The View From Here

Travel. The flight to Shanghai was something we’d recommend only once in a lifetime with a toddler in tow.  E made lots of friends onboard as we walked the aisles in an effort to busy his drunken little legs.  Passengers gave him high fives, kids offered their toys, a flight attendant awarded him “wings” and some crackers and kept fresh milk at the ready.  But he didn’t sleep much.  We’ve yet to deduce whether it was ears or teeth that caused the problem, but my money is on the bottom right molar, an obnoxious party crasher of a tooth that arrived beyond what’s considered fashionably late. Alas, in August we’ll have to return the same way that we came.  We researched freighter travel as a means to cross the Pacific (awesome factor = 10).  The trip takes up to 30 days (awesome factor = 10). Sadly, E is too young to board the boat and school starts a week after we return so we’ll slate it for some other time (fingers crossed).

Home. Our Pudong apartment is surprisingly modest given the high cost but our location is great. Sewer gases waft up into the bathroom so we have to shut the door, the elevator is scarily sullen, but the view from our living room is dizzying. From aloft E and I have spied hotel staff roll out red carpet for two break-the-bank, white gown weddings.  This is a serviced apartment, with a “full kitchen” even, but the management has reacted stingily to our requests for additional cooking implements (they grudgingly sent up a second pan but two lonely forks still sit in the drawer).  And yet we are so grateful for this experience.  After all, we are in Shanghai, humming, bustling city of XX million – all color and light and angles and pavement and fresh flowers - where the world moves both forward and backward at the same time.

Food. The closest supermarket is a 10-minute walk and we can reach the nearest Metro station in 5 to 7.   Navigating our way around the city with baby is a bit of a challenge but we’re making headway.  We were told not to bring a big stroller as “people would hate us” for it, so we brought a cheapie umbrella rig that United promptly mangled en route from LAX.  (The baggage handlers feebly attempted to reshape the grips, and the stroller now resembles an endearing Bighorn sheep on wheels). The hillbillies have arrived in Shanghai!

Tiny challenges. We hit the market yesterday, and Casey accidently trapped the backpack into a locker. I share this because as y’all know the Engineer is 100% kindness, and it was somehow darkly sweet to watch him pantomime the dilemma to the Chinese employee sweeping the floor. We were hot and tired and the store was blaring the same thump-thump-thump Circus music you hear in Ensenada bars and restaurants and all we wanted was foodfoodfood.  It was Walmart on a cocktail of steroids and durian.
 
We’d been cautioned that the Chinese love babies.  We arrived at Pudong International after the 14-hour slog across the Pacific and confronted a large stream of foreigners not unlike us awaiting passport control.  Suddenly, a lanky young airport official saw E hunched in the Bighorn stroller and quickly chanted “baby, baby, baby!” and then motioned for us to follow him to the front of the queue. This small kindness allowed us to bypass a potential toddler meltdown.  China Immigration: 1; US Immigration: 0! 

The downside.  Most of the locals gawk at E like as if he’s a Hollywood celebrity, which, of course, is not at all an unusual reaction to Caucasian babies in this part of the world, and probably a fine “turn-the-tables lesson” in what it’s like to be the Other.  It’s a little more vexing when a churlish man with a cigarette reaches down and, unsolicited, pets E’s little hand, prompting Momma Bear to want to (unapologetically) slash her claws into the man’s abdominal cavity and feed the innards to her smiling cub. Casey suggested we add spots to Eli’s face to connote some kind of contagion.  I guess we’re both pretty jetlagged.

And so that’s the view from here.  Pictures to follow and love to you all.