Adam’s Not Here

I picked up the keys for my new place this evening and I’ll be moving in tomorrow. It’s a two-bedroom place that I’ll be sharing with a Chinese girl who works as a legal consultant for an American law firm. She’s quite friendly and when she is not at work is usually studying for the Chinese equivalent of the Bar exam. Hopefully her studious nature will inspire me to really get cracking on my research. Her English is quite excellent, which is unfortunate in a way, as I am sure that will be the language we will converse in. Maybe I can get her to use Chinese with me, although she’ll have to be patient enough to repeat everything slowly and at least 10 times….

It’s exciting to be moving into a new area. It’s still downtown, but in an area that I am not as familiar with. It’s in Jing’an district, which is a little more upscale than where I am now. There are a fair bit of foreigners in the general area, but it’s more working folk and less tourists. It will be fun to get out and explore the streets, hopefully I’ll be able to find some nice restaurants.

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Date: 05/28/2007Views: 816

I took the bus to get home after picking up the key to the new place. I found and empty seat near the rear door and sat down. When I sat down I noticed a few people looking at me, and two girls in particular were really looking me over. You don’t have to be here for too long for your ego to get inflated, so I just figured they were checking me out and didn’t think much of it. After about 5 minutes, with just a few blocks to go until my stop, a girl leaned over to me as she walked up to the front of the bus. “Excuse me…. Be careful….,” she said as she pointed to the window beside me. Rice was splattered all over the window, and all around the bars and floor around and behind my seat. I couldn’t tell if someone had thrown up or just spilled a container of rice. Either way it wasn’t pretty. The bus was pretty dark so I hadn’t even noticed, which was weird considering how obvious it was after it was pointed out to me. I guess I am turning a little Chinese or something - don’t want to lose face - since I continued sitting in the seat until we got to my stop. Although, I guess it’s pretty hard to salvage any face from that situation. Oh well, I had to do laundry anyway.

The original goal for my time here this summer had been to try and find a planning internship. Not only would this fulfill a requirement for my program, it would allow me to come back here while getting some real work experience that would hopefully get my foot in the door towards finding a real job here after graduation. However, as I found during my search, not a lot of places take on foreign interns here. As far as I could tell, most firms only hire foreigners with lots of experience, and usually for managerial type positions. I suppose the logic is that a Chinese person will work for a lot less than a foreigner (for anywhere from 1/2 to 1/6 as much, depending on the position), so at the entry level why pay more for the same work? In China, there seems to be a real dearth of experienced people with management level qualifications, so at this point it’s worth it to pay the big bucks for foreign staff. So anyway, the shake out from all of this was that I was unable to find a position. Since my backup plan came through, I headed over here to do research instead. At the last minute, just a few days before I flew out, I got word that a local firm was willing to take me on as an unpaid intern. As my grant was already going to cover my expenses, I decided to take the position and hopefully get some good work experience.

They call themselves a Canadian company because they are registered in Canada. The founder is Chinese and he and some of the senior people were educated and have some work experience in Canada. However, all the staff is Chinese and the language spoken in the office is Chinese and their headquarters is Shanghai. As far as I can tell, this is pretty much a Chinese company trying to brand themselves as Canadian. This isn’t so unusual over in China, as being a foreign company gives you some real cachet.

I arrived at their office in Pudong last Monday at 9:30 AM, not really knowing what to expect. And as it turned out, neither did they. From the beginning, it was obvious that they really didn’t know what to do with me. I spent most of the first day just waiting to talk to someone, it was almost 4 PM by the time I was given any work. The work I was given seemed ok at first, but as I presented my results, it quickly became apparent that what I had done had no bearing on the project and they had already decided what they were going to do. By the end of the second day I had had it. Most of the time I spent there was wasted waiting around. It didn’t take long for me to see that what little work I was being given was mostly just busy work to try and keep my happy. I felt silly leaving so soon, but I was already going numb after two days.

On the weekend I met up with Pei, the guy that had put me in touch with this company. We had a really great conversation over drinks and dinner and he was able to share a lot of his insight into the design and development industries over here. Pei confirmed my feelings about the difficulty of starting off here as a fresh graduate, in terms of finding good work and a reasonable salary. He said that having even just one or two years of experience in the West before coming over to China makes a world of difference. I had been feeling a bit down after my short-lived work experience and now facing the difficult task of getting my research going, but Pei seems pretty intent on helping me plug into things here.

A couple of quick links today, before I get my act together and put up another post.

How to write a China article. In a word - brilliant.

Ben’s Blog. Have you ever wondered what it’s like to work as a “little brother” for 24 cents an hour in a Chinese hair salon? I know I have (honest!), and this American guy has decided to make a 1 month experiment of doing just that. He’s nearing the end now, and his blog has proved to be quite a well written and insightful chronicle.

I’ve been in Shanghai for 5 days now, and I think I’ve finally beat the jet lag. I’ve been staying with my good friend Mason, at the same place I lived last summer and just getting settled in so far. I was not too sure what to expect coming back. With the pace of change over here, I thought I might come back to find a whole new city after 9 months. But things haven’t changed all that much, at least in the downtown areas where I live and hang out. The area where I lived for the first 9 months when I was here last time has been all torn down and is under construction with a new metro line running through it. Beyond the physical landscape, things definitely have not changed. Getting to the bank to change money, getting my phone to work properly, or registering at the police station can still be all day affairs. I can stand at the counter of a restaurant chain, about to place my order, and someone will still barge in front of me, and hand their money to the cashier and place their order, as if I don’t exist. And when asking for directions, or the location of a certain store, people will still tell you to try walking in some random direction for a while, even though they have no idea what your talking about. I have spent enough time living here, that these things don’t really bother me any more. I almost finding it endearing, like I’ve missed the zaniness that comes with Shanghai. Like the other day, walking by a hair salon to see 20 male and female staff standing in rows, engaged in some sort of team building synchronized dancing routine in front of their store in the middle of the afternoon. It’s good to be back to my 2nd home.

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Date: 05/17/2007Views: 509

When I came back to Canada last year, I found that I had lost about 13 pounds during my time in Asia. I knew I had lost some weight, but was surprised when I found out how much. Luckily, by being back in Residence and eating at Fung, I was able to put it all back on, plus a few pounds more. Now that I am back here, I am curious to see what’ll happen with all of that. Despite the fact that the food is pretty good here, I am sure I’ll be missing the hassle free nature of Fung by August. The other day I went back to my favourite dumpling shop and was delighted to find that the main woman behind the counter remembered me. She remembered that I was from Canada and how I used to come all the time last summer. It felt really good to be remembered like that, and even better to be eating their fantastic xialongbaos (steamed soupy pork dumplings) again. Through everything, I’ve found my Chinese is pretty much where I left it last year, which is a big relief. I still have a long way to go with it, but at least I am able to pick up where I left off.

So I am in the midst of wrapping everything up here in Toronto before heading off. Lots of packing, finishing off bits of work, seeing people, etc. This is now my third time having to uproot myself and it’s a familiar mix of emotions. It gets a little easier each time, but it always tough leaving people behind. It’s also rather sad to be leaving right when everything has started blooming and the city comes alive after hibernating through winter.

However, if its life and energy I’m after, I’ll find no shortage of it in Shanghai. I am very excited for my second tour, especially since it looks like I will have interesting work to do. The main thrust of my 3 month visit is to do research towards my current issues paper (CIP), a quasi-thesis that I will have to do next year. I’ve been lucky enough to get a travel grant from U of T, so my costs will be covered and I can focus on my work. I had bought my plane ticket back in March because I came across a deal that was too good to pass up. As time marched on and my search for a paid internship continued to fail in yielding any results, I was beginning to feel some trepidation at the prospect of having to teach English again to support myself. So the grant definitely brought about some relief.

For my research, I have general topic, which is to examine the role that foreigner architects and planners have played in the development of Shanghai since the 1990s. I found myself thinking about this kind of thing when I lived in Shanghai last year. What struck me when I was there was that I liked the older style of housing better, where people lived in mid-rise buildings with interior courtyards. I thought it was unfortunate that all the new housing developments were in the vein of the monolithic high-rise with poorly defined and under-utilized public space at it’s base. From what I saw, these new complexes seemed pretty dead compared to the old courtyard style. I lived in these old mid-rise style complexes when I was there, and what I loved was how people would just be sitting in lawn chairs in the little lanes and courtyards all day long. Playing cards, drinking beer, chatting or whatever, there seemed to be a real sense of community. I wonder if they’re losing that with this new style.

So that’s the plan for right now. Although, step number one upon arrival is to get some sleep and find a place to live.