"Ask a 人，问 a person"

Today a group of us went to the Oriental Pearl Tower downtown. This is the most prominent building, with its spaceship like features, in most pictures that you see of Shanghai, and was the tallest building in China until recently. It has 19 different observation decks at various levels, and we went right before sunset, so we could catch the daytime view and the city lights after the sun went down. The view was amazing, and we had the chance to walk on the new outdoor observation deck that has an enclosed glass floor (not recommended for those afraid of heights)! In our attempt to take a "jumping picture" we started a trend, and soon all these Chinese families were jumping together to try to capture a similar photo.
After spending a good amount of time in the tower, we cabbed over to Xintiandi, which is a car-less shopping, eating, and entertainment area. It's part of an area called the French Concession, named for its obvious French influence. I now know what Shanghai is referred to as the Paris of the East. It's such a beautiful area filled with cafes, restaurants, bars, and high-end shopping. Thanks to a recommendation from the lovely Sophie Lewis, my friends and I went to an awesome dumpling restaurant called Din Tai Fung. It lived up to every expectation, and revived my interest in Chinese food.

This post is continued from earlier....I'm back from going out tonight to KTV, and I now understand the Chinese obsession with Karaoke. KTV is similar to a club or hotel with multiple rooms for people to rent and sing karaoke with their friends. Usually I'm used to picking songs out of a book, but they are so advanced here that they have a computer to queue up the selection of songs you want to sing, and the experience is complete with a huge room to chill or dance in while you are singing. Each song that you pick is shown on multiple tv's around the room and the music video plays along with it. About 25 of us went with a couple of our Chinese roommates, so there was plenty of dancing and singing to both American and Chinese songs. Unlike any club in the US, it's BYOB, so a bunch of people cruised Walmart next door to bring drinks and snacks. Overall tonight has been super fun, and a bunch of us agreed we have to do this at least once a month. I wish we had karaoke this legit in the states.
One last comment: The title of my post "Ask a 人，问 a person" conveys how much Chinglish (Chinese-English) we've been speaking since we got here. Hardly any Chinese people speak good English unless you are at a huge tourist location, so we are used to using our Chinese as much as possible. This leads to the use of half Chinese, half English sentences such as the one above which means "Ask a person, Ask a person." Whether we are asking someone to take our picture, or how to get to our next location, we are constantly using the people around us to be our guides, and most of the time locals are more than happy to help us. Although I was told I speak good Chinese tonight, which is most definitely not true, it does help that we get to practice about 75% of every day whether we are in class, ordering dinner, or trying to figure out which karaoke song we want to sing. Now that it is 3:45am I'm just grateful that I could direct the taxi driver back to our apartment!

Goodnight!


Chinese Word of the Day: 人 (ren, people) & 问 (wen, to ask)