We're Back

Thanks to our in-house computor wizard we have regained access to our blog site. It seems that big brother "C" feels that unedited access to blogs is not healthy for young minds so has blocked access to all off shore blog sites. I am not sure if they have even read my blog so I guess I can't take it too personal. I have probably put a few censors to sleep over the last ten months.

Glad to be back as this will be the only way I will remember what the heck we have done over the last fifteen months. (Censors take notice: I avoided the hell word)

We have been busy so I will just give you a quick recap. We made it safely back from Shanghai. We were successful in obtaining our visas for Russia and Mongolia. Tickets and travel arrangements have been finalized for our return to Canada. Completed our last class on Friday night with a little administration work left for next week. Had many long lunches and a few dinners with friends. Gave a boring presentation entitled "Growing Old in Canada: 6 Decades of Change", not a big turnout. Did a little local sight seeing during the "Dragon Boat Festival" holiday. Had planned to go to Beijing but opted to save some money and stay local. Introduced our Chinese friends to the concept of "brunch". It may catch on.

We will leave for Beijing next Saturday and then two days later leave for Mongolia and home. Will hopefully keep you all enthralled with our newest adventures as we proceed around the world.

Stay tuned for the bestest news yet along with pictures.

Shanghai, The Old and the New

The history of Shanghai goes back to the 10th Century when it began life as a small market town. It became a home to 250,000 refugees when a sudden feudal war broke out in Kafeng, one of the seven ancient capitals of China. Over the next 10 centuries it continued to grow in stature, as a cotton and textile producing area, as well as due to it's location at the mouth of the Yangstze River. Trade between China and Europe became brisk with Shanghai playing host to the British, Americans, Germans and French. The growth of the cotton industry in 19 Century Europe and the Americas slowly destroyed the cotton industry in Shanghai and its stature started to wane. During the Sino-Japanese war over the Korean Peninsula in 1894, the Japanese became the controlling partner in Shanghai and began to build factories to take advantage of the cheap labour force that had relocated to Shanghai due to the war. Japan was soon followed by the rest of the western world and thus the industrial power house that is Shanghai was born. 

We woke up Saturday to a sunny and comfortable morning and a lovely Chinese/Western breakfast. Our plans were first to head over to the Pudong side of the river and explore all those shiny new buildings. We were to take a shuttle train that travelled between the two riverbanks in a tunnel under the river located only a block from our hotel.   We arrived to find it closed due to construction. Plan B had us take a stroll down E. Nanjing St. to gawk at the fancy shops and find our way to the Peoples Park.  We arrived about 10:30 to find the park just starting to fill up. There are two subway stops located in the park and there was a continuous line of people exiting out into the park.  It was a little like the line of ants you see marching from their nests, all heading in the same direction and following the ant in front.  We explored the park and headed over to the Shanghai Museum or what looked like a museum.  Whoa, no crowds. Excellent. We quickly jumped into line, whoa, tickets on sale for half price, whoa, can it get any better?  We followed the crowd inside.  Whoa, wrong museum.  We found ourselves in the Shanghai Museum of Architecture.  Oh well, I really wanted to go there anyway.  Shanghai has some of the most stunning buildings I have ever seen. It was nice to be able to see them all in one place. 

 The park was getting busy so we took the plunge down into the subway for a quick two stop run across the river to Pudong.  We exited out into the sunlight to find ourselves surrounded by 8ft. high steel construction walls on all sides. It seemed like the entire Pudong was under construction.  Following the crowd along narrow walkways we eventually found an area that was not under construction and provided a fabulous view of the Pudong landscape of award winning architecture. We also had our second "sea of humanity" experience.  It seemed like the entire population of Shanghai was headed to one of the architectural wonders located in the Pudong.  It  is a huge tri-pod shaped tower called the "Pearl".  It is home to a Shanghai television station and a tourist event much like the Empire State Building, with the most convoluted ticketing system ever invented.  There were over 10 different tickets that you could purchase with a myriad of options.  I just wanted to go to the top, but you can't just go to the top, you have to visit a bunch of other stuff and pay for it.  There was a massive lineup just to get into another massive line up that got you to another lineup for tickets. Nah! We decided just to wander around the Pudong and enjoy it from the ground.  As we made our way away from the architectural wonder, the crowds started to thin our til it seemed like it was just Nonie and I. The rest of the Pudong area was deserted.  

Our biggest challenge was trying to find our way around all those damn construction fences. The Chinese seem to have a huge surplus and they are not afraid to use them.  Everywhere we wanted to go was blocked and involved an extra 500 metres of trekking around these fences, just so we could travel 100 metres.  We did stumble across a cute little park with it own lake or that's what the sign called it. It was really just a glorified pond but at least it did not have any construction fencing.  By now we had consumed much water and a bathroom break was becoming imminent.  I spotted a nearby McDonald's sign, always a home of clean washrooms, so we headed over that way.  Aaaagh, only to find those damn construction fences were keeping us from that lovely porcelain.  After much cursing we backtracked down this alley and through a construction site to finally arrive.  Ahhhh!  We took advantage of the break and had a large  fry and a couple of cold Cokes.  

After a little more wandering around and more stunning architecture we had had enough and we waded back into the "Sea of Humanity" for a return subway trip home and supper.  We took a few moments back at the hotel for a rest then a quiet dinner in the hotel dining room complete with a cute Chinglish menu and pseudo Western food such as the ever popular spaghetti with tomato soup sauce.   After dinner and a half bottle of fine Chinese wine under our belt, we again waded out into the Bund to try and find the river cruise dock for a nice evening cruise around the Pudong.   We found it not as busy as Friday night.  We  were not pushed along so much as led along.  We made the assumption that the crowd knew where they were going and went with the flow.  We were correct as we eventually reached a temporary pedestrian bridge that took us across the barricaded street to small chunk of the riverbank that was not under construction and was left for the tourists to jam themselves into. And jammed we were.  We eventually found an small area that allowed us a clear unobstructed view of the lights of Pudong and the effort was worth it.  It was quite a show.  We watched a video of a 35 story high butterfly unfolding it's wings and taking flight.  Took my breath away.  

It was now just about 8:00 and the crowd actually seemed to be thinning out.  We wandered around looking at the various boat options for river cruises and after careful consideration, did not find any that looked seaworthy enough for us to risk our lives on.  All the really nice ones seemed to be docking somewhere else.  It had been spitting rain on and off, so it was time  to go home for a wee drink from the last half of the bottle of wine  and some napping in front of the ever present English news channels that seem to populate Chinese cable.  But luck was with us and we found one Channel playing an English movie with Chinese subtitles. 

Tomorrow we are headed for a breakfast of Starbucks muffins and a Cafe American.  Ahh! Can it get any better?

Shanghai Baby

As we walked the streets we were greeted everywhere by a "sea of humanity". Over the years, I have heard or read this phrase on dozens of occasions and always thought I had an inkling of what the phrase meant. I was wrong, at least until last Friday night on the Bund in Shanghai. We arrived at Pudong/Shanghai International Airport on Friday in the early afternoon. The waiting areas seemed abandoned as we exited the plane and made our way to the luggage area. We found ourselves the only passengers in a massive hall where we were greeted by eight huge, empty carousels. At that moment, I casually thought to myself that I had expected Shanghai would be busier than this. Our luggage arrived quickly and we made our way through the airport to the MagLev Train station.

The MagLev would shuttle us to the closest subway station. We virtually had an entire car to ourselves. We quickly got up to speed. Did I mention that the MagLev reaches a top speed of 450 kph? I took a moment to send a high speed, 450 kph text to our colleagues in Harbin. As we sped past cars on the adjacent freeway, they seemed to be going backwards. As quickly as the train got up to speed it slowed down and we arrived at the subway stop in under 8 minutes. The subway car was nearly empty and we were able to get seats. We had three stops to reach the one nearest our hotel. At the next stop we found that station a little busier but the last stop before ours was very crowded and our car quickly filled to capacity. As we neared our stop we fought our way to the door in preparation to disembark. As the car rolled to a halt and the doors opened, we were greeted by a mass of people anxious to board the car with no time or patience to let people off. I know now how a salmon feels trying to swim up stream. I grabbed Nonie and we pushed our way through the crowd. It seemed like all the riders in all the cars were leaving at this stop. We just let ourselves be pushed along trusting the crowd knew where they were going and would deliver us to an exit. With memories of having Nonie's purse pickpocketed as we departed a subway station in London, we clutched our belongings securely as we flowed through the station.

We were eventually spit out onto East Nanjing St., a busy pedestrian shopping street in central Shanghai. It took us a few minutes to get oriented and find the correct direction to our hotel, about a ten minute walk away. We took a few hours to relax in our room before heading out to see the sights.

Our hotel was only half a block up from the Bund. The Bund is a street/quasi park that runs along the Huangpu River and stares across to the Pudong District of Shanghai. The Bund was the Wall Street of old Shanghai with most of the buildings built in the 1930's and where fortunes of the robber barons were made and lost. Across the river is the Pudong New Area. The area did not exist eleven years ago and is now home to some of the world's most stunning and possibly most gaudy architecture. The panorama that you see behind Nonie and I is only a small part of the view and has only existed since about 1997 and later.

We found the Bund completely dug up and under construction. A eight foot wall had been erected between the sidewalk and the street and the river. We could barely see the skyline of Pudong over the fence. We turned right, looking to find a break in the construction so we could cross the street and reach the riverbank for a clearer view. The complete renovation of the riverside along the Bund had been started about two weeks before we arrived. It is scheduled to be complete in time for the 2010 World Exposition that will be held in Shanghai next May 1, exactly a year from the day we arrived in Shanghai.

We eventually found our way to the extreme end of the Bund where we found a hotel with a nice and virtually empty deck overlooking the river and Pudong. We grabbed a table, ordered a drink and prepared to watch the sun set and the lights of the Pudong skyline appear as darkness fell. It was stunning to watch as the faces of huge highrise buildings were turned into giant video screens. I kept losing track as I tried to count the number of floors used for showing these advertising videos. Vegas has nothing on this show.

Drinks done, we strolled back towards the Bund, hoping to find another break in the construction that would allow us to get a different view of Pudong skyline. As we moved deeper into the Bund, the crowds grew in every increasing numbers. Five blocks later, with no break in the construction in sight, we found ourselves being pushed along buy a "sea of humanity". It just sort of happened. We really did not notice until we decided to turn around and return to our hotel only to find ourselves facing a wall of people all heading in the opposite direction from the one we wanted to go. As we were close to a cross street, Nonie and I decided to fight our way to the corner thinking that once we got off the Bund, we could move more freely. This thought was quickly dispelled as we turned the corner only to find thousands more visitors streaming down the street, drawn to the Bund and lights of the Pudong skyline. It was a bruising return to our hotel.

This was our introduction to the beautiful and exotic city of Shanghai. A scene that we would face a few more times as we explored this city of 17,000,000.

Goodbye Leah

We said farewell to one of our colleagues this past weekend and the American contingent is down one of their prettiest members. A small gathering was held at the Cornell's to celebrate Leah's new beginning and our loss. We will miss her ever present smile that could been seen from a block away and her patience in always being there to help us out of a jam with her excellent Chinese. She is returning to London to visit with her Grandparents then on to spend some quality time with her family in Massachusetts before joining main squeeze Will in England to begin a new phase in their life. Will, the only British member of our group will continue teaching till the end of the semester and after a little travel in China, will return to England to begin his duties as a teacher in the Chinese Department of a posh public school. In England, they call private schools, public schools. Still trying to figure that one out.


A number of our group will be saying goodbye at the end of the semester so there will be a few more goodbyes to be had. I have said this before but I will say it again. It was so easy to bond with these kids. I am sure that some psychological mumbo-jumbo could explain our feelings but this will somehow spoil what has been a wonderful moment in our life. Who cares why, it just happened and our lives are better for it. Sometimes it is better not to know how, but just to savor those moments.

"Stay in touch" is so easy to say, but over the years Nonie and I found it was easier said than done. But this time Nonie and I will stay in touch with this crazy bunch. We just gotta know!

For reasons that will come up in future blogs, Nonie and I will not be returning to Harbin next semester. It was a difficult decision.But don't worry, the adventure continues. Stay tuned.

Welcome To Middle Age

I had to break the bad news to our birthday boy, Edoardo, that he can no longer qualify as a youngun since he has now officially entered middle age or the Dark Side as I like to call it. "Luke, You are starting to sound like your Father". (sotto voci Darth Vader) I made a grown Italian man cry. I quickly told him that he was eligible to maintain his youngun status for another five years by acting as a mentor to the other younguns. Sort of like the Past President position maintained by many organizations, created to allow the passing on of all the accumulated wisdom of the policies and procedures of the organization. Of course he will discover that the younguns won't listen as they fully believe they know everything and that what input he has is ancient and of little use in their lives. Those of us who have entered our senior years have had to face that stigma for the last 25 years so it is now second nature to us, to be regulated to "old news" status.

We celebrated his birthday on Saturday night with a lovely meal in a large private room at a local restaurant with over 20 people attending. Most Chinese restaurants provide one or more rooms for their guests to dine in privacy. The nicer ones provide only private rooms and have no public seating areas. Some of the larger restaurants occupy 3 or more floors of a building with small rooms seating 8 and growing to larger rooms with seating for up to 20 or more. The room will always have a round table with a Lazy Susan occupying the centre of the table. The Lazy Susan on a table for 20+ is huge but it may need to hold 15-20 different dishes. The one on our table was a round piece of 1/2" glass over 5' in diameter. It looked strong enough to stop a puck.

There is some unwritten rule about the ratio of the number of food dishes to people but I have yet to figure it out. I think it is based solely on the appetite of the person or persons ordering the meal. Kind of like the rule "never go grocery shopping when you are hungry as you will have a tendency to buy too much". Ordering food is quite a process. Some restaurants have the food artfully displayed on tables in a room usually located where you enter the restaurant while other make do with pictures. You point to the dishes you want or in some cases, to the fish swimming around in huge tanks. Over the last year we have seen some interesting dishes. From live silk worms to turtles poking their little heads out and staring at you as you ponder their fate.

You return to your room and twenty minutes later the dishes start arriving. Typically, they will arrive one at a time, delivered 5 or 10 minutes apart. Once a few dishes have arrived people will start to eat while more dishes continue to arrive over the next 40 minutes or so. The Lazy Susan will be in continuous motion so you need to be quick when one of your favorite dishes goes by. That is a challenge for me as I have not grasped the intricacies of chopstick use yet. I think it has something to do with the missing piece of my thumb. There are no serving spoons for the dishes, you just dig in with your chopsticks. This can involve lots of work as most dishes are usually carved up into small chopstick size portions so it can involve quite a few transfers to your plate. The plates are usually no larger than a coaster making it difficult to pile on a lot of food. This helps to reduce your food intake and may explain my shedding pounds during our time in China.

The nicer rooms will also contain couches, and all the makings for a karaoke party. Wandering around the restaurant, you will often hear some really bad singing. The room is yours for as long as you want it so most diners make a night of it. You can carry on as crazily as you want, as long as you keep it in your room. As a long time people watcher, the private rooms do not satisfy my needs but it is more civilized. Nothing can spoil a nice meal than watching some sloppy drunk at the next table unless he is your sloppy drunk.

Life has settled into a nice rhythm since Nonie has returned, with long lunches and surprisingly late nights for us. Our switch to late afternoon and evening classes has thrown both our Circadian clocks into disarray. We are staying up till 10, sometimes 11 o'clock at night and sleeping in till 6:30 or 7:00. I not sure if we will become night owls but it is actually a nice change all be it a temporary one.

A Chinese Easter

Unlike Christmas, Easter passed relatively quietly in Harbin. The only signs we saw were a few posters of cartoon Easter bunnies in the window of the local Pizza Hut franchise. The Chinese have not embraced Easter as they have Christmas. Not sure of the reason. Perhaps the religious tones of Easter are so much stronger than the Christmas.

Nonie, who is always thinking, brought back all the fixings for an Easter egg decorating party. So Saturday was set aside to have the younguns over.Much like our Christmas tree ornament making party, they immediately jumped into the spirit of the moment creating some truly unique designs and patterns on their hard boiled eggs. White eggs do not exist in Harbin, brown only. This created some interesting colors after the eggs were removed from the dyes.

Faberge had better watch out if the Chinese should take it into their minds to start creating those beautiful and intricate egg creations. We had to make it very clear to some of our guests that even though the eggs were hard boiled, they would not keep for ever and would need to be eaten or thrown away. Much to their consternation as they did not want to destroy all their hard work. The afternoon included a highly competitive Easter Egg Hunt and finished with a piece of Easter Bunny cake and ice cream.

Nonie has had a successful return to the classroom. Her Friday students presented her with a lovely bouquet of flowers and a small wall hanging to welcome her back. That is just another of example of the kindness that we experience almost every day from the Chinese. I will miss these little civilities when we leave China.

We will be celebrating the thirtieth birthday of one of the younguns this weekend. I sense a party in the wind. More next blog.

Seven Weeks, One Day, Four Hours

Nonie has landed safely back in Harbin. Seven weeks, one day, four hours snce we last saw each other. This is longest we have been apart since we first met on November 30th, 1973. She experienced no problems along the way. All her flights were on time with her luggage arriving in Harbin at the same time as she did. I can relax now. Tom, a fellow Canadian has lost his luggage on three out of four trips back and forth between Canada and China. I think that I can count on two fingers, the number of times we have lost luggage in all our years of travelling. I would like to say it is all due to careful planning but I cannot in all honesty claim that. We have had some hairy connections over the years. I remember one that had us running through LAX like O.J. Simpson on his way to the Hertz counter. We arrived 90 minutes late to catch a connecting flight in another terminal. We made it to the gate only to find we had been given the wrong gate number on our boarding passes. This little glitch required another Simpson like dash to the other side of the terminal. Despite this, our bags managed to arrive with us in Vancouver. Perhaps we should have let the baggage handlers get us to the correct gate.

Nonie arrived to a impromptu hall party organized by the younguns. They were as thrilled to have her back in Harbin as I was. She was greeted by a huge bouquet of balloons and a welcome home sign decorating the elevator lobby on our floor. Lately, the lobby has been the location of a number of social gatherings. It has a nice couch and two comfortable chairs with more room for a crowd then in our apartments. Word quickly spread around the building of Nonie's return and the lobby was soon filled with well wishers. Even the building staff wandered up to say hello. I am constantly amazed at how quickly we have bonded with the people here. Most are in their twenties and they remind us so much of our own kids. Full of life and way to much confidence. It will be difficult to say goodbye over the next few months.