Tomorrow I get to go back to the United States.  I am excited for several reasons, but one of them is that I get to go to the doctor and figure out what the hell is wrong with me.  When I first got here, I had this awful cough that lingered for a month and a half.  Now the cough has given way to incessant sneezing, sniffling, and bleary eyes.  I am beginning to suspect I had an infection which then went away only to be replaced by allergies.  I have no idea why, because there are no goddam flowers here.   And the best part is that the allergy meds I brought from the States are not working.

So many people have allergies, yet I think people who don’t suffer from them fail to understand exactly how shitty it is to have them.  Let me put it in perspective for you…imagine having something like a cold for roughly 4 months total of every year.  Because you’ll have periods of time where you feel normal, imagine nobody giving a fuck that you’re sick, and expecting you to perform at 100% anyways.   And imagine being instructed to take medicine almost year-round even when you don’t feel bad, because you never know exactly when you’ll start feeling bad.

I hate commercials for allergy meds.  They make it look so easy; at first the world is horrible and allergy-fogged, but once you take Allegra/Nasonex/Claritin/Zyrtec/Rhinocort the fog lifts!  and everything is beautiful!  and you can smell the flowers! and go jogging with your dog!  Everyone can have a quick fix for their allergic misery!!  Well let me tell you a little something. I have tried every single one of those medications, only to have them stop working after one or two seasons.  The only way to get effective usage out of them is to take them in combination and rotate them every few seasons.

So what’s the big deal, you ask?  Just play chemist and figure it out yourself, quit whining.  Well stfu, I did.  Unfortunately, because different places have different allergens, the perfect drug cocktail of 4392084093 drugs that I took in North Carolina doesn’t work for anyplace else.

Also, allergies have made me afraid to travel and afraid to move to new places.  Why?  Because I have no idea if I’ll be allergic to things in a new place that never existed in places I have been before.  And I won’t have the right drugs to combat them 9 out of 10 times.  For example, visiting Florida is one of the worst things I can do to myself.  I start sprouting hives, my eyes are so red it looks like I’m constantly high, I have to bust out an inhaler to stop coughing, and I’m sneezing so much I am living in a daze surrounded by Kleenex.  Taking all the OTC drugs I could find did not help me, neither did the pharmacy I brought for myself.

Anyways, I hope I go home and feel better.  I also hope my liver doesn’t die before I’m thirty.

The Pudong skyline

Being in Puxi is an entirely different experience from Pudong; it is more vibrant and gritty, more like the China I remember from ten years ago.  Pudong is a newly developed area, full of sleek new skyscrapers, immaculate designer malls, and manicured apartment complex neighborhoods.  It is largely populated by the wealthy and white-collar segment of the Shanghainese population and at night it glitters, but remains devoid of the nightlife-seeking droves that walk the streets of Puxi. Puxi has all the glossy nouveau riche installments of Pudong, with new high-end hotels and malls popping up everywhere, but seems less gentrified.  Cramped and dusty dirt-floor houses are on the same block as fancy Italian restaurants, and less than five minutes from the massive Tiffany’s facade in the plaza where I work, I find myself on a street full of tiny dingy noodle shops and old men on bamboo stools fanning themselves and spitting into the street.  Instead of the Porsches and Maseratis in the underground parking of my workplace, these streets teem with bicycles, tuk-tuks, and mopeds.  In Pudong my walk home from the subway was largely populated by other commuters and shoppers, here in Puxi I see everyday life unfolding in front of me.   People wash themselves in the street, scrawny kittens sniff for scraps, laundry hangs from street signs.

the Puxi Skyline

Pudong is the iconic skyline, the image that China wants to project to the rest of the world.  But it is Puxi that seems closer to what modern China truly is, bustling and packed, where the fabulously wealthy cross the street alongside those just scraping by.  There is the ostentatious display of all  that China’s amazing growth has brought, yet there is the evidence of all those who are still trying to climb their way to a decent standard of living.  What is striking is how quickly change has occurred; my father’s friend who grew up in poverty can now afford to take his family on luxury vacations to Europe, and there are many others just like him.  China is an exciting place to be right now for that reason, but it remains to be seen if those who are behind now will have the same opportunities to improve their socioeconomic status.

First, a list of five things I don’t like about Shanghai:

1) Having to wait three times the length of my actual shower for my shower water to get hot.

2) The fact that no one uses dryers and thus we must hang our clothes out to dry, meaning they get all wrinkled and are still damp after a few days.

3) How cars are allowed to turn into pedestrian walkways while pedestrians are supposed to be crossing.  Can’t get used to large buses charging at me while the light says I still have 10 secs.

4) All the designer stores in all the malls.  It’s really excessive when there’s a Dolce and Gabbana or a Ermenegildo Zegna or a Chanel in every mall on every plaza…sort of conspicuous gross excess my Midwestern self can’t handle.

5) The air quality.  The haze is always there.  Even if it is a sunny day, it settles in without fail by 3 PM and I cannot see the skyscrapers three blocks down from the office window anymore.

Now, a list of five things I might like if I lived in Shanghai:

1) The food.  The sheer abundance of good food is not the only thing; food is so reasonably priced here.  I usually don’t have to pay more than $5 for a decent amount of food, and I have yet to pay anything over $10.

2) Not having to take out $89790817283901782930271093 in loans if I want to go to a decent law school.  I think the most you pay in China is around 30K.

3) A developing legal market where jobs are still fairly abundant for top grads.  Hearing about T-14 grads without jobs makes my future look pretty bleak.

4) The relatively casual workplace dress code.  I work in a skyscraper with corporations and firms on every floor, yet every day in the elevator cute T-shirts and jeans are the predominant attire.

5) Having very affordable taxi prices.  Usually only costs us around 25 kuai (4 dollars or so) to go out to the other side of the river.

It wasn’t that this woman was ugly.  It was just that she had made herself so unreal it was like looking at a creepy doll; what she had done to herself in a quest for beauty had pushed her completely into the uncanny valley.  First of all, that hair color was most definitely not her natural one, as she was Chinese.  Secondly, she was wearing really unnatural eye makeup; definitely a fringe of fake lashes going on.  But worst of all, she had those frightening contacts that make your irises bigger to try to make your eyes appear larger…think Lady Gaga in Bad Romance.  And, they weren’t even her natural eye color, they were gray.  Like big colored circles peering around at us all; she looked like someone had taken Dobby the house elf’s eyeballs and put them in her head.

The unfortunate case we saw on the subway was only one of many.  People often say that Americans like “fake” looks, but I have seldom seen looks as fake as these.  Since we’ve been here, we have seen so many girls on the street with hair dyed outrageously unnatural colors (blonde, reddish-gold, straight up orange), wearing make up that looks like the heavily painted features of a porcelain doll, and wearing those creepy as fuck contacts.  It also does not help that they like to wear bright colors, with an overabundance of girly ruffles and polka dots and cartoon animals all at the same time.  I am all for having a personal sense of style, but I can’t get on board with whatever this is.  These girls would be so much cuter if they didn’t make themselves look like Asian Pedo-Bride of Chucky.

That is, of course, just my humble opinion.  I guess it would help me out a little if I didn’t feel that they were all trying to look as far from Asian as possible.  I get that maybe this trend comes from a lot of Japan’s Lolita/anime culture and quirky sort of fashion.  But when thinking about the root of the trend, I have to ask what it is trying to achieve.   The hair color is not at all Asian; even the curling that a lot of the girls do is not a Chinese hair texture.  The eye color change and attempt to change the perceived shape of the eye seems also like a form of trying to look whiter; white people have light eye colors and typically longer eyelashes and generally bigger eyes.  Perhaps my reaction would be less negative if I didn’t feel these people were trying to escape what they were born with instead of enhancing what they were born with.

Fine, fine, now you can all call me a judgmental whitewashed hypocrite and tell me beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  I accept I am looking at everything through a very American lens.  But I will stick to my claim that if you start looking non-human, you should probably re-think your beauty routine.

if you find this appealing, I question your taste

Growing up, my parents raised us very much in the tiger mom way.  The attitude was that we could never be stupid, just lazy.  As long as we worked hard enough, we would get good grades and get into good schools.  Being studious was the most important thing, followed by cultivating musical talents and participating in the “right” extracurriculars.  After I got into college, I looked around me at all the kids whose parents didn’t push them to work hard, and thanked my parents for kicking my ass and developing my work ethic. But after reading this article, I realized that my parents only had it half right. American society doesn’t value pure hard work, nor does it reward pure academic merit. American education prizes those who are independent, who have strong personalities and know how to work other people and communicate well to others. These are not skills that are learned from staring at a textbook day in and day out, these are skills best learned through having a social life, playing team sports, and not listening to authorities.

The Chinese system, from which my parents derive their attitude towards education and values about work, is based purely on hardcore, cut-throat academic merit. There’s a lot of history behind this; Chinese officials have tested into their positions starting dynasties ago. Moreover, the Chinese culture is still collectivist at the core even though it is becoming more Westernized, so keeping your head down and working hard is more important than bragging about yourself. Therefore, there’s not a lot of emphasis on sports or outside activities, and there is a heavy focus on grades and tests. Once kids get to high school, they spend hours in class and then hours in cram schools; one of our relatives told us she goes to school at 7 in the morning and leaves at 6 or 7 in the evening. College is a get in or lose at life deal, and it is entirely determined by the dreaded college entrance exam, the Gao Kao. Children and parents alike cry over poor results from the Gao Kao because it means much worse life prospects; studying for it is so stressful kids actually go crazy. Wanting to avoid the high pressure of the Gao Kao, wealthy families in China pay for their kids to go to school elsewhere.

It’s also becoming more and more popular to send children to the United States in high school. When we asked my dad’s friend, a Chinese lawyer, why he sent his two sons to a New Jersey public high school, he replied that he believed the American education system would teach his children more useful things like people skills, independence, and decision-making. These, he believed would give them better opportunities in a globalized world than the studiousness that is prized in Chinese schools.

The Chinese education system produces very qualified individuals who can more than hold their own in the global job market. But as far as personal growth and ambition, an American education seems more advantageous in several ways. Personally I’m glad I had the freedom of an American education; I probably would not have survived with my sanity intact if I had to take the Gao Kao to get into college. At the same time, I’m glad I know the value of working hard…too many American parents are too lax on their children with regards to school achievement, which severely limits their options later on.

First, you have to use chopsticks for everything. I have on several occasions defended chopsticks to some of my friends who ask why Chinese people don’t really use other utensils.  Chopsticks are convenient and versatile, I argued, and because you can use them to pick up anything from gobs of rice to pieces of meat, nobody needs forks or spoons.  Yesterday, I came face to face with how wrong I was.  Granted, my chopstick skills are average to say the least; I don’t even hold them correctly because I think I learned the wrong way as a kid.  But when you’re trying to pick up a really slippery piece of turnip, or an entire slice of fried tomato, or a large piece of fish filet that keeps falling apart…chopsticks stop seeming so great.  I would struggle to pick up the same morsel of food from the communal plate for whole minutes, feeling ashamed of myself.  Whenever a piece of food actually got to my mouth, it was like this great triumph; I felt like I was scoring points in a video game, with higher points going to larger pieces of food.

Then there was also the problem of bones.  Most entrees in nice American restaurants (with the exception of wings and ribs) are devoid of bones, kindly removed for graceful eating.  Or, if it’s bone in, the bone is a large bone that you cut around and avoid.  Chinese food is all about bones, little ones and big ones and the little fish spines everyone hates.  Sometimes people like the bone marrow, other times it’s as if you’re in a contest to pile as many bones as possible on your plate to visually prove your eating prowess.  Yesterday, there were two plates of chicken, one of duck, two of pork, and one of fish.  They were all full of bones.  I wanted so badly to use my hands and just tear into things like I would with a plate of wings, but it was not that kind of restaurant.  So I sat there and tried to pick the meat off the bones as best I could with chopsticks and avoid choking on the fish spines.  My skills need work.

my very modest pile of bones.

My final lunchtime thought was marveling again at how skinny everyone was.  Every girl that works in my office is slender.  Not a single person is actually fat, though some of the men are heavier.  Nobody diets; they all go out to eat for lunch and if the last three days are any indication, no one particularly cares about how many calories or grams of fat or carbs is in their food.  I avoided most of the fried dishes on the table yesterday, but I was the only one; everyone else ate whatever was placed in front of us without a second thought.  And then, they all got milk tea afterwards.  How do they do it?  I have no idea; nobody here really seems to jog outside, and though there are gym memberships available in apartment complexes and around the city, I get the sense that it’s not really a priority for most people.  Magic?  I think so.

So far, from my drive from the airport to the apartment complex I’m staying, Shanghai looks like a spread of skyscrapers and lights.  Nothing like the vague memories I have of dirty streets from my visit nearly ten years ago.  I am, of course, suffering from facebook/twitter withdrawal; what’s worse, I can’t play words with friends because it connects to facebook.  FML, #brattyamericanproblems.

Tonight’s goal; stay up until at least 10:00 pm so I can get over my jetlag.

Sex is something shared between two people, and by its very nature it requires those two individuals to both agree to do it.  It just seems to be the basic, decent human thing to get consent before having sex with someone…that we have to try to make someone’s sexual consent a “cool” thing highlights something extremely problematic.  It’s almost as if these posters are saying that consent would be nice or ideal, but not needed, in order for sexual activity to occur.  I really wish that the tagline was more forceful, something stronger and more in-your-face, something that accurately portrays the idea that if you don’t get consent before engaging in sexual activity, you are guilty of rape, sexual assault, or at the very least, violating someone else’s human rights and dignity.  ”Consent is sexy” just doesn’t seem to get the consequences and meaning of nonconsensual sex across.

Maybe I’m nitpicking, or simply complaining that something good isn’t good enough.  I just think it’s embarrassing to us as a society that we have to appeal to a cool factor to get people to do something that seems self-evidently ethical and right.

For a time period in high school, I felt the two of them were closer than I was, and that I was somehow the odd one out though we were all separated from each other by two years in age.  When I left for college I didn’t feel extremely close to either of them, and part of me was just excited to leave cold and boring Indiana.  My first two years of college, I didn’t get homesick much, and my visits home were few and far between.  But the summer I was in Kenya, feeling more alone than I had in a long time, I found myself desperately missing my brother’s ridiculous sense of humor and my sister’s bubbly personality.  Something happened and I wasn’t missing my friends or my parents or my boyfriend nearly as much as I was missing my very own pesky little siblings.

After that summer, things changed.  I wanted to spend time with my brother and sister; we would stay up past midnight talking in my room and laughing about random things until my mom would hear us and yell at us to go to bed.  When I’m at school, we message each other with links and youtube videos we know will be appreciated only by each other, and commiserate about the ridiculous chain emails Mom insists on forwarding to all of us.  Who else would understand why we call our dog 50 different names, who else knows why it’s justifiable to dislike our 80-year old grandma, who else remembers that summer roadtrip to Tahoe when all we ate was Spam and baguettes because Mom was cheap?  Nobody else shares such a ridiculous embarrassing wonderful collective memory with me, and nobody else will love me quite the same way.

This spring break, I went home to cold and boring Indiana.  I stayed up late watching movies and talking to my sister, I drove over to Notre Dame and hung out with my brother in his dorm room.  I am so proud of what they’ve grown into:  My brother the dancer and business major, lover of memes and clown of the family.  My sister the budding photographer and fashionista, Student council president and my occasional partner in crime (hehehe).  Yes, we are going to be each others weirdest and best friends.

famity fam fam in the Gardens

Different and so cool.  Now they need to make more music before I get antsy.