am now in my new home. First of all excluding me there are four other people living here. The mother Angela, the father (I don’t really know how to call him), the younger Sister Fisher and an “Ayi” who is a mixture of a real aunt and some kind of a cleaning lady. Fisher and Angela are both very good in English, the father can speak too but our Ayi does even not speak Mandarin. She uses a mixture of Shanghai-accent and Mandarin which I CAN´T understand at all. But she is very nice and she cooks pretty well.

As I arrived there were even three more members of the family at our home. Angela’s mother, her sister and her nephew Ding ding who is a funny 6 years old who can speak a little English. He has that funny mixture of childish craziness and hilarity. Talking to him was very funny. Together with them we had lunch and afterwards I unpacked my bag and “inspected” my room. I have a big bed, a big wardrobe, a small couch, a desk for study and even a TV in my room. SO actually it is kind of a nice room I gotta admitJ. But in some strange way I don’t feel really connected to them on the first sight. I think this kinda feeling will disappear within time. In the evening we had the traditional “Mid Autumn Festival” dinner. The food was good and the people were nice. I was very happy that I didn’t have to eat too much moon-cakes (traditional bakery stuff which is veeery sweet and filled with smashed beans), but instead I ate pig-ears! Strange taste but ok, wouldn’t like to eat every day…

The “Mid Autumn Festival” is like the Chinese “Thanksgiving”. They are celebrating the beginning of the harvest. It is the second most important festival in China after the Chinese New-Year. Usually the whole family comes together and re-unites and spends the whole day with each other.

So I had quite a good evening and everything. And today we got better and better along the whole time. They even gave me a water boiler, my own tea, and two cups ;-)

Tomorrow another huuuuuuuge highlight will be in my “schedule”: Jane Goodall, the mother of all chimpanzees, will give a speech at a “Jane Goodall Institute – Roots&Shoots” event (they are the guys who are providing everything to me work, hostfamily etc.). I heard that she has a breathtaking way to talk people and even just her aura is inspiring to other people! I am really looking forward for her speech and maybe I am going to get a chance to talk to her in person or just shake her hand:-D

So be “tensed” how Jane Goodall was like!

Take care

L.

Traditional China - Lost and Found!

After I was a little frustrated about the visiting to "Yu-Garden" last Friday, my family decided to have a trip to one of the nearby so called "water-towns". So in the morning we went to "Zhujiaojia", the "Venice of Shanghai". Even though Venice is just a tinylittle bit different they have actually a bridge at "Zhujiaojia" that looks like the small version of the "Rialto" in Venice. But enough of this.
As we arrived we went to a shop where a chinese guy was selling Jazz-CDs for about two Euros. My hostmum loooves Jazz so we spend quite a lot time there. The Owner of the place could not speak English, French or any other language he was selling but he had a GREAT sellection of music. I bought three CDs: "Music&Me" by Micheal Jackson (it is crazy when you you hear the young-Michaels voice), a Elvis Costello and some Tibetian Jazz-Electronic CD which sounds sooo strange that it is actually really good and it has sound that is so unusual to here that you can not stop listening to it!

But this CD-shop was not the only highlight in the water-town. Event though it was boiling hot we wandered around the small, narrow streets and next to the channels. Suprisingly the village was not fully of tourist or lets say it were not so many of them that you would be really enoyed. There were several restaurants and teahouses right next to the channel that it was hard to make a decision where to go for lunch! All those places looked so fantastic peacefull. All shops where you could buy traditional paintings, instruments and other small and cheap stuff where located in up to 500 years old buildings. With the white painted walls and the black roofs they looked really authentic. Another highlight of the tour was the house, or better to say the estate of the former richest person in the village Ma Wen Qing. The compound of his estate was huge and I every corner I found something special or interesting. One of these special things was an huuge stone in the shape of a horse. The families name "Ma" means horse. Or in the middle of a small bamboo-forest there where a table with for seats made of stone. In those moments I felt more freedom and peace then you usually get in Shanghai. Nad maybe that was the mytic about this place. For me it was a welcomed change of scenery.

The most exciting thing in "Zhujiaojia" is the boat ride. You can pay a guy for taking you on a small trips through the channels and onto a small lake. From the waterfront it is ways more interesting to see the traditional village. Me and my hostfamily really enjoyed the time on the Chinese "gondola". I felt very satisfied to see that China is not just full of commerce and huge skyscrapers, even though I indeed love those sides of my living in Shanghai.
That trip was a good end for the weekend and gave me fresh power for the new week...though this fresh power was completly distroyed by the heat that I have to live with in SH! At 8 pm. it was still 31 °C hot, no wait...boooiling! It is so crazy to have such temperatures when theres constantly bad weather in Hamburg. Hopefully its going to be a little colder till Wednesday because this will be my "moving-day".

AAAAND i got some more information about my new hostfamily. In this family there are living four persons: Mother (accountant), father (engineer), daughter (15) and their grandmother (very very old!). I am not quite shure if I am soo happy with that but it will be definitly a huge experience for me:-)
This Wednesday also represents the start of the "Mid Autumn Festival" but about that more tomorrow;-)

Hope you are enjoying my reports!
Take care wherever you guys are in the world.
L.