An American Girl

With a name like Gipsy Danger, she seemed destined for international travel from the very beginning.

My Shanghainese street cat has now logged more cage time than an MMA fighter, I'm fond of saying.

We've arrived in America.

But it wasn't easy.

********

Her story began about two years ago, when she wandered past the lobby of the apartment building I lived in.  My neighbors, Balvinder and Cissy, were with me on the couches, drinking 3 RMB (50 cent) 750 ml bottles of Qingdao beer.  Bal had Macklemore's "Thrift Shop" on repeat and was smoking cigars.

 

"A kitty!"  I exclaimed.  I'd had a couple of Qingdaos by this point, so my enthusiasm wasn't unexpected.  Cissy followed my pointing finger and drew a quick inhale.  "She's lovely," she breathed.

And she was.  The kitten was five months old, we found out later, and had the most incredible markings--gray and black tiger stripes and orange marmalade whirled over a white belly and four white paws.  At the corner of each eye was a downward cheetah tear stripe that could've made her look pathetic--but her eyes were bright and her body language was confident and curious.

As Cissy and I cooed over the kitten and tried to coax her into the lobby.  "That cat is from the street.  Probably has fleas and God knows what," Bal said.

Cissy and I zipped to the nearby convenience store and bought a can of mackerel to feed the cat, and a few more beers.  The cat sniffed curiously at the fish we'd placed outside the building, but didn't eat it.

"Well, there goes my 7 kuai," I grumbled, but I was smiling.

"I'm talking to myself right now," Bal griped from the couches.  The cat followed Cissy and I back inside.  She made figure eights around Bal's ankles and meowed, purring.

"This is a helicopter cat!"  Bal said.  He seemed delighted now that he was receiving the cat's attention.

I picked her up and checked under her fur.  "No fleas.  Or flea eggs," I reported.  My orange tabby back home, Sitka, had had quite a few of both when I'd gotten him five years ago.  It'd been an easy fix, but in China?  Probably can't pick up a flea collar at the supermarket, I thought.

"Boy or girl?"  Cissy asked.

"Hold her upside down and check!"  Bal laughed. 

We all giggled.  "I can't tell, I'm not a vet," I said, "but most calico cats are female.  My guess is girl."

We all commented on the silky smoothness of her fur, and how she didn't appear to be starving.  Cissy and Bal both asked several people, including the lobby security guard, about the cat.  The answer was always the same:  "Homeless."

A couple of hours later we'd grown attached, and Cissy asked me if I'd take her home.  "I can't take her, I already have a cat at home!"  I protested, holding up my hands.  "I can't cheat on Sitka!"  I'd only been in Shanghai for a couple of months, and I was only planning on staying for a year.  But Cissy was Chinese, and her and Bal were committed to staying in Shanghai for the next year or two.

 

I told Bal about how my sister had captured kittens in her hoodie, and so he did the same--we rode the elevator up to their floor.

The next morning I showed up at their door with cat litter, a plastic basin for a litter box, and some kitten food I'd purchased at Jiadeli, the local supermarket.  Cissy was in the pajamas that Bal's mom had made for her, and she looked delightfully Asian in the bright red and pink colors.

"Oh, this cat," she started worriedly.  "She's too wild, Bal says.  She kept running over us all night, meowing and meowing.  Bal says we might put her back on the street."

I remembered how Sitka had been at that age.  "She'll outgrow it," I said, as we set up Gipsy's things.

Gipsy wouldn't have survived the winter at her young age, a Chinese vet later revealed.  A subtropical city, Shanghai is nowhere near as cold as Spokane, but we did have a couple of freezing cold mornings.

But Gipsy had other challenges ahead of her, most notably, an unstable living situation.  Frustrated with China and especially EF, Bal had resigned his position in April and returned to England.  At that point, he and Cissy had been married only a couple of months, and she'd decided to return to her hometown of Guangzhou in the south to take care of her ailing mother.  Taking Gipsy was not an option--Cissy already had a dog at home, and she'd be busy with her visa application and studying for her IELTS (English language test). 

I encouraged Cissy to call the two Shanghai animal shelters we could find, but one never returned her call and the other was full.

Cissy missed Bal terribly.  Though we watched Jason Statham movies and went to a pub quiz once a week, I was often working, so Cissy was quite lonely.  She also told me she'd started feeding Gipsy people food. 

"She likes it.  She'll eat anything, even the spicy dishes...But then she vomits."  Cissy looked at me, her eyes watery.  "I'm trying to get her ready to return to the street."

"What are you talking about?"  I demanded.  "You know I'm taking that cat."

"What?"  she asked, startled. 

"Sure, I'll take her," I committed, "and I'll try my best to find her a good home."

When Cissy left at the end of May, she hugged me tightly--something she didn't usually do--with tears in her eyes.  "Thank you so much for everything," she said.

I asked around:  coworkers, my chiropractor.  I posted a cute sign with Gipsy's picture at Avocado Lady, a small local shop patronized by many wealthy ex-pats.  I went home to Spokane for three weeks and had a coworker take care of Gipsy.  By the time I got back to Shanghai, I was growing quite attached to her.

I started looking into taking her home with me.  Oh, the regulations!  Oh, the horrors of quarantine!  Oh, the horrors of shipping animals in China!  I heard about epic quarantines--beloved family pets incarcerated in cages for six months; the pets were never the same afterward.  I heard about pets suffocating or freezing to death due to Chinese airline staff failing to pressurize the cargo hold.

I learned that certain airlines would allow in-cabin pets (thank you, United).  I learned that Chinese bureaucracy, while a slow nightmare of paperwork and money, can be handled, even if it means waiting in the vet's office for two hours with your cat for that official pet health certificate that cost 1150 RMB (about $200 US).  I discovered that China has strange demands--the rabies shot Gipsy had gotten the year before wasn't "official", so she was revaccinated, and micro chipped, on the same day--in spite of my reservations that the microchip wouldn't work in the US. 

When Gipsy and I arrived at Pudong International Airport an hour before our check-in time on July 8th, she'd already been in the carrier for an hour. 

Going through security, I had to take her out of her carrier (with about 25 curious Chinese passengers behind me, and doors opening up to the rest of the airport on either end) so that they could scan it.  What if she runs away?  I was sweating and tense by the time we got to our gate, and the sweat really popped when an cute female employee approached me, saying my carrier was too big to fit under the seat.

"Well, what am I supposed to do now?"  I said angrily.  Why tell me now, after security and everything?  It seemed that everything I did in China had some kind of problem, and after two years, I was more than ready to leave.

My rude response should've earned me a smack in the face, but the employee and her coworker called the purser of the plane to come out and speak to me. 

"My name is Laura," she said, shaking my hand, "and I have nine cats myself."  She smiled at me and eyed the carrier with a sharpness.  "Well, the flight isn't fully booked.  Let's go for it."  (Again, thank you, United.)

And the employees were right.  The carrier was about a centimeter too tall to go under the seat, but I shoved and tried.  About five minutes after we got settled, a couple of older Chinese ladies wanted to sit together and asked the attendant in Chinese to ask me to move.  I rolled my eyes and grumbled, but we ended up sitting in an aisle seat, rather than a window, a blessing on an 11-hour flight, and had an empty seat between us and a quiet Chinese man.

We landed in San Francisco.  The Customs guy calmly and carefully looked over her Chinese certificate and took her Ziploc baggie of cat food.  "You and I both know what this is," he said kindly, "but Uncle Sam has rules."

"That's okay," I sighed.  "She's not eating, anyway."

And she wasn't.  No eating, no drinking, no bathroom accidents.  I was starting to wonder if Gipsy's body had completely shut down.  I was starting to worry, but I couldn't do anything about it.  I sweated some more.  I'd only slept a couple of hours the night before we left, and maybe dozed an hour on the flight from Shanghai to San Fran.  I have no idea if Gipsy slept at all.

Again, we had to take her out so that security could scan her cage.  This time we were allowed to wait in a private room with ridiculously high walls.  I kept telling Gipsy how much I loved her, what a good cat she was being, and how proud I was of her.  My mom had sent a hormone collar from the US with supposedly calming effects, and although Gipsy still seemed nervous, it appeared to be working.  When the TSA guy returned, he commented, "By now, most cats are climbing those walls.  You've got a nice, mellow cat."  I beamed with pride and put her back in her carrier, and she was pretty good about it.

We landed in Denver.  And there we waited.  And waited.

A computer glitch had grounded some United flights earlier that day, I learned.  We'd already planned for a 7 or 8 hour layover, but it got later and later.  I'd eaten, but, as the airport's restaurants closed down, I felt hungry again.  I peered into Gipsy's cage.  She seemed fine, and she hadn't eaten.  I drew strength from that.  As we waited some more, I curled up around her carrier, draped between two chairs, freezing cold.  I'd forgotten my new jacket in San Francisco--my only worry then had been getting us through Customs.  The sweat seemed to have frozen on my body.  I was tempted to take Gipsy's blanket and use it for myself, but I kept it draped over her carrier--partly to keep her warm and partly to block off any sights that may have frightened her.

Finally we got on the flight.  It was full.  Gipsy's carrier wouldn't go under the seat.  I had to prop my feet on top of it, and my backpack on top of my knees.  It's only for a couple of hours.  Strangely, I never got reminded or reprimanded about her carrier or my backpack.  Lucky.  No one bugged us.

We finally, finally landed in Spokane.  It was about 1 am.  And I could hear jack hammering coming from near the luggage carousel.  My sister Laura met us and I could tell she was worried about us and the jack hammering. 

"I think Gipsy's kind of in shock, anyway," I said, laughing, loopy from lack of sleep.  It hadn't quite sunken in that we'd made it--that we were in America.  I unnecessarily reminded my sister that we'd lived next to a construction site for two years.  I joked, "It's probably a 'welcome home' sound for her."

********

It's been over a week now, and Gipsy has met Sitka and Nellie, my sister's cat.  She's explored both levels of the house.  So much space compared to our tiny 40 square meter studio in Shanghai!  Yesterday, she even went outside with the other two cats.  She has fallen for Sitka, following him around like a starry eyed teeny bopper.  There's been some hissing, and some batting of paws, but no biting or scratching.

My Shanghainese girl is now an American girl--out in the open spaces of the West, enjoying the fresh air and grass under her paws, exploring this New World--just like I'd promised.

 

Freedom is...

"They can take our lives, but they'll never take...our...FREEDOM!!!"

Of course Braveheart's line kindles a fire within me.  As an American, freedom is my middle name.

Interestingly, there are things I am free to do in China that I can't do back home.  I can walk down the street, or onto public transportation, with a can of beer in my hand.  I can light off a fistful of fireworks whenever the occasion (or the mood) strikes.  I can smoke anywhere I want, even if there are a dozen signs claiming "NO SMOKING", because those signs in China are just there for decoration.  If I had a scooter, I could ride it onto the sidewalk and disregard any and all traffic lights.  If I had a kid, I could hold him/her over a garbage can to relieve themselves in public, and no one would call C.P.S. on me.

But what is public drinking compared to the right of free speech?  In my country, I can say whatever I want to about my government, and I won't disappear into some gulag, never to be seen again.  Even now, people disappear in China after saying politically volatile things. 

What is lighting off explosives compared to freedom of religion?  If I decide to run for political office in the U.S., I don't have to swear to renounce religion.  As a member of the Communist Party in China, you'd have to swear your only allegiance was to Communism. 

I don't have to put my age, gender, photo, health, or marital status on my resume. 

Feeling as I do, I still wanted my students to talk about the idea of freedom without feeling as if some foreigner were judging them.  Because the 4th of July is coming up, I thought it'd be a good idea to give them just a few minutes of U.S. history--specifically, why the U.S. declared its independence--and then the rest of class would mostly be open-ended discussion.

When I talked about the colonists' complaints against England (search and seizure; quartering soldiers; imprisonment without knowing the charges against you; and of course, taxation without representation), my students' eyes widened.  In China nowadays, and especially in Shanghai, some of these ideas are as foreign as they are in the U.S.

"After more than 160 years of this, the colonists were pretty upset.  Many of them had only lived in the colonies--they'd never been to England.  Sometimes whole generations had only lived in Boston or New York.  That made them more American than British (even though the United States of America wasn't a country yet!).  But the British government--over 5000 kilometers away over the ocean--was still ruling their lives.  Quite unfairly at times.  And that's why they declared independence."

I knew I was simplifying, but when your classes only run 50 minutes and you don't see the same students on a daily basis, you have to come to the point as fast as you can.

Still, sometimes teaching opens a door in me I didn't know was there.  For the first time, I could really put myself in the shoes of my ancestors.  I could feel a bit of what they must've felt.

I'd prepared about 20 discussion questions for my students--What is freedom?  What freedoms do you have, and which ones do you wish you had?  Is working 40 hours a week like slavery?  Should everyone in the world be able to bear arms (own a gun)?  I knew a lot of my students would be more comfortable if I ran the class as a partner discussion, where only one person might hear their opinions on the idea of freedom.  Running the class this way also would keep me from overwhelming them with my own opinions--at least, that was my hope.

Here are some of the things I caught from three different classes:

I try to escape from my mother's controlling!  [Laughter]  I can't make choices by myself.  [Her parents had said] "If you don't go to Fudan University, we won't send you to another one, and we won't visit you."

[Freedom means] I can read any book I want, watch any program I want...In our country, there are too many limitations, and you cannot choose...

Freedom is good, but we must have rules.

You have to say the [Communist] Party is always right...I don't think it's correct.

Freedom has limitation also.

We can discuss ideas [political, etc.] in private but not public...it will be deleted [by the government if posted online or written in print].

Governments make mistakes...[police] officers make mistakes.

We don't have complete freedom.

The government protects the rich man.  (Not a uniquely Chinese situation, I wanted to tell them.)

[Freedom means] you can say what you want, and no one can hurt you.

It was a bittersweet class, partially because it was my second-to-last Life Club class, and partially because so many of their opinions were similar to my own.  And yet they lived in a country where they couldn't have some of the freedoms they knew existed elsewhere.

At the end of my second class, a female student asked, "Teacher, what's your opinion?"

Part of me wanted to get up on my soapbox, but after living in China for a total of three years now, I knew it'd be the wrong thing.  I wouldn't have been surprised if the government had sent the occasional "guest" to "monitor" my classes, and I could also see myself getting hauled out of the country before the day was over for instigating a revolution.

"Well, this class isn't about me.  It's really about what YOU guys think freedom is.  My ideas about freedom will be very different from your ideas, because we come from different countries."

She looked disappointed, and asked again, "But what's your opinion?"

I wanted to tell her, but at the same time, this was a student I'd never met before.  I knew this was China, and I was feeling a bit paranoid.  The irony is that I'd grown up believing freedom of speech was a God-given right, and here I was, buttoning my lip...meanwhile, a Chinese person, who'd grown up under Big Brother's watch, was asking me to speak freely.  But paranoia won out.  I repeated what I'd said before. 

In the third class, it happened again, this time with a smaller class of students I'd known for a while.  I gave them a similar answer, then expanded a bit. 

"I think education is really the ticket to freedom," I said.  Not very original, but it's something I've believed most of my life.  "We're really lucky--American women, Chinese women.  We get to go to school."  All of my students in this class were women, and they were nodding.  "If we were in some places in Africa or the Middle East, we wouldn't be at school.  We'd be at home with the baby, or working in the field.  That would be our life.  I think it's great that China has such high respect for education."

This was true.  I've felt more respected as a teacher here than I ever have in the States.  Of course, most of my students in the States were considered at-risk youth, so that might have something to do with it.

I was also hoping a little flattery would cover up the fact that I wasn't completely giving my opinion--that on my VPN-sourced news, I've read how many Hong Konger's online posts are taken down; that the people here work hard, pay taxes, and have no right to say what the government does with said taxes.  Taxation without representation!  Censored art exhibits!  My sealed packages being cut open at the post office every single time to be searched right in front of me. 

Only one student seemed to catch on--a girl named Soonie, the one who'd been forced to Fudan University by her parents.  A bright student with smooth English, she looked a little disappointed at my lack of complete transparency. 

If I was ten years younger, I probably would've spoken my mind completely, and damn the consequences.  But was that the right thing to do?  To inspire my students into a democratic revolution less than two weeks before returning to my own "land of the free", leaving them to be silenced (by any means necessary) by their government?  I'm not saying I have that much power, but as a teacher, you sometimes never know.

My hope is that, by having them discuss freedom, by thinking about what it really means to them, that they will come to their own conclusions, their own truth.  My hope is that they will be inspired to discuss things more freely, that they will fight for freedom, not in my way, but in their own.

My hope is that, one day, freedom won't just belong to Americans.  It'll belong to everyone. 

Opposites Attract?

They say opposites attract.  There are songs about it (Paula Abdul's comes to mind).  Sometimes I look at my relationship with my sister, or at my parents' relationship--very different individuals who love each other and get along--in spite of driving each other up the wall from time to time.

Yet in my family, I also feel there is a deep connection between us--a love of nature and animals, a willingness to protect the environment, to learn about everything...a compassion and a curiosity about our fellow humans.  And of course, there is our shared time in Qinghai--an intense, difficult time of survival-bonding.

Plunk an American like myself down in China and it's like oil and water--but which is which?

Watching my dad nearly pull his hair out in the 80s when having business dealings with his Chinese counterparts prepped me better than some ex-pats:  I knew in advance how frustrating China could be.  I knew Shanghai in 2015, with all its bells and whistles, was still China.

America and China are COMPLETE opposites in so many ways!  Just a few examples:

U.S.

business cards traded at the end of a meeting

911 is the emergency number

"you lucky dog"

China

business cards traded at the beginning of a meeting

119 is the fire department number

"you lucky cat"

The ideas we have about customer service are completely different as well.  Unless you're at the DMV in NYC, speedy, short lines at any register at any store make us look efficient, organized--and well, like we know what's going on.  In China, as it's been explained to me, a long, slow line makes the store look popular and desirable.  A small store will have 50-60 customers on a Saturday afternoon, and there will be a dozen staff sweeping the floor, rearranging displays, and just standing around--while two cashiers methodically ring up customers.  Whenever I've worked retail in the past, sweeping and display arranging were something you did when NO customers were around!  And yet my students have told me repeatedly that the motto of most businesses is "The customer is the Emperor", "The customer is a god".  The way the two cultures show it is completely different.

To get heavier now:  in many Western cultures, there's also a sense of absolute right and wrong--morality is black and white.  We've got that Judeo-Christian thing happening in a lot of our legal structures, regardless of the separation of church and state that some countries have in common.  If someone breaks the law in Europe, the States, Australia, they're caught and punished.  I'm not saying the system is perfect.  In the U.S., rapists are let free after serving 5 years, and go on to rape again.  There are cops shooting unarmed black teenagers.  But the American justice system is far more predictable, and, well, just, than China's.

With a history over 4000 years, China has rarely had one central government.  For thousands of years, the law depended upon the whims of corrupt landlords, crazy warlords, invaders, Triads and other gang members.  There's a saying in Chinese that's one of my faves:  Tian gao, huangdi yuan--Heaven is high and the Emperor is far away.  It's China in a nutshell, even today, 100 years after the last emperor.  The rules changed constantly.  Bribing was the order of business, because it wasn't safe to gather, to demonstrate, to speak out against whoever was in charge because they would kill you and your family. 

As if multiple political leaders weren't difficult enough to figure out in China's past, there were multiple religions and philosophies trying to guide the way:  Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism, Taoism, ancestor worship, and local religions I don't even know the name of.  It's amazing any Chinese person knows what to believe!

In most Western countries, the Word of God is IT.  A Jewish person, a Muslim, and a Christian have this in common--there is one God and one law.  Not everyone in the West belongs to one of these religions, but the idea that there is one way or the highway influences our culture and our beliefs about right and wrong and how society should deal with problems. 

But in China, it's a buffet table.  "Take what you want and leave the rest," as Egg Shen said in "Big Trouble in Little China".  Morality is situational in China.  Something might be illegal, but if a friend of yours is doing it, you look the other way.  Students can bribe the right person in order to move up levels. 

I'm not saying China's is the only culture that does this.  To a certain extent, it's a human thing.  But in China it happens so often, it seems!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"Why are dragons bad in Western cultures?"  one of my students asked.       

We'd been discussing movie genres and had gotten sidetracked by fantasy--particularly "The Hobbit" and a certain dragon named Smaug.

"In China, dragons don't have wings," another student chimed in.  "They are like snake but can fly."

I was a bit flabbergasted.  I hadn't been prepared for this question, in spite of teaching this lesson around 20 times before--it had never come up.

"Well...I guess it goes back to Beowulf,"  I said, pulling up the internet and showing them some pics from the Angelina Jolie movie.  "It's the first story in English.  The monster was terrorizing [grade your language!]...um, eating...all the people and causing problems."

Was Grindel a dragon?  I wondered.  I wracked my brain.  The last time I'd read Beowulf had been 17 years ago.

King Arthur and other Brit Lit has knights slaying dragons all over the place.  Hell, it was how boys became men.  It's how they impressed women.  What about China?  There are dragons in Journey to the West, a famous Chinese tale, colloquially known as The Monkey King or simply Monkey.  My memory of them in the 1986 CCTV version, and the two translations I've read, don't exactly portray dragons as angels.  However, bargains could be made with dragons, or assistance acquired in exchange for treasure.  I certainly don't recall any dragons running (well, flying) around terrorizing villages or sleeping under vast piles of gold.

What did these flying giants represent to our ancestors?  The unknown?  Death?  The natural world?  Whatever the symbolism, it seems to me that Eastern cultures were more willing (at least in literature) to make a deal with a clever beast (the local warlord?!), whereas in the West, these beasts are greedy and/or mad, and it was a hero's duty to destroy them (the American Revolution?! the French Revolution?!) Only deeper exploration on my part will help me understand what the difference is, exactly, and why.

Thinking about all of these differences between East and West made me search for an easy analogy to describe them.  But if I say "evil twin", who is the evil one?  If I saw "fun house mirror", which culture is the distorted image.  Why is it always so easy for humans to point and say, "Well, they're messed up, but not me!"

But we're not completely different. 

China and the U.S. seem to hold family in a position of high importance.  While China's idea is still very nuclear (mom, dad, kid) and the U.S.'s is more fluid, I still feel we've both got a loyalty to whoever we call family--our loved ones.

There's also this strength China seems to have--adapt and survive.  Survival was maybe more important than revolt.  Bending your ideas or beliefs to agree with whoever was in charge (at least on the surface) was how the Chinese people have had such a long history.  And while the Pilgrims may have clutched at their "One way to Heaven" ideal, the ability to keep going on that pioneer trail--losing belongings out of the covered wagons, burying loved ones along the way--exists in the U.S., too.

Amy Tan published The Joy Luck Club around the time my family returned from China--1989ish.  In it, she writes about a song she learned to play on the piano as a child, later discovering a second part to the song as an adult.

I feel like Amy Tan's character right now--discovering things about China as an adult that I didn't know or care about as a 10-year-old.  I feel closer to this culture now, in spite of the fact that there are days I want to pull my hair out.  China will always be a part of my life, a big part, and I can't fight that.  I love watching kung-fu movies.  I like sayings in Chinese.  I like Chinese traditional art and music.  I like the Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai.  And while a lot of Chinese cuisine turns me off, there are some foods I really like.  I like the civilized delicacy of eating with chopsticks, too.

Perhaps it's not so much that China and I are opposites--but that we are (as Tan wrote) "two halves of the same song".

Why it's hard to leave Shanghai

Understand this:  my social life had been sadly lacking in Spokane for the better part of six years.  I'm very grateful for the time I spent with my family, especially my sister.  I'm grateful for my cat, for blue sky and fresh air.  I miss all of that.  I miss the smell of pine and cottonwood trees.

Nevertheless, there are reasons to stay in Shanghai, and I'm planning on signing up for a second year here. 

KTV

I never thought I'd say this, but Haoledi (Holiday, or as I like to call it, "a howl a day") was really fun!  I can't believe it's taken my nine months to experience this, a hugely popular activity in Shanghai.  Some of the people in my intake group go once a week!

Located next to my center, team-building locations don't get any more convenient than Haoledi.  An American and a Chinese teacher were about to leave us for good, and a new American teacher was being welcomed.  About a dozen of us squeezed into a 25 square meter private room, complete with tiny corner stage, two large flat screen TVs, and a disco ball.  A case of bottled beer was brought in, along with bottle openers, bottles of green tea, ash trays, glasses, tambourines, and three microphones.  We ordered food.

There were songs in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and English.  My new boss from South Africa spent several years in Japan, so he sang quite a few songs in Japanese.  A co-worker with a Chinese wife sang along with the Chinese songs.  Another co-worker has a Korean grandmother, so the Korean songs were hers. 

Unlike karaoke singers in the U.S., most of my co-workers drank very little, if at all, and seemed to take the singing quite seriously.  They had fun, but the emotion behind the (often sad) songs seemed very real.

I sang Green Day's "When September Ends" with a Chinese co-worker--I'd had no idea the video was so depressing.  Two American guys and I conquered Nirvana's "All Apologies".  I'm not a huge Kurt Cobain fan, but I know the song well and felt I owed it to the guy since I was the only Washingtonian in the room.  We sang "Hey Jude" by the Beatles and danced to Psy's "Gangnam Style". 

American Night

Started by an American, this night at the pub occurs every five weeks or so invites every Canuck, Aussie, Kiwi, Yank, Springbok, and Zhonguoren who's interested.  It's interesting and entertaining to hear English through the filter of half a dozen different accents.  Everyone's usually in a good mood...it's common to have a few drinks, and you can meet people from all over (even Greece!) while getting your American fix.  The American guy who started it waits until everyone's had a few, and then he yells, "Candadians, where you at?"  and they all shout back.  "Aussies, where you at?"  They scream.  And so on.  It's great.

Pub Quiz at the Camel

My only experience with pub quizzes before coming to Shanghai was seeing the fancy one in the second "Bridget Jones" movie.  It looked fun, but I didn't know enough people to form a team, and it's not like Spokane had regular pub quizzes (at least ones that I was aware of).

Pub quiz nights coincided with "Tight Arse Tuesdays", meaning you could get two-for-one fish-n-chips and happy hour pints from 4 to 8 pm. 

Team names:  everything from the silly (Monkey Kings and Hampster Whoopie Cushion--our team) to the obscene (I won't mention details, but body parts and dirty words were involved).

The winnings:  500 RMB and a bottle of booze for first place; a bottle of booze for second; and a round of shots for third.

The quiz always involves the week in news, Shanghai trivia, a large music and movies section (hold me back!) and usually some kind of technical, historical, or sport section with a mysterious connection.

I've been twice now, and have had a team of four each time--me, two Brits, and a Chinese woman.  I would say we're all pretty well-rounded, and we did well, considering other teams had six or more players.  We were in the bottom half of about 20 teams.

Our homework assignments were to "revise" (Brit-speak for study) general knowledge and news for the next quiz--I chose baseball and celebrity gossip (twist my arm).

WeChat

This last sounds a bit trite, but yes, I've been sucked in to the social-media-on-your-smart phone-in-Shanghai set.  I never had a smart phone until I came here, but I am now addicted and wondering how I ever did without.

As long as there's wifi, I can connect with my Shanghai friends and acquaintances in a Facebook-like environment on my little Samsung smart phone.  Lately I'm actually spending more time on WeChat than Facebook.  WeChat doesn't require a VPN.  It doesn't try to kick me offline every other click.  When our free wifi was shut down at work, I went out and got a wireless router and set up my own wifi at home--all by myself!  I'm pretty proud of that.  Part of the manual was even in Chinese!!

Grandma's Home

Yu tou tang.  Ma pu doufu.  Yum. 

Yep, fish head soup and spicy tofu are not exactly things I was expecting to like, but they are actually really good at Grandma's.  That's the name of a restaurant that prepares Hangzhou cuisine.  Hangzhou is about an hour outside of Shanghai by high-speed train and is famous for some of its food.

This restaurant is extremely popular, with long queues (for those of us unfamiliar with British English, that means lines) outside 30 minutes before opening.  Part of it is the food.  Along with the aforementioned dishes, Grandma's makes some great stir-fried green beans and peanut smoothies.  Of course there are the usual things foreigners never order (pickled pig trotters, for example, or cartilage of chicken leg).  You can get a large meal for six people under $50.  It's my favorite Chinese restaurant!  If you come to visit me, I promise we'll go!!