March 9: Shanghai is ready to rock tonight

Index to blog posts March 9: Shanghai is ready to rock tonight by Alex Weisler March 9: A detour for antiquing on Dongtai Road by Eric Reed March 9: Beauty school dropout by Grace Muller March 9: A taste of Paris in Shanghai's French Concession by Devin Tomb March 7: Sunday Mass in Shanghai by Kelly Rippin and Eric Jou

Our plane had barely touched down in Shanghai after an exhausting 15-hour flight when my Penn State classmate Heather Schmelzlen and I suited up in our best approximation of Chinese hipster wear and headed straight from the airport for a night on the town. Our destination? Yuyintang on Kai Xuan Road, one of the city's only venues for live music.

We were in search of Shanghainese music lovers, people who could describe for me the difference between expatriate and domestic Chinese concert venues. It's all part of a story I'm writing for my international reporting class on the effect the World Expo will have on Shanghai's burgeoning homegrown live scene. In all, 15 Penn State journalism students are spending spring break in Shanghai writing about issues ranging from the city's gay and lesbian scene to the growing popularity of basketball and cosmetic surgery.

The crowd was small when we arrived for punk band Little Nature's sound check at about 8:30 p.m., but the dive bar had swelled to capacity by the time the show kicked off at 10.

Yuyintang was both overwhelmingly Chinese and improbably American. The crowd was at least 90 percent Shanghainese, but everyone looked like they could have been at a Warped Tour show. The bathrooms had traditional squat toilets, but Beijing punk band Larry's Pizza addressed the crowd in English: "Are you ready? Are you ready to rock? Are you ready to rock tonight?"

Jonah Wigerhaell, a Swedish expatriate who works for clothing company H&M, said venues like Yuyintang draw the same crowd - regardless of who's playing on any given night.

"There's such a small live scene in this city going on that when there are things going on like tonight, it draws anyone who's interested in live music," he said.

That's been true of the scene as I've experienced it these past three days. Everyone seems to be in it together, fighting for a common goal that is larger than any one band or venue. Maxime Lenik at hipster hotspot LOgO may ostensibly compete with Dada Bar down Xingfu Lu street or Live Bar a few neighborhoods over, but everyone I've spoken with is working for the same thing: a live music scene that can survive the moratorium on public events that will come with the Expo on May 1.

I'll be watching from back in State College to see if they can pull it off.

-- By Alex Weisler

March 9: A detour for antiquing on Dongtai Road

Their feet were tired from walking all day and looking for the heart of the old French Concession. All the six Penn State students wanted was a quaint café in which to relax, sip tea and enjoy some delicious French pastries to cap an exciting afternoon in Shanghai. What they didn't expect to find was a two block long street of antique shops displaying relics ranging from a crank phonograph with a brass megaphone to a century old pair of wire-rimmed bifocals.

The Penn State students are in Shanghai as part of an international reporting class aimed at giving them first hand experience at working as journalists in a foreign land. Earlier in the day they had been filming the elderly dancing in the park and even got to join in on the fun.

One of the students, Eric Jou, is of Chinese descent and is fluent in Mandarin. He spent eight months last spring and summer in Shanghai, and has become the unofficial tour guide of the group. But not even he had visited the antique market on Dongtai Road, so it was a surprise when the group stumbled upon it.

Even on a foggy, rainy day the store vendors sprang to life when they saw the Americans walking down the street looking at their goods. Some of the items spanned the centuries - such as ancient Chinese warrior helmets and modern Chinese fighter pilot helmets. Ivory pipes and jade filled most of the stores. Need a camera from the 40s or 50s? No problem.

I was looking for a terra cotta statue my cousin had asked me to buy. Once I settled on the one I liked, the timeless process of haggling began. With the help of Eric Jou's interpreting, the price dropped from 180 Chinese yuan, about $27, to 60, about $9.

The bargaining, added in with this unique visit, was worth putting off the French cafés for 40 minutes.

-- By Eric Reed

March 9: Beauty school dropout

On a rainy Monday morning, I took a trip outside the hotel to try to find some batteries for my wireless microphone. Instead, I found Yongqi: Imp rove Look & Hair (that's exactly how it reads).

Because neither my hair dryer nor hair straightener will work in China, I decided to stop inside and see if a hairdresser could run a flat iron over my poofy hair. After a series of pantomimes - "no 'snip,' " I indicated with my scissor fingers, "just 'hisssss,' " my imitation of the sound of a hair straightener - I was taken to a seat and given tea in a paper cup.

I waited only a minute until the stylist took me to the sink. He washed my hair and it felt like I was with my hairdresser, Kimmy, back home in Pittsburgh. Two boys, who indicated with their hands that they were both 21, like me, took turns blow-drying my hair.

I'm just a girl who can't say no

My stylists don't speak much English:

"Hello."

"Do you have a boyfriend? No? Do you want his phone number?"

"Your eyes are very beautiful."

My Chinese is even more limited. I can say "ni hao," meaning "hello" and "xie xie," which means "thank you."

"Xie xie, xie xie, xie xie, xie xie." Thank you for the tea, thank you for brushing my hair, thank you for drying my hair, thank you, thank you, thank you.

My hair was dry and straight. I was ready to go. I got up to pay but the boys handed me what looked like a large menu instead. They pointed to three different options. I chose the cheapest one. They shook their head. They pointed to the second choice, 510 RMB -- about 80 American dollars.

They pulled up a tray and started to paint my hair with white goop. I was hoping that it was a deep conditioning treatment but I knew I was in trouble when I smelled the cream.

Perms have been out of fashion as long as I have had hair, so I've never smelled the chemicals used in permanents. I read somewhere a long time ago, probably in some outdated teen novel checked out from the library, that perms smelled like cat pee.

I was stuck. I could shake my head but I could not say no. I didn't know how.

I started to sweat through my cardigan. I tapped my foot. I was nervous - had they ever straightened hair like mine before? What if all my hair broke off?

My very straight hair was on its way to being permanently straightened.

When the job was done, I paid quickly, gave a friendly American smile and exited the salon as gracefully as I could.

My permanent souvenir

My hair hasn't broken off yet. It is as straight as it's ever been. I'll get more use out of my new hair than I would out of 80 dollars of hip outfits, or silk, or Chinese fans. I have had a lot of compliments on my new hair by my friends from Shanghai International Studies University. Maybe they are just being friendly. The trend for Asian girls is to perm their hair curly now. But I don't mind being a little bit of out style here.

There's always room to "Imp rove."

-- By Grace Muller

March 9: A taste of Paris in Shanghai's French Concession

After living in France for four months, the French Concession is a small part of Shanghai I couldn't wait to see. Often called the "Paris of the East," the French Concession was established in Shanghai as a separate ruling government in the mid-1800s and lasted until 1943. Today, the calm, narrow streets of the Xuhui and Luwan districts are still preserved with stone paths and lots of character. It's quite different from the lively city streets in Shanghai's Pudong district.

The architecture of one building in particular, pictured at left below, reminded me of the buildings found all over Paris. The stucco exterior and black terraces outside the windows are exactly what you would find walking along Avenue Montaigne, pictured below at right, in Paris.

France is famous for its outdoor cafés, shown in the picture below on the right. While I haven't seen this often in Shanghai, every restaurant in the French Concession had tables and chairs outside, photo below, left. The French Concession is admittedly a hub for tourists and Europeans, so many of the restaurants were familiar ones, such as Haagen-Dazs and The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Either way, the option to eat outdoors made me want to trade the tea and dumplings I've been treating myself to for an espresso and croissant - which is exactly what I did.

My taste buds went wild at the sight of all the French pastries inside Paul, one of the French Concession's patisseries. Everything, from the miniature macaroons and chocolate croissants to the square pizzas (which are heated up after ordering) and baguette sandwiches, screamed France. A woman beside our table, dressed in all black and clearly European, was even working away at her Croque Monsieur. The only way to tell Shanghai's pastries from Paris' are that one costs a yuan and the other costs a euro.

The tables were small inside the café, forcing intimate conversation over espresso. After a relaxing hour or two, the other students and I left the French Concession feeling like we had a small taste of something closer to home ... but ready to get back out there and see what else Shanghai had to offer.

-- By Devin Tomb

March 7: Sunday Mass in Shanghai

After 14 grueling hours on an international flight to one of the world’s most exotic cities, Kelly Rippin was anxious about her first trip abroad. Shanghai is vast and chaotic, 18 million people spread across an area the size of Connecticut. Knowing next to nothing about the language and culture of China, Kelly found the prospect of the familiar rituals of Sunday Mass somewhat comforting. And that’s just where her colleague and classmate at Penn State, Eric Jou, was heading.

Eric, who is of Chinese descent and speaks the language fluently, is familiar with Shanghai and knows some of the hidden treasures of its many neighborhoods. Both Eric and Kelly are members of an international reporting class at Penn State, which is spending spring break on a reporting trip in Shanghai. The 15 members of the class will be writing and filming stories and blogs on a broad range of subjects, from China’s economic development to its art and pop music scene, to religion. And religion happened to be the story Eric was after – the growth of Catholicism in communist China.

Setting out barely 18 hours after their plane touched down, Eric and Kelly went to Sunday morning mass in search of a story. And for Kelly, attending this mass brought a feeling of comfort she wasn’t expecting to have in city so strange and mysterious.

Growing up Catholic and attending Catholic school, Kelly had attended thousands of masses and, to her surprise, this one was no different. Expecting the Mass to be foreign, Kelly found it a reminiscent of home. Attending mass in the middle of Shanghai under the Nanpu Bridge, Saint Peters Church’s Sunday morning service is almost exactly the same as one would find in the United States.

English was the language of choice. Sermon, hymns, and prayers were understandable. What Kelly heard today was going to be word for word exactly what her parents would be hearing 13 hours later in Western Pennsylvania. The songs and liturgy of the Catholic Mass were familiar as was the communion. Half a dozen children brought flowers to the alter at the presentation of gifts.

The church is strikingly similar to Catholic churches throughout the Western world. Stations of the cross, the alter, and the pungent fumes of incense burning all felt like home. St. Peters stands in the middle of a huge construction project and is surrounded by buildings that are slated for demolition. The church itself is undergoing renovation and is covered in bamboo scaffolding. The neighborhood represents the constant struggle between old and new that is embodied in Shanghai. This being China, work on the renovation didn’t stop during the Mass.

-- By Kelly Rippin and Eric Jou