A Busy Weekend!

I haven't posted for a few days: it's been a very busy weekend and I needed until now to catch up on the sleep!

On thursday I had dinner with a few people in Shanghai, which transformed into a rather late excursion to the before-mentioned Bonbons and a fairly late (early) return home. Friday was my last day at the company, so it was fortunatly rather light on the work front - trying to get some last bits of data and looking around the place a final time.

In the afternoon Prof. Ma returned me to Puxi via his daughters work, they invited me to dinner on Sunday chez Ma, whch is very close to the university - with the promise of Baijiu, the chinese national spirit.

Saturday was the real beginning: went into town to meet a friend for breakfast, and had my first experience of People's Square as a lone foreigner - totally different! I'd heard about this scam where a group of young female students 'befriend' you saying they want to practice their english, then take you to some teahouse where you end up getting charged a massivly inflated bill for a few cups of tea - as well as reading it on the internet, my friend Neil warned me about it: he'd been scammed for 400 RMB on the first day (they tried to take 1000!).

It hadn't happened to me yet but I wasn't surprised, I obviously don't look like the kind of guy that would fall for a scam. Or perhaps I do. Within 20 minutes of arriving (got in half an hour early due to mistiming busses!) it'd been tried on me twice. It really is very cleaver, but of course forwarned is forarmed and I got rid of them. When I came back hours later one pair were still there - apparently they'd 'got lost' and asked me for some directions!

That afternoon (to my eternal shame I forgot my camera for the whole weekend so have no photos of any of this) I met up with more friends - James and Ziyang from my course in Cambridge and a few of their friends, and went to KTV! KTV is karioke, but its massivly popular here, occupying about the same cultural space as going out for drinks. You get a room with the karioke stuff, order foor and drinks, and sing away to each other for several hour, and its as much fun as it sounds, although the only english songs they have are dodgy britney covers and the omnipresent Backstreet Boys (the supermarket near where I lived in Pudong played the BB greatest hits album on loop - but frustratingly didn't have a dance floor!).

Afterwards we went to a Guangzhou restaurent (Guangzhou (formerly Canton) is in the south of China near Hong Kong, and its people are famous for eating almot anything. There was a recent field mouse epidemic in central china where 2,000,000,000 field mice chomped through thousands of acres of cropland, but the farmers were able to make up their losses by exporting live mice to Guangzhou instead). We ate donkey and rabbit among other things and it was all rather tasty!

Afterwards I nipped briefly home to change and shower and make a rapid turnaround, before heading back into town to visit Attica, one of Shanghai's most famous scenes. It's on the roof of one of the buildings of the Bund (by this stage the loss of a camera was really getting to me!) and priced accordingly. It had two really nice rooms and a lovely outdoor bar area, and the clientelle were slightly more resectable than those in bonbons. We knew a few people there (someone in the Taiwanese mafia allegedly?!) and chatted and danced until about 4am. Clubbing here seems much less down-all-you-can-and-act-stupid oriented, although that may be because the people who I go out with don't drink that much, but it's actually much more fun and much less expensive. We also met lots more people, my Shanghai circle is growing!

Since we left at 4.30am and dragonboating starts at 8, I'd made the prior decision not to return home, and brought a bag with me to the club. The one weakness of Attica is that the cloakroom ONLY takes coats - we argued this one for a bit, and despite my bag containing nothing valuble the assisstant wouldn't give in, luckily it wasn't a bulky sports bag or anything and despite looking slightly metro, it wasn't so bad.

Crossed the city early in the morning and saw some interesting sights (camera loss now chaffing). McDonalds is open 24/7 near the bund, but the only people actually eating were a few groups of foreign lads clearly just out of a club too. However, most of the tables were occupied by sleeping locals - literally just head down on the tables like those funny mushroom people in Voyage of the Dawn Treader! Another open square was covered in homeless - so many here.

The subway is shut from 10.30pm - 6am which really makes me appreciate London's 1.00am-ish, although I wish more cities would follow NY's 24h example! Got to the DB pickup at about 6.45 and dozed by a wall for a bit until 8, then dozed a bit more on the coach. We had about 40 people this week: enough for two boats and races!

It was by far the hottest day so far and with no cloud cover. I borrowed some sun cream but it wasn't as good as my factor 40 stuff and rapidly washed off in the spashing. Despite the races being great fun, I knew it was just a matter of time until the strawberry look arrived!

I was meeting up with some more friends afterwards to explore Shanghai further and we popped down to a temple called Yu Yuan Temple, a former temple of Taoism and now a shopping mall and tourist area (the buildings are preserved and it's very pretty), with a little bit of temple left and some god statues that you can go and bow to if you're into that stuff (I and my guides of course were) and we were there for a while as the morning's sun turned into a heavy downpour outside.

We wondered the backstreets of Shanghai towards the bund and stopped for tea in a teashop (a very reasonable 2 RMB / cup, although my guides, who don't speak the loca Shanghai dialect, could only point and gesture, a great equalising experience!), and came to the far end of the bund. Got a ferry across (another 2 RMB!) and wandered Pudong breifly before I had to head back to my apartment for that night's dinner!

Evening came and I was picked up by the professor and headed to his. We had lots and lots of dishes (off the top of my head; peanut chicken, steamed fish, braised beef, a kind of local shellfish, several vegetables, fruit, left VERY full!) all of which were most tasty, and the promised maotai - the best brand of baijiu. It is about 56% alcohol, but much tastier than vodka, and between us I and the professor had the better part of a (small!) bottle. At this stage I was slightly concerned about how I would get home, but fortunatly Mrs. Ma (also a teacher at Shanghai Daxue) said she'd take me home!

Haven't been up to much besides work since, except to say that:

++=

Real* Tea! I was like a heroin addict drinking this. And yes, despite being packaged in the UK, all the ingredients are individually chinese!

Another rule

another rule to add to the clothing post from last week:

9. Unless you have at least 5 years chopstick experience, do NOT wear good clothes to restaurents focusing on noodles, hot pot, or any soup-based dishes

Not worth the paper?

We've all heard the story about the dollar bill: how the treasury would love to change to coins but the population are just too attached to the old greenback. Coins can last for 30 years, while most notes circulate for about 18 months before needing to be reissued, leading to millions a year in reprinting costs. In the UK the smallest note is £5, worth about ten times as much, and the euro goes further with EU 10 as its smallest note denomination.

Yet again, the Chinese weren't to be beaten. Into my possession yesterday came a 1 Jiao note. There are 10 Jiao in one RMB, and 15 RMB is about £1, so three of these notes are worth about 2p.


To be fair, I don't think they circulate very rapidly anymore... (this one is from 1980!)


And the designers of movie boxes over here perhaps still have something to learn about choosing their reviewers...

A Linguistic Stu

OK this resolution of a long-running problem is totally worth its own blog entry.

Ever since I've been here (and in fact, before), I've been sure I've heard Chinese people say a word or words in conversation that sounds very like a particularly familiar greeting used amoung certain ethnic minorities in the UK.

Every time I asked a Chinese speaker, they stared at me blankly (even the bilingual ones), and my attempts to get students over here to stop mid-sentence when I heard it were equally unsuccessful.

I gave up, thinking I must be paranoid. However, the first question Seigo and Jono asked on their recent visit was, sure enough, what does *that word* mean here?!

Well today after a particularly heavy meeting session hearing it many times, I finally took my problem to the internet (and this took guts!). Surprisingly enough, the very first entry resolved my problem - apparently we weren't the first to notice it.

http://eastweststation.com/blog/2007/04/30/nigger-niggernei-ge-nei-ge/

Two nights in Shanghai

This weekend was fairly busy, and I'm finally getting round to writing an update about it. On thursday and friday night Seigo and Jono were in Shanghai on their massive world tour from Moscow to Thailand. Thursday, being a work night, we went out for a respectable meal at a restaurent in town and tried to order food from the confused waitress in rubbish phrasebook Chinese (she didn't seem to understand any of the CHinese I'd learn over the past three weeks - or perhaps didn't want to tell me where she lived!). The meal was very interesting, a little boiling pot of broth which you put bits of meatinto to cook. No rice, no veg, no fuss, and some really nice sauces.


Friday night we'd heard about a club called bonbons that we were keen to check out. Entrance was RMB 120 (about £8), but once inside it was an open bar. This drew our attention pretty sharply, and after another pointy meal at a nearby joint we headed straight over.

The setup in the club was amazing. Once inside you swapped your ticket for a drink, then when you want another you swap your empty bottle or glass for the new one, saving them hassle with table cleaners! We got chatting to a Chinese guy who had had the forsight to make a reservation (for which you need a group of 10) and who had a table reserved in a quiet area. We joined them and played a few hours of entertaining drinking games, had a dance and chatted to some other people. Jono took lots of photos so in a few weeks I'm sure they'll be in my possession.

We left at about 4 and struggled to a nearby bar, but that was a bit quiet as well. We had to fight our way through crouds of child beggars and prostitutes (and also those cyncal flower sellers who approach couples and emotionally blackmail the man to buy a flower) to escape to the nearest taxis and get away.

Saturday day was mostly sleeping - I pity Jono and Sog who had to get a 12 o'clock ferry to head off to Japan. However, I'd arranged to go out with one of the expat lads from last week (Bonbons again), and another guy he'd befriended at the pub, plus a couple of girls we'd met later at a salsa bar. I invited the guy we'd met on Friday and all of the sudden we had a party! It started to rain as soon as I got off the underground, but Chinese are the true capitalists, within moments there were entrepreneurs selling umbrellas for 20 kwai. Again it was really good, the DJ had lots of competitions (trying to find the most beautiful woman in the club or something...) and we danced until very early in the morning.

After two all night bonanzas, Sunday was very relaxed. Me and a housemate had dinner at the local restaurent. It had about space for three tables and was basically in the middle of a maze field, but the food was very satisfying and inexpensive.

Shanghai Solar!

This one is going to be a little technical, my parents have asked for an update on my activities here inside work, so if you're not interested in physics, solar panels, or the physics of solar panels, you might as well skip it.

Last week started off mostly organisational, and I spent the first few days touring the factory working out how everything works and what gets done. The production line is manned about 16 hours a day (there are three work teams that rotate), but there are also teams of engineers, who are there to fix problems, manage, and I think also deal with clients and expriment and things.

So after a few days, I wanted to do something.There is a control room in the factory where all the cells get tested before being assembled onto the panels, and the room also has a few other testing devices. One of them tests reflectivity of a sample, and since it was available, I thought I'd use it. At each stage of the production there are a few breakages, so I used some of these from different stages to check how reflective they were. Most interestingly, one of the stages involves aving the cells sprayed with titanium dioxide to form an anti-reflective layer. If light hits bare silicon, a significant portion of the energy is reflected away because light travels so much more slowly inside it than it does in the air (this is roughly why you can see a faint reflection of yourself in glass windows, since not all of the light that bounces off your face passes straight through the window, a small amount bounces back. If you look at a window that doesn't have much light coming from the other side, eg. look outside at night, it's much easier to see this effect). It turns out that if you choose an intermediate layer perfectly and have the right (very thin) thickness, you can stop all light of a certain wavelength from being reflected, and significantly reduce reflection at other wavelengths. Glasses and camera lenses use this effect, camera lenses look a bit purpley because they block green reflectionmore-or-less totally, but only reduce the red and blue reflection (which are on either side of green). Red + blue = purple.

In the factory, this layer is currently applied by people with spray guns and they judge the thckness by the colour of the sample (because it changes the reflective properties, the colour also changes as the spray is applied. Some factories use a more advanced piece of kit - they're gettig one fitted here in december - that is more accurate and improves power output of the finished cells by about 10%). I wanted to see what the measured reflectivity was with a bit less spray than usual and a bit more than usual (and of course the normal amount as a control and no spray as another control). The other student engineers were keen to help - they seem not to have much to do in the factory and hadn't really thought about doing their own experiments.

I got some data last friday from one set of samples, and was planning to get lots more early this week. Unfortunatly, however, the machine has broken and I haven't been able to get more data. (It wasn't actually due to me! I think they were quite interested in my idea, last Thursday my professor told one of the students looking after me that he should do a similar experiment, 20 samples from each stage and measure the reflectivity, but being much more careful about getting samples from the same batch, etc, as a longer term experiment. So the machine was getting a lot of use and at somepoint seems to have given up! There's another component coming next week to fix it).

So this week I've been putting together a model of the reflective properties using excel (and a lot of notebook space! Both my pens ran out on the same day and it was surprisingly tough to obtain a new one!). It's a fairly simple model but without access to my notes from the last few years it's taken abit of time to get my brain back into gear, although quite fun to have a go. I've been able to find silicon's refractive index data on the internet (refractive index is hw fast light travels inside it compared to a vacuum, and has a lot of effect on its reflective/refractive properties. A pencil in a glass of water looks bent because water has a higher refractive index than air, so the light bends on entry). I've been trying to fit the model to the dat I got last week, although to be honest one set of samples is far too few to be considered scientific, so I'm going to collect more data as soon as the machine starts to work again.


The model with the anti-reflective layer is a bit more complicated because of various different reflections inside the layer itself that depend on the thickness in quite a complicated way and all interfere with one another. However, the model is quite good and I've now adjusted it to take account of silicon's low wavelength behaviour as well.

Yesterday I was also looking at the absorption of sunlight by solar cells. A good 95% or so of all solar panels are the basic silicon ones like the ones they make here. There is lots of innovation around the world about other types, but most are constrained by cost or still very young technology. Unfortunatly, the maximum possible efficiency (the proportion of incident solar radiation that gets turned into electricity) in a normal silicon cell is about 32%, and most real cells are lower - the ones they make here are about 16% efficient. This limit is due partly to the solar spectrum, much of which falls at wavelengths that are too long to excite the electrons inside the silicon, and also due to the way that electrons that are excited behave - a lot of their energy is converted into heat inside the cell. There are lots of ideas about how to improve this (such as using mirrors to concentrate the light, altering the spectrum using clever materials, or using thing other than silicon) and I've been studying a review paper on the topic, but at the moment these are all some way from being practical.


Next week I'll get more data and then see where to go from there, and then after that I'll be back in the lab as Shanghai University which will have finished its refurbishment and able to try out some new experiments!

ps. Whats happening with Russia? Getting snippets on the news but noone here knows how to translate it. I *would* check the news websites, but it seems anything with 'news' in the website is blocked here...

A Night Out...

Last night I had my first night out in Shanghai, with an American chap called Kenny and a few girls who, all of whom met on one of the Shanghai expat websites (I prmised myself I wasn't going to go out of my way to meet foreigners, and the promise lasted over two weeks, so I tried! Unfortunatly the students here just don't have the inclination or spending power to go into town at night, so I really had no choice).

We went to a pub that has an expat mixer event every Wednesday on the top floor and followed it with a salsa bar/club in the French Concession.

Lots of interesting things happened but I'm still digesting the experience, Seigo and Jono are in town for a few days from later today and then Kenny and I and a few others are going out again on Saturday, so expect a longer entry about in near future!

Weekend passed...

I'd been told that the Shanghai Museum of Science and Technology has a brilliant display of dinosaur bones ('Dragon Bones'!!), and it is at the end of our nearby bus route, and entry is free. So, last saturday we got up really early (10am) to go and explore.


Unfortunatly, some other people had had the same idea.


And some more...


And some more...


And some more.

So, we decided instead to go in to central Shanghai and visit The Shanghai Museum, full of Chinese historical relics and other goodies.

The Chinese have been minting coins for thousands of years, although some of the early ones aren't quite the shape you might expect...


For hundreds of years they were at the forfront of civisation, technologically and culturally, and possibly made the first circumnavigation of the globe years before Magellan. They certainly got as far as the UK - we found this model of my sister presumably defending the coast against them:


After we finished in the museum, we went for a wanderaround the city. My Chinese friend didn't quite understand my amusement at some of the road signs


We stopped for an afternoon coffee in this indiginous Chinese coffee shop chain not basing its branding on a well known American label:


And treated ourselves to an afternoon tea


(The English reads: "Taking afternoon tea is a unique custom which is said to have started in the early 19th Century". The Chinese calls it Afternoon red tea (they call Western tea red tea), but this was stuffed full of sugar, tasted of apricot, and meant to be drunk cold!)

Dressing in China

One of the most interesting things about Shanghai has been the weather. It's incredibly hot and humid, but very cloudy all the time and often rains. Consquently, many of the clothes I brought across have proved somewhere between unwieldy (jumpers) and totally unwearable (long jacket).

However, after two weeks here, I'm beginning to work out how to dress her, and present: Jack's Rules to Dressing in China:

1) THE GOLDEN RULE: Always wear a vest or t-shirt under your top layer. Chinese people CANNOT understand this and will tell you that you're wearing too much. They don't seem to appreciate quite how unattractive those sweatty patches make them look. (Daughter tells me baby powder works as a substitute, I haven't got round to experimenting yet)

2) It's incredibly hot here, so shower lots and drink LOTS. However, be aware that after either of these you will sweat lots for about 30 mins, so if possible time showers at least this long before you leave the house, and drink steadily - not in bursts. Also, drink water and not all the sugery 'ice tea' they have here, but buy local water - I accidentally bought an evian the other day, it costs 'usual' Eropean price - about 20* as much as local water!

3) (nice) shorts are acceptable, short sleeve shirts are not! It seems impossible to get long sleeve shirts here (although ironically the first thing I do is roll the sleeves up!), there are so many nice shirts at bargain prices even in the really nice shops, but they're all short sleeves! Such a shame.

4) According to my guide book, the best clothes to buy are the ones that say 'Made in China' on them. No self respecting Chinese would ever buy such an item, so all the fakes say 'Made in Italy' or 'Made in USA' on them, leaving the good quality factory extras in the bargain bin

5) Invest in shoes. (And know wither your European or US size - British sizes mea nothing here!) 'Sneakers' (trainers) are the popular choice for walking around the city in here, don't join the trend! Get some nice shoes or sandals. There are LOTS of choices and some very nice ones at every shop I've been in.

6) Foreigners have it easy. The locals automatically think what you're wear is fashionable - just stear clear of t-shirts and don't be afraid to smarten it up a notch for formalities (suit + tie goes down a treat)

7) Learn how to use washing machines and how to wash clothes by hand before you leave home. Ours has a wash functon, then we rinse by hand, then it spins, then we dry. I and a friend have both lost clothes that were blown of the drying line, so invest in pegs and be careful!

8) Remember the golden rule. Also carry an umbrella and don't trust the weather forcast! (This really goes for everywhere - does weather forcast ever have any point except filling up time on the news and giving us things to talk about?)




Lfe update: Dragonboating yesterday was great fun, my technique is improving and I ache a lot less today than last week. Spent saturday wondering the city centre, love it! Going clubbing with some expats on Wednesday, can't wait. New experiment to start in the lab today, should be fun.

Solar Panels

Today was my third day at the company and I’m beginning to find my way around the place. I’ve got a desk on the second floor, which is where the factory is located – they get little silicon slices in and put them through a load of processes to make them into solar cells. Then they all go downstairs to the assembly bay where they get stuck together in 6*12 arrays and have some protective layers put around them to turn them into solar panels. So far I’ve mostly been getting set up/familiarising myself and fiddling a bit, but I have a nice little experiment lined up for tomorrow which should be interesting.

My new apartment is shared between me and two other lads at the company, it’s not as nice as my ‘hotel’ at the university but it’s fun to have some roommates! Despite fears to the contrary, we have a western style toilet (a definite must) and a washing machine, and also a kitchen! Haven’t cooked anything yet but I may do soon… Work is 8.30 – 5.30, although lunch and dinner are free so it’s not so bad.

The downside is that it’s a little far away from everything – even the nearest metro station is a good bus journey away, and the supermarket is about 30 minutes walk. Not too bad during the week, but it’ll be a hassle this weekend when I want to look around – apparently there are various museums and other things worth looking at. Well, maybe...

My apartment is in a little ‘housing estate’, but its more of a satellite village, with its own stream, vegetable sellers, motorbike repairmen (motorbikes are about £99 and VERY popular here, all the lads carry their girlfriends around on the back) and several vegetable fields. We’re out early and back late so we haven’t got to meet the neighbours yet.

Here is a photo of me with some of the high up people in the company:

In other news, it turns out that Ghandi is very much alive and playing football for Malaysia in the current Asian cup. Unfortunately his leadership couldn’t save them from a 4-1 drubbing by the Chinese in the first game last night (which we, of course, watched at the flat). Possibly the cleanest, and least inspirational game I’ve ever seen.

Dragonboats!

Today I went Dragonboating! Woke up at 5.45 am to jump on a bus, then a metro, then another, then walk 2 miles, to get to the pickup place. My guardian, not wanting me to lose anything else, came along too to help me get there, and we arrived on the dot of 8 as the shuttle bus was about to leave.

Dragonboating is an ancient Chinese traditional sport with over two thousand years of history, but from the Shanghai team you wouldn't know it. Numbers weren't high (lots of people were put off by yesterday's weather), we had 14 people in all, two germans, an austrian, a hungarian, myself, three guys from the Phillipeans, a japanese man, and the remaining five actally natives. The team trains at the National Watersports Centre, where the Olympic rowing, sculling etc. teams train.For anyone keen to come along, its 50 RMB for a session (about 2 hours on the water, plus the bus ride there and back) and the bus leaves from 20 Shui Cheng Lu at 8am on a sunday, just outside the starbucks with the lawsons next door PAST THE CARREFOUR (there are in fact, unbelieveably, two starbucks within about 60 of each other, AND BOTH HAVE A LAWSONS NEXT DOOR!! This fact NEARLY spoiled my boating hopes!). Combine boating trips with olive oil and roquefort missions for extra points.


I confess that this picture is a fraud - it's from their practice a few weeks ago and I'm not in it. No-one had a camera today, I'll replace it as soon as I get one with me in it!

Initial impressions: they go slower than rowing boats, but you can't get your legs involved (your strongest muscles by some distance) so thats not too surprising. It's very tiring on the back becauseyou have to lean forward to row. TAKE SOMETHING TO SIT ON (ie. a towel), my bum is aching very much at the moment! Otherwise it was great fun, paddling about, we had a swim, and the people were awesome, very keen to do some more and they have a race in early September that I should be able to get involved with if I'm about.

I got back to campus at gone 2pm (after my first solo-trip on a Chinese bus: very gripping!) thoroughly satisfied with my morning and raring to go, so I decided to get a trip to the swimming pool together. Got a few other people organised and then went to collect my trunks which I'd left on my balcony to dry. Couldn't find them - at first I suspected a very odd underwear theif. Then I peaked over the balcony...


...


Seven floors down, on the roof of the reception, were my trunks and pool hat. cursed my bad luck and yesterdays storm. We had to cancel the swimming outing :(

Note to readers: Tomorrow I'm going to work with a company on the other side of the river here in Pudong district that manufactures Solar Cells. I'm in a dorm with three other workers thre and probably won't have regular internet access, so I'm afraid updates may be slightly fewer-and-farther-between for the next fortnight. Don't go away tho, I promise to save up all the stories that I'm not able to post for my triumphal return!

Thank God for Carrefour

Be beholden unto the golden glory of it:


Totally unobtainable in China until the genius of French engineering brings us Carrefour, a glorious bastion of cheese, fine wine and unsteamed bread. First TGV and now this - I've been humming La Marseillaise all the way home.

I love Carrefour! J'adore la France!



Later note: Being fair to China, it isn't all bad. Despite tasting slightly acidic, this 0.35kg bag of lychees set me back 2 RMB (12p)!

A Storm in Shanghai

My plan today was to go and buy some washing powder and get all my clothes freshly laundered, and also shop around for a few bits and pieces. The weather here had other plans.

We had a lovely lunch at 11.30 (people here do everything about 2 hours earlier than in the UK it seems) and returned for a rest before a town trip. However, shortly afterwards, the clouds started to bunch together and look pretty ominous:


Sure enough, before too long the skies opened, and its been tipping down ever since. Theres been a good deal of lightning - I just saw the most amazing forks of it, one after another (I guess it must be a lie about it never striking the same place twice) and the rain's looking pretty foul still.


My shopping trip is postponed.

The plot thickens...

As it turns out, my professor has a daughter. I worked out as much when I was in his car on the first day and noticed a few dolls in the back seat. It wasn't until a few days ago I found out she happens to be 22.

An early phone chat and a little preliminary research (rumours in the dept.!) turned up that she also happens to be beautiful, charming, speaks a handful of languages and has a wonderful oriental accent (perhaps less than surprisingly). Needless to say, she sounded way out of my league.

So, when my professor called me up on tuesday and asked if I'd like to go with her to the leaving party of a French student she knew from her exchange there, I jumped at the chance! My French is highly spurious (A grade... at GCSE!) but the promise of european food (cheese, beer, wine!), a beautiful daughter and some international students was too good to miss!

The party was at an apartment near to people's square, a very plush affair with plasma tv, great view, and several rooms - very Canary Wharf. The international students were two very charming French couples (one below, our host is in the middle), a lovely Japanese girl, four very squeeky Koreans (also below), and the class chinese teacher (they all took chinese lessons together, and were omore or less at my standard, so we chatted bemusedly in our pigeon while the teacher and the daughter corrected our grammer!).

My first beer in China was, ironically, budweiser, but it still tasted good. Had lots of food and chatted to a long time to one of the French guys who's working in a nearby Chinese city for another month and a alf, who has invited daughter and myself to go and stay one weekend if we're free, which sounds awesome.

Afterwards the two of us headed over to see the Bund by night, were mobbed by beggers and kite salespeople, drank coconut juice and took blurry photos. Even by night the C19th British arcitecture looks drab, but the East side of the river is amazing in all the light. She has let on to me that her father plans to invite me to dinner one night - I've promised to act surprised - for a Chinese feast and some real Baijiu (Chinese spirit. Apparently her father is quite a drinker!). Can't wait!



Back row: Korean, Me, Daughter, Korean Korean
Front row: Host, Korean, Host's boyfriend (who has invited us to stay)



Beautiful people!

Bliss

Today has been blissful. Following the savage defeat I inflicted on the mosquito hordes at The Battle of the Quick Clap last night, I have actually woken up with NO NEW BITES!

Mosquitos here are much more savage than those in England, and its a lie that they only go for people with B-type blood, I'm O+ and I've been bitten about 25 times since I got here. I've erected a great mosquito wall of China around my dorm to keep more out

Some photos

Some photos from the last few days that entertained me...



Shanghai has always been the backbone of the Chinese economy and it's not hard to see why. Wondering the streets you'll see countless examples of Shanghainese ingenuity, like ths clip above - this enterprising Chinese has struck upon the idea of a book and grocery shop - now THATS synergy!



More diversification here - but don't I recognise this popular Chinese shirt and suit brandname from somewhere else...?



After travelling half way round the World I was more than surprised when I wondered into the canteen to discover that it was in fact Trinity College halls. A later, more through investigation revealed my early mistake.

(This one came out a bit dark alas)


Now swimming is a big hobby of mine (in fact any water sports really), so I was naturally overjoyed when I found out that my campus has a swimming pool on it, 8 RMB (50p!) an hour after a 'health check' ("Are you healthy?" "Yes" "Here's your health card, that's 5 RMB"), so I brought my swimming shorts from home specially.



Perhaps I'm a slightly conservative dresser in the water, but I hadn't forseen this being a problem. However, the old Chinese lady at the desk had different ideas. She laughed her head off when she saw them - "tai da le! tai da le!" - apparently the chinese are much less repressed in the water, and they wouldn't let me in until I bought a pair of trunks 'chinese style' (for another 30 RMB!), and although it thankfully hasn't come out too well in the photo they leave NOTHING to the imagination...

Early day faux-pas

I was told that there was almost nothing I could do that would upset the Shanghaiese. True to form, here are the first few faux-pas I've racked up in three days:

• Don't get into a taxi on the left hand side. Remember, like the rest of the world, Shanghai people drive on the right so you might get hit. (In fact they seem to drive on every side) And your driver will get irate
• When having a meal with others with lots of dishes, don't pick any of the dishes up
• Don't hang your umbrella on the seat infront of you on a bus
• Don't growl friendly-ly at a little kid who points at you in the street
• On Nanjing Road, there are people who collect empty plastic bottles from bins since they can sell them to recycling companies (big thumbs up, by the way) for a bitof money. If you have an empty bottle, don't give it to them directly and DON'T look at them. Instead put it nearby where they can get it themselves or they might think you're gloating (does anyone else thing this is so the wrong way round?!)
• On a similar vein, don't give fen (very small denomination, 15 fen is about a penny) to beggers. Wish I got a photo of the begger moaning at me! I didn't realise quite how worthless they were, my minder had to gve him a yuan to get him to go away!
• NEVER NEVER NEVER suggest to a visiting expert from the US who is chairman of one of the councils over here during a presentation that a 2 million tonne cut in carbon emissions (equivalent to the CO2 emissions of Scotland) from a single 1-kW solar panal might be unfesable (you could've trned the air conditioning off and we'd still have been cool for days...)
  

Shanghai

finance vs. fashion, finance vs. fashion... oh dear!

So I've been a bit lame about updating this blog. I'm putting it down to not being able to view it (hanks PRC) although at least I can get the BBC, contrary to my expectations!

I arrived a couple of days ago, on the 30th. Have so much to write about. settling in, red stamps, money counters, hot weather, maglevs etc.

Most exciting (!!) tho was today. The last couple of days have been mostly settling in and desperatly trying to relearn the year of chinese lessons that have drifted over exam term. Love the almost total immersion (have been helped out greatly by a grad student here, Tang, who is also using the chance to polish his english, admittedly much much MUCH better than my chinese at the moment!).

Today, we went to pay my tuition fees, and i lost my wallet on the bus! this has never happened to me before, could it happen at less convenient time?! Luckily, Eurotrip buff that I am, I had all my not insignificant stash of renminbi in a pouch around my neck under my shirt. however, it had my HSBC card AND my barclaycard inside (yes, it sounds silly in retrospect to me to), as well as a few other bits and bobs and $5 USD that i was going to use to buy a beer in moscow airport on the way home (damn barbarians don't even accept euros yet, let alone the queen's silver).

Well, there's nothing like deseratly needing money from a uk account that you dont have the debit card to any longer to catalyse a rapid study in international money transfer methods, and calling the uk from abroad. HSBC china weren't very helpful (at the risk of being condescending, i don't think they've got the conceptof free banking over here just yet. as soon as they heard that i didn't have the account plus - "VIP account" as they called it - they didn't really want to know). Luckily mother has just had a rather large tax rebate so was able not only to cancel the cards for me from the uk, but also send an emergency £300 across via western union until the replacement debit card arrives. They have my maximum regard - money arrived in about 5 minutes, which was longer than it took for the queue in China Agricultural Bank to clear, and they are also great incidentally, great transfer rate, wish I'd done my cash there the other day, would've got about RMB 150 more!

Anyway, since we were in town anyway, we went formy first tour. We saw lots of tall buildings in funny shapes, big rivers, and drab C19 british bomb shelters. Went to browse a few malls, can't wait to go back with a bit more ready cash, tho the prices certainly weren't bad and the shop assistants very friendly! they had suits for GBP 30ish, and some very nice polo shirts for about a tenner. Only thing that held me back from the suit was I heard you can get some very good tailored ones for not much more.

Of course the morning's excitment had left me with a critical decision to make. I could either risk becoming a victim of financial crime again or else do the unthinkable and commit the worst crime of fashion... (see above i think - does anyone know how to put them at the bottom?)