Okay, when the government has to post cartoons in the stalls of the bathrooms to try and teach it’s citizens how to use the facilities, you know you are in China.  Of course, the cartoons are in English so you have to wonder….is it targeted at just me because I am pretty sure I’m the only one who only speaks/reads only English in our building?  I would say that everyone could use a refresher course on this topic but don’t I feel special that it is directed just at me.  Guess I’ll have to be more careful in the future or the bathroom police will swoop down upon me.

I have to be honest with you, though, after seeing countless people just use the street as their personal bathroom, no amount of cute cartoons posted in bathrooms are going to make a difference.  Walking back from the park Sunday, two women were holding a toddler over the hedge to take care of business.  Not lying and yes, it freaks you out.  You know you should just avert your eyes and move on quickly because otherwise you will see some serious shit (literally) that you just don’t want to see but you stare because you just can’t believe it’s happening.

 

The press is even weighing in on this topic.  In the Shanghai Daily this week, one of the lead stories was on pit toliets or squats as they are called by locals.  Squats are still used in many urban bathrooms as well as rural areas so if you live or visit here, you will learn to squat.

REMEMBER–hand sanitizer and toliet paper–carry them with you religiously wherever you go or you will be so, so sorry.  Working on those thigh muscles couldn’t hurt as well–practice that yoga warrior position perhaps?  You will need those muscles to use those squat (hole in the floor) bathrooms, believe me.  TMI, I know, but just trying to do my public service to get those “spoiled by toliets” Westerners ready for their China experience.  You never know when you may have to decide between using the squat bathroom or just taking advantage of a handy hedge.   Either is acceptable here.

 

 

 

Shanghai Daily Article for your reading pleasure:

 

Toilet campaign cleans up rural living conditions

Source: Xinhua | December 13, 2013, Friday |

Pang Zhankui and his family never expected a flush toilet at home, enabling them to get rid of the latrine pit haunted by flies and mosquitoes.

“No more dirty pits and no more stinky smells. All we have to do now is push the flush button,” said Pang, a 65-year-old farmer in Cangfang
Village, Gaoyi County in north China’s Hebei Province.

Pang’s family is among the 120,000 households who had their pit toilets replaced by flush toilets this year as part of a provincial campaign to improve the living environment in rural areas.

China has a rural population of 650 million. Farmers have benefited from the country’s opening up, reform, and preferential policies in past decades. However, it lags behind in living environment.

Farmers suffer from dirty pit toilets, garbage and waste water near their houses because of poor infrastructure and loose management.

“We used to throw kitchen leftovers and other garbage into the pigsty in the yard, but in recent years, when we quit raising pigs, we had nowhere to discard the garbage,” said Feng Yuezeng, a Nanlangtou Village farmer in Luancheng County, Shijiazhuang City.

In a rural environment improvement campaign, the Hebei provincial government spent 6.57 billion yuan (US$1.08 billion) this year on garbage disposal in 50,000 villages in the province. More than 120,000 workers have been hired at an annual cost of 270 million yuan to collect the trash in villages and deliver it to garbage power plants.

Zhang Baoqiang, director with the leadership office on countryside appearance innovation in Hebei, said more government efforts are necessary to address rural environmental issues.

He said the government plans to convert all pit toilets to flush toilets in the province within three years. “We only have seven years to reach the goal,” Zhang said.

 

From <http://www.shanghaidaily.com/national/Toilet-campaign-cleans-up-rural-living-conditions/shdaily.shtml

Feeling like Superwoman today!  I got to work via Shanghai Subway all by myself. Well, not technically all by myself because I was joined by several million of my fellow citizens doing their commute as well. At first, going down into the subway on the empty staircase, I was thinking I had beat the rush and this would be a piece of cake. Lulled into a false sense of security, I was then assaulted by just a few of the 25 million people who also happen to live in Shanghai. Boldly ignoring the officials signaling me to put my purse/backpack through the security scanner (no one pays them any attention so neither do I), I then proceeded to follow the masses into the bowels of humanity.

Lining up to get on the train as it arrives,  you pray that someone, really anyone, is getting off at your stop so that there is room for you to get on. This worked 2 out of 3 times but one time there was not a fraction of room so I waited for the next train, where I could find a pocket of space to shove my body into. Riding the Shanghai subway is a full-on contact sport—using your upper body to block and elbows to jab, you must use brute strength to gain a space on the train.  Having worked in NYC Times Square, I have some experience with these types of crowds so I wasn’t too intimidated but still….

Several locals smiled when they saw the crazy female Laowai on their train so at least I brought some levity to their morning chaotic commute.  I’m glad I can do my own thing even though it defies the norms for ex pat behavior. Surprisingly with this heavy traffic use, the subway is very clean and all signs and announcements are in English as well as Chinese so it is not hard to use.  It is super cheap at 50 cents US$ for my trip vs. $3 US for a taxi. To get to my office from home, I have to take three different trains which means lots of stairs as you have to go up and down to transfer. At least I don’t have to go to the gym tonight or at least that’s what I’m telling myself.

No one but me took the stairs, everyone else preferring to crowd onto the escalators. All told, it takes about 45 minutes for the commute. I may not take the subway all the time but it is very empowering to know how to use it and be able to get around town by myself.  After conquering the subway, who knows what I will tackle next!

A few weeks ago,  we moved into our new apartment in the area called Pudong in Shanghai.   Holy Hell-if you thought moving in the US was stressful, try doing it in China.  Though we have a real estate agent who is working on our behalf and they had known about our move-in date for months, we still arrived at the appointed time with two mini vans packed with our belongings only to find that the apartment was a wreck from the painting crew that had just finished the night before.  After lots of heated conversation between our rep and the landlord rep, a crew of ladies showed up to clean and I promptly left to shop for needed stuff at Ikea and various grocery stores.   In other words, I bailed and let Thom handle it, which he did magnificently.  When I got back, it was clean and we proceeded to be able to unpack the air container that had miraculously shown up at the appointed time.  Our new mattress also arrived–we had heard that Chinese mattresses were hard but I swear they are made out of slabs of marble because they are just that hard.  I couldn’t have slept even a night on one of them so thank God our memory foam King size slice of Heaven showed up in time to save us.  We will have to buy super padded covers for our other bedrooms so our guests don’t have to suffer.

Our area is definitely expat friendly and close to the downtown financial center.  Our complex of seven buildings is built around a lake, which they had drained for repair.  Looking down from our 15th floor (really 12th level because they don’t have a 4th, 13th or 14th floor due to bad luck) and seeing a pit of mud, I was near tears but they assure me it will be filled up soon–yeah, right!    I do love looking down to see the dog walkers and tai chi groups exercising in the morning in the area around the mud pit. 

While we have an unbelievable gym, there’s nothing like running outside, which I haven’t been able to do because I value my life and limb.   Pedestrians (and what few joggers are out and about) are the lowest form of life in terms of who rules the road and sidewalks.  You find out very quickly that the chain of life starts at the lowest level with pedestrians, then bikes, scooters, cars and then buses are the biggest bad asses and craziest of them all.  You step in front of a bus and you are history.  There is no “right of way” and certainly no niceties like “yield to pedestrians or crosswalks” going on in China.  Basically, if you are walking on a sidewalk or crossing a street, even with the light, you better be nimble, head on a swivel and dodge all the chains of life that can run you down because they will without a thought.  I just watched Dodgeball on TV and when the old guy says, “If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball” I just have to laugh because in China, it’s more like, “If you can dodge a bus, you can save your ass.”

Not for the faint hearted or slow in movement, this is probably why Thom and I are the only Lai Wai’s I see walking the streets.  All the other ex pats are using private car/drivers or at least taxis.  What can I say–we like to live life on the edge and Thom likes to stare them down like the New Yorker that he is and see if he can get them to yield-not the buses, of course, but all other forms of killer transportation.  Sometimes he actually wins but, in the game of life, he also has learned to dodge too.

 

We weren’t able to bring very many personal items with us to China.  We chose to leave our furniture in the US and will probably buy a home in Boise, Idaho to be near our family in the future when we visit the U.S.  That means we will have to try to make our new house our home without many of our favorite items including most of our family photos, the wall hanging of the Flat Iron building, the Noblesville throw, our autographed photos from the many concerts I’ve been to with my job, and so on.  We saw a beautiful old phonograph (see left) but we couldn’t pull the trigger to buy it despite haggling the price down to $200 US. 

So, as we set out to take this blank canvas of an apartment, I am wondering how to quickly make it our own and make it feel like home.  On moving day, crazy me made our driver go to Ikea and help me load a huge floor plant into the mini van (picture at right of the leaf-filled van).  The Ikea security guard got a good laugh out of our efforts to stuff it in without damage.  I know having lots of plants will help with the air quality (in addition to our large Blue Air cleaner) and give color to the white walls and marble floors.   I had to give away all the plants that I had managed to keep alive for years, truly a miracle, and our wonderful dog, Izaak, went to stay with our daughter due to cost and the anticipated stress.  Boy, do I miss him!

I splurged on comfy plaid sheets and duvet cover from Muji, a Japanese store that is one of the few places to carry quality linens.  I had no idea it would be so expensive and so hard to find good sheets but very few places carry any except Ikea which primarily has scratchy cotton.  We also bought LOTS of candles to help with the strange odors that pop up with regularity from somewhere.  I got some lovely silk pillow covers including a Mao classic head shot–when in China!

Over time, we will go to the antique alley markets and buy what speaks to us.  Thom takes beautiful photos and we plan to get those blown up and put on the walls.  Over time, it will start to feel warm and inviting like our other homes.  Now, what to do about the lack of man’s best friend???  Time will tell…