Late at night we finally arrived in Shanghai. There’s nothing that says ‘Welcome to Shanghai’ quite like a group of pelvic-thrusting police officers. After a short walk, with lots of laughs – we arrived at our hotel – the Seventh Heaven Hotel – situated on top of a clothing store (Lanie was the only one that took advantage of the convenient location. Our hotel was interestingly…dark. Quite creepy. We quickly dropped off our things in our rooms (shout out to my roomie Nicole!). Afterwards we headed to late night food (basically dinner) at a local hot pot place with Cleo who works at Uber. Basically, I learned that I’m not a fan of hot pot – if I have to cook my own food I’d rather do it at home.
The next morning we visited the Urban Planning Museum. Crazy impressive/ Basically, American museums could learn a lot from this amazing place. My favorite exhibit was the scaled model of the city – I ended up taking tons of pictures of all the different sections of Shanghai, and then as we’d visit different areas of the city, I would try to find them in the pictures of the model. This was a lot harder than imagined, Shanghai is crazy big.
After the museum, we grabbed lunch in the nearby mall. It was super bougie. I also found out that fish egg rolls are not delicious at all. We all grabbed boba tea afterwards and headed to the Marriage Market. Finally something to do with my project. Ah, the Shanghai Marriage Market: the original Tinder. Basically, parents come out and advertise their unmarried children based on various attributes (it seemed that the most important ones were age, height, weight, education, and income) and talk to other parents looking for a suitable mate. We should definitely make this a thing in the U.S. Dating would be so much easier, plus my mother has a much better taste in people than me. Later on, we talked to Tiffany told us that without a good job, a good income, a house and a car, you have no chance (also a hukou). However, because of the of the “Little Emperor Syndrome”, parents and grandparents spend their whole lives pouring everything into this one child, so that they can have a better chance at marriage.
We then spent time at The Bund – you could literally see the pollution in the air – and it wasn’t even considered a “bad day”. Cleo was having a difficult day because one of her Uber drivers got into a car accident, so she didn’t end up going to the Yuyuan Garden and Market with us.
My favorite part of the Shanghai trip came with the visit to Robert Foye. I loved hearing about his experiences in China, and also about the marketing strategies they were putting forth in China. Also, his wife happened to be from Pearland (small world!) Afterwards, Lanie, Mishi and I went back to the Yuyuan Garden (shopping!), and we got a lot better at bargaining – the trick it to walk away.
The next day we met with Rice grad Jerry Del Fierro. I found his discussion of defensive architecture to be very interesting. Basically, all the rules and laws in the Western world go so overboard, they actually stifle artistic freedom – which could happen soon in the East too, but so far there are a lot less laws. We also visited an amazing Buddhist Temple. Touched some jade, made some wishes. Whaat I found most interesting was the contrast of the temple architecture and the commercial architecture that surrounded it.
A group of us headed to century park the next day, and Jeh, Lanie, Mishi and I took a trip on a four person bike, joined by Taylor Swift (basically our trip soundtrack). We loved taking photos in the blossoms, but not as much as the locals did. Suddenly we were being followed by families with cameras – one family even stopped us and asked our group to take a picture with their son #famous.
Next we headed to NYU to meet with Non (I was in a panda hat, with a suitcase in tow). Non introduced the topic of Leftover Women to us. Basically, this was an idea that was actually started by a woman’s organization in China (irony, right?) to encourage young women to think about marriage. They started the idea of Leftover Women, that basically any women over 27 left unmarried were basically useless.
