#ipefall18

Shanghai JiaoTong University is a big campus. In order to reasonably get around, you really need to either have a bike, or heavily rely on rental bikes which are found just anywhere. Either option works with owning your own bike being the more convenient of the two. But this semester I have had very bad luck with relation to bikes; something that I now call a curse. For reasons that I will now list:

Exactly a week after buying my first bike, it had gone unexpectedly missing. I had ridden it to the subway station not far from campus, and upon returning late that night, it was gone. I talked to a police officer there who was interview some other people who had gotten their bikes stolen and he said to check at the city impound. And if it was not there, to come and file a report at the police station. But the city impound was very far away and the price of a taxi there only to maybe find my bike prompted me to give up on that idea. Maybe this was the beginning of the curse, that I had abandoned my first bike so recklessly. But I can’t say. However to differentiate my bike from all the other bikes, I had put duck tape on the handlebars with the words “我的，不是你的” translating to “Mine, not yours” which very well have provided impetus for someone to steal that bike. 

I used rental bikes for a bit after that, feeling sad that my new bike would be so heartlessly be torn away from me, until I felt that the inconvenience of finding a rental bike every time I wanted to go somewhere to be too much. I bought a second hand bike for half as much as my first one, which in hindsight maybe I should have done first. But not 3 days had passed until I got into a bike accident with that bike. I was riding along, when a person a little ahead of me on my right decided they wanted to turn left; she didn’t see I was there and we collided. I scraped both my knees up pretty badly (I would include a picture, but it doesn’t look good). She got right back up and rode off, and I did my best to do the same. Later I went to the school clinic and got some iodine spread on me, which was fun. 

To summarize the rest: I had a tire pop twice, I accidentally went to fast and ran into some of the pylons on roads that are supposed to prevent cars from driving on some roads, another time I hit a speed bump badly (and fell). Recently I was coming out of an intersection and into a person who decided to stop in said intersection, busting open my front tire, picture below.

And lastly, probably most devastating, I was riding down a sidewalk one night, going arguably faster than I should have, when I hit a curb thing that extended into the sidewalk. It’s one of those concrete rings that goes around trees, but there was no tree there, and it extended out into the sidewalk, and it was dark, so it blended in. Needless to say, I hit it and fell down. But when I fell, I landed on my phone which was in my pocket, and completely cracked the screen, to the point where is was no longer usable. Living in China for the past 3 months now, I have come to realize that having a phone is essential to paying for things, coordinating with people, and getting around. And I had just broke mine. In the next couple days I was able to get another phone, but after this event, I decided that I needed to stop using bikes. If you’ve been counting, this has made 8 bike related accidents this year. If I’m anything like a cat, then I have all but 1 life left, and after that night, I vowed not to use a bike unless it was absolutely necessary.

Though it sounds bad, I don’t necessarily mind walking everywhere nowadays. The campus is big, but it’s relaxing to walk so much. It’s been annoying that these past few days have all been raining, but I’m glad that my routine is no longer just about getting from a to b but also about what’s in between. Related to that, I’d be remiss not to mention that Shanghai had its first snow today; it was the kind of snow that melted when it hit the ground, but it still built up in some places. Everyone and their mother was taking pictures, myself included.

Stay tuned for more: TALES OF SHANGHAI!

Braden Saltus

Nuclear Engineering

Hi, Y'all,

It’s Jenipher here.

Shanghai has been magical. The friends I made, the experiences I gained and the special moments I had will live with me forever. I came to Shanghai unsure of what my experiences would be like. Will the locals know English? Will I have to walk around with a translator? I am happy to say that I was lucky that some locals had a basic grasp of English so I was not totally lost and WeChat helped a lot in translating.

I got a chance to explore China one last time and went to Leshan to see the Giant Buddha. It was an interesting experience.

I also got to see various monk statues and remains of other Buddhas that were sculpted at around the same time as the Giant Buddha.

I also got to see the blue dragon in the East and the white tiger in the West which are very important animals in Chinese culture as they are two of the animals believed to protect the four directions.

Overall, it was an enlightening and enriching experience.

I spent Christmas in Shanghai and it was fun. I got my window-shopping in, bought some gifts for friends and tried to find an ugly Christmas sweater. I was unsuccessful in the last endeavor.

The tune of Ice Ice Baby keeps playing in my head every time I see this photo.

I also a cute little reindeer with butterflies all over it.

My friend invited me to her Christmas party. I really enjoyed it. We got matching glow-in-the-dark face paints.

I loved my experience in Shanghai and I will definitely visit again if I get the chance. Thank you so much for this opportunity.

Have a Merry Christmas!!!!

我爱上海!!!! 我爱中国!!!

Jenipher J. Mpondela

Computer Science

It’s 6 am, December 21st, 2018 in Michigan. I’m still struggling with the effects of the time zone change and four plus days is pretty embarrassing. I’d been gone for 4 months and I’m not gonna lie, I was immensely glad when I finally got home.

Is studying abroad worth it? Is travelling worth it?

Cliche answer, it’s fulfilling, you’ll find yourself or at least a new part of yourself out there. Experience something different for a change.

Practical answer, you’ll save a lot of money on tuition.

Short answer, you do you.

My answer.

For me personally. It started off as a whim. Early in this year, I’d decided to pull the plug on what had been a big part of my life for the past 2 years. With this now large hole in my life, I was honestly pretty lost. Really didn’t know what I was going to do anymore. One day, I saw an email about a study abroad opportunity and I think the cliche answer got me. When your a young man with no direction, where do you go? In my case, 5000 miles away.

To sell the trip to my friends and family, I gave them the practical answer. It would allow me to save tuition money first and foremost and also fell in line with my plans for early graduation.

My travels began in the first of August. I began my journey to self enlightenment lol, with a week long trip down south with my lovely companion. I’d been really lost that summer, unemployed without job prospects, I had devolved into a lifestyle of hedonistic vices.

Which is actually pretty awesome.

However, next thing I knew, I was on a plane to Asia.

For the next 3 and a half months, I travelled Tokyo, Shanghai, Xi’an, Wuhan, and Jiaxing. I immersed myself into a foreign culture. Experienced life in an alternate reality, well just barely.

I really lived out the cliche vision of myself.

But there was a catch.

Although I lived in the country for an extended period of time. Although I’d integrated myself into the society there. As a foreigner with a relatively brief window, it’s impossible for me to ever become truly rooted. Thus the Cliche experiences I sought weren’t so much as foreign as they were novel. After all the people I experienced those experiences with were mostly foreigners like myself. The culture we enjoyed amongst ourselves was predominately like the culture of home. The language spoken was predominantly english. We were mere tourists living in a bubble experiencing mostly the comforts of home, half a world away.

Now I’m not saying this is a bad thing. For me personally, it was pretty awesome. I don’t think I would’ve wanted to integrate myself into chinese or japanese culture anyways. I was already too Americanized. Plus, the friends you meet/make are pretty awesome too, and you can actually communicate with them this way.

What I’m hinting at, is just that if you go travelling looking for some exotic other worldly experience, your going to have to really go out your shell because it’s very easy and natural to stay in the comfort zone and live in a world of familiarity.

On the other hand, the other thing you realize when you travel is that us humans, are pretty darn similar. At least in the so called 1st world, where we don’t have to worry about disease, war or starvation from killing us. Although places like Japan, China or Germany sound exotic to us back home. Really, their societies aren’t so much that different from ours. The people really isn’t any different at all. We’re mostly driven by money and intimacy. Plus it seems like we eat the same 2 dozen kinds of vegetables and half a dozen livestock animals with varying cooking methods and spices. It isn’t so much as “Eat Pray Love” but more like “Stay At Home” with strange tasting food.

Hi y’all,

It’s Jenipher here.

December has been a weird hybrid of “Ooh! Finals”, “I wanna go home” and “I don’t wanna leave”. When I think about Finals, I’m filled with dread. When I think about my friends back at Michigan I wanna go home. When I think about the Michigan weather, I get more than a few second thoughts about returning. December was so short but I got a chance to go see Pandas at Chengdu.

Naptime pandas.

Snack time panda

Hide and Seek Panda.

Bamboo & Chill Panda.

My roommate’s Small Red Raccoon Bear or simply the Red Panda.

It was interesting to learn what the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding was doing to help save the Giant Pandas. There was a lot of information on the lifestyle and evolution of the Giant Panda. My roommate is shocked that the Red Panda is more related to the Giant Panda compared to the raccoon. She still calls them Red Raccoons. I’m letting her live in her picket fence.

My Panda Experience

Jenipher J. Mpondela

Computer Science

After a few months in China my few days are now ahead of me now and it’s a little bitter sweet. I am so excited to get back to the US, my friends, family, and all the comforts of home. But it’s sad to say goodbye to Shanghai and the JI. Our little dorm room had become so messy and cozy and lived in, and now as my roommates pack up it’s just becoming another industrial bunk and its interesting to see how a few coats on hangers and blankets on beds can make such a difference.

Tonight, I am flying to Phuket, Thailand with my friend and we are looking forward to beaches, sunshine, and sleeping in after a long two weeks of finals. After that it’s back to Shanghai for a night to pickup the rest of my luggage and then back home.

My time in shanghai is really coming to the end. I’m down to my last weekend here. Next week I will be back in cold, cold Michigan. Since it’s been the last month, I’ve spent a lot of my time just enjoying myself and the little time I had left here as opposed to schoolwork. Although the cold weather did make things hard. Most days, It’ll just make me want to stay in bed and hibernate but alas I was persuaded to head out a few times.

 Last weekend we went to a Shanghai Sharks basketball game to watch the legendary college player Jimmer Fredette. An ex-NBA player, he was forced out of the league and now is must watch in China. Absolutely tearing up the Chinese Basketball league up. In this game he dropped over 40 points despite some bad fouls and a slow start. 

The other thing we tend to do a lot around here is hangout at one of our two friendly neighborhood bar/restaurants. There’s the Mexican themed Bamba and the more casual learnt bar. Despite the advertising, the Mexican food served still makes me crave Chipotle. 

Cannot wait to eat stuff back in Michigan, 

It’s November now and your time in China is nearing it’s end. You have lived here more days already then you have left. When you got here, you were excited, ambivalent, unsure of what to expect. But now as you near the tail end of your time here, you begin to feel an illness settling in. Maybe it begins with the pain of your VPN not working, and still not working as you try, try again. What used to bemuse you now becomes an incessant nagging sting in the back of your mind. Maybe it starts with the realization that you haven’t had real meat in at least 2 months. You start daydreaming of glorious pieces of steak, big juicy hamburgers and dripping rakes of ribs. But a glance back down on to your canteen tray quickly brings you back to reality as you go back to picking through the bones. Or maybe it just comes down to mundanity, monotony and a slight disappointment. You came to China in the first place to escape your boring, mundane and routine life back home. Perhaps a change in scenery, culture, a dash of possible danger would bring around some notions of great adventure. Unfortunately the longer you stay here, the more you have adjusted and acclimated, you eventually settle into a routine, eventually coming to the realization that life over here is really not so different from life over there. 

And so the homesickness begins.

(VPN service is extremely shotty since the government keeps on banning servers. Like a cat and mouse game between the VPN provider and the Chinese gov.) 

As October rolls into November, Shanghai begins to change. The temperature starts to drop. The days get shorter. The leaves on the trees of your favorite basketball court start to fall out. The smog comes in. On Halloween, when you call your friends back home, you start making plans for your homecoming. You exchange feelings of mutual missing each otherness. By mid-November you are already starting to count down the days to your flight. You even start considering changing your flight to an earlier date. 

It’s funny that you probably don’t see homesickness as a contagious disease. But on the contrary it’s as potent as the flu. You soon realize that your feelings aren’t exactly unique and your roommates, classmates, fellow exchangees are also coming to the same realization. You find comfort as you connect with each other on stories of back home, on stories of the past, and stories yet to happen in the future. 

Aside from the above, I did enjoy my time in November. 

I spent some time exploring the city, went on a trip with my program, and rode on the metro like a lot, a lot.

(People’s park)

Here you will find droves of senior Chinese parents match making for their 80s or 90s unmarried kids. Each parent will have their own little 3ft by 3ft space where they will have their kid’s specifications listed on a sheet of paper taped on an umbrella. Mostly list things like birthdate, height, sex, education, income and dowry. 

(Rucker Park Shanghai) 

A carbon copy of the famous street ball cages and Dykeman Park in New York city. If you come here prepare to play as the competition here is supposed to be some of the best of Shanghai. Most people over 6ft tall along with some giants. When NBA players visit Shanghai, they are usually hosted either here or the Sports Stadium courts. 

(One Piece Posters in restaurant) 

One piece is very big over here with some super fans. This restaurant owner had his entire wallpaper composed of One Piece wanted posters/murals. 

(Karaoke at TianTai) 

It was a great time. What more can I say?