Shanghai: Starting to get Cold (Mid-December)

It's official, Winter is here, temparatures are dropping below 0, some mild snow is expected to fall (have yet to witness), and everyone is having difficulty showing up for 8am class.
Shanghai's type of cold is Wet/Damp, Piercing Wind type of cold due to its proximity to the sea, things get alot wetter or here in comparison to more in-land cities.

I hate the cold, it is a very tough adversary in comparison to heat.
You can easily beat heat by taking a shower, putting on less/no clothes, turning up the air-conditioner or fan. Solutions to beat heat is cheap, easily accessible, convenient.

COLD on the other hand: requires: specialized winter underwear such as Long Johns/Thighs underwear, heating elements, a good PU jacket/leather jacket or trench, gloves and beanies are a MUST. Brr even two layers of socks are starting to fail. The Only PLUS side to cold is that people tend to start dressing fashionably with scarves, coats and headwear.

Tips to stay warm:

In all honesty, i sometimes think it feels warmer outside than inside (assuming there is no heating) because, 1) When you walk, your core temparature rises from physical exertion 2) you'll often be wearing more clothing which you'll often take off when you get home for convenience and mobility 3) Being at home is like being inside a fridge, cold is retained inside your home.

To stay warm outside, its important you have a big coat, a smaller coat eg. a sweater/sports jacket/cotton jackets, whatever you normally wear eg. T shirt, collared shirt,vest and then thermals.
We SE Asians tend to neglect the "coat within the coat" layer since we usually have to deal with heat (and rainrainrainrain during monsoon periods) and not cold.

The Outer Coat is the most important piece of clothing as this coat is responsible for fending off piercing winds, and the occassional shower. The most ideal material would be leather, but since everyone isn't that rich, there always is Plastic otherwise known as PVC or PU at the markets. PVC/PU is often used as an alternative to leather as it gives off the finish of a leather, is cheap and easily mass produced and it is waterproof.

Tip** I read this somewhere but the way to distinguish leather from PVC is by scratching it. The mark on leather will fade away like how it would on your skin but on PU, it'll stay there.

There is the fire thing: light a fire and place it near the leather, leather will not burn but PVC will be ruined as the fire will melt alway its sheen and coat which will leave a mark.

PVC will often look synthetic and shiny and flimsier due to their plastic nature. Though some well done PVCs will look like its leather.

PVC/PU is alot cheaper, when a price tag is too low and the seller is telling you its leather, be suspicious as it cannot possibly be leather isn't very cheap.

A nice/relatively warm leather looking PVC will cost about 300-600yuan

Essential items:
Gloves!! Get 2: one that is thin enough for manual dexterity for keys, taking stuff out wallets, grabbing small items and a big fat one for cycling as the thinner one is sometimes not enough to withstand the chilling winds.
You will also be needing the thin one for indoor use like what I am doing right now. You cannot go gloveless in your home as the chill will get to your fingers (wear socks too and get some slippers). I can't type as i normally can but thats just a small trade to keep my hands warm.

Beanie/Ear Protector
Ears are one of the more vulnerable pieces of your face, keep it warm with a beanie or ear protector which can be found for less than 10yuan at walmart!!

Get a kettle and get some water boiling! Hot drinks are a good way to keep warm as well and to keep hunger at bay when trying to maintain a diet.

Long Johns/Thermal underwear.
These things are very handy as it helps form another layer of "skin" as its tight fit nature doesn't allow for chills to sneak into your body so easily and it contains heat in the process. For Thermal underwear, I recommened HeatTech made by UNIQLO: the material is stretchy so even if its tight, it will not limit your movement too much, it dries really quickly after washing, it can serve as pajamas and its pretty cheap online!! At stores you will normally find that it costs 99yuan but online, you can get it for 25yuan!! Though the cheaper price comes at a cost as often there will be limited selections and colors to choose from.

Shanghai: An evaluation of Things

With the advent of Christmas, the New Year and the end of the semester coming closer and closer, I thought I'll share a few thoughts on what its like over here in Shanghai, China.

Learning Mandarin.
The initial phase of learning mandarin is never easy. Characters are a constant challenge to memorize, pinyin words are difficult enough to make a grown man cry; trying to distinguish the spoken tone then drives the man into bi-polar disorder, even when you think you have got the tones right, you haven't cause the 中国人 is staring blankly at you in the eye with a frown of confusion and a squint of incomprehensibility. If you mind thinks in cartoon, you'll can easily spot a huge WTF thought bubble.

DO NOT BE FOOLED MANDARIN IS NOT EASY!!

You will be angry at how characters when unrecognisable cannot be read. Frustrated at how difficult pinyin can 比如说 que, ci, chi, zi, zhi. Agitated at how slow your mind works when it comes to translating your core language to mandarin; only for the receiver to say "你说什么意思" or "听不懂" due to grammar errors from your side.

Unless you have a very cool head, or the passivity of Dalai Lama, you will get want to scream, throw your books in a tantrum-like manner, scribble huge swathes of red ink over wrongly written characters and finally declare mandarin a stupid language and that it makes "NO SENSE TO USE CHARACTERS SINCE YOU CAN NEVER REALISTICALLY MEMORIZE ALL CHARACTERS AND THAT MEMORIZING CHARACTERS IS A WASTE OF BRAIN SPACE"

Been there done that.

After that you will cool down. Focus on the books you have, read, memorize, write essays, listen to tape recordings. As 1-2 months progresses some characters like 是，要，如果，还，需要，大小，比，学，生,气，一起，不错，对，说，汉语，活，动，请
start appearing very often and new words start getting easier to memorize as a new word can sometimes be a matter of adding the words you have learnt with another,
比如：学生 = Student 大学 = University 需要 = Need 大小 = Size
It gets even better when you look at the dictionary and look for a single character like 生. Just from 生 and combining words about you can easily get 生气，学生，生活，生动

then there are radicals. for example:
请清青情
ALL OF THEM ARE QING!! They are simply prounounced differently but the context of the sentence helps you clarify which one you are using as well as the radical otherwise known as zi pang.
eg. 清 has 3 strokes in front of it, otherwise known as the water stroke. Chances are, this Character has some relation to water, and sure enough, 清白 = pure, clean and 清楚 = clear.

sometimes by understanding the word in isolation, you get to understand things better. For example, say 生出, sheng has many uses eg. ripe, raw, existence which chu is to go to (出去is to GO to a location), so if you combine, ripe/raw/existence with to go to, you'll get BORN!! This connecting the dots helps when trying to learn new words from the book without having to memorize the word as a whole.

I can recall about 50-70% of new vocabulary from my textbook for the next 1-2 hours after the teacher has gone through the text by understanding what the characters in isolation stand for.

So What UP at Hangzhou?

You can get to Hangzhou by hoping on the Fast rail train. It takes about 1 hour for the train to get there and the ticket costs 90yuan. Just remember that the train leaves from Hongqiao train station and not the Shanghai Railway station!!



If you miss it, don't worry, its not the end of the world, you could always get onto the next one within the next 2-3 hours.

From what I see and understand from television ads I see on CCTV English, Hangzhou is suppose to be an outsourcing/economic/support center due to its proximity from Shanghai. Fun fact, http://www.taobao.com/ is based in Hangzhou!

You can also get to Shanghai cheap from Hangzhou by flying Airasia there. For example, I just bought my ticket home for RMB900!! (Average is usually RMB1,500-2000)
It takes about 30-40mins to get to the train station from the airport, and another 1 hour to get to Shanghai by train. This should all cost at most** RMB250 all together.

As for touring Hangzhou,
The only interesting/highlight of Hangzhou is 西湖West Lake XiHu,
Once you are at the lake, you'll see:

Ducks, Lily Pads, Pagoda, BuBBles



Elderly Singing, Dancing, or holding Public performances

Play chess and have the whole park observe your game



Sit Down and Do Nothing



Have some Cotton Candy with your Bud....



Observe People



Take kids for walks



Ride on a Boat for RMB80/hour



Check out Girls



Blow Bubbles



Observe Crazy 老外s Shooting Water into the lake




Observe 老外s buy stuff in markets


Shoot Photos of the lilies/water pads and "Pagoda"


Ride on "the Boat" (RMB45) to the middle of the Lake (get there before 4)


Rejected!

Explore the Middle of the Lake



Observe marriages



Check out the very touristy street (Qinghefang Old Street‘ 清河坊)



Buy Stuff



Have some Food at the International Food Street (Next to XiHu)



Thats what I did, but you could also check out:
Jade Emperor Hill Entry fee here is 10 rmb
Guo's Villa (郭庄)Entry fee here is 10 rmb
Linyin Temple (灵隐寺) 65 rmb

FLY TO HANGZHOU NOW!!!
www.airasia.com