Animal Market, World Financial Center, Chongming Island, and Beijing!

I am writing this week’s entry from a spacious hotel room overlooking the Bird’s Nest stadium and the rest of Olympic Park in Beijing!  I had a bit of a surprise at work last Wednesday evening when Jun Li brought Brad and I in for a routine meeting and in addition invited me accompany him on a business trip to Beijing! For our last week of work, Brad and I naively thought we could leisurely wrap up our current assignments and enjoy a more slow-paced, restful week before heading stateside. Of course our office had no such ideas, and in keeping with the hectic pace of Xian Dai and our internship thus far, we were given plenty of additional assignments to keep us more than busy for our last week. We left our meeting with Jun Li in a bit of a daze as he had informed us of the deadlines and criteria due for our current two projects and additionally introduced a brand new project for which two new iterations needed to be designed and modeled by the following Wednesday morning. I wasn’t sure how a trip to Beijing would fit in with all of these deadlines, but I was willing to make it work!

For our last weekend in China, Brad, Misha, Tina and I set out to cross a few remaining sights off our must-see list. First we investigated a small-animal, insect, and plant market in Old Town I had read about and was interested in visiting after reading as far as “small-animal”. The market is spread throughout the ground level of a block of traditional longtang alleyways and two-story dwelling/shops- similar to the Tianzifang Art Street we visited last weekend. Unlike Tianzifang, this market has no upscale, artsy aspirations or even a desire to attract tourists as its very unsouvenir-like business is selling pets. I thoroughly enjoyed exploring the maze of crowded alleyways and viewing the unexpected variety of plants, animals, and pet supplies for sale. The animal selection offered the largest variety of turtles I have ever seen, an abundance of colorful squawking birds in beautiful wooden cages, glittering goldfish of all shapes and sizes, crickets, crickets, and more crickets, a large selection of rodents, and of course adorable fluffy kittens and puppies! From my observations, it seems the Chinese like their dogs to be small and fluffy, which of course aligns with my puppy preference as well, and I even saw a puppy identical to Shelby!! I spent way too much time trying to get a good picture of her but she wouldn’t sit still. Mom and Dad, you can rest assured that I restrained from making any rash purchases at the small-animal market, and I should make it through customs without any problems tomorrow.

Although I was glad to visit the pet market, the top priority on our list for the day was visiting the observation deck of the World Financial Center. This skyscraper defines the skyline of Pudong, (the East side of the Huangpu River), and is currently the tallest building in Shanghai, (although soon to be surpassed by 450 feet in 2014 with the completion of the Shanghai tower). The World Financial Center boasts the highest observation level in the world at the 101st level, 1,600 feet in the air, and we were hoping for a clear evening to see Shanghai from a new perspective. Considering I can count on one hand the number of days I’ve seen blue overhead while in Shanghai, the weather was decent enough and the evening lights of Pudong and the Bund on the West side of the river were a beautiful sight. We also got a bird’s eye view of the neighboring Jin Mao tower, the second tallest building in the city. Afterwards, we made a quick visit to the hotel lobby of the Jin Mao tower to have a refreshment and to take in the 33-story atrium overhead that runs the entire height of the hotel.

Sunday was easily the highlight of my weekend if not of the whole trip. Brad and I were invited to join our coworkers for a Xian Dai organized social outing to Chongming Island, an island about an hour and a half North East of the city, located at the convergence of the Yangtze River and the East China Sea. Misha tagged along as well and per usual, the three of us really had no clue what was on the agenda. We were all surprised and excited to spend the day at a large wooded park enjoying a delicious bbq, riding paddle boats and bumper cars, rock climbing, and even riding down a zip line! My favorite activity by far was cruising all over the park along shaded winding paths on tandem bikes. Our whole office of almost 20 was out on bikes and it was quite a sight! Thankfully I got a rest on the bus ride back to Shanghai because that evening I was joining a few girls from work to see the James Blunt concert. Apparently he is quite popular with the girls here and for the couple weeks leading up to the concert, the topic of discussion at lunch was always how handsome he is. Although I am familiar with his music, I agreed to go mostly because I thought it would be interesting to see a concert while in Shanghai and he was playing at the Cultural Center at the World Expo site which looks like a giant UFO. It was a wonderful evening and a lot of fun although I may be hesitant to see any of my favorite bands while in China because the crowds are a little too tame. James Blunt even made a joke about being told performing here would be like playing before an audience at the cinema, which got a good laugh. To be fair though, James Blunt is more of a melodic singer and the floor audience was standing for a few of the more popular upbeat songs.

Monday and Tuesday were busy days at work as Brad and I were trying to wrap everything up for our Wednesday morning deadline and before I headed off for Beijing. I wasn’t actually told when I would be going or for how long until the night before and felt a little unprepared to jet set off for two days right before flying back to the states, but I simply could not miss such a great opportunity. Unfortunately Jun Li knew that Brad was traveling to Beijing with friends the following week, and since the opportunity could only be for one person, I got the invitation. Again, I was not sure what the agenda was for the trip but soon realized that Jun Li was sending me and a fellow coworker up a day early so I could enjoy some of the sights. My coworker Liu Gong is relatively familiar with Beijing and served as my tour guide. Liu Gong seems to be one of the busiest in our office and rarely has a day off even on the weekends. Although our communication was limited due to the language barrier, and he was probably worried about work the whole time, I hope he enjoyed spending a day out of the office.  I felt less like an employee and more like a special guest while in Beijing, as I was taxied around from site to site, given my own spacious hotel room, and fed many fantastic meals. What a memorable end to two months at Xian Dai!

Beijing is the second largest city in China and like Shanghai, requires much more than two days to fully appreciate; although I think we made a good attempt in our limited time. I enjoyed seeing the famous Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square as well as some modern architecture including the Center for Performing Arts, the National Library, and Olympic Park with the Bird’s Nest Stadium and the Water Cube Aquatics Center. Liu Gong also took me to Wangfujing Snack Street which is exactly what the name implies- a crowded pedestrian street lined with food vendors offering an amazing assortment of Chinese cuisine from all over the country. I wish I had been prepared and been more hungry! I will only briefly mention my sightseeing tour of Beijing as it is late and I am leaving tomorrow for the U.S. I also need to save some stories to share with everyone when I return!

Week 6

Friday was an unusually exciting end to the work week as it began with a torrential rainstorm and ended with Karaoke! It seems we all had difficulties waking up Friday morning as storm clouds blanketed the sun and rain masked the construction noise that regularly begins at 6am. We were all a little confused about how to get to work since we have walked everyday thus far, but 1.8 miles is much too far to walk in the rain. Eventually we found our coworker from down the hall who we could tag along with to catch the bus. We had all heard and seen the downpour from our hotel window before we left for the bus, but were shocked to see a muddy river where our little Aomen Road should have been. The street was filled with colorful poncho clad people as they attempted to go about their morning routines despite the flooded street. Scooters, taxis, and bicyclists slowly passed by and people had to wade through the murky water because the sidewalks had disappeared. It seems nothing can stand in the way of the city buses as they defiantly plowed through the water, creating a large wake that lapped against the neighboring shops. There was no way out of our hotel besides through the water, and having a change of shoes in my bag and holding a canvas dress over my head as a makeshift umbrella, I made my way through the shin-deep murky river to the nearest bus stop. It looked like our street was one of the worst from what we saw that day and thankfully most of the rest of the city seemed to have properly functioning storm drains. By evening the flash flood on Aomen Road had subsided and things appeared to be back to normal.   

Our workday was cut short not only by the rainstorm which made us late, but also by an afternoon discussion/lecture session the company hosted for all of the interns. Although the majority of the dialogue was in unintelligible Chinese, it was nice to meet the Chinese interns and have a break from work. The company also organized a social outing afterwards at a nearby KTV (the local terminology for karaoke bar). As most are probably aware, karaoke is insanely popular in China and KTVs are easy to spot as they tend to be giant, ostentatious buildings brightly lit and reminiscent of Las Vegas casinos. This particular KTV was called PartyWorld and was the first and only KTV I have ever been too; I have never even done karaoke in the states! As is typical, our group of 15 got a small private room with a wrap around couch, some tables, and a large TV. Maracas, a couple tambourines, as well two microphones were also provided. I think the five of us Americans were all a little hesitant to start belting out tunes, especially in front of a group of coworkers, (1/2 of which we had just met), but our coworkers had no such inhibitions and jumped right in. The KTV offers a large list of Chinese as well American songs and it wasn’t long before we gave in to our coworkers’ encouragement and were queuing songs for ourselves. In case you are wondering, between the five of us we performed a nice selection of American hits including embarrassing numbers from Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber as well as classics like Hotel California and Hey Jude. I can now proudly say I have done karaoke and in Shanghai no less! Our coworkers were very gracious, complimenting us on our performances, although I think we lack the endurance and attention span of the Chinese KTV regulars. A coworker of mine was telling us about her love of KTV and how she recently did karaoke for 6 hours straight, and that was still not enough… I think one evening of KTV was plenty for us.

Saturday Misha, Tina and I did some more local sightseeing, starting with the Shanghai Museum. Visiting the museum requires traveling to People’s Square, which is the largest and most popular public square in Shanghai and one of the city’s most well-known landmarks. A number of prominent museums and public buildings are all organized together in a gigantic park setting and this complex constitutes People’s Square. The Shanghai Museum is one of the most famous museums in the city if not China, and is also free to visit! As an aspiring architect, I have to comment that the organization of this museum and its various collections was maybe the most orderly and easily navigable of any museums I have visited. The collections represented all things Chinese throughout the country’s unimaginably long history and included exhibitions of jade, furniture, currency, bronze, ceramics, and painting. We spent varying amounts of time in the different galleries depending on our interests and I found I was most intrigued by the calligraphy gallery. I have never seen so many different and beautiful variations of Chinese writing!

After the museum, we made our way over to Tianzifang Art Street, which a coworker of mine had recommended visiting. Despite its name, Tianzifang is more than just a street. It is actually a district of traditional longtang alleyways turned into design studios, boutiques, and cafes. The traditional architecture of Shanghai consists of small two story buildings clustered together along narrow alleyways called longtang. These crowded, mazelike alleyways serve a variety of functions beyond just circulation and are essentially the front and back yard of the residents as well as a place to socialize and even set up a small storefront. The longtang and their associated neighborhoods can be found in patches throughout the city although they are fast disappearing and being replaced by high-rises. The charm of Tianzifang is in the hodgepodge nature of the buildings and crooked alleyways and half of the fun shopping here is in the exploration.

I am sad to report that Sunday was not a fun-filled sightseeing day, but a workday for Brad and me. Right before our afternoon meet & greet with the other interns on Friday, Brad and I were surprised with a new project. A new design idea needed to be developed and modeled in 3D for a new twin-tower office/hotel/entertainment complex by Monday. At this point in our internship, we are fairly used to being given gigantic design projects and short deadlines but this was our first time having to work over the weekend, (although the majority of my coworkers spend at least one day of every weekend in the office). We allowed ourselves a late start Sunday morning, and were able to work on our computers from the comfort of our hotel which was also nice. All of our running around this last month and a half is finally catching up to me and a day inside sounded just fine, although working wasn’t my first choice for a relaxing Sunday. These hurried work assignments are a little frustrating because the limited design time we are given makes it difficult to develop strong design ideas and to really think through the details but it is also a very good exercise in time-management and efficiency. I think this internship has been one of the most eye-opening and educational of all of my work experiences thus far and I hope to maintain some of the quick decision making skills we have had to develop here.

I guess no one can feel too badly for Brad and I considering we were able to finish our model in time to celebrate with Misha for his birthday with a fantastic dinner followed by a hip little wine bar. It wasn’t the most relaxing weekend ever and I was definitely tired at work on Monday but I can’t complain, I’m in Shanghai!

Another Busy Week In Shanghai

This past week has been another busy one, but of course exciting and fun-
filled as well! Wednesday night I joined Misha to meet a friend of his from
undergrad who also has a summer internship in Shanghai. We met Eric
and Eric's American roommates and several other friends of friends for yet
another fantastic dinner, but the main excitement for the evening
was the bar we headed to afterwards to hear Eric's roommate do stand-up at
an expat open mic night. I have never been to an open mic comedy night and
was a little unsure about it when we first arrived and there were only about
10 patrons at the bar and a really awkward "comedian" reading bad jokes off
of his iphone. After about two so-so performances, the acts started to pick
up and by the end I was laughing a good deal. The comedians, as well as
most of the audience, were all Westerners and the jokes centered around the
experience of living in Shanghai as a foreigner. It was entertaining to hear
many of the thoughts I've had as well as many scenarios I can easily imagine
being vocalized. Eric's roommate was among the best of the evening and I
was surprised and impressed to hear that it was only his second time doing
stand-up, how brave!  


At work, our hospital project doesn't seem to be on a rushed schedule,
allowing Brad and I to leave at 5pm most days and giving us greater
opportunity to enjoy different areas of the city in the evenings. Thursday,
Misha, Tina and I took advantage of our free time and headed to Old Town
to check out the Dongtai Road Antique Market. This outdoor market only
stretches over a couple of blocks but hours can be enjoyed here sifting
through the dusty piles of knick-knacks at the overflowing vendor carts. The
range of goods include colorful Communist propaganda posters, porcelain tea
sets, cracking leather suitcases, lacquered wooden jewelry boxes, ornate lion
and Buddha statuary, and much much more. Needless to say we all picked up
a few goods while perusing the stalls. 


After tossing around a few ideas of possible trips for this weekend, we
decided to stay in Shanghai. Between work and travel, we have been
incredibly busy and a free weekend without set plans sounded pretty nice to
everyone. Friday night we all went out together and got a taste of Shanghai's
nightlife. Shanghai doesn't offer the rich abundance of laid-back bars and
microbreweries that I take for granted in Portland, and "going out" generally
entails patronizing a multi-level, smoke-filled club with flashing lights,
expensive drinks, and thumping music hidden somewhere on the upper floor
of a high-rise. Although it is not likely to be a regular outing for me, Tina and I
did have a great time getting some exercise on the crowded dance floor!  


After enjoying a lazy morning on Saturday, I joined Misha and Eric for lunch
at a street vendor in the French Concession offering whole fried ducks. This
literal hole-in-the-wall take-out "restaurant" consisted of 2 men, 2 giant frying
vats, and a knife and cutting board. The duck was served in halves and was
literally 1/2 of the duck. After being fried, each duck was cut once length-wise,
(head and neck included), and then cut again perpendicularly about 6 more
times and each half thrown into a paper carton. It seems that the art of carving
meat is not known or appreciated here as I am rarely served a piece of meat
that I can identify as any recognizable anatomy. Although I have not picked
up the Chinese technique of eating meat served this way, which involves a
lot of gnawing and spitting, I managed to get a decent size lunch out of my 1/2 duck. All in all, lunch cost less than $3 USD per serving and was crispy,
golden, and delicious! 


I parted ways with Eric and Misha for the afternoon and enjoyed a little alone
time exploring a district called Hongkou in North Shanghai. A coworker
had told me about a renovated slaughterhouse turned shopping complex
in the area called 1933 that she recommended visiting for its interesting
architecture. Hongkou has been a hotspot for new construction in the last
few years but also offers some beautiful historic streets and lively markets to
explore. I used a map from my guidebook to locate various sights in the area
and spent a few hours walking around before heading to 1933 and a famous
historic street called Duolun Cultural Street. 1933 may easily be some of my
favorite architecture in the city thus far, although it was difficult to photograph
due to the overcast sky as well as the complex shapes and layers that make
up the building. The slaughterhouse was built in 1933, (hence the name),
and is a maze of concrete ramps, stairs, and bridges that connect a central
circular building with a larger rectangular building circumscribed around it,
with an open air 4-story atrium space between the two. The many ramps and
bridges had been used to funnel cattle through the building and passages
of varying widths were used to control the animal traffic. Even the concrete
lattice facade was functional as it served to keep the animals inside while still
allowing for adequate ventilation. The complex is so beautiful with its graceful
flowering columns and sculpted spiral staircases, that it is hard to imagine it
functioning as a slaughterhouse. I enjoy seeing architecture built so beautifully
for such a brutal and private function as a slaughterhouse. I can’t imagine
anyone spending any time or money on aesthetics for such a building today
but this initial investment has obviously paid off as the building is still highly
valued and has not been torn down like the surrounding neighborhoods have.


Saturday evening we were treated by some coworkers to another fantastic
Sichuan style dinner and Tina and I were treated extra specially with roses
because it was Chinese Valentine's Day. As evening approached, many
young couples filled the streets, all dressed for the occasion, and
the young women were parading around with giant fancy bouquets of
flowers and stuffed animals. Besides giving flowers, it is also common to
give bouquets of small stuffed animals such as teddy bears which I had never
seen before. Although it was cute, I’m not sure what I would do with a dozen
miniature teddy bears on sticks…


Sunday our employer Jun Li was again gracious enough to spend half of
his day touring us around Shanghai and as always, the tour ended with
a fantastic meal. The theme of this tour was “old and new architecture of
Shanghai” and we visited several historic buildings, a new high-rise designed
by Jun Li, as well as a newly renovated cluster of historic buildings turned high-end shopping district. Due to the forecasted typhoon that was supposed to hit Shanghai this weekend but ultimately changed its mind, the weekend was very overcast and rainy, which is not conducive to photography, but I tried anyways. The rain and wind was a welcome relief from the heat, although short-lived as temperatures were back to normal after the weekend.


As always, I have posted a link to pictures from this weekend, but I also posted an additional link to a compilation album I put together of some of Guillaume's photos which focus specifically on pictures of us as a group. I tend to focus mostly on the scenery and surroundings with my photos but thought you all would enjoy some more photos of us in action!

Wuzhen

Our latest weekend excursion was to the water town of Wuzhen, about 2 hours SW of Shanghai by bus. Our coworker Pamela had recently visited this small town and recommended us going. Unlike our last trip and possible future trips, this one was not listed in my Shanghai guidebook and I didn’t have a map! I couldn’t even find a decent map online because apparently Wuzhen doesn’t have many major roads. Wuzhen really is a small town even by Western standards. The town only has 12,000 permanent residents, (although this is not counting the thousands of tourists visiting daily). The town is only about 2 miles long and the only way to get around town besides walking is by bicycle taxi! Tina and I enjoyed a nice ride from the train station in a rickshaw. It was humorous to hear the taxi drivers chatter to one another as they passed by and Tina translated some of the comments for me- all of which centered around us being foreigners such as “were did you pick up that cargo?!” Although Wuzhen is quite popular for Chinese tourists, I think we saw about 5 other Caucasians over the weekend. At least us UofO kids don’t have to worry about losing each other in the crowds.

Wuzhen has two historic/scenic districts that cost a fee to enter and after we arrived early Saturday morning and checked into our hotel, we headed over to  Wuzhen West. Pamela thought we would enjoy Wuzhen West best as it is cleaner and quieter than Wuzhen East, which gets the brunt of the tourist flood. Both historic districts are surrounded by walls, canals, and security guards and to enter Wuzhen West we had to pass through the visitors’ center and take a small wooden ferry. After disembarking from the ferry, we were free to roam. Wuzhen West is oriented around a main canal a little over half a mile long and includes numerous little alleys and side streets. We had the whole day to leisurely wander the many winding streets and visit the shops because the tickets were single entry only and Pamela said we had to stay till evening to see the canal all lit up. Saturday was easily over a hundred degrees, humid, and sunny, so we took our time walking around and frequently took breaks either in the shade or in an air-conditioned shop or restaurant. We were all tired by the time sunset arrived but seeing the waterways and shops all lit up at night was most definitely worth seeing. After dinner we walked to the far end of the main canal and rode a small water taxi back to the visitors’ center, a fantastic and relaxing ride. The view from the water was picture perfect, (although I couldn’t take any pictures because the boat kept rocking). We ventured back to the hotel around 9:00pm, all sweaty and tired from the day. After showers, we got some beers from a nearby convenient store and enjoyed some late night grilled skewers of various meats, seafood, vegetables, and mushrooms that are popular street food in China. We sat on tiny plastic stools under the yellow street light at a trash littered corner, (no one seems to use trash cans in China), and enjoyed our greasy skewers. It was quite a different scene from the day we spent in Wuzhen West, but enjoyable none-the-less.

Reflecting on Saturday in Wuzhen West, I think we were all pleasantly surprised at how beautiful, quiet, and immaculately clean the historic district was.  The shops, houses, and streets were all in pristine condition but it seemed that something was missing. It took a minute to realize that no one appeared to live in Wuzhen West. There were no clothes hanging out to dry, no children using the sewer grates and landscaping as toilets, no elderly sitting on small wooden stools observing the street life, no one doing laundry in buckets on the sidewalk, no noisey scooters or bicycles whizzing by, and no shops that offered any kind of daily household items. It seems that the 2,000 year old architecture of the town has been preserved and filled with souvenir shops and tasty restaurants but all of the inhabitants disappeared. After doing some more reading on the town, I found out that Wuzhen West was just recently renovated/”preserved” and in deed all of the inhabitants had been kicked out. The town is a lovely place to visit but it is a little museum or resort-like in that it preserves and presents only the photogenic parts of its history. We decided not to visit Wuzhen East on Sunday but to walk around the rest of the town- the “normal” parts of town with actual residents and that doesn’t cost to enter. We enjoyed escaping the tourists and wandering down various alleys. We saw a number of combination garden/animal farms with vegetable vines growing up telephone poles and chicken coops built from a variety of scrap materials. We happened upon a grandma watching her two little grandchildren playing outside their home and we spent a good 20 minutes being entertained by the little kids. When the little boy and girl saw us, they quickly became a broken record of “hellos” and“bye byes” intermixed with giggles. Even grandma joined in the game.

We headed back to Shanghai Sunday afternoon and Brad and I are continuing to work on the 3D model and elevation designs for our hospital project this week. Our employer, Jun Li, reviewed our designs on Tuesday, provided some feedback and told us of some changes in the plans. Once Brad and I finish our designs, we have been instructed to each build another iteration only this time around Brad is to design a classical façade and I am to design an art deco façade option. By next week we will have four 3D models of different façade studies to show the client. Brad and I are not accustomed to designing in a particular style, and it will be a little challenging to copy a period style like the client wants. In architecture school, we have taken extensive history classes that review the development of architecture over time and have studied many various styles including classical and art deco. In our design studios though, we are not taught to design in a period style as architects back in the early 20^th century did. Again, this assignment should be a good learning experience as not all clients care for the contemporary aesthetic that many designers my age favor. I am enjoying the challenges at work and being busy just makes the weeks go by even faster, for better or worse. It is hard to believe I have been in Shanghai for almost five weeks now! 

Work Update

Last week marked the end of the hotel project for Brad and me. We gave the final elevation design to the rendering company, and the principal architect of the project, Jun Li, has approved the design to be forwarded on to the clients. Brad and I have not seen the final rendering but hopefully will sometime soon. I think we are both a little unsure about how the final design turned out given the rushed schedule, the lack of information provided us, along with being given limited design flexibility but we are hoping for the best. At any rate, it was a really great learning experience. We have now moved on to a large hospital project. It seems that all construction projects in China only come in size Large, XL and Gigantic. Brad and I have been given two days to again design elevations and to each build a 3D model of a large hospital based off of nearly finalized floor plans. The project has been in the works for about 6 months now and is now in the design development stage (schematic design is over). I am amazed at the design process and how little thought is given to the appearance and form of the building until the floor plans are almost finalized. Brad and I are working hard to meet the deadline of tomorrow evening so that we can enjoy our trip to Wuzhen this weekend! 


Between work projects Brad and I felt very lucky to be invited by Jun Li to join him and a van-full of Xian Dai employees when they traveled to nearby Hangzhou for a client meeting on Wednesday. Hangzhou is similar to Suzhou in size and is a popular tourist destination because of the beautiful West Lake and it's surrounding parks and hills. After dropping Jun Li and the others off at their meeting around 9:30am, Brad and I were pleasantly surprised to be given the day off to tour around the city with our fellow coworker Pamela and the Xian Dai driver as our chauffeur! Pamela was also happy to have the day off as she has been working very hard on the hotel project with us. She had been to Hangzhou once before and was a wonderful tour guide.  Our first stop was Tiger Spring, which is a natural spring and is surrounded by peaceful gardens and forest. Apparently the residents of Hangzhou can come here free of charge to get fresh, clean water and we saw a line of people with their plastic water containers waiting at the spicket. We also visited the historic Qinghefang Old Street were we were treated to a fantastic lunch of local dishes and also enjoyed some window shopping. The street is famous for its traditional medicine shops and we stopped to tour the Chinese Medicine Museum which still has a thriving business selling traditional Chinese medicine. The museum housed all sorts of stuffed animals and jarred specimen with labels describing their various medicinal properties. My favorite part of the day was touring the China Academy of Art, a university campus built about eight years ago. The buildings were designed by a Chinese architect named Wang Shu whose work is characterized by his use of local materials and his interesting use of masonry. His work seems very modern yet rooted in the local context and I greatly enjoyed the campus. 


After our sightseeing, we took a drive around the famous West Lake, which is quite beautiful and quite large. It was soon time to pick up Jun Li and rest of the Xian Dai crew and all thirteen of us enjoyed a delicious dinner together before heading back to Shanghai. It was quite a long day and everyone was asleep in the van on the way home. 


In other work news, I was extremely excited when one afternoon a giant bag of ice cream goodies was brought into the office! Along with some standard carmel cones and chocolate covered  ice cream bars, there were also some frozen treats I have never seen before such as frozen pea popsicles. Yes it's green and has frozen peas in it but it is actually really good! I was again elated when a few days later it happened again, more ice cream at work! By the third time it happened I was finally told that the whole office gets ice cream every time the temperature hits 35 degrees celsius, (95 degrees fahrenheit). It has been so incredibly hot that we have had ice cream a number of times so far. I must say it does make me feel better about putting up with the heat. It rarely gets below 85 degrees, even at night and the humidity is so high that the heat index is a good 10 degrees higher than the temperature. Brad, Misha and Guillaume have been troopers so far and we all still walk to and from work. We have a routine were we leave at 8am, stop and get bananas from the fruit stand around the corner, stop again along the way for some dumplings, pastries, or other street food, sit and eat in the shade at the palm tree park, then continue on to work. Between the stops and walking slow due to the heat it takes us about an hour but we enjoy observing the street life and getting some exercise. After almost four weeks, the walk is still interesting and amidst the familiar faces and shops, there is always something new happening. 

Suzhou

Suzhou, or “The Venice of China” as it’s sometimes called, was the destination of our first weekend excursion outside of Shanghai. Suzhou is one of many water towns around Shanghai that are popular weekend retreats for the Shanghainese, and it is also the largest and most famous. In reality, Suzhou is not a “town” at all but a city of 6 million. Despite its size and large tourist population, we were able to find some peace and quiet in the smaller gardens as well as walking along the historic flagstone streets that run alongside the canals. The historical center of the city where we spent our weekend, is encompassed by the Waicheng River, forming a rectangular boundary that is crisscrossed by many smaller canals and by many many bridges. The water towns get their name from the many canals that pattern the city and although it was not up to par with Venice, I was by no means disappointed.

We arrived at the Suzhou train station at 10:30am and headed by taxi to the Suzhou Museum. The Museum is the last building designed by the internationally famous Chinese architect, I.M. Pei. Pei has done a great deal of work in the states but is most famous for his controversial glass pyramid addition to the Louvre in France. He is originally from Suzhou and wanted to do his final design for his hometown. The museum was free and we spent about an hour there, mostly enjoying the architecture but also the calligraphy, carvings, embroidered silk, and watercolor paintings that were on display. I found the exterior of the museum to be fairly unimpressive but greatly enjoyed the windings halls, courtyards, and many skylights. The museum is in a historic area and I. M. Pei had obviously taken the context into consideration when designing the museum’s appearance by maintaining similar proportions and colors but I thought he really missed an opportunity to emphasize the roofline like so many of the historical buildings do with their wood carved eaves, undulating roof tiles and stone statuary on the ridges.

The museum abuts the largest and most famous of the classical gardens, the Humble Administrator’s Garden, our next destination. The Suzhou gardens are characterized by their use of stone, water, winding paths, elaborate wooden pavilions and arcades, as well their use of whitewashed walls to divide and organize the garden. Even the smallest gardens have so many walls and winding paths that you can easily become “lost”. The Humble Administrator’s garden was very large and very crowded. The garden seemed more like a park than a private garden with its lotus filled lakes, islands and footbridges and crowds of people. The highlight for me was the abundance of lotus plants; I have never seen so many!

The Suzhou museum and the Humble Administrator’s garden are located on a wonderful flagstone pedestrian street lined with small shops and stalls selling a variety of snacks and souvenirs. After perusing the goods and having lunch, we decided to head towards our hotel to check-in and shower since we were all drenched and sticky from the thick heat. While walking towards our hotel, we happened upon a fantastic pedestrian street called Pingjiang Lu that followed the canal South. We slowly made our way to the hotel, but were regularly distracted by the wonderful cafes and shops along the route. This street was most pleasant since it was shaded and quiet in comparison to the market street where the museum and first garden were. We headed back to Pingjiang Lu Saturday evening to see canal and the shops all lit up; quite a sight! We enjoyed a couple bottles of chilled white wine while sitting alongside the canal and thoroughly enjoyed the evening.

Misha and I were the early risers on Sunday and we ventured out to do some watercolors along the canal before the others awoke. I had been warned by Brad about the crowds that are drawn to a foreigner attempting artwork in public as he had attracted quite an audience while sketching at the Humble Administrator’s Garden. I purposefully chose what I thought was a quiet location but none-the-less attracted a number of inquisitive onlookers who are not at all shy about looking directly over your shoulder and asking a few questions. Everyone that passed by was very friendly and seemed genuinely interested in what Misha and I were doing. Even the small wooden tour boats that passed by all said “Nin hao” (hello) and one commented on how beautiful either I or my painting was, not sure which… The boat rowers giving canal tours are often dressed in silk robes and will sing opera as they row and I enjoyed whenever they passed by. One nice man stopped to tell me the name of the bridge I was painting and was kind enough to write the bridge’s name in Chinese at the bottom of my painting!

At 11am Misha headed back to reconvene with our friends, have some delicious dumplings for lunch, and visit two more gardens before calling a close to our trip. The Garden of the Master of the Nets and the Blue Wave Pavilion Garden were both fantastic! Both were fairly empty and I could feel a much better sense of how the gardens were meant to be experienced. The gardens had all been built between the 11^th and 16^th century, (so old!), for various families as an extension of their homes and provided the yin-yang balance between urbanity and nature. To get to the Garden of the Master of the Nets, we had to venture through a tiny cobblestone alleyway crammed with little shops, which was quite delightful. Once at the garden, we spent a good two hours caught up in its beauty as well as a pretty sizable thunderstorm! We were all quite content to sit undercover of one of the pavilions and watch the lighting show. After a suffocating morning of intense humidity, the rain was a very welcome change. We even enjoyed some delicious flower tea at the tea pavilion in the garden.

I think we all thoroughly enjoyed the trip and as of Tuesday, we’re all still a little tired! A coworker of Brad and mine brought us some tea leaves last week after we had a conversation about his tea, so now we have some fresh tea to enjoy whenever we feel sleepy!

Week 2 & 3

 Time is flying by and Tina and I have started planning out our remaining weekends so we can make the best use of our time. At work, Brad and I have been getting many recommendations of sights to see and places to visit and we now have quite a list! Last weekend we were going to visit a nearby city called Suzhou that is famous for its traditional gardens but had a last minute change of plans. The clients of Brad’s and my design team were supposed to arrive Saturday for an important meeting and we found out on Wednesday that they decided to come early and wanted to have the meeting Friday morning. Our office has been furiously trying to get prepared and Brad and I have been busy working with the 3D modeling/rendering company to get our design schemes ready to show at the meeting. Due to our busy work week, we were not well prepared for our tentatively planned trip to Suzhou and when our host/employer Jun Li invited us to join him and the clients on Saturday we felt it important to change our plans and agreed to join them. Brad and I were unsure at first what we were being invited to and were a little afraid we would have to work on Saturday but soon found out our fellow interns were also invited. As our host, Jun Li wanted to invite us to join him while he and the clients visited past projects to reference for our current project.

On Friday, I was excited to leave the office at 5pm and Tina and I enjoyed a couple hours of shopping before meeting the other interns and some coworkers for a delicious Sichuan style dinner. Sichuan is a province in SW China and is famous for their spicy food; I’m told the spiciest in all of China. It is traditional in China, for one person to order and for everyone to eat together. It is also traditional for one person to pay and we have witnessed a few friendly scuffles at various restaurants as people fight over who gets to pay the tab. The evening was quite a treat and we are going to try and take our coworkers out to dinner at some point to reciprocate although it will take some sneaky tactics to successfully pay the tab before them. In regards to the food, I thought it was delicious and it helped to have a pitcher of fresh pureed watermelon juice which provides relief for our burning mouths. I’m hoping to find a Sichuan style restaurant in Portland or St.Louis to take Dave and Melissa or my Dad since I think they would really enjoy the food.

I must say that the highlight on Saturday was again, the food! After we visited a residential complex so the clients could view the stone cladding and another very contemporary, geometrically styled residential complex designed by Jun Li, we were treated to a fantastic buffet lunch at a fancy restaurant overlooking the Huangpu River. The restaurant was on the East side of the Huangpu River in a high-end district known as Pudong, where the tallest high-rises in Shanghai are located. The restaurant was on the 8^th floor and it overlooked a waterfront park and the river and offered great views of the West riverbank known as the Bund. I was amazed at how many different dishes there were to choose from and I regret that we were not allowed to take photos of the food, (Guilluame tried) as it was all very beautiful.

Sunday involved more sightseeing in Shanghai. Misha and I visited a beautiful Buddhist temple and afterwards Guilluame, Brad, Tina, Misha and I all met up at M50, a complex of contemporary art galleries and studios. The Jade Temple is a walled-in complex that provides a wonderful respite from the bustling, loud, and crowded city that surrounds it. Misha and I enjoyed viewing the intricate wood carvings, giant statues of Buddhist gods, and two large jade carvings of Buddha from which the temple gets its name. My favorite part, besides the peace and quiet, was visiting the tea room and sampling a variety of specialty teas that the monks make. We were given a list of 10 teas and each had a description of what effects the tea provides such as energy or help sleeping as well as more medicinal ones to lower blood pressure and ease indigestion. The teas were made from various kinds of roots, flowers, leaves, and other unknown dried things and were unlike any teas I have seen in the states. I greatly enjoy the rosebud tea that is made from little pink rosebuds and smells like potpourri!

M50 is an old complex of industrial buildings that have been converted into art galleries and studio spaces. The whole complex is deceivingly large and would definitely take most of a day to thoroughly explore. The layout and atmosphere was unlike any art gallery I have been to and I enjoyed the lack of pretense and rough-around-the-edges feel. Each building is filled with numerous galleries, shops, and studios and all the buildings are connected with winding paths and elevated walkways. Every imaginable space seems to be utilized and even one of the stairways had its walls filled with paintings. I have read that contemporary Chinese art is very popular internationally right now and that may explain how such a large collection of artists are supported.

It was back to work Monday and another deadline as the whole hotel complex design is hopefully to be approved by the client on Friday. Cross your fingers! There have been so many changes so far that it is hard for our design team to keep up and I worry about some of my coworkers who work tirelessly through the night and the weekends to keep up with the changes. It’s definitely been a great learning experience so far and it’s only the third week! This weekend we really are headed to Suzhou as Tina and I have booked train tickets and hotel rooms for Saturday night. I’m really looking forward to visiting some traditional Chinese gardens!