Shanghai, part II

PREVIOUSLY: I put my suitcase in the middle of the room and closed the door behind me. I was moved into university in Shanghai.

And then I walked right out again. Much like how my mother is  (was, I guess - wow) with my dorm at ANU, I didn’t want to be in there too long because it was kinda bleak and depressing, and I didn’t want to have to deal with the fact of the situation. Plus, I had shit to do. I went out in search of a supermarket, which, much like in Italy, I had yet to see anywhere. Is supermarket proliferation just an American/Australian/British thing? What do these people do otherwise?

I found one on google maps (yes, I’m still using google maps here in China instead of whatever the Chinese equivalent is because I can’t download fuckin apps, and I’m paying the price for it.) and I couldn’t believe my luck. It was very different to any Coles or Woolworths or even Fairprice I’d ever been in, but it had most of the normal supermarket things (though I’ve heard they don’t sell deodorant here?). I felt very watched and awkward, but I got cleaning stuff and some fruit. At the counter, the cashier took my bag of apples and bananas and tossed it to some other man, saying “她两个都没做“ (“she didn’t do it to either of them”). Turns out there’s a designated fruit and vegetable man in the produce section who you give your stuff to, and he weighs it and prints out a bar code for it. I later relayed this to my mother on the phone, and she said, “yes! Of course! Don’t you remember? When you were a little girl in Singapore your job at the supermarket was always to give the fruit to the fruit man.” Since she’s said that, I do recall a very deeply buried, very vague memory of doing as much in Tanglin Mall. I usually remember the minutiae of everything in my previous lives - why not this?

Some Sunday scenery along the way:

Anyway, I marched back to uni, feeling self-conscious about holding a grocery bag (don’t even ask; I don’t even know at this point), and got to work cleaning my dorm. It doesn’t show from the picture, but it was pretty dirty. I got really into it and got a lot done very quickly, before I realised I should probably start going to look for the shuttle bus that was going to take us to orientation at the Minhang campus. This had been a source of general doom / anxiety, because one of the Chinese students in charge of registration had told me yesterday that the busses would be “at the gates”. There are at least three gates around the campus, but he had pointed in the general direction of two, so I set out that way. A few hundred meters out of my building I noticed a group of white girls walking confidently together. Awkwardly, I waited a while and then followed behind them, because they looked like they knew where they were going. They all had different accents, so I presumed they had just made friends already, which made me feel very socially inadequate. They were talking about having gone out to some club the night before, and what it was like. “They said in the WeChat group that…” I was still not part of the spring exchange student group chat - I needed to be invited by somebody, because the QR code had been maxed out. Great, so last night HAD been some great bonding moment, and I hadn’t gone, tucked up in my hotel room like some sort of fucking princess.

At one point they made a turn, and I was too awkward to follow them round the turn because it would had made it REALLY obvious that I was following them, so I kept going straight. I immediately regretted this, and the bus wasn’t at the first gate I went to. But I brisk-walked, mumbling anxiously to myself, to the next one, the big Temple gates, and there, to my relief, were a bunch of shuttle buses. I wouldn’t miss the orientation. And then, one of my biggest fears: a bunch of students milling around, talking in groups, and no one I knew. I just stood there awkwardly by myself, tempted to just look on my phone as protection. But I saw another girl in a long grey coat standing by herself too, just on her phone, and I made myself walk up to her.

“Hey! I think I saw you yesterday! [I had.] You’re at [redacted] Building right?”

She turned to me, very surprised. “When did you see me?”

“I was leaving when you were checking in! What floor are you on?”

It was at this point that I was starting to regret my decision, because as soon as I got talking to her I realised that she was kind of lame. Is that horrible to say? It probably is, and it’s probably very prejudiced. But nevertheless, that’s what I felt. It was too late though. I found out she was from Romania, and soon we boarded the shuttle bus and sat together. We didn’t talk much the entire 45 minute bus ride, because we weren’t very compatible, I don’t think. There was this American guy sitting behind me who had also been behind me in line at the registration the day before, and oh my god, both times he WOULD NOT SHUT UP. That fucking accent. Why do Americans talk so much, and so confidently about things they know fuck all about? “I’m from Texas,,, well actually I’m from Oklahoma but no one outside of America knows what that is so I just say Texas”. The french guy next to him, whom he was addressing, said, “everyone knows Oklahoma.” Everyone knows Oklahoma. He then went on the give all kinds of advice about Shanghai, including not to eat dumplings from street stall because “you can’t see the meat”. He talked all about his life, what he studies, how he doesn’t actually plan on using his degree, about the “famous foot massages” in China, all kinds of shit. Infuriatingly, no one else seemed to mind. So I’m probably the problem. I take after my father, don’t I?

We finally got to Minhang, the bigger, but more out-of-the-way campus. It was cold. We all milled into the building the busses had pulled up in front of, and waited for the elevator, which would fill full of students and go up, and come back empty. A blonde boy next to me as we got in the elevator said, “does anyone know where we’re going?” no one answered, so I guess no one did. I told him that i think the two Chinese kids in front of the elevator buttons were in charge, so he asked the boy of the pair what floor we were meant to go to, and the boy said 4, just before the elevator closed. I wonder what would have happened had he not asked. We made a few jokes, and he introduced himself to me and my new Romanian partner. Now, his name is Håkon, but I didn’t quite catch it when he introduced himself, and I still don’t know how to pronounce his name. My partner introduced herself as “Romania”, right after telling him that she was from Romania, so I just assumed that because her English wasn’t too good, she’d misheard him and thought he was asking where she was from again. “Romania from Romania, that’s easy to remember”, he said. I later found out that her name is actually Romalia. Romalia from Romania. We all sat together towards the back of the hall - all of the other buses must have arrived before ours. Metaphor? For me, at least, yes. Håkon scanned my QR code and added me to the group chat. I was finally in the loop, somewhat.

The orientation was depressing, and not very helpful. I was excited for it like a dork, because I thought it would solve all the little logistical problems I was having. Well, first, we went over the minutiae of our visas and their conditions, which, you know, we had learnt in the process of applying for our visas. Then, a police man who couldn’t speak English came up to talk, and the Malaysian student in charge of the whole orientation, the emcee if you will, would translate very badly. The policeman told us about the common crimes committed against foreign students - internet scamming and theft. He then went in depth into the common crimes foreign students commit - D R U G S. Honestly, it gave me flashbacks to the “Say No to Drugs” assemblies we’d have on Wednesdays in primary school. The funny thing, which I can now appreciate from having lived in a Western culture where drugs are far more acceptable and common, is how misinformed everyone, including the authorities, are about drugs in places like China and Singapore where drugs just aren’t a thing. They’re BAD. He made it very clear that any international students caught with drugs would be deported immediately and banned from the country. Which makes sense. But he handed round this flyer, and it was almost like a handy “how-to” guide:

Notice how there’s no concept of danger, or addiction hierarchy - weed and ice are just lumped together as BAD DRUGS. Another example - this poster put up in my building:

They then showed us this student-made anti-drugs video, which I couldn’t follow at ALL. I don’t think anyone could. It featured a Chinese student, and two Latin American students, who were the drug-takers - I don’t think they quite understand the insensitivity of that. Anyway, the Chinese student gets diarrhoea at a bar (?) and while in the bathroom stall witnesses the male latin American student snorting coke or something? And then he disappears and the Latin American girl is really upset but the Chinese student is like “let me show you how to have fun WITHOUT drugs” and they have a cute fun time, but then the chick goes into withdrawal back in her dorm (these talks always talk about withdrawal being this terrible body-thrashing thing as if everyone who takes drugs is helplessly addicted to ice and shoots up every day) and decides to resort to drugs again. And then the next day the Chinese student is waiting for the girl so they can have their next cute drug-free adventure, but another student comes up and is like, “didn’t you hear? She was caught taking drugs and she’s been sent back home” and he’s all like :O. I know it seems as if I was able to follow the video, but I’m omitting a lot of weird scenes (and visual effects) that didn’t make sense. I’ll try and find it.

After that, we had a logistics talk by the head of the international students’ society, who’s Iraqi-Chinese! How interesting. He covered topics such as how to pay for our electricity in our dorm, which WILL cut out immediately when your balance reaches zero, how to use AliPay to top up our student card, and places to eat on campus - Minhang campus. This all seemed very useful, but, as we shall discover later, extremely insufficient.

Just as the college logistical orientation had in O-week of first year, this whole presentation made me very very sad. I thought about how long I’m going to be here, how I know nothing, and how out of it I am. At many points, people speaking would say things like, “…but I can see from the group chat that many of you have already explored the nightlife for yourself last night”, and every time, lots of people, I could see spread out in front of me, would giggle amongst themselves, making me like a loser (jesus christ I’m a sensitive-ass bitch).

I did learn something cool though. The university I’m at is Shanghai Jiaotong University - 上海交通大学. It’s known as the MIT of the East. The thing is that its name, Jiaotong 交通, never made sense to me - 交通 means transport, travel. Shanghai Transport University? My half-assed reasoning was that 交通 probably also has some sort of meaning like communication, making it something like Shanghai Communications University, which still doesn’t really make sense because it doesn’t teach communications, and is more focussed on science etc. But the head of international students told us: the 交通 refers to universe transportation / connection / linking / liason. So it’s something like Shanghai Universe-Linking University. I like that a lot.

So you’d think a university with 交通 in its name would have its transportation under control right? Wrong. We were informed after the orientation concluded that there were no shuttle buses back. Actually, no, we were informed by a random student in the group chat - none of the university people had told us, so we were all just waiting in parking lot outside in the cold for nothing. So we had to all figure out for ourselves how to get back to a place a 45-minute drive away. Now, at this point my phone was nearly dead, I had no Metro card, no app for the taxis, and I hardly knew anybody. Håkon had left just before we found out about the lack of shuttle bus, because his hotel was really nearby, and he had to start moving his stuff into his apartment near Xuhui. I had Romalia next to me, but she really was no help at all. I shouldn’t be such a bitch - she couldn’t speak English very well and could hardly speak Chinese. Anyway, everyone had started breaking off into groups in the distance. I said to Romalia, okay, let’s go back inside and find a powerpoint so I can charge my phone, and we can wait for the regularly-scheduled shuttle bus, which wasn’t due for another hour and a half in some random place on this giant campus. So we just sat there, my phone slowly charging. I looked up how to get back via public transport, forgetting for a second that neither Romalia nor I had metrocards to use, and the 2.5 hour trip spanned half an hour of walking, a bus, and then two trains. I thought, okay, guess we’ll just wait for the bus and pray we find it (it would be getting dark by then). Then, suddenly, my mum called. I talked to her and gave her an update of my past couple of days and told her about the predicament we were currently in. I was SO close to bursting into tears - I had to stop a sentence halfway for like 20 seconds just so I wouldn’t. I know I sound like a big baby, but I was in a foreign country, I hadn’t eaten all day and it was 4pm, and the orientation itself had emotionally stressed me enough already. I just wanted to be “home” in my warm dorm room, where I could cry in bed. My mum laughed, because I was framing it very humorously. She asked me if I was with anyone, and I said yes, a girl from Romania, and mum said, well, imagine how scared she must be. This was true, but I was not in an empathetic mood. 

My dad got on the phone and said, “why don’t you just take a taxi?”

“I don’t have the DiDi app.”

“Just go out onto the street and get one you dork.”

I know it’s gonna sound really #genZ that I didn’t even think of that, but the way the orientation had posed it, it sounded like you weren’t even able to do that even more. Plus, we were in the middle of the MASSIVE campus, so I didn’t know how or if we could get to a main street. But I said ok, let’s try anyway. We walked out of the building and now two blocks later, we encountered a green-lit taxi just sitting on the side of the road.

“可以达吗？(Can we ride?)” I was sure he was a DiDi taxi waiting to pick someone else.

“去哪儿？“

”徐汇“

”徐家汇啊“

”啊“

He assented, seemingly reluctantly. I couldn’t believe our luck. We got in, and I don’t think Romalia and I talked the entire 45 minute ride, because we were both so emotionally worn out. I half-played with my still-dying phone. Forty-five minutes later he dropped us off on the wrong side of the Xuhui campus, and I exited the car, marvelling at how cheap taxis are in China. The whole ride was like 90元, so about $20 AUD. Romalia got out too, and went, “taxis here are so expensive!” 

I balked at her: "how much would ghat have been in Romania?"

She claimed it would have been about $10 AUD. I don’t know if I quite believe her.

We walked briskly through the cold campus back to her building. We live on the same floor, so I got to see her room - it’s far nicer than mine, though I think it’s because she has a roommate; I think that’s the trade-off. Her key’s a key card and her door is new and wooden (as is her room), while mine and all the others on the same floor are plastic and opened using analogue keys, which seems bizarre to me. Did they just transplant a few modern rooms into the building at some point? Anyway. My room was heaven. I sat, but didn’t cry.

After dinner that night, Håkon messaged me on WeChat to see if I wanted to go drink, as he had said he would do earlier. He said that he knew some other Norwegian students who were gathering, we could just drink the two of us. I  was so anxious, but I knew I had to do it, so I got myself up and ready and stopped being such a little bitch - put hoops in; put brown lipstick on. We met at the Temple gates (see, I’m learning the terminology!) (actually, we bumped into each other before the Temple gates.) I was surprised at how easily we were able to chat; we just set off walking in the general direction of where the others were and figured we’d work out the rest later. This walk made me really happy because we walked in a direction I’d not explored before, and it was so different to the environment I’d seen so far. It had cute little eccentric shops and cafes, a tiny shop FULL of violins, and at one point, we walked past a vendor hacking away at an entire dead pig (It was like 11pm at this point). It made my potential world in Shanghai feel a little more open.

We ended up talking a lot and forgetting to check the directions, but eventually we found the place. We’d circled the block twice before we realised we actually had to enter this really dark, private looking alley. I was sure it couldn’t be right. And it was the longest fucking alley I've ever been in - we were walking for at least a good two minutes past dead houses, motorbikes, and the occasional person. And then, suddenly, there it was: a red-check-tablecloth Italian restaurant with big glass windows and people dressed up having dinner. We found our group right at the back of the restaurant; they’d finished their dinner and were just drinking. Håkon and I pulled up chairs and sat at the end of the table, and he got us a beer each - tsingtao. Now, as y’all probably know I can’t drink beer for shit, but I gave it a good go. I drank maybe half of the (very small) bottle! I talked to some people on our end of the table, who very nicely switched to English for me. Soon after, a lot of them left to go to TAX, apparently a big club. But us two and a good friend of Håkon’s, Kate, stayed behind and talked a little, and then went to this Japanese bar. This bar was BIZARRE - it was like walking into a world of kitsch hyperreality. You’d think that, being so close to Japan, China would have a good understanding of Japanese culture. But not this place apparently - the servers were half-dressed as geishas? Anyway, I didn’t drink anything here, because i knew we weren’t going to be out for much longer, Håkon ordered a beer, and Kate ordered lots of food. She’s Chinese-Norwegian, and you know how the Chinese can eat. We talked a lot, but it reached 2am, I was yawning like hell, and thankfully we all agreed to go home. Kate rode a MO-bike back to her relative’s place, and then Håkon and I shared a taxi back to Xuhui. Ok, so - I think he was kind of insinuating that we ~go home together~? First he was like, “are you just gonna let me walk home in the dark and cold?” and I was like “lol you’re a twenty-seven-year-old tall man I’m sure you’ll be fine.” And then, when the taxi pulled up at the school gates, he was like, “oh, I think your school gates are locked!” (they weren’t, there was a small entrance for pedestrians). While he is kinda attractive, that’s not what I wanted to do. I don’t know why, I just really didn't want to that night. Also I was already so socially exhausted, and that’s like the most anxiety-inducing thing ever. Anyway, I managed to awkwardly shirk his advances (if they were advances - I could have just been misinterpreting?), and we parted, and finally i was back in my dorm. I fell asleep almost immediately, blissfully proud of my social effort.

I woke up the next morning still ecstatic: I had socialised, and now, that day, I would have the whole day to myself. (This is the sort of thing that makes me think I’m an introvert, although apparently i’m not? Whatever, it’s a binary construct anyway.) I remember waking up in my dorm for the first time in first year and feeling the exact same ecstasy, albeit not because I was going to be alone. It was weirdly deja vu - my room was of the same dimensions, with the bed and window in the same spot, morning light coming in and me comfortable on white sheets.

I spontaneously worked on blood/cuts, the poem I’ve had in my mind and as a draft for about a year, but which I could never get right. I was listening to Nikes by Frank Ocean at the same time, and I think that helped.

I was inspired by the holographic hue of the fairytale song. Blood/cuts is more of a horror fairytale, red and black, but one day I’ll write a poem that has that pearly green-and-pink sheen. (I’ll let you guys prophesy / I’ll let you guys prophesy…..”) So I posted that, and posting on this blog gives me a happiness that I can’t replicate by any other method. The feeling of productivity, and creative accomplishment, and the thrill of seeing that people have read it! So that put me in an even better mood. 

Later, I went exploring in a direction I’d not been before. The things I found! First, I came across the “Shanghai Film & Art Centre” I went looking inside, and the first floor was a cinema, with several movies on show, and lots of old people milling in and out. I saw that the other floors were screening rooms and meeting rooms for film-making, I guess. I thought: how mum will love this place when she comes to visit for Easter! Even better, there was a Crowne Plaza right next to it, and mum had told me to keep an eye out for any hotels nearby my university. Then, I walked past a gym! Potential there. I then found myself in an aesthetic little centre called “Nice To Meet You”. You could walk through a grey-bricked corridor, and there were little coffee shops and bubble tea places, and this very cool combined clothes shop and bookstore, which I had fun looking through. 

(There was also this odd ‘Italian’ restaurant:

)

Along the street, I also encountered a house covered in vines. And then, a tiny little village called “I-TATTOO”. Along the wall were test tubes, each with one tattoo-needle. The test tubes were varying colours of red, which I assume were from the varying amounts of blood left on the needles after they’d been used. Cool, but creepy - my favourite. I

 was a bit scared to explore further because I don’t have tattoos so I thought they might laugh at me for being #lame, but I knew it was going to be a cool place so I went on. First, there was a cafe with all kinds of people, including families with small children. Some glass cabinets with jewellery, a gallery on the history of tattoos, and, right at the very back, a streetwear shop. It had a see-through blow-up supreme chair, and all these clothes with plastic covers over them, which I soon realised were all archive Supreme. It was pretty fucking cool. There were also some generously-glad-wrapped Yeezys.

That was about it for the cool neighbourhood. I went home, and somehow fell asleep from 2pm-6pm, which was extremely disorienting. It was dark by then, but I put on a podcast (I’d torn through all episodes of the one I had been obsessively listening to, so I picked up another one I used to be obsessed with) and walked the entire outer perimeter of the university campus, just to orient myself. I found dinner somewhere (this is the good thing about Shanghai - you can literally go anywhere, any random place on the street, and the food will be great, and like $3 AUD max, went back and wrote, I think, and fell asleep around midnight, not knowing how to feel about class starting the next day.