December 2019 – Astronomer in Shanghai

December 30, 2019

Channukkah Celebrations and the Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Center

Thanks for joining me for this week’s adventures in Shanghai! I hope this post offers you a window into my life here, in Shanghai.

If you haven’t already, please subscribe and let me know what you’ve been enjoying! To subscribe, enter your name and e-mail on the right side of the page. Once subscribed, you’ll receive an e-mail with each new post. If you’re curious about anything I’ve posted, let me know. Instructions are on the “To Comment” page.

Now, on to this week’s adventures!

Life in Shanghai

This week was a normal research week. For those of you in the US (or most of the western world), let that sink in. How many of you worked a full, regular week both this past week and this upcoming week? For me, this has been a somewhat surreal experience. For the first time in my life (this is the first time I haven’t been in school), I worked continuously through the end of December. While it was not weird for me to work on Christmas, it is strange not having this time to rest and recharge. However, we do get January 1st off though.

For those of you who are curious, the Chinese academic calendar is quite different than the traditional semester system in the US. The fall semester is still ongoing. It ends in about two weeks. Then, there is a 5-6 week vacation period for the students, not me, which coincides with Chinese New Year. Thus, the spring semester starts in the spring, in March and ends at the end of June. While I can take a couple weeks off (if I choose to) during the 6 week break, it won’t be a complete break like what happens around the holiday time in the US because I’m involved in international collaborations (DES and DESI), which will be back to there regular telecon and meeting schedule. So, as a postdoc in China, I kind of lose when it comes to having a relaxing winter vacation.

I think that’s enough about my work life. So, to transition, this week, I visited the Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Center. This is a small gallery located in the heart of downtown Shanghai featuring different propaganda posters that were mostly made between the 1930s and 1970s. There are also some more modern posters as well. I’m including posters that I thought had interesting looking art. So these posters do not reflect my political views or beliefs. The gallery showed posters featuring different political messages, most of which were depicting the rise of Mao and other aspects of Chinese culture during that time period.

However, but not really surprising, there were also posters that showed strong anti-American sentiments as well as support for the black Power movement in the US.

In stark contrast to the purely political posters, there were also posters that supported universal ideas, such as the importance of education and literacy, the chinese goals of dominating the sciences, and the importance of eating vegetables.

While the posters incorporate Chinese characters, the gallery included English titles (and French titles) next to the posters, which allowed me to understand the messages that each poster was trying to convey.

Overall, this was a very interesting museum. Prior to visiting, I hadn’t learned anything about this period of time in China, so I’m glad I got to learn about it via this unique vantage point.

It’s continued to be quite nice here (it was in the mid-upper 50s this weekend), so I went running on both Saturday and Sunday. I did a 5.6 mile run to People’s square on Saturday and a 7.2 mile run to Xujiahui park on Sunday. I’m really enjoying that I can keep running throughout the winter! I definitely plan to keep it up!

Going on these long runs and walking to the Propaganda Art Center also allowed me to see a lot of cool posters, sculptures, street art, and displays.

And yes, for those of you wondering, those are people dancing (there is music) in one of the parks in downtown Shanghai! That happens all the time in different parks.

Food in Shanghai

Due to all the different Channukkah celebrations I attended this week, I didn’t try as many different Chinese dishes. However, I still had an excellent lunch on Saturday! The two dishes I got were 1). braised tofu in a clay pot with different kinds of mushrooms, carrots, baby bok choy, and edamame and 2). vegetarian duck. For those of you unfamiliar, vegetarian duck is made of layers of tofu skins that are then cooked to become crispy on the outside, so it’s just crispy tofu.

Jewish Life in Shanghai

As the title of this entry suggests, I went to a lot of Channukkah celebrations this week! On Tuesday, Moishe House hosted a Channukkah game night, which also featured homemade latkes. I had a lot of fun playing dreidel for some very mediocre gelt. We also played a Channukkah version of the improv game Mafia, where the Mafiosa were replaced by the Assyrians and the Detectives were replaced by the Maccabees, and team Scrabble, which unsurprisingly, I won.

My Channukkah celebrations continued on Friday, when I attended Kehilat Shanghai’s Channukkah Shabbat. It was nice joining together with many of the other Kehilat members to celebrate both Shabbat and Channukkah. I got to catch up with a few different members that I hadn’t seen since Yom Kippur. We had tons of different menorahs as well as delicious sufganiyot (jelly doughnuts) and also falafel (not associated with Channukkah, but still delicious)!

Lastly, to end Channukkah, I joined Kehilat Shanghai once again for their Channukkah party on Sunday night! This celebration was attended by many community members with young children as well as a large contingent of other young professionals in Shanghai. It’s been really interesting meeting so many different people my age and learning about what brought them to Shanghai. It’s a mix of Americans, Israelis, Canadiens, and Europeans (mostly British), many of whom are in Shanghai for either business or teaching. Once again we enjoyed latkes and sufganiyot!

While in the grand scheme of Judaism, Channukkah is a relatively unimportant holiday, it was really nice getting to join together with so many different Jewish communities throughout Shanghai to celebrate! I’m really glad that I’ve found these communities as I’ve gotten more settled here.

In addition to those celebrations, I also marked each night of Channukkah by lighting a menorah in my apartment, which you can see in the slideshow above!

I hope you enjoyed experiencing my visit to the Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Center and my many Channukkah celebrations! This week will be somewhat normal research week, but with New Years Day off. I look forward to sharing my adventures with you next week/next year/next decade . I hope that everyone has a Happy New Year! If you have any questions/comments about life in Shanghai, let me know!

See you in 2020! I’ll get there first. 🙂

In peace,
Jesse

December 23, 2019

The Shanghai Art Museum and Channukkah Celebrations!

Thanks for joining me for another Shanghai adventure! I hope my photos and words make you feel like you’re exploring Shanghai with me!

If you haven’t, please subscribe and let me know what interests you about my life in Shanghai! To subscribe, enter your name and e-mail on the right side of the page. Once subscribed, you’ll receive an e-mail with each new post. If you’re curious about anything I’ve posted, let me know. Instructions are on the “To Comment” page.

Now, on to this week’s adventures!

Life in Shanghai

This week was a normal week of research. AstroCoffee, the 3x per week discussion of recent Astronomy Journal articles, that I organize, has been going very well! The presentations have been good and the attendance has been growing beyond just members of the Zu research group, which is great! We’re now getting a lot more of the postdocs and even some of the other graduate students.

In terms of my actual research, I’ve been spending most of my time focusing on understanding how to measure the Luminosity Function (which, put in simpler terms is a measure of the number of bright galaxies within a galaxy cluster binned in terms of the absolute magnitude, the astronomical measure of brightness) for low-redshift SDSS galaxy groups and clusters. I’ve been making progress on reproducing some of the results from a prior study, which is the first step in successfully measuring this relation myself. I think that’s enough Astronomy for this week, so onto the adventure!

It was a rainy and gray Saturday, so I decided to visit the Shanghai Art Museum in Pudong (located on the other side of the Huangpu river that divides Shanghai). This museum mostly houses modern Chinese art (from 1950 to the present) and has a wide variety works: sculptures, paintings, animation, graphic art, pen and ink works. As you can see, even the outside of the museum looks like a piece of modern art!

This is a massive museum . Despite spending three hours there, I didn’t see the whole museum, so I’ll definitely be back to visit again. For the photo’s I’ve divided the pictures based on the different types of exhibits that I saw.

As a huge fan of comic books, some of my favorite types of art work are graphic pen and ink artwork. Here are some of my favorites. I was particularly impressed by the detailed line work in the two pieces on the sides of the bottom row.

There was also an exhibits highlighting work from the Shanghai Animation and Film Studio, as well as some about Chinese comic books, including some pages from the story of the Monkey King!

The museum has displays of Chinese paper art (which was really cool!) as well as displays of more traditional styles of Chinese paintings featuring landscapes and animal imagery.

The most jaw-dropping exhibit was the animated version of the landscape Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival. This animated version of the traditional Chinese landscape scroll is spread over an entire wall and some of the floor of the uppermost floor of the museum. The animations show people move around and even transitions from day to night (as shown in the last two pictures in the next gallery). This was an amazing and inventive way to use technology to experience such a beautiful piece of traditional Chinese art!

The lower floors of the museum also had exhibits of different modern art sculptures. I love these kinds of sculptures and found them to be fascinating to look at!

This reminded me of one of the horse statues in Saratoga!

One of my favorite pieces was the painting shown on the left. While not as breathtaking as some of the other works I photographed, this one reminded me of the beauty I see in my own Astronomical data!

The only downside of the museum is that all of the descriptions and name placards are in Chinese. However, I still had a great time exploring the museum and wold definitely recommend visiting!

While I clearly saw a lot of amazing artwork at the Shanghai Art museum, I also saw a ton of cool displays and advertisements this week. Downtown Shanghai (especially the commercial areas) are getting ready for Christmas, so there are decorations and trees set up as well. My personal favorite was the giant panda sculptures!

Despite the rainy weather this weekend, I am still running! I did a 4.6 mile run this week. The weather is still warm (at least by my personal standards). It’s been a nice adjustment running in upper 40/low-50 degree weather in December.

Food in Shanghai

For those of you wondering, I am still doing a lot of cooking for myself. Since it’s colder now, I’ve been making soup. However, I also got to try a lot of different vegan foods this week! I’ve had great luck when it comes to food here. I went to dinner on Friday with one of my friends and then out to lunch on Saturday! Everything was delicious. On Friday, I had tempeh for the first time since I moved to Shanghai!

This week, I also had my first vegan desserts in Shanghai! A coffee cream cake and a chocolate mousse bar! It’s great to know I can get excellent vegan desserts here!

I also had to share this picture of these cute panda cookies that I bought!

Jewish Life in Shanghai

Sunday was the first night of Channukkah! Chag Sameach and Happy Channukkah to all who are celebrating! I went to two Channukkah celebrations this week. On Monday, the Moishe House did a pre-Channukkah Breakfast for Dinner (“Brinner”) featuring latkes and sufganiyot (jelly doughnuts). I made homemade applesauce, using my Mom’s recipe! I had a fun time hanging out with friends and making new friends. It’s great being part of that community!

On Sunday, for the first night of Channukkah, I attended the Chabad of Shanghai’s Channukkah celebration. This celebration was held at the Ohel Rachel Synagogue. Ohel Rachel is a beautiful, grand, and large syngogue that was built in 1921. It is currently owned by the Shanghai government, so it can’t be used as a synagogue. However, the government does allow the building to be used a few times per year for different holidays.

The Channukkah celebration featured short remarks from representatives from the US and Israeli consulates as well as remarks from Justice Richard Bernstein of the Michigan Supreme Court, who was visiting Shanghai. As an American, one of the Chabad Rabbi’s introduced me to Justice Bernstein and I got to talk to him a bit about a). having gone to Michigan and b). what I was doing in Shanghai. Given that he’s on the Michigan Supreme Court, I’m curious if my cousin Margaret has ever met him.

In addition to the speeches, there were prayers, some short performances by children, lots of singing, a group menorah lighting, and tons of delicious latkes and doughnuts! While I didn’t know many people at the event, it was a wonderful being able to celebrate the start of Channukkah together!

My celebration of the first night of Channukkah was completed by lighting the menorah in my apartment for the first time!

I hope you enjoyed experiencing my visit to the Shanghai Art Museum and Channukkah celebrations! This week will be another regular research week. I look forward to sharing my adventures with you next week, which will include more Channukkah celebrations! For those of you celebrating either Channukkah or Christmas this week, I hope that you have a wonderful holiday filled with family and friends! If you have and questions/comments, about life in Shanghai, let me know!

Happy Holidays!

In peace,
Jesse

December 15, 2019December 15, 2019

The Yu Gardens and the Laoximen District (and its History)!

Thanks for joining me on another adventure in Shanghai! I hope my descriptions and photos let you feel like you are here with me! If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and let me know what you think! To subscribe, just enter your name and e-mail on the right side of the page. Once subscribed, you’ll receive an e-mail with each new post. If you’re curious about anything I’ve posted in this or other entries, let me know by commenting. You can find instructions on the “To Comment” page.

Now, on to this week’s adventures!

Life in Shanghai

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I have a new research project that I’m working on. So, during the week, I returned to my old research habits from graduate school, which means I am either downloading data or running long, time consuming codes. It’s been nice to flex my research muscles by working on my measurement of the low-redshift luminosity function. While I haven’t made any breakthroughs yet, there’s a lot of really interesting questions I am trying to answer about central galaxy assembly!

While my week focused on learning about galaxy assembly, the weekend was spent learning about Shanghai’s history. This weekend I had two adventures. First, I visited the beautiful and scenic Yu Gardens (located about 1.5 miles from where I live) and then on Sunday, I joined the Historic Shanghai group for a tour of the Laoximen district. It was very warm this weekend (mid 60s), so I wanted to take advantage of what may be one of the last warm weekends!

When I visited Shanghai in June, I went to the Yu Gardens. However, by the time I arrived the inside area was closed for the day. While the outside is a beautiful Koi ponds with fountains as well as majestic pagodas, this time, I made sure to see the manicured gardens located within the walls.

These are stunning! I really like being here during the fall/winter, because you can see some of the trees change colors. Now you may be wondering, where is this? The Yu Gardens are not outside of the city; rather they’re located in the center of the Yuyuan shopping district (which was built around the gardens in the old Shanghai style). The Yu Gardens were built as a home for a wealthy family in the mid 1500s. The grounds are meticulously manicured and still look amazing today! Although it’s not a huge complex, the paths snake around so you feel like you’re in a mcuh larger area than you actually are.

In addition to the natural landscape, the Yu Gardens house gorgeous buildings with ornate decorations. There are dozens of lion statues. Here I am grabbing the ball from inside the mouth of one of the lions!

As noted earlier, Yuyuan is surrounded by a shopping district. This is a very popular area with tourists (Chinese and western). You can see the area already decked out for Chinese new year, which is coming up in about 5 weeks. This is the year of the Rat!

I guess just like in the US, where Christmas decorations show up weeks in advance, the same is true for Chinese New Year Decorations!

While in the shopping district, I had to stop in the toy store called Superman toys! They had tons of different anime and comic book figurines. As many of you know I’m a huge fan of both, so I’ll be back once I’ve built up some savings in RMB. I know that both Emmet and my friend Ryan would really enjoy seeing this place! Here are some images of the Dragon Ball Z and My Hero Academia figurines. There were also a ton of One Piece and One Punch Man as well.

In stark contrast to my adventure on Saturday, on Sunday, I joined the Historic Shanghai group for the tour of the Laoximen or Old West Gate district in Shanghai. Patrick and Tina who run Historic Shanghai gave the presentation at Kehilat Shanghai last week about the Jews in Shanghai.

Laoximen is part of the original walled city of Shanghai that was built in the 1500s. Today, the neighborhood consists of buildings that were mostly built during the 1920s. It was built later occupied by the Japanese in the 1930s/40s. This neighborhood is scheduled for urban renewal/renovation (i.e. it’s going to be torn down). So, many of the residents had already left, although some are still holding out for a better deal with the government. I wanted to visit and share this story with you to provide a different view of what the city looks like. Not all of it is as glamorous as what I’ve shown you.

The images show the different kinds of architecture that exist here. While most of it is run down, you can still see European/western features intermixed with Chinese touches, such as the animals (that were symbols of luck or strength), symbols, and writing. Additionally, you can see the layers of brick and cement that cover these buildings, highlighting how this neighborhood evolved.

The characters above us in the group photo depict Maoist slogans that adorned all of the homes during the cultural revolution. Interestingly, I learned that during the cultural revolution, many of the affluent families fled from there homes. These homes were then turned into multi-family apartments owned by the state. Ironically, I think that this is the case for the row house building that I’m living in as well, since the other residents are either families or elderly residents.

Additionally, we also visited a Buddhist convent in Laoximen (which is not slated to be torn down). Prior to my visit, I didn’t even realize there were Buddhist nuns. Being on the tour, I also learned about a lot about Buddhism. During the cultural revolution, religion was outlawed (it no longer is). So, all of the Buddhist monasteries in major cities were shut down and their statues were destroyed. So, everything I’ve seen is rather new. Additionally, I also learned about some of the iconography, described below. For those, like me, who know little about Buddhism, there are public services on the 1st and 15th of each lunar months as well as other holidays/celebrations.

Two of the four guardians of the cardinal directions, which protect the temple from evil

Overall, the tour was a fun way to learn the history of Shanghai. I definitely plan on joining the Historic Shanghai group for other tours of my new home city!

Now, some of you might be wondering, since it was warm, did I go running. Of course! Since it was very warm (and that many not happen for a while), I pushed my self and did 7.25 miles! I definitely am close to my half marathon shape! So, I’ll be keeping my eyes (and WeChat account) posted for races in the spring! During my run, I also ran into one of the undergraduates who works with Prof. Zu at SJTU! This was the first time I’ve run into anyone that I know in Shanghai. Hopefully, as I get to know more people this will occasionally start to happen, albeit this is a megacity with 26+ million people, so who knows.

During all of the tours and adventures, I also saw a ton of cool billboards and advertisements. As you can see, there are amazing things to see everywhere I go!

And yes, as an Astronomer, I had to take a picture of the Astronaut.

Food in Shanghai

After my long run Saturday morning, I treated myself to a lunch with a ton of different seitan options!

The first is a soft stewed seitan with mushrooms and peanuts. The second is a crispy seitan kebab with cumin. The third is a seitan sizzling platter with peppers and broccoli. It’s awesome being able to try so many different kinds of food here! If there’s anything I have yet to try that you think I’m missing or that you’re surprised I haven’t had yet, let me know!

I hope you enjoyed experiencing my visit to the Yu Gardens and Laoximen! This week will be another normal research week. I look forward to sharing my adventures with you next week, which will include some pre-Channukkah and Channukkah activities! If you have and questions/comments, let me know!

In peace,
Jesse

December 8, 2019

The Jade Buddha Temple and Tianzifang

Thank you for reading another entry about my life in Shanghai! I hope you’re continuing to enjoy my adventures! If you haven’t already, please subscribe and let me know! To subscribe, all you have to do is enter your name and e-mail on the right side of the page. Once subscribed, you’ll receive an e-mail with each new post. Also, if you’re curious about anything I’ve posted on this or prior entries, let me know by commenting on the blog. You can find instructions on the “To Comment” page.

Now, on to this week’s adventures!

Life in Shanghai!

In terms of Astronomy, this was a fairly normal week. The start of my week featured skype meetings with a few of my DES collaborators in the US, so at times it felt like I spent all day and night working, but at least they weren’t midnight telecons! I also began working on my SJTU project, measuring the Luminosity function of galaxy groups and clusters in the Yang group catalog (which is a low redshift group finder). While I haven’t made tons of progress yet, it’s been an interesting experience jumping in to a new project. This is the first time I’ve done that since I started working with Prof. Chris Miller at Michigan 4.5 years ago.

As many of you know, I try to walk everywhere (~ within 2 miles). So, combined with my daily commute I saw more cool Chinese advertisements, sculptures, and flowers! Maybe its because this is my first experience living in a mega city (other than my summer in NYC), but it’s amazing how there is so much to see around every corner!

This weekend, I visited the popular shopping district of Tianzifang, an arts and crafts area located in the French Concession, about 1 mile from where I live. While my photos don’t show the full hectic nature of Tianzifang, this reminded a lot of the shuk in Jerusalem. It’s a winding pathway of many vendors (including more than 1 of everything) selling different toys, jewelry, silk clothing, tea, food, and artistic works! It was overwhelming. Once I bought gifts for my parents and brother, I had to immediately escape. If I hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t have any money left! 🙂

Once I left Tianzifang, I went to visit the Jade Buddha Temple. So, between this and Tianzifang, I experienced polar opposites within a matter of hours. This is the fourth Buddhist temple I’ve visited in Shanghai. These are active temples with monks who live and pray at the temples. There were many visitors who came to present offerings and make personal prayers to different deities. By visiting so many of these temples, I now recognize a lot of the different Buddhist motifs. As you can see, this temple is located right in the city. You can see skyscrapers peaking out behind the pagodas. It’s a really stark juxtaposition of the new and old.

While each of the temples features similar statues and aesthetics, what makes this temple unique are the two Jade Buddhas. However, I only saw one. I learned about the second, which you have to pay to view and I didn’t see signs for, afterward, so I’ll have to come back for another visit. Additionally, there is a magnificent and beautiful marble reclining Buddha! This was the most breathtaking Buddha that I have seen so far in my time in Shanghai. When I first saw it, I thought that it was pure white. However, once I moved closer, I was able to see all the intricate colors of the gorgeous marble! It also had an ornate box holding it!

For those of you who are interested in my running habits. It’s still warm (at least I think that the 40s and low-50s is warm for December). So, I went for a 4.5 run on Sunday morning. However, next week it will be in the 50s-60s, so I’m already planning at least one long run!

Food in Shanghai!

I’ve continued my exploration of vegan/vegetarian food in Shanghai! Additionally, while at a grocery store, I saw these weird looking soda bottles, with a plastic bottom and aluminum (soda can) lids. Is this a Chinese thing or am I just unaware of new trends?

In terms of food, I tried a delicious dish or seitan with mushrooms and peppers as well as a sweet fruity sauce and a wonton (filled with mushrooms and greens) soup! I still haven’t had a bad meal at any of these restaurants! I’m also amazed by the variety of the food at each restaurant! There’s so many awesome things I still haven’t tried.

Jewish Life in Shanghai!

This weekend featured a lot of different Jewish activities. On Friday, I joined Kehilat Shanghai for Shabbat services and dinner. After services, one of the community members gave a fascinating talk about the history of Jews in Shanghai. Specifically, he focused on the personal stories of three different Jews who grew up in Shanghai. One was from a Sephardic family (who had moved from Iraq to Shanghai in the late 1800s), another was from a Russian Jewish family that escaped the pogroms by fleeing to Shanghai, and the final one came from a family that had fled the Holocaust. Making this more unique, the speaker contacted each of these people to hear their experiences first hand! It was very interesting hearing about these prior waves of Jewish immigrants to Shanghai! This is one area I would love to learn more about during my time here!

In front of the Chabad, which operates as a Kosher restaurant in Shanghai

On Sunday, I went to the Channukkah fair at one of the three Shanghai Chabad houses. This was my first time going to one of the Chabad’s. I found the community to be very welcoming! I met two of the Rabbi’s and some of the community members (many of them came from different parts of New York City). I also was able to pick up Channukkah candles. In Shanghai, the Chabad’s legally operate as Kosher restaurants and stores, so I know where I’ll be going to get matzah for Passover, too!

I then ended Sunday afternoon enjoying the bagel brunch at the Moishe House. Now that I know many of the regular attendees it’s been a really nice seeing familiar faces outside of work and starting to become friends with people from different countries who are working in many different fields!

While each of these Jewish communities offer unique and diverse experiences (there is overlap in attendees). I’m really glad they all exist. It’s been a wonderful way for me to meet people, make friends, and get comfortable in my new home!

I hope you enjoyed experiencing my visit to the Jade Buddha Temple! This should be another normal research work. I look forward to sharing my adventures with you next week! If you have and questions/comments, let me know!

Until next week!

In peace,
Jesse

December 1, 2019

Vegan Hot Pot and the Shanghai Natural History Museum!

Thanks so much for reading another entry of my blog! I hope that you’ve been enjoying it! If you haven’t already, please subscribe and let me know! Subscribing helps me know my audience. It’s easy, all you have to do is enter your name and e-mail on the right side of the page. By subscribing, you’ll receive an e-mail after each new post. Also, if you’re interested in anything I’ve posted, let me know by commenting on the blog. You can find instructions on the “To Comment” page.

Now, on to this week’s adventures!

Life in Shanghai

This week was a normal week. I spent most of the week reading papers. The goal was to determine which research avenue to pursue as a postdoc at SJTU. For those Astronomers reading this, I’m going to be analyzing how the Luminosity Function of member galaxies in clusters is impacted by the magnitude gap and possibly redshift. This relates to my dissertation research (via the magnitude gap), while also pushing me in a new direction! I’m excited to start on my first project with my postdoc mentor, Prof. Ying Zu. Additionally, I have a longterm project of determining how the velocity caustic (yay the Chris Miller Research Group!) relates to the Splashback Radius.

That’s enough Astronomy for this week, so on to this week’s adventure!

During my commute and travels, for the first time, I noticed what seemed to be some holiday themed lights. While there’s nothing in China like Thanksgiving to mark the start of the Holiday season, it is been interesting to see holiday decorations start to pop up. However, unlike in the US, there is no doubt that Christmas is purely a commercial, gift giving, holiday here. Since I’m not 100% sure whether these are Christmas lights, I’ll keep my eyes out for them in the spring and let you know!

In addition to the lights, I saw a lot more cool sculptures, flowers, and advertisements during my adventures this weekend!

For my first adventure of the weekend, I visited the Shanghai Natural History Museum! As many of you know, I spent a summer doing Astronomy research at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, during which I made a point of visiting each exhibit in the museum. So, needless to say, I am incredibly fond of these kinds of museums. On a rainy Saturday, I was excited to get lost in the museum!

The museum is located inside the Jing’an Sculpture gardens. On my way to the museum, I briefly visited the gardens. Unfortunately, the rain cut my visit short; however, I’ll definitely come back for another visit, since it’s only 1.5 miles away.

The museum is very big. It has 5 floors full of exhibits on space, dinosaurs, animals, rocks, and the history of China. To visit the museum you work your way down.

The museum starts with an exhibit on the universe and space. As an astronomer, I loved this. I immediately knew I was in the right place when I saw the familiar images of structure formation from the MILLENNIUM simulation, which I use in my own research! The exhibit featured models of telescopes, descriptions and pictures of astronomical objects and events. While I knew all the material presented in the exhibit, I was incredibly impressed by how accessible the exhibit made Astronomy.

Following the Astronomy exhibit was the River of Life, a winding pathway which took you down a level while showcasing models and taxidermy of a wide variety of reptiles, mammals, birds, fish, and even dinosaurs! As you can tell, this area was overrun with children visiting on their days off from school. I really loved the innovative use of the space and how the museum used the River to connect the universe to life on earth! One thing I really liked about these exhibits was that each emphasized which species were native to China.

Following the River of Life, there were more exhibits on the 4th, 3rd, and 2nd floors of dinosaurs and other prehistoric fossils. There were so many fossils! It was like being transported back to AMNH, visiting the dinosaurs during my lunch break!

While it may seem like everything in the museum was dead, that was not the case. There were fish tanks and reptile cages that allowed visitors to see and interact with the species they were learning about! There were even opportunities to pet the animals.

On the third floor, they had a fascinating exhibit on both the species native to Shanghai as well as on the efforts that China and Shanghai are making to protect endangered species and reduce their carbon footprint. While other than the recycling effort, I’m not sure how heavily these policies things are enforced, it made me happy to see them mentioned here.

On the lower level they an amazing display of the African Savannah! While in the exhibit, they shut off the lights and played a video which showed the animals interact, eat, and hunt in their natural habitats. It was a really cool ! There were also great exhibits on unique animal survival methods as well as on a variety of other habitats such as the arctic, tundra, rain forest, and local Chinese mountains where pandas live.

Additionally, on the bottom floor, they had amazing displays highlighting nature’s beauty. Butterflies elaborately displayed as a stained glass window and pine cones made into a Chandelier. It was breathtaking. They also had walls of seashells, which brought back fond memories of searching for shells while visiting my grandparents in Siesta Key, Florida.

The bottom floor also featured exhibits which discussed the history of agriculture. They discussed how rice was cultivated and transplanted around the world. These exhibits lead into others which incorporated Chinese art and clothing to highlight different Chinese cultures. While I’ve learned a lot about these topics at the Shanghai Museum and Shanghai History Museum. There’s still much for me to see and learn!

Overall, I had a fantastic time at the Shanghai Natural History Museum. It was a lovely way to spend a rainy day! While it’s not as big as it’s NYC counterpart, it’s modern touches made the museum a fantastic visit, especially if you’re visiting with children.

While nobody asked for my picture at the museum, I had a much nicer encounter. While in the exhibit for Arctic animals, a young boy (~5-7) with his father came over and said “Hello, nice to meet you.” A few minutes later, he came back and introduced himself and shook my hand. A few minutes after that he came over to say goodbye. I later waved to him when I passed him and his father as they were resting in another part of the museum. It was really nice to be viewed as someone interesting without having to be in a photo!

While most of the weekend was rainy, I still went for a run on Sunday (the rain stopped in the late morning). I did 4.5 miles this week. It’s still warm enough that I can run in shorts, but I had to break out my short tights for the first time. Temperature wise the highs are generally in the mid to low 50s while the lows are in the 30s/40s. I don’t think it’ll get below freezing here for quite a while. So, I should be able to keep running!

Food in Shanghai

My second adventure for the weekend was to try hot pot! I found a Vegan Hot Pot restaurant! For those of you, who like me, are unfamiliar with hot pot, here’s how it works. I was so unfamiliar with the concept that when the food was delivered, I had to quickly search (on Bing) on my phone how to eat a hot pot. 🙂

1). Select your soup base — I chose a fragrant maitake mushroom broth
2). Select your vegetables and proteins to add in — I chose lotus root, cauliflower/broccoli, tofu, and dried tofu noodles. They had a wide range of vegetarian proteins like vegetarian seafood and pork, but some of it looked too realistic for me, so I stuck to tofu.
3). Make your dipping sauce — I made a yummy sesame sauce, my favorite!

4). Once all the food is delivered, you cook the ingredients in the hot pot from longest to shortest
5). When they’re ready (~5-10 minutes), you take them out of the broth, let them cool, then dip them in the sauce.

This was a fantastically fun and delicious experience. It could only be improved by going back with more people to try more vegetables and proteins. I’ll definitely do this again! Next time I want to try the different kinds of mushrooms, baby corns, vegetable dumplings, and noodles!

Jewish Life in Shanghai

For Shabbat this week, I joined my friend Julia at the Sephardic Community Center for Shabbat dinner. This is an Orthodox environment so services started at sundown (~5:00pm). It was a really interesting experience. During dinner, I heard conversations in Hebrew, Chinese, Spanish, and English. Even though I couldn’t understand what everyone was talking about, the people I spoke with were very friendly and the food was delicious! While I prefer to spend Shabbat with Kehilat Shanghai or Moishe House, it’s nice knowing that there are other welcoming places in Shanghai!

I hope you enjoyed seeing photos from the Natural History Museum and my hot pot adventure! This should be another normal week. I’m hoping to make progress on my DES and SJTU research. I’m sure I’ll find another awesome site to visit next weekend as well! If you have and questions/comments, let me know!

Until next week!

In peace,
Jesse