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!

Week 1 Continued

Working at Xian Dai continues to be exciting as Brad and I are kept busy on the hotel project. On Friday, we felt lucky to again be invited on another trip by some fellow coworkers who were showing a client some existing projects around the city. My favorite was an old concrete bus parking garage that was redesigned into an office for Tongji University's College of Design Innovation. Looking at the finished renovation you would never guess this modern building was a bus parking garage originally. The renovation added a fourth story in the form of a sleek black cantilevering box as well as a curving copper entryway on the first floor. I also met another American intern at the firm named Tina who toured around with us on Saturday. She is Chinese and besides being a lot of fun, she speaks fluent Mandarin and helps us to maneuver the city when she is with us. 


Friday night, Guillaume, Brad, Misha and I headed over to People's Square to walk around and have dinner. The area has a famous pedestrian street lined with shops and bright signs and seems to be a popular place to window shop. We also made it to the Huangpu River's edge, an area called the Bund, where you have a fantastic view of the Pudong side of Shanghai. Pudong's skyline boasts the tallest towers of the city and we plan on visiting the observation deck of the Shanghai World Financial Center on an upcoming clear evening. The tower is one of the tallest buildings in the world and the observation deck is the tallest at 1,555 feet. 


Saturday we headed to the French Concession, a famous international district characterized  by its beautiful tree-lined streets and low-rise, historic buildings, (a stark contrast to the Shanghai I've experienced thus far).  The French Concession is also home for many expatriates and we definitely noticed a much greater number of Westerns as well as businesses catering to Westerners. Tina and I noticed many great boutiques and will be going back to do some shopping! The French Concession also has the only bars that I have seen in Shanghai, so  we of course had to visit a few Saturday evening. The bar scene is quite lively although the majority of patrons are not Chinese and the prices are more in line with what you would find back home. We stopped in a bar and had to pay 60 yuan for a pint of beer, (about $9), which  is quite a steep increase from the 5 yuan 22 ouncers we often get with our 15 yuan dinners at the small food shops in our neighborhood! 


The boys, (Misha, Brad, and Guillaume), have started calling me "mom" since I am the only one with a map and have taken on the role of tour guide. My Shanghai guidebook has been quite handy so far and we followed a mapped out walking tour of the French Concession. Highlights included a number of historic villas and hotels and Fuxing Park, which was my favorite part of the day. I have never seen such a lively park. Besides being beautifully landscaped, the park was full of playing children, kites, ballroom dancing seniors, men playing boardgames and we enjoyed watching all of the activity. 


Sunday we headed back to People's Square where we visited the scale model of the city at the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall. Needless to say, the model of the city is gigantic! Looking at the model really helped to give a sense of just how big this city really is. When driving around with coworkers from Xian Dai, Shanghai seems to have no end! I took some photos of the World Expo pavilions that were included in the model, since that was our next stop. The World Expo was held in Shanghai last summer and the city undertook major construction projects in preparation. The world expo site is now pretty vacant as many of the pavilions were temporary and have been taken down. The site is now full of fences and wide empty streets and sidewalks, a little erie actually, like an abandoned theme park. We were quite content with missing the actual expo though because attendance totalled 73 million visitors between May 1 and October 31 of last year and people waited 3-8 hours to get into many of the pavilions. 


Considering how much we have seen and how tired we all were by Sunday evening, I think we've succeeded in making the most of our first week in Shanghai!

I made it to Shanghai!

My much anticipated trip to Shanghai finally arrived! The 13.5 hr flight from Chicago was surprisingly easy and relatively comfortable. By 4:30 pm Shanghai time, I had made it to my hotel where I met one of the other interns from UofO, Guillaume, who had already arrived. Guillaume and I chose a tiny restaurant across from our hotel for dinner where we ordered 2 of whatever the lady pointed to on the 8.5x11 printed sheet of Chinese words. As Caucasians, we stand out as foreigners and assumed whatever she pointed to was her recommendation for us. After being here several days, it seems to be very common to only know about 50% of what is served to me and I think that's probably a good thing. So much new food to try! Varying levels of English proficiency can be found at work but out on the city streets, it seems that next to no English is understood and most transactions involve a lot of pointing. Even if I try and pronounce a Chinese word from my dictionary I am rarely understood unless I point to the written word in my book. Despite this hinderance, everyone we have met so far, either at work or on the street, is incredibly friendly and I've been impressed with how helpful and patient people are! 

The last few days have been a bit of a whirlwind and I seem to be exhausted by 9 or 10 every evening. Work started Tuesday morning at 9am and I was placed in a design studio with one of the other UofO interns named Brad. After a lot of introductions and chatter, we were assigned to design the elevations for a large addition to a 5-star hotel complex that had already been designed and whose program had been expanded. We were shocked to be given three 16-story apartment towers and a large 3-story restaurant, recreation center, and karaoke bar complex that connected the apartment towers to one of the 5-star hotel towers to design. We were given a basic extruded massing to develop. We didn't have computers for the first two days, and also barely any supplies so we sat at a table drawing on trace paper. We were told that afternoon that we were to finalize our design to hand off to a 3D modeling/rendering company who would turn it into pretty pictures to show the client ASAP. Brad and I were again shocked at the pace of this project and the reliance on us to develop such a large design. We spent an additional evening modeling on our computers at the hotel to try and meet their deadline. Thursday we reviewed our design with the project leaders and then went to the rendering company across the street to relay our design ideas for them to render. It is amazing how fast the people at this company can build and render 3D models, and how cheap the service is as well. All of us were contemplating how to hire them to render our studio projects for next year....

In between working on our design assignment, Brad and I were invited by one of the principal architects to tour a new residential complex with him. One of the area's largest development companies was putting on a tour of their latest project which was being built with precast concrete panels. This technique is by no means a new technology but it is uncommon in China and the tour was to show the benefits of this type of construction. Many of the photos from this week are of the construction site. It was really interesting to visit a construction site, especially since manual labor is so cheap here and a great deal of work is still done by hand. I was amazed to see older women dressed in long sleeve silk floral tops digging with shovels. It was over 100 degrees and I couldn't imagine working outside all day. We were given waters and towels to wipe our faces as everyone was very sweaty from the heat. It's also interesting to see the scaffolding which is commonly built from bamboo although less and less anymore because of the risk of fire. The construction site also had numerous cartoon posters displayed giving safety advise, which I found humorous. 

I have only been here four days but have already had so many new experiences and find it hard to describe it all. I still have so much to share; more to come!