hsianghai

[hsianghai]

Finals time! 再见，上海！

Just went to my last official class here at NYU Shanghai. I can't believe it's already time to leave... time passes so quickly! We're heading to our farewell event tomorrow at the Le Royal Meridien, where we'll be dining and toasting to a good semester with our Chinese professors and fellow students. 

I remember our orientation week like it was yesterday! 

To start off: One of the biggest things I'll miss here....

Jinduyuan - Golden City Garden (NYU Off-Campus Housing)

I'll miss the ahyi's that clean our room every other day, living in the same building as all of your friends, the view at 5 a.m. (see below), the actual living room where we can all sit and chat after dinner, the awesome kitchen that we never used, the laundry machine and dryer in every suite, individual single rooms, my bathroom.... 

Okay, so it sounds like we're pretty spoiled over here at NYU Shanghai. The living accommodations are fantastic, and I can't say I'm excited to move back to an NYU-New York dorm. Unfortunately, we're one of the last NYU Shanghai semesters to live here because the campus is moving to Pudong, across the Huangpu River. The new NYU campus isn't really located next to any of the shopping or touristy areas though, so that will definitely be a change - I think all of the students will be heading over here to Puxi a lot more than exploring Pudong. There are a lot more developments and office buildings over in Pudong, with the amount of space and land that they have there.   

kitchen :)

hey tiff!

dining room area

gorgeous sunrise at 5 a.m.... and the free tent/mosquito net area that we like to play in

定西路 has a lot of great restaurants and a CoCo's, an 85 Degree Bakery, some clothing shops, a McDonald's/Starbucks/Costa Coffee/Japanese food/Korean food... everything! We're getting a little tired of Chinese food here, so we've been heading to McDonald's more often then we'd like to mention (more time this semester than ever before during our three years at NYU...). 

Thank you, NYU Shanghai! I'll always have a very fond place for Shanghai in my heart. 再见！ 

[hsianghai]

craving Bonchon chicken SO BADLY after being a chicken-tarian for a few months too long.... 

http://www.scpr.org/news/2013/05/08/37188/rat-mutton-and-bird-flu-strange-days-for-meat-eate/

[hsianghai]

Wanted to visit a swanky hotel rooftop before I left, so I decided to splurge on my birthday at Flair, Ritz-Carlton, Pudong's Rooftop Bar. 

Got a little artsy with my Crystal Martini, forgive me for the spam of the Pearl Tower. 

[hsianghai]

Turned 21 here in Shanghai! The "turning point" of becoming an adult. I'm glad I could celebrate here with people who might not have been able to celebrate with me back in New York. Had two delicious cakes surrounded by awesome friends :) 

二十一岁。太老了！

时间过得真快！(how time flies...)

[hsianghai]

Three of my favorite shots from Yangzhou. Credit goes to Tiffany's camera :) 

我爱我的朋友们！

[hsianghai]

YANGZHOU! 扬州

Last weekend, about 60 of us went to Yangzhou on one of the NYU Shanghai weekend trips. We saw a lot of gardens and a cool pagoda, had a ton of delicious food, and saw an interesting traditional performance while drinking tea and eating sunflower seeds. It started to rain at night, but that didn't ruin our plans to see more gardens.. :p

The bus ride was incredibly long, about 4 hours, so that took up a lot of the time that we spent in the city. I think the best part of the trip was definitely the hotel we stayed in (thanks NYU), a stark contrast to the hostels we've been suffering in (haha). What can I say, I'm a hotel management major. Anyways, I think I've had enough gardens for the entire semester...

[hsianghai]

Thank you CoCo Fresh Tea & Juice, for being on every block of Shanghai. Thank you for being $1 USD :) 我爱你。

Not looking forward to 珍珠奶茶 being $3-5 USD back in NY.... 

Image source: http://drinks.seriouseats.com

[hsianghai]

Shanghai Formula 1 UBS Chinese Grand Prix - April 13 Qualifying Race 

Awesome to be a guest of Banco Santander at the F1 race, since it was their first time as a sponsor of F1. Great seats, perfect weather. The cars are supposedly louder than airplanes taking off, allowing vendors to sell their earplugs for 100rmb o.o (16 usd)

The stadium was pretty much filled with only foreigners cheering on their favorite driver, and a few lost souls (like us) wandering about. The more exciting day was the 14th, where a few crashes happened and wheels went flying (as reported back by the others who went back for the race day itself). 

Cool experience, wish I knew more about what was actually happening during the race though. We watched both the qualifying and the porsche cars race, and a few took pictures with some of the drivers. Fun! Thanks Banco Santander! 

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Brunch with Chairman Botin of Banco Santander with the other NYU Shanghai Banco Santander Scholars at the Park Hyatt :) Gorgeous view from the 91st floor and an inspiring chat with the chairman himself! 

[hsianghai]

Nanjing adventures! 

We had to catch our flight to Nanjing from HK at 7:30 am, but the buses to the airport started running when we needed to be at the airport. We ended up pulling an all-nighter and told ourselves we would take a one-hour nap when landing in Nanjing at around 9:30 am. 

We crawled into our beds at Traveler's Soul Inn (in a cool 1865 Creative Plaza) and woke up at 7pm... 

Did I mention we only had one day in Nanjing? So that was spent in our beds.. but we tried to go scavenge around for something to eat around Yuhua Lu and that was definitely a fail - it was Qingming Festival, so lots of things were closed. It was about a 30 min walk from our hostel to Yuhua Lu (and the nearest subway), so that was disappointing. Nanjing is definitely not a walkable city, if you were wondering. 

Fortunately, we only had our sights set on hiking up Purple Mountain, and we had a slot of time before our train at 2 pm the next day, so we woke up early and did a 30-min Huangshan-style hike up to the top, where we saw an awesome view of Nanjing. Legit rock-climbed up to the top, which was incredibly scary, but pretty cool. 

Nanjing street food was delicious - wish we had more time to indulge. Ate some soupy buns with a straw (also found in Yuyuan Garden in Shanghai) and tofu skin skewers. The lady yelled at us. Typical. 

From HK to Macau to Nanjing, we experienced an incredible difference in service. In Nanjing, there are of course less foreigners and travelers from different parts of the world (in comparison to HK), and people look less fondly upon you if you cannot speak fluent Mandarin. That was definitely a challenge. 

A very different Spring Break than my other friends had - some went to Guilin, etc to see the beauty of China's waterfalls and mountains, others went to Sanya in Hainan, "China's Hawaii" to get tan on the beach. Our city adventures were filled with lots of laughter, language problems, Chungking Mansion bugs, shopping malls and some of the most wonderful HK people.

Enjoy! Back to "normal life" at ECNU in Shanghai :) 

[hsianghai]

More Macau pics! 

After the rain, the end of the bridge disappeared ... 

[hsianghai]

Macau! 

A great place to escape from China for a day - Portuguese influence in its buildings, cobblestone streets, MOP (Macau Patacas - Macau's currency), Portuguese egg tarts EVERYWHERE (so good), and delicious food. A former Portuguese colony until 1999 (and the last remaining European colony in China), it definitely felt like we exited the country and took a short trip to Portugal. Colorful buildings everywhere! 

We visited St. Pauls Ruins and Largo do Senado, (Senate Square) and abruptly halted our adventures when it started down pouring. So we quickly grabbed a delicious pork bun sandwich and an egg tart and scarfed both down in Starbucks. 

Did I mention they love egg tarts? I grabbed an egg tart phone key chain of course. The picture above is of egg tart magnets, shown in Macau Patacas. (MOP) More pictures to follow...

[hsianghai]

香港,澳门,南京 - Hong Kong, Macau and Nanjing Spring Break 2013! 

What an interesting spring break - we had so many interesting encounters with various people and obstacles to hurdle with our elementary 1+elementary 2 chinese knowledge. We were told HK is manageable with English and bits of Mandarin, which is pretty accurate. In so many different areas though, we struggled with the language barrier (in service areas in particular, surprisingly, such as Tsui Wah restaurant, one of the "cha chan tang" tea house restaurants scattered throughout HK.

We happened upon approximately 10 malls within one day by accident, just because there is a shopping mall on every corner. (How many Gucci's does one really need within a 10 mi radius?) 

(Also, getting used to walking on the left side of the underground MTR passage and driving on the right hand side of the car - ah, British!) 

Our first day in HK, we stumbled into our hostel at around 3-4 a.m. after a late night, delayed flight. Our hostel, at Chungking Mansion, was something I would not care to ever go back to. The only reason I would ever wander into the building again is to visit Ling Nini, the grandma/owner of Beverly Guest House in the mansion, who is the sweetest, most caring hostel owner I've ever met! She promised to cook Chinese food for us next time, but there won't be a next time in Chungking Mansions. (We had to move to a hotel for several reasons, it's for sure worth it for anyone visiting HK for only a little bit more money) 

We visited Victoria Peak for the best view of the city, but unfortunately it was a somewhat stormy looking day and the entire view was covered by a cloud, so that was pretty disappointing. But the view up to the top was still nice, which is the second photo above. We walked through Times Square, ventured to Temple Market and Ladies Market, 5 more shopping malls, and then ended up at Avenue of Stars and Victoria Harbor for the light show! Pretty interesting idea to synchronize all the skyline buildings to the same songs. 

Our second day began with a strange dim sum experience, and consisted of shopping (obviously) in Mongkok, venturing down Sneaker Street (which was disappointingly filled with only Nike + Adidas stores), took the Mid-to-Central Escalators, the longest outdoor escalator in the world, explored Soho, ate some street food, and ended up in Tsui Wah and a solely-mango dessert house. 

We also explored Lan Kwai Fong, a whole street of bars and restaurants and clubs the next day after our day trip to Macau, but that'll be on my next post because I don't have any more room for additional pics on this post. 

Hong Kong is so similar to NYC, and it's definitely a place to go if you have the money to spend and want to go on shopping trips (Mommy!). I'm looking forward to returning in the future, even though I have already seen all of the touristy spots. It's so similar to New York in that I feel as if I would have a different experience and see a different city every time I go. My favorite part of Hong Kong was definitely the people, something I could not say about New York City. We met some awesome individuals who stopped doing their job to help us out (waiters stopped working to help us find a bus, or another destination) - taxi drivers often spoke fluent English and asked us where we were from and took us on a mini-tour while driving us to our destination. I can't say that for everyone, as we sometimes received a grunt when we asked if they spoke English, but the frequent encounters with helpful locals were so frequent that was such a pleasant experience. Shoutout to Nick at Tsui Wah in HK Island, we love your hand motions and quirky anime moves. 

Macau + Nanjing on the next post! 

[hsianghai]

Shanghai Formula 1 Grand Prix 2013 - Can't wait. Thanks to NYU + Banco Santander for this awesome opportunity! :) It'll be great to be able to meet and chat with Chairman Botin of Banco Santander as well. 

http://www.redbull.com/en/motorsports/f1/events/1331579732594/chinese-grand-prix-

[hsianghai]

A few awesome views of Hong Kong! What a cool city... very detailed posts to come! Currently in Nanjing for the last leg of our trip.

[hsianghai]

Hong Kong money feels so cool... it's usually very straight and each bill has a circular transparent part on the bottom left corner. Definitely my favorite bill out of all currencies!

[hsianghai]

First day of Spring Break!

3/29/13 - Explored the somewhat Jing'An Temple area, French Concession, Tianzifeng, and Xintiandi in one day. 

First day of spring break and the desire to utilize the handful of days I have in Shanghai before leaving for Hong Kong caused me to cram everything into one day! The French Concession is a great (expensive) place with so many different types of restaurants from all over the world. Today happened to be weird, and I unfortunately experienced three different people throwing up. I have no idea how this occurred, but I literally walked by three different people launching the contents of their lunches out onto the street by the Jing'An Temple and then later at the French Concession, consecutively. Unlucky me. 

Tianzifeng and Xintiandi are also ridiculously expensive areas, but we got to enjoy teddy bear cappuccinos and fake Beats and angry cab drivers. Got to see the Langham, Shanghai - Xintiandi for the first time, which I've heard about since working there in 2011; it just opened this year I believe, or maybe the end of 2012. Three expensive areas that are interestingly European with a hint of Western brands, transporting us to Europe for a bit. 

Check out our cappuccinos/stroll in "Europe":

Leaving for HK, Macau and Nanjing (and maybe a bit more in the southern region of China) tomorrow. Update after the break! :)