Air pollution index raised from "Marlboro lights" to "Silk Cut"

We recently read a website (webzilla.com) that equated the pollution index to the brand of a pack of cigarettes smoked during a 10-minute walk in downtown Shanghai. In other words a ten minute walk in downtown Shanghai currently has the same effect as smoking a pack of "Silk Cut" cigarettes and is approaching the levels of "Benson & Hedges". You don't have to be a smoker to understand that no matter the brand, the smog here is bad.

Most mornings the smog hangs low over Shanghai as a result of the use of low grade coal as the primary fuel for cooking, heating, and running the factories. Close to 70% of China's electrical power is generated from coal, and most of it appears to be blowing right into the cities that they support. Much of the pollution consists of particulate matter, including concrete dust from the massive number of construction projects, ash, etc. For reference, particulate matter usually ranges from around 60 to 200 (Dec. 26th it was 175). For comparison, US cities usually range from 10-30. So Shanghai has around 10-15 times more particulates than a typical US city. In addition Sulfer Dioxide and Nitrogen Dioxide are also significantly worse, due primarily to the extensive use of coal fired power plants.

The most noticeable effect of the pollution is the thick brownish haze that coats the city. There are some clear days when the wind blows the smog out, but in the year that we have been here I can count the number of clear days on two hands. Additionally, we never see the deep blue sky that we are used to in the US. In fact, that was the first thing we noticed while on vacation in the US this summer was the blue sky.

Another effect that we notice often is that anything which sits outside overnight is coated with a fine layer of dust (like charcoal). You cannot walk in bare feet outside, because even a few steps will have the bottom of your foot blackened from the soot. As a result of this, we have become very regiment about removing our shoes before walking through the house. The car windows must be cleaned every morning as well to keep them clear.

It took some adjustment to get used to the levels of pollution. For Jeff, he no longer wears his contacts and wears only glasses now as the air is causing too much irritation in his eyes. Additionally, he discovered that the smog exaggerated his seasonal allergies and needed Claritin to fight back. For a while he suggested that he was allergic to China, but it really only turned out to be the smog.

The 20 million people who now live in Shanghai are also contributing. I recently learned that the number of people who use their own personal vehicle to commute to and from work is around 15%. This number is growing rapidly as the people are buying more vehicles at a incredible pace. GM sales were up an unbelievable 60% this year! This year will mark the first time in which China will sell more vehicles than the US, somewhere around 13 million vehicles.

All of these factors combine to contribute to the poor air quality. Hopefully, we will see improvements during our time here, but I would be very surprised due to the rate of growth. For now, we will take every vacation and holiday opportunity to get away from the city to get some fresh air.

Daily Life In Shanghai

Attached in our blog are some great photos from the typical Chinese Tourist hot spots as we have begun to explore inside and outside of Shanghai. After re-reading some of these it kind of gives me the impression that we are all on an extended vacation here. Some of the next blogs we will write will get into our typical daily experiences. Some are quite surprising.

Grocery Shopping: A couple of blocks from our house (walking distance) is a French shopping store called Carrefour. This all purpose store is a lot like a Super Kmart. It has clothes, appliances, food, and all other sorts of things. The first floor is like a mall with flower stores, shoe stores, a Pizza Hut, and Subway. Take an escalator to the second floor and you enter the grociery store. One of the things that is most evident when entering, besides everything written in Chinese, are the crowds, especially in the evenings. Lines can quite long.

A quick note on lines: In the US, people tend to be quite orderly in lines. Line up and take turns. In China, not sure if it is because of the sheer number of people or what, but if you wait in line, you may find yourself waiting forever. Pushing is not uncommon, and I seen my share of Grandmas who have moved in front of me in line because I didn't move fast enough. I am becoming more aware of these sneaky ones and I am no longer afraid to box out Grandma if she gets to assertive.

The scariest thing in the store is the meat department. The butcher area has pork, chicken, beef, snake, turtle, frogs, and other 4 legged creatures no doubt. Plucked chickens are stacked in coolers, and the beef are sliced up in front of you with raw meat unpackaged in the the coolers. People pick through the meat like produce. It's not clean, and it smells. We don't get our meat in this store as a result. Instead we buy imported meat, typically from New Zealand or Austrailia at specialty meat stores. The picture here shows live turtles and frogs which are considered a delicacy.

We do shop at Carrefour for most staples like, bread, juices, milk, eggs, etc. They also have a nice import goods section where we can get cereal (about $10 per box), Chips and salsa, & pickles. Availability of import food is not guaranteed, so foreigners tend to stock up when they see things that they like, because it may be a while before it comes around again. For instance, this week, we could not get tortilla chips (grrrrr!). The imported food is expensive, but trust me, it is worth every penny.

Another interesting note is that no one store has all the food we want. Not like the supermarkets in the US, where you get everything in one place. Here you begin to learn that there are 3 or 4 shops that you need shop at to get everything you need. Part of it is the fact that we are more particular about what we eat and the other part is availability.

One recent frustration that I had at Carrafour was that I went in with Kayla to purchase an electric scooter. As usual the place was packed and many people were buying scooters. I found the one I wanted and after about 1/2 hour of trying the clerk took pity on me and found someone who spoke english to tell me that the one I wanted was already sold to someone else. No big deal, I just picked another one. I knew that I needed to take the tag off the bike and pay for it then return for the bike, however, after I waited in line at the checkout for another 20 minutes, only to find out that I was in the wrong line, I finally gave up. Kayla cried the whole way home. The next day, Rebecca tried, and found out that you had to pay at the cosmetics counter. Not very intiutive.

Back Online - July 7, 2009

Ok, so it has been since April that the Blogspot website has been blocked within China. There appear to be other ways to access it though :).



The end of May Rebecca and I took a day off of work and flew with the kids to Beijing for a long weekend - The Dragon Boat festival holiday. We had great weather up there with the exception of the first day which was our day on the Great Wall. There was light rain, but virtually no crowds so the rain was bearable. We saw all of the typical sights in Beijing and will post photos or links to them soon. Both of the kids continue to attract a rediculous amount of attention when we are traveling together or just walking together downtown. It reminds me of the papparizzi at times.



The kids finished the school year about 2 weeks ago. They both did fantastic considering the circumstances. We were concerned with school placement especially Kayla, because the school operates on a British School system which would not typically allow her to be in Year 3 (2nd grade equivalent) even though she was 2nd grade in Michigan. It was tough on her for the first month. The school system here was about 1/2 year ahead of Michigan plus the new language. By the end of the year, she caught up to the class in Chinese Proficiency and will advance to the next class this fall.



For me work at PATAC (Pan Asia Technical Automotive Center) in Shanghai has been demanding and extremely challenging for me. My first semester in college shortly before I dropped German 101 was the only experience that has come remotely close. Unfortunately, this time, a foreign language is required. Anyway, between the new names, faces, organization, etc. I have easily consummed one years worth of information in the first 5 months. I told Rebecca that I literally cannot remember the first 3 months of being here and only now am I beginning to recognize the neighbors.



In other news, two weeks ago I severely sprained my ankle running down our outdoor steps (not advisable). No broken bones, but my foot and ankle are only now returning to normal size and colors. Then to top it off, I all of a sudden woke up with about a 30% loss of hearing in my right ear. It's all good now, but I was honestly about one broken chopstick away from limping my sorry hard of hearing self to the airport so I could board the next plane for home. The good news is that it's too far to walk to the airport and since I still cannot communicate with the taxis drivers, we're all still here.

Pictures of Hangzhou and Suzhou

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=tz2looq.9znzfddi&x=0&y=ns0pwh&localeid=en_US


Attached is a link to our album of pictures taken on our recent trips to nearby Hangzhou (about 3 hours from Shanghai by car) and Suzhou. We took the train to Suzhou; the train ride itself was only about 30 minutes and the kids loved it. Hangzhou was an easy trip for us and a great way to break in to traveling in China. We went with Jeff's coworkers, and they had planned the trip, made hotel reservations and selected the restaurants. All we had to do was show up! Suzhou, on the other hand, was completely our gig. Mr. Wong helped Rebecca buy the train tickets and made sure that we made it to our train in Shanghai, and they we were all on our own. Rebecca was able to test her Mandarin skills, and learned that she has a lot left to learn! We stayed in a beautiful hotel and the weather was wonderful. In the end, both trips were roaring successes.


There are captions with the album. Sorry if there are too many - we tried and tried, but just couldn't filter out any others. We took several hundred pics on these trips, so we were glad to get it to where we did! Enjoy!

Shanghai in the Spring

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=tz2looq.c9r05y3q&x=0&y=5jdh5z&localeid=en_US

The link above will take you to a photo album of some of the photos we have taken in Shanghai since our arrival in January. The bulk of the pictures were taken by Rebecca during a tour of "Old Town" - an area of the city that dates back to the 1920's and 30's. Life here is much different from what we are all used to - cooking outside over hot coals in a bucket, using public toilets and chamber pots, homemade bamboo and straw/grass brooms, shopping in the alley markets, etc. The tour was an amazing window into another lifestyle. At the end of the the album are a few shots of some of the skyscrapers in Pudong (the "new" side of town, on the east side of the river.)

For those of you in touch with Rebecca through FaceBook, many of these are already in FB and may be familiar to you.

60 Day Mark

As of today, we have been in China for 60 days. The honeymoon period is over, and now when people ask how long we have been here, we will describe it in months instead of days or weeks. Everyday life is getting easier and our routines are becoming familiar now. Here are few of the major milestones (family, personal and transition) we have passed:

• McKenna turned 4 years old on February 23rd! Hers was our first "China Birthday" and we celebrated by sending Rice Krispie Treats in to school and blowing out candles on a chocolate cake in the evening. McKenna elected to eat supper at a restaurant known for their dim sum and dumplings, so we had a wonderful meal! (Kayla may beg to differ on that opinion, though! She is still not sure about all this Chinese food.)



• Our sea crate from the US arrived on February 26th. It was such a relief to get the bulk of our personal belongings! The kids have enjoyed riding their bikes and scooters through the neighborhood. Rebecca is thrilled to have her kitchen tools and supplies on hand, and we all feel a bit more at home now that we have our pictures and books and other personal items around us. The crate also contained our vast assortment of food, medicines, toiletries, and cleaning products that we had sent over - both for ourselves and for other GM ISPs. Wheat Thins anyone...? Rebecca didn't understand exactly what was being said, but it became clear that the amount of boxes strictly containing food became a bit of a running joke with the guys that were bringing the boxes in. The picture here shows MAYBE a third of the boxes containing food items.


• On the same day, in the US, the sale of our home in Brighton closed. As of the end of February, the Lundys are pretty liquid - with no home or cars to our names, we are a regular bunch of vagabonds now. The sale went fairly smoothly, but we owe a HUGE thank you to the Loman family who spent a lot of time and effort getting the house ready for the sale. They took care of all the details we had run out of time for and then Teresa was kind enough to be at the house when the movers came to take the remainder of our stuff to storage. It was a good thing she was there too, as the movers inadvertently set our kitchen table on fire! Teresa alerted the movers when she saw the smoke - come to find out, they had set the table upside down on the flat-top stove to wrap the table top with cardboard. At some point, two of the burners get turned on; then everyone went on break. By the time the smoke was rolling out of the kitchen, the cardboard was flaming and the table had been singed badly in two spots. Luckily, there was no lasting damage to anything else in the house, and after a couple of good cleanings by a professional, there was no evidence left of what had happened. (Except the scorched table of course!)


• Rebecca had her first (unofficial) day of work on February 27th. Her manager was visiting from the US and invited her to a team meeting. it was a great introduction to the team and to the business. She has been to the office a couple of times since, but still unofficially until the paperwork for the work permit is ironed out. The picture here shows the view out her window at work - pretty awesome!! During the evening of the 27th, Jeff and Rebecca had supper with the work team and then experienced another first - KTV! The Chinese take their kareoke very seriously, and we went to a very nice club that was a maze of private rooms of varying sizes. Each room had their own bar and table and couches and their own kareoke equipment. We sang for a few hours and had a great time hanging out with new friends. Jeff dazzled everyone with his rendition of "Puff, the Magic Dragon" and the evening ended on a rather embarrassing note when the video for "Meet the Flintstones" was a bit more racy than any of the Americans remembered!


• Kayla lost her first tooth during the night on March 2nd. She had been worrying about it for a while - most of her friends were way ahead of her on this milestone, and she was beginning to think it was never going to happen. She first started noticing it during the week before, but wouldn't let either of her parents anywhere near it (especially Dad!) We learned that the tooth fairy does indeed visit China, and pays out in local currency!


• Rebecca started her Mandarin lessons on March 6th. The first 3 sessions were focused on the phonetics used in the Chinese language. There are 21 initial sounds (or consonant sounds) and 39 finals (vowel sounds). Many are straightforward, some are a bit difficult for a westerner with little experience in foreign languages to pick up. Rebecca graduated to whole words and phrases during her last lesson and can now say "Hi, my name is Rebecca. I am an American." - at least she thinks that's what she's saying!
  

Overall, we are settling in easier than we had expected. It is hard to be so far from family and friends, but we are continuing to enjoy the adventure.

School Days

After all our time off, everyone was ready for school to begin here in China. Kayla and McKenna started at Yew Chung International School (YCIS) on February 2nd, just as the other students were returning from the Chinese New Year break. Kayla was excited about getting back into the school routine, about being with other kids her age (as opposed to just her annoying little sister), and about the opportunity to learn to play the violin. Violin is a standard part of the music program at YCIS for student in the four-year-old preschool group through the equivalent of second grade. It was one of the many things we were really excited about at YCIS. McKenna was excited about making new friends and about getting to RIDE THE BUS!! This is a big deal to a little girl who has had to watch her sister get on the school bus without her for 2 1/2 years. The pre-school buildings are on a separate campus from the primary school, so the girls are not together at all during the day. They take the same bus from our neighborhood to Kayla's school, and then McKenna gets on a smaller bus to go to her school. The buses are very nice, have seat belts and bus monitors so the kids are all very safe. We also have school uniforms, which takes the fight out of the "what should I wear" stage of the morning routine!

During the first week at school, Mom and Dad drove the girls to school, making sure they got in okay and settled in their classrooms. The drop off and pick up process these first few days was slow - we stopped to talk to teachers, pick up information, and meet other parents - but it was very helpful. The girls have great teachers who are really going out of their way to make sure that we all adjust to life and school in Shanghai.

Kayla's teachers are Ms. Mac (Macwilliam) from Australia and Ms. Mei from China. Ms. Mei is also the beginner Chinese instructor, so she has been working with Kayla on her Mandarin. Kayla's class had just started a science segment on rainforests, and is tying that topic into many of their other subjects as well. Kayla selected Hermit Hummingbirds as a topic for research - using books and internet to find information in Science and Computer class, taking notes, writing drafts, and a final report about hummingbirds during English class, even putting together powerpoint presentation for an oral presentation to her class. In addition, her art class is focusing on decorating their room and hallway to resemble a rainforest, and draw and paint some of the selected wildlife. When they were studying symmetry in math, they identified animals and foliage in the rainforest that demonstrates symmetry and drew those.

McKenna's teachers are Ms. Esther and Ms. Rainbow. They are both wonderful ladies who have made us feel right at home from the very beginning. McKenna has had lessons about fruits and nutrition, the weather, and fish (in preparation for her first field trip to the aquarium!) She enjoys singing her new song "What's the weather" (to the tune of "Oh my Darlin' Clementine"). She was very excited about the field trip, and proudly returned home to tell mom that "I stayed with my adult ALL day!" Apparently they had made a big deal about safety on the trip and that was the lesson she had really learned on her first off-site adventure.

The two major adjustments that we are making for school (especially for Kayla) is the Mandarin lessons and the homework expectations. We knew that the Mandarin was going to take some work, but the homework has caught us a bit by surprise! In Michigan, we didn't see much homework, and when we did it was usually something interactive to be done with the parents and we had a few days to do it. Here at YCIS, we were told to expect 1 hour of homework every night. Because so much of this is new to us and we don't have a good homework routine down yet, we have been spending closer to 2 hours a night on it. We hope to streamline our process and reduce the time, but this is going to be a big change for us and has been a bit painful during our first two weeks. We have found a great tutor to help us learn Mandarin; Nina comes to our house two nights per week to help us practice our vocabulary and pronunciation.

Overall, both girls are really enjoying school here in Shanghai. While YCIS is a bit more dramatic a change from our schools at home than we would have had if we had selected one of the American-based international schools here, we are very happy with our choice. The girls are exposed to a significant level of Chinese language and culture here. Also, the student body is very diverse and we have many friends for whom English is a second or even third language. We are playing with children from Australia, England, Norway, Finland, Korea, Japan, France and Germany in addition to our Chinese and American friends. It is a wonderful way for our children to experience the differences and similarities of people from all over the world.