A bicycle made for......

I am aware that I haven’t been updating my blog as often as I used to. I think this is partly an indication of how we have all settled down into Shanghai being a normal way of life, but also how things that seemed bizarre at first are just about unnoticeable now. Absurd translations no longer stand out, everyone still stares but now we don’t think about it, Carrefour and its live frogs are no stranger now than any Tesco store. I have to concentrate now to really notice the unusual.

Having said that, one of the things I would like to do while I’m in China is to create a collection of photos called “Unusual Bicycle Cargo”. I have explained before about the number of bikes in Shanghai (apparently, there are more bikes in China than people…that is a lot of bikes) and the loads carried on bikes range from the bizarre to the downright dangerous. Nevertheless, my project is proving surprisingly difficult, and not because there is any shortage of material.

My first problem is that I am inevitably in the car, and speed is a problem. Not that I am speeding past the bike obviously, but that I am sitting in a traffic jam and the bike is speeding past me. On the rare occasion that I am moving more quickly than the bike, it is just as difficult. I have considered shouting “STOP” at Charley, but if he stopped dead in the middle of the road for no reason, the inevitable and immediate crescendo of car horns would deafen everyone. In fact, even if someone stops dead in the middle of the road for a perfectly good reason, e.g. they have crashed into the car in front, the chorus of a hundred angry car horns has to be heard to be believed. I have considered sitting by the side of the road and waiting for unusual loads to go by, but as the temperatures at the moment are around 38 ۫۫۫ C during the day, that idea was soon dismissed.

And so at the moment, I am not taking pictures, but insead I'm trying to commit to memory all the unusual loads. The strangest, and yet most common, is the pushbike that appears to be the family vehicle. These are most evident on Sundays. There is a man driving, or pedalling I should say, his black floppy hair blowing in the breeze. He looks about 12 but is probably nearer 30. The wife is perched elegantly on the luggage rack, over the back tyre, side-saddle of course, with her size two feet (clad in pink Hello Kitty stilettos and pop socks) hovering 3 inches above the road. The fact that she probably weighs no more than 5 stone is a definite advantage here. She will usually be holding a small baby. Once the baby gets to about 18 months old, the baby is perfectly capable of holding on by itself, and sits on the luggage rack too, but facing forwards. If the family owns an electric bike (again, there are many of these around – scooters I think they are called in England) the seating configuration changes. The baby now sits on the seat, squashed in between its mother and father, who all face forwards. None of them wear crash helmets, and they weave dangerously in and out of the Shanghai traffic, sometimes reaching speeds of up to 15mph. A truly amazing sight. Other unusual loads seen recently include trees (yes, large trees, complete with roots), a leopard print 3-piece suite and a window (the glass, not the frame, approximate size 48” x 48”, which was being carried by a passenger, who was of course sitting on the luggage rack). Loads that are bizarre but not uncommon are large plants, huge loads of empty plastic containers, water melons and live chickens.

But anyway, even if the conditions were perfect, and my camera was poised and ready, I would still feel uncomfortable about taking a picture – it seems to me to be an invasion of privacy, as it probably would to any British person. Not that the Chinese have any concept of privacy or indeed invasions of it…but one thing I have learnt here is that upbringing is ingrained, and it is sometimes very difficult to dismiss that upbringing and the habits of not only a lifetime, but a lifestyle as well. We have all adjusted very well and very quickly I think, but no matter how normal life in Shanghai now seems, J is still repulsed whenever the Ayi spits in the kitchen sink.

Upstairs downstairs

“For casual everyday use, set the kitchen table for our family without the name cards or silverware. Use only one glass”. “During the party, please stay in the kitchen”. “I will give you a shopping list each day and you should buy the items on your way to work the next morning”. “If you have extra time, you must tell me as I may have extra tasks for you”.

These are all phrases in a book I was reading over the weekend. No, not some 19th century guide on giving instructions to the under parlour maid, but an Ayi Survival Guide, written just last year by two American expats living in Shanghai. It’s basically a phrase book, but filled with phrases apparently useful for communicating with an Ayi. Traditional phrase books are good, but knowing how to say “I would like two return tickets on the soft coach to Beijing” is not much use when you need to tell the Ayi to stop cooking the rice with tap water. I had heard about this book, and had been looking for a copy for a while. Admittedly, it had seemed more urgent with the previous Ayi, as I’d hoped it would contain the Chinese for “Please stop scrubbing coloured items of clothing with bleach and wire wool”, but Joanne the new Ayi doesn’t seem to massacre the laundry with such depressing regularity. Nevertheless, as soon as I saw it, I bought it without even reading any of the contents.

I soon discovered that as an added bonus, it also contains a section on giving instructions to the driver. This includes such gems as “I will let you know when it is a good time to eat your meal”, “I will always tell you when you can go home for the day. Do not ask when you can go unless you have a problem and need to go”, “Never use the horn, use the brake instead”, “and “Do not leave for lunch from my driveway without asking if the timing is good for me to be without my vehicle”.

It is quite an eye-opener to discover that phrases like this are in everyday use between ex-pats and their Ayis and drivers. I am teaching our new Ayi to speak English. The look of horror on the landlady’s face when she saw this spoke volumes – she clearly thinks that the Ayi’s time would be better spent blackening the grate, and that it’s entirely inappropriate for me to be giving the hired help free lessons. Class discrimination is alive and well here in Shanghai.

Probably as a result of us treating Charley the driver and Joanne the Ayi as people and not slaves, Charley invited us for lunch at his house last Sunday. We met his wife and son, and his wife made a Chinese banquet for us. I am positive he does not normally invite his employers for meals in his home with his family. And at this very moment, he is downstairs playing Monopoly (on the Shanghai Monopoly Board that J and I made as part of her project on Shanghai) with J – an excellent way for her to practice Mandarin, and judging by the hysterical laughter, more fun for him than sitting in the driveway.

Changing times

On Sunday, we visited Zhujiajiao, according to the blurb ‘an ancient town built on the crisscrossing waterways that run from Dianshan Lake’. This particular water town is about 20 minutes away from Shanghai, and is of such interest that they actually charge people to get in it. The one (pedestrian) road in leads you under a twin wooden archway, one archway marked “Tourists” and the other marked “Locals Only”. We paid our money and went in, looking out for the sign that said “You’ll never leave”.

Predictably, the town was geared up for tourists; all the usual shops selling all the usual Chinese souvenirs, the junks on one of the wider waterways taking tourists on return trips for 100RMB for half an hour, the ‘fisherman’s cottage’ (another 25RMB to get in) and a ‘noiseometer’ (not sure if this is its proper name – they’re very popular, big electronic signs that measure and constantly display the noise levels in decibels – usually found by main roads). We assumed it was there to show how quiet this town is compared to say, the middle of Shanghai, but it simply encouraged hoards of people to go and scream at it as loudly as possible to measure their own noise output.

We stood and watched an old woman preparing something that I think is called a zong-zi. Whatever it’s called though, it’s typical Chinese fast food, on sale in every street in Shanghai, as ubiquitous as the chippy in England. For that reason alone, it never seems appropriate to stand and watch one being made – it would be as absurd as a group of Japanese tourists gathered round the window of Fred’s Fish Bar to watch him dumping buckets of chips in the deep fat fryer. However, since we’d paid to get in, and everyone was nosying around anyway, I didn’t feel so ridiculous. The woman took a large leaf, probably bamboo – but similar to a spinach leaf - and then filled it with brown sticky rice and a few other bits I couldn’t identify. She then wrapped the leaf round the filling and secured it with some parcel string. The woman had only one tooth, it was in the middle, right at the front, but this didn’t deter her from using it to bite through the surplus string. I think this was what put me off. “Heng how- velly good”, enthused Charley, buying a carrier bag full of them. He took one out and undid the string, insisting I tried one. I’m not particularly squeamish, I’ll try most things, but I really didn’t fancy this at all. In the end, I gave in and took a bite out of the now unwrapped zong-zi. The reason for the rice being brown and sticky was now obvious, there seemed to be some sort of toffee gluing it all together. I dread to think what it was. I found a bin and disposed of it as subtly as I could.

It’s constantly difficult to remember that China only really opened its doors to tourists 20 years ago. And despite all the efforts made for tourists, this little town was still clearly lived in, with life mainly going on just as it had for hundreds of years. Once you’ve paid to come in somewhere, the whole place takes on the feel of something there to be examined – so it felt acceptable to stare into the open front doors in a way that I would never do normally. The tiny houses in the narrow streets had the usual laundry hanging from every upstairs window. There were men playing Mah-jong in dark rooms, old women snoozing in chairs just inside their halls, and old men sitting outside their doors in their pyjamas as they presumably had been doing all their lives. It’s hard to comprehend the enormous changes taking place in and around Shanghai, and how those changes must be affecting the people that live there. One wizened old woman appeared to be giving it plenty of thought, as she sat in the doorway of her house on her stool, while crowds of tourists trampled past, taking photos.

On discovering that it's nice to be nice

“Hello!!” called J, waving happily through the windscreen. The Security Guard’s formal salute never faltered as our black Buick swept through the gate, but the grin on his face was from ear to ear.

Our boxes are all here and unpacked, all our worldly goods are with us again, and this house in Shanghai is now truly home. To think we have only been here for a little over two months is quite amazing. We have all settled into a life so different from the life we knew in England, this new life of living in a city with 14 million other people, hardly any of whom speak our language, a life of mosquito nets and bottled water and air conditioning in the house, of live turtles in the supermarket and no cake and no bacon sandwiches, and an Ayi to take care of tedious chores and a driver to drive us everywhere in a car with blacked out windows, a daily occurrence of fireworks and chopsticks and elevated roads and neon, a life of constant Chinese lessons and miming and 35 degrees through the day and 28 degrees through the night, of Chinese cooking lessons and skiing lessons and no chips and no television and being stared at wherever we go – I don’t think life could be much more different.

S and D were playing 5-a-side football. I was at home in the study, air conditioning on full blast, working on my TEFL course. J was in the study with me, reading her book. And I thought, all our lives have changed – but hers – her life has changed the most. I have been home-schooling her for a month now. When we lived in England, I doubt I spent more than a couple of hours with her in a day, but now we spend just about every waking moment together. She is stared at absolutely wherever she goes, whether she is walking down the street or playing in the park or shopping in the supermarket or eating a meal – people nudge each other and turn and stop and stare and point and lean out of car windows and encourage each other to come out from wherever they were and have a look – they even come up to her and hug her and take her photo and chatter to her excitedly in Chinese. In the beginning, she usually accepted all this attention quite willingly, smiling patiently. As she got more used to it she went through a phase of just ignoring it, but a few weeks ago she discovered something new. If she responded, or initiated even the most basic conversation, such as saying hello, people were absolutely delighted. The happier they were, the happier she was. “Ne hao”, she calls, waving and smiling to everyone who stares. Momentarily people are confused, but then invariably they are thrilled, waving and smiling delightedly in return. Charley the driver was initially horrified at this ‘making eye contact’, but now, amazed by the reactions of his fellow Shanghainese, he’s as delighted as the recipients of one of J’s waves. I don’t know for sure, but I have an idea of how most Shanghainese must perceive the Westerners that arrive in Shanghai. J, with her sudden discovery of friendliness and good humour, must be turning all those perceptions on their head.

Non Kun San

The landlady was due to come and give me a cookery lesson at the same time that J was having her Chinese lesson. The cookery lessons came about because I had bought a couple of cookery books in Carrefour when we first arrived. The books are in Chinese, but each recipe was illustrated with a lovely colour picture. So we could pick which picture we liked the look of, show it to the Ayi, specify a time and she would cook it for us. But I wanted to have a go at these genuine Chinese recipes myself, which was how the landlady ended up volunteering (via the interpreter) to cook them, while I watched her and wrote down in English what she did. Simple.

The previous Ayi used to come here on her bike, and if she needed to go shopping for anything, she went on her bike. With the new Ayi not having a bike, I managed to make Charley the driver understand that he needed to take her to the supermarket to get the ingredients required for my lesson. In the end, J and I decided to go with them, and so at 2.00pm, I found myself touring the local supermarket (no Western translations here, except the odd one that creeps onto a label here and there – this is more helpful than you might imagine, as it not only tells you what’s in that particular bottle, it also gives you a clue as to what the entire aisle might contain) with Charley and the Ayi.

We had to go upstairs to get a jar of pineapple chunks, and this took us past the household equipment. The Ayi paused longingly beside the ironing boards (the previous Ayi burnt a hole in the one we’ve got) and I nodded to indicate she could have a new one. She fairly skipped round carrying her new ironing board, and when I said she could have a new mop too, I knew I had a friend for life.
On our way back downstairs, J diverted into the children’s clothes section. This always draws a crowd of excited shop assistants, who all gather round to watch her flick through the rails of summer dresses. She picked one out and held it up. This drew gasps from the admiring crowd, and off she went to the clothes till to pay for it. She handed over her 110RMB and stood waiting for her 1RMB change. It did not appear. The lady on the till then started having an argument with another customer, and J had been forgotten. I checked her receipt, which showed the price as 110RMB, even though the label showed 109RMB. Charley and the Ayi immediately took up the cause, and stood arguing with the crowd of assistants. The assistants made it quite clear that as far as store policy was concerned, it didn’t matter what the label said - it was what the barcode said that mattered. After much typical Chinese excitement and chattering, we admitted defeat and went downstairs to pay for the rest of the food. But the Ayi still wasn’t happy, and disappeared somewhere with J’s dress. Ten minutes later she returned, triumphantly brandishing a 1RMB note. I wonder if Confucius said anywhere that if you make sure your Ayi has good tools to work with, she will in turn make sure you don’t get ripped off by barcode trickery.