Where am I?

We have been back in Shanghai for 7 weeks now, and I am still amazed that I am in the same city. We are 20 or 30 miles from our old house, but it feels like we are a world away. When we moved to Shanghai, I never would have considered living here. Why would anyone choose to come all the way to China only to live in an American-style community? But there are so many things that I am enjoying about our new location:

The sky is blue.

The almost constant breeze.

There is no soot accumulating on the outdoor furniture, but the management washes the windows once a month anyway.

The internet connection is so fast!

The house has almost all the comforts of home. How I missed wood floors!

The car gives us more freedom than I imagined.

Papa is more relaxed.

The new school is challenging in the best possible ways. So far, the school is exceeding my expectations, and I expected quite a bit.

We have a small fenced yard for the dog!

We can see ships passing by on the sea from the bedroom windows.

The compound's convenience store has a great selection of groceries that Americans want, without any additional price gouging.

We have traded the constant honking of cars for air traffic. I prefer the airplanes,which are louder than the cars, but the noise is so much less jarring. Oh, and sometimes we hear ships sounding their horns.

We are surprised at the people who can and will speak English here. I suspect there are more foreigners on this side of the river.

We are socializing more with Papa's coworkers and their families.

Taxis? Horrible traffic jams? Not so much!

The shuttle runs all day long, so except for the distances involved, grocery shopping is more convenient .

Of course, there are also a few downsides to life in Pudong:

Everything is more expensive, and we have a few new expenses (the car, the school supplies, oh my!)

We miss seeing our Puxi friends every day.

Although Papa's commute takes about the same amount of time as before our move, now he is driving, so he doesn't get to use that time to relax.

We had better amenities in our old place (indoor pool, hot tub, beautiful landscaping, more television stations). High class problem, I know.

The old shuttle ran to a wider variety of places.

The access roads outside the new compound are twisty and narrow and sometimes harrowing to travel down.

We have to work harder to have a "Chinese Experience." I'm not sure that The Paying Customer and aka The Works would agree that belongs in the downsides column. But I feel that we have so much to be thankful for, and I hope some day they will feel the same way about this experience. If we have to be away from our home this year, this isn't such a bad place to be.

The octopus vs the cloverleaf

In china they appear to be utterly opposed to highway intersections that use the cloverleaf or the diamond model. My daily commute is 50km (30 miles) to/from work every day and spend most of it on highways/tollways.

Each time I approach an intersection you need to pay attention to the signs (at least those with some english on them) and adjust for the wide range of driving experience found on the chinese roads. The octopus style intersection makes this challenging because its new/different and there are no straight lines or right angles:

The line in green is the route I follow every day. I pass above the north/south road, then under the east-west road, finally merging with traffic from both directions. For comparison if I was doing the same thing in grand rapids it would look like this:

As you can see the octopus provides a shorter overall route and allows you to maintain a higher speed while passing through the intersection. It also takes up less space, which I suspect was a big concern when building the interchange. To accomplish this it does have many more bridges as the roads weave through each other. Visibility isn't as good and it was a bit disorienting the first time I went through it. You also have no way of making a U turn which can be a big problem if you miss a sign since you won't be able to make  U turn at the next intersection either!

Overall the highways in china are very well built, smooth and in good condition. The surface streets are another story for another time. I want to take some pictures of the route to show some more of the oddities of my route. Especially the "ghost road" I ride on every day :-)

The new school

Tonight I had the pleasure of attending the Middle School Open House at our new school.  Most of the evening was spent in the usual classroom visits where we learn a little bit about the teachers and the curriculum. But the evening started out a little bit differently, and I think it is a good sign for the year ahead. The Principal welcomed us in the school auditorium, taught us some school chants and gave us an observation test. We were then treated to a few presentations by the staff. My favorites? The creative arts department dressing in shipping cartons and danced on stage to "Mah-Na-Mah-Na" was definitely my top pick. But another noteworthy performance came from the PE staff.  One PE teacher played "Let it Be" on the piano while the other 4 teachers sang new lyrics, the chorus being  "I love PE, I love PE, I love PE, I love PE, Physical Education, I love PE" and did a choreographed dance number that included passing colorful balls back and forth. The school obviously has a very energetic and creative staff that understands what makes a middle school mind tick!

Driving in Shanghai

So over the last 2-3 months I've been working on getting my drivers license, arranging a car lease, moving, parking, etc..etc... Pretty much settled into a routine now and thought it was time to post something to the blog.

First of all the precious license:

This is good for 6 years and allows me to drive anywhere in China. Ironically they recently (in the last year?) updated the rules to allow visitors to get a temporary license without taking a test. But those of us with a long-term visa aren't allowed to obtain a temporary license, we have to take the test and get a proper 6-year license.

A lot of people asked me "how", to simplify the answer I created a page you can peruse here. It takes some time since you have to make 3 separate trips, fill out a ton of forms and wait in more lines than you can imagine. The real obstacle is the test. They wrote 1500 questions, translated em to English and ask you to answer 100 randomly selected by a computer. You have to get a 90. The first time I took a practice test I got an 80, after reading all the questions, taking a ton of notes and practicing multiple times I brought my score consistently into the mid 90s. If you are good at trivia you'll do fine :-)

The car:

I contacted a number of places including Avis & Hertz (which gives a GE discount) and several local places. I went with a local place and got a used Santana. I got a larger car by going with something a bit older, I'm not as worried about damaging it and Santana's are far and away the most popular car on the road. Volkswagen apparently cut a deal ensuring all the taxi's in Shanghai are Santana's. We've named it Pidgy in honor of the Flying Pidgeon that dominated China's roads for 30 years.

Driving:

Where to begin? Its taken me awhile to get comfortable learning the special offensive/defensive techniques common to the shanghai roads. The biggest issue is that turning left at an intersection has the right of way. The first time I stopped at a light, turned on my left signal & waited for green was quite a surprise. I  pulled halfway in, so did the guy across from me. He then got upset and began honking because I was supposed to cut in front of him and finish my turn! This has taken some getting used to & I'll need to be retrained when I return to the states.

The next biggest issue is all the bicycles, scooters & pedestrians. They follow the rules when it suites them, but otherwise they do what they want, when they want. Simply go slow, give em room and assume that if they can do something...they will.

Finally what has really sunk-in is that privately owned vehicles are a new concept in China, only becoming significant over the last 5-10 years. The majority of the drivers are the first in their family to get a license and drive a car. They didn't grow up in the back seat. They didn't grow up with very many cars on the road. Its effectively a nation of teenagers. Luckily most of those teenagers saved their own money bought their own car and realize just how much it costs to replace. This group drives very very...very slow and cautious. Its maddening, but I forgive them. The other group is pure adrenaline, in-experienced and still learning. The best group to keep an eye is actually the taxi drivers. They have the most experience and it shows. Visitors find this shocking, but that is because they sit in the backseat and watch the taxi's take advantage of all the newbies.....and the taxi drivers can be brutal.

I was paranoid about parking, luckily it turns out that since there are very few private vehicles  that it leads to a plentiful number of parking spots. I can drive downtown and park in the street in front of most buildings. No meters, no fees. In the really crowded areas you can find a garage fairly easily and the fees are reasonable, I haven't paid more than 10rmb ($1.50) Occasionally you'll find that some spaces in front of a building are being managed by someone, again they ask for money, you give it and all is good.

The final piece of the puzzle is the electronic ticketing. They have cameras everywhere and will issue a ticket for running a red light, speeding or driving on a road without the correct license plate. Each province has a unique license plate and Shanghai reserves specific roads for Shanghai plates from 7:30-9:30am and 4:30-6:30pm. I learned after a week that the signs indicating the roads are written in Chinese, I can spot them now but I was a bit worried. Part of driving a cheaper rental is you don't get Shanghai plates. An upside to this is that they don't send the tickets to your home province. They conduct a border-check and make you pay them as you leave Shanghai....no leave...no pay! A co-worker helped me find the online website where I could punch in my plate and look up my record. So far I'm clean.

FYI, Shanghai license plates are sold in auction with a limited number offered to the public every month. The latest price for a license plate has pushed over $10,000 (USD). You can get plates from another province for a few hundred bucks, but you have to live with the  driving restrictions. Once you purchase a plate you are allowed to re-sell it if you no longer want it. Creates a bit of an investment market, but at least you can get your money back when your done with the plates.

Bits about buying a car. You can buy car in China fairly easily. The base cost is comparable to the US but the taxes push em 15-20% higher. There are some chinese brands emerging, with the quality you expect from a brand-new chinese brand. Car insurance is fairly cheap, mine comes with the car, but you can get you your own for ~200/year. Keep in mind its got to be cheap enough for the taxi drivers to afford it.

A year ago gas was cheaper in china than in the US. The prices are regulated and everyone charges the same price. Over the last year there have been 2-3 increases that have pushed prices higher than most of the US. I'm just starting to log gas & mileage and will have better data in a few weeks. Since gas is regulated and sold by state owned enterprises the stations are hard to find. They are reasonably placed, but there isn't one on every street corner. Took me awhile to find all 4 stations within a 4 mile radius of my house.

Drive throughs don't exist, not for banks or for food. There simply isn't enough interest.

So, that's all for now. As a driver I'm seeing an entirely different side to Shanghai and loving it! Freedom has been restored, I live 3x as far from work as last year, but spend about the same amount of time getting to/from work. I come/go as I please.