Black Friday

You may recall that I posted earlier about Thanksgiving being a non-event in China. One tradition, however, we did keep this year was our Black Friday shopping trip. There are no "Day After Thanksgiving" sales or anything like that here so we just went over to the Old Town area where there are thousands of small shops. And by small, I mean really small. Some shops are no bigger than 100 square feet. Those are the exception though. Most shops in this area are more like 300 square feet - still pretty small by US standards. It's very crowded and there is a lot of junk for sale but it's a good place to get stuff cheap.

Whenever we go to this area, we know we are going to see something that just leaves us scratching our heads. In one shop, we saw the owner watching his surveillance monitor. He was using four video cameras in one of these little bitty shops.This would be like you using four cameras to keep an eye on your living room. I don't think anything in this store cost more than $3 but this guy has installed a couple of hundred dollars worth of equipment to make sure that no one steals a refrigerator magnet. I guess if he prevents a hundred magnets from being stolen, then the equipment has paid for itself.

We also saw people watching the stock market, which was a first. A couple of times, we ran across shop owners with laptops watching every movement of the Shanghia Stock Exchange. At first, I thought it kind of funny but then I found it a little disturbing. Don't get me wrong - I think it's great that these people are investing their money but when a guy who sells zippers for a living starts day-trading, things may be getting a little overheated.

We managed to get a few pictures, which you can find here.

I would love to know...

where you find a full-size Dodge conversion van in China.

Chinese Airbag

Yao Ming and Other Sights

Last Sunday afternoon, Kristi and I wanted to get out of the house for a few hours so we rode the subway over to Puxi. We really didn't do anything too exciting - just walked around People's Square for a while.
The subway was a little crowded. Actually this is about normal for a Sunday. Weekday afternoons are the worst. The ride to Puxi cost 4 yuan (about 55 cents) each.






Yao was in town - signing autographs, posing for pictures, visiting the little people. This is wax figure on display and Madame Tussaud's in Shanghai. This was on display back in August 2006 when I made my first trip here and people would line up to pose for a picture with it. Now, almost a year and a half later, they're still lining up. Unless you've been here, you can't understand how big of a deal this is. The Chinese people don't line up in an orderly fashion for just anything. Usually it's just a mass of people pushing and shoving - survival of the fittest, in a way. So it's pretty amazing to see them wait their turn for a picture. They really love Yao and consider him to be a national treasure. Kristi and I jumped in line with them just to mess with them a little as they get very curious when Westerners do Chinese things.

A couple of other pictures from that day. This is a statue in People's Square. I have no idea what it commemorates but thought it looks kind of cool. I'm guessing that, like every other statue here, it has something to do with communism or revolution or fighting the Japanese.

Here's another shot of the JW Marriott hotel, which you may have seen previously here. The restaurant on the 40th floor offers a pretty good view of the city. Unfortunately, we didn't get any pictures as it's a pretty swanky joint and we didn't want to look like a couple of tourists.

Happy Thanksgiving

Hello everyone. We hope that everybody had a great Thanksgiving holiday, complete with tons of food and time to reflect on all our blessings. Here in Shanghai Thanksgiving is pretty much a non-event. It was a regular school day for Kate and Emily and my office was open like normal. This is when you realize that this a strictly an American holiday. Still, we've done our best to make this Thanksgiving as "normal" as possible. School was closed Friday and I burned some vacation time so we can have a long weekend together.

Some of our friends here really made an effort to make this a normal holiday, even going so far as to cook a traditional dinner. We, on the other hand, chose to take the easy way, joining some friends for dinner at Cafe du Monde. The original Cafe du Monde is in New Orleans and is supposed to be pretty famous from what I hear. The one here in Shanghai is a Chinese version of the original but maintains the whole cajun/creole/jazz atmosphere. No one here has been able to figure out if the Shanghai store is affiliated with the original or if it's just a knock-off, like many things are in China. We've even tried to get the owner, who is Chinese-American, to talk about it but he avoids the subject. However, he does claim to have been a manager of one of the restaurants in New Orleans.

Regardless if it's the real-deal or a copy, the food is good, service is friendly, and you always have a good time. Thanksgiving evening was no exception. Seating this night was by reservation only and the regular menu was replaced with turkey and mashed potatoes and stuffing and all the good stuff. We all still missed our families back in the States but we made the best of it and enjoyed each other's company. I wanted to get a couple of pictures to post here but the camera batteries were completely dead.

I told you Carrefour was crazy.

If you've been following this blog for a while, you might recall that I posted some pictures of Carrefour, our local superstore. I think I described it as "Wal-Mart on steroids." Well, the chain made the news this week.

Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Four people were trampled to death and 31 were injured in a promotional event at a supermarket owned by Carrefour SA in the Shapingba district of China's western Chongqing city.

You can read the story here. It would be interesting to know what the "promotional event" was for. Probably a big sale on chicken feet.

The Catch-All Post

Since I really don't have that much to post about - just a few little things to comment on - I'm going to lump them all together in this one post.

First, I now have access to this blog from our apartment. One of the subtle reminders that we are living in a co**unist county was the fact that any web site with "blog" in its name was blocked from the internet service in our apartment. I finally found a way that I could post from home but then I couldn't see how the posts looked until I got to the office where access is unrestricted. Anyhow, having access from home will make updating the blog much easier.

Along these same lines, YouTube had always been available here but it was suddenly blocked about a week ago. Now it is back and available again. I'm not sure what happened (it's not like they report this stuff in the news) but maybe they found a way to block only certain content.

Second, if you looked at the pictures I took in Wales, you might recall my sweet ride, the Passat wagon. Well, earlier today I was working on my expense report for that trip and I ran across the receipt where I filled the car before returning it. I'm not sure what fuel prices are in the States but I'm assuming it's still around $3.00/gallon so I was curious how that compares to prices in the United Kingdom. I filled the Passat with a little more than 33 liters of diesel, which cost 33 British pounds. This converts to 8.7 gallons and cost $68, or $7.80/gallon. Interestingly, there were no SUVs to be seen, except for the occasional Range Rover. I guess if you can afford a Rover, $8 for a gallon of fuel shouldn't be a problem.

Lastly, we are being treated to a fireworks show tonight. I don't know what the occasion is but we've had a steady barrage of fireworks for the last two hours. This is not really uncommon but has been happening more frequently lately. Sometimes they don't even wait until it's dark and just set them off in the middle of the day. Someone told me that the Chinese believe it brings good luck to shoot off fireworks whenever you move into a new house or apartment. I don't know if this is true or not - sounds to me like an excuse to play with fire. And these aren't your ordinary, out-of-state, buy-one-get three-free fireworks. This is the good stuff like the pros use. After all, the Chinese did invent gunpowder, you know. This did provide an opportunity to try out the "fireworks" mode on my camera. The pictures didn't come out that great but I think part of the problem was that I was too close (easily within 100 yards). Here's a link to them anyway. http://picasaweb.google.com/baamick/Fireworks

Cellular, Modular, Interactive-odular

Someone sent a comment in response to the post below about the lack of activity. Evidently he was not expecting peanut butter jelly time. Instead he was expecting this classic. So here it is - you want banana phone, you got banana phone. Be warned. This will stick in your head and you will hate yourself (and probably me) for having listened to it.

Lack of Activity

Hey everyone. I apologize for the lack of activity here. I had been home from my trip to Wales for only a few days before Kristi had to return to the US to attend to a medical emergency in her family. With her being gone, I'm staying busy working and taking care of the kids and haven't had much time for posting new updates. Kristi returns home in a few days and I don't have any plans for travel so maybe things will get back to normal. Here is something to keep you entertained until then.