Sign my Guestbook!
|
Friday, January 4th On this date last year... "Free day!" On Friday, we each did our own thing, though Flora and I walked out the door together to take a quick look at chi-paos that she saw earlier this week. Jim went to meet with his designer who is remodeling his new place; Flora went to check out the Modern Art Gallery, and I went to get my plane ticket at the Shanghai Centre and met up with William for lunch at Xin Tian Di. That was fun!
Click on the photo for more of today's pictures. William is an immigration lawyer who used to work in Taiwan for 6+ years before moving with his business to Shanghai. It was interesting to hear his breakdown of the foreign community out here.
The first group is your typical senior expats sent to China by their companies who pretty much live in their own worlds and become obsolete just as soon as the firm localizes (which to my understanding is happening a lot faster than in Taiwan), and then there's the young professional crowd, the latter of which can Now where have I heard this before?
Click on the photo for more of today's pictures. William was also telling me about a Shanghainese man he knows who told him that he thought Taiwanese women are really ugly. "Why?", William asked. Turns out that the only exposure to Taiwanese women are the ones they see on the popular t.v. dating show from Taipei --> FEI CHANG NAN NU. LOL! Shocking to find out (though not really?) was that the Chinese government only allows between 12-20 foreign movies to be shown at the movie theaters in China, all of which of course are first censored and pre-screened. Crazy, eh? Anyway, afterwards we checked out his office, located one block west of the Bund. And, William surprised me by offering office space to me, should I get funding for ORIENTED and need a starting point in Shanghai. I was so surprised! And psyched! Sheesh!
Click on the photo for more of today's pictures. Afterwards he walked me to the MRT station, and from there I met up with Flora at the silk store near Xu Ja Hui. Funny how are "missions in Shanghai" are so different! She had her wedding chi-pao made and bought a lot of material, I did all the market research I needed to convince myself that ORIENTED is a must do. I have to say, it was kind of EMPOWERING to be able to make my way around Shanghai on my own, but I'll delve into this in tomorrow's entry. Flora and I attempted to do some "shopping" at Xu Ja Hui but never made it past ONE mall. Those malls are freakin' HUGE. ALL of them, sheesh. Anyway, Jim met up with us later and the three of us had dinner at a Xin Zhiang restaurant nearby, with his friends James and Sunny, at James' excellent suggestion. I cannot emphasize how much fun that was! We actually had dinner in a big TENT and ate lamb out the WAZOO, and all of the wait staff were these VERY happy guys from Xin Zhiang who had so much energy! VERY loud and VERY jolly would be the best words to describe them. They even dragged us out to dance (hysterical) and the food was really good too (never had Xin Zhiang food before). I'm so glad we went there for dinner!
We really enjoyed ourselves there. =)
LAST ENTRY | NEXT ENTRY HOME | ARCHIVES |  |
ADVERTISE
|
ORIENTED
Copyright (c) 2001 HeyChristine.com. All rights reserved. |
