Hi Everyone! Welcome back to Astronomer in Shanghai! I hope that all of you have had a wonderful summer! For those of you who work in academia, are teachers, students, or have kids in school that the start of the school year has gone well and so far been uneventful.
Before I dive into the different more interesting and fun experiences of the past month, I wanted to update you all on the covid-19 situation in Shanghai. As I’m sure many of you are aware because of the impact on the global economy, there still continue to be city-wide lockdowns throughout China (this time in Chengdu, a city of 21 million people in western China, near the panda reserves). Thankfully, Shanghai has been spared another lockdown. The number of cases remains incredibly low, with only a few being found each day. However, the government remains incredibly strict about both the testing policies and ability to lockdown neighborhoods and individual buildings. We have to be tested at least every 3 days to use public transportation and enter public spaces and at least 1 time per week. Since my last post, I’ve been tested 14 times, each time negative. There are still testing stations set up all over the city, often with long lines (see above). Also, my dentist required a test within 24 hours of my appointment, so some places are even more stringent. That said, I’ve been fortunate to not have to deal with any further lockdowns.
The same cannot be said for my colleagues at SJTU. On Tuesday, the campus went into another indefinite lockdown. With many students arriving back on campus after the summer, coming from all around China, there was a heightened nervousness of students testing positive upon arrival, which unsurprisingly happened. However, there’s been very little, to no transparency about the situation. Other than messages asking if people need blankets, pillows, or toiletries as well as sign ups for using the showers, there’s been no announcement about how long this lockdown will last. Moreover, on Saturday night, they announced that due to a recent close contact, the Astronomy and Physics building will be sealed for the next 7 days, which is stricter than I’ve heard about in other parts of Shanghai, and signals that there may be additional cases on campus. Thankfully, my supervisor, Ying, was not on campus this time, either. However, many of my fellow postdocs have been stuck in the office. While I was not planning on regularly going into campus (mostly because I enjoy working from home with Scottie & Charlie), I had been planning to return to campus this past Wednesday for our group meeting. That said, it’s incredibly frustrating that SJTU once again finds itself in this situation, but also feels like a severe over reaction for a single case. Hopefully, following the October meetings, policies in Shanghai and the rest of China will relax and at some point I’ll be able to go to campus.
Additionally, mainland China just had it’s first reported case of Monkeypox, when a foreigner tested positive upon arrival in China. In response, the local CDC issued a statement saying to avoid touching all foreigners (not just those recently arrived), which is incredibly racist. As the global pandemic has changed, especially when the situation was better in China than the rest of the world), many around China have blamed any outbreaks on foreigners , so this added finger-pointing is really frustrating and disheartening. As someone who hasn’t been home in almost 3 years, I find it very troubling that people continue to use foreigners as scapegoats for any infections.
Astronomy in Shanghai
Despite another month of working entirely from home, this was an incredibly productive month. About two weeks ago, I submitted my paper on the evolution and characteristics of the intracluster light in galaxy clusters using the DES-ACT sample for publication in MNRAS (Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society) following a successful DES Collaboration Wide Review Process!! 🙂 For those of you interested, we also posted the paper on arXiv, where anyone can read it. I won’t go into depth on the paper here, since I’ve done that over the last few months, but the main focus is on how incorporating the faint light from the ICL into the measurement of the massive central galaxy’s stellar mass yields a tighter correlation with the underlying dark matter halo mass. For any of you who do take the time to look at it, let me know if you have any questions. Special thanks to my colleague, mentor, and friend Yuanyuan for her help with with this analysis and sharing her expertise on the ICL. I’ve long been fascinated by the ICL (since I started working with Prof. Chris Miller at UMich) and am excited to finally have the opportunity to publish on it and look forward to more opportunities to continue to study diffuse light! Additionally, thanks to the suggestion of my co-author and collaborator, Ricardo, we’re writing up a DES Outreach article about the paper, which I’ll make sure to share with all of you once it’s online! I also plan to have one of the SJTU grad students help me translate that article into Chinese to share as well!
In addition to all of my excitement with my new paper, I’ve made a lot of really fantastic headway on Project Population, my luminosity function analysis. We’ve got some really fascinating results looking at the impact of the different cluster finders (redMaPPer and the Yang catalog) as well as color on the luminosity function and I think we have a strong physical understanding of some of the differences that we’re identifying. Moreover, I’ve been working with one of the SJTU grad students to incorporate weak lensing dark matter halo mass estimates into our analysis to help strengthen our analysis. Overall, I’m very excited about this project and look forward to wrapping up this analysis and also to writing it up in the coming weeks.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m also investing a lot of time thinking about the future and have been spending a lot of time drafting teaching and research statements for job applications that will start being due in October. Though I know the next few months will be stressful with all the applications, it’s exciting to think about the future and to start to set teaching and research goals for myself. Thanks in advance to all my fantastic friends, mentors, and family members who have offered to read through some of my statements and provide me feedback!
Life in Shanghai
Given all of the work that I did with finishing the paper and research (as well as starting to prepare for the High Holidays — more on that later), it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that there weren’t quite as many social highlights this month. Though I’m hopeful to intersperse some fun activities as a way to relax during job application season.
Thankfully, it is finally starting to cool down in Shanghai. While it’s definitely not the cool, crisp fall days that I love, it’s now only in the low 80s most days, this has allowed me to start running again (when the air pollution isn’t too bad)! I’m still going to F45 most days as well, since exercise is one of the ways I decompress from the stresses of work and job applications.
With the weather now being a little bit more manageable, I was able to do some fun activities outside with some of my friends, without melting! One highlight of this past month was the F45 end of the summer party! Though probably a bit rowdier than what I normally do for fun, it was fun getting to hang out with many of my friends and trainers from the gym and nice to get out of the heart of the city (the party was hosted in the suburbs ~ 1 hour from where I live). It was a lot of fun to spend the afternoon playing catch, volleyball, and spike ball as well as some classic field day games!
This past month, I also said goodbye to my friends Hannah Maia and Sydney who both moved back to the US a few weeks ago. It’s been sad that so many of my friends have moved from Shanghai this past summer. I don’t think there are many other of my friends who are planning to move this academic year, though next summer may be more of the same. Despite that, it was fun getting to see Hannah Maia and Sydney (and many of my other friends) one last time before they left as well as getting to do some final F45 sessions together! Even though it’s sad to see so many of my close friends leave, it’s nice knowing that I’ll have friends in so many different places around the US (and the world)!
As usual, there were also a bunch of cool photos and other things seen around Shanghai that I wanted to share with all of you, from anime posters, to Oatly advertisements, to a guy in some sort of cosplay suit when it was 100 degrees!
Also, in addition to the many adorable photos of Scottie and Charlie, I also wanted to share some cute photos of the cats that live near F45 who are very friendly when I’m entering/exiting the studio!
One other highlight I wanted to share is that I’ve passed the 700 day mark of learning Mandarin on Duolingo! Although mandarin is very difficult and I can’t say that I’m really able to communicate well in it, I now do recognize a lot more words and am able to do simple things like order food or ask a question at the grocery store. However, always being able to understand the answer can be a bit tricky, since Shanghai’s dialect differs from traditional mandarin.
Scottie and Charlie
As always, Scottie and Charlie continue to be absolutely adorable! They bring me so much joy (and cuddles) each and every day and I’m so grateful that I have them in my life. As some of you may recall, my friend Sydney saved them when they were a few weeks old and took care of them while they were very young. So, it was really nice for me to have Sydney over to see them before she moved back to the US. Scottie and Charlie are slowly warming back up to other people (I think not seeing anyone else for 3 months during the lockdown confused them and made them a bit scared of other people), so it was nice to see them both bond with Sydney!
This has been a month of growth and excitement for Scottie and Charlie, particularly Charlie. As you may recall, Scottie has been jumping and sitting on my back for the better part of the last few months. Well, at long last, Charlie is now doing it to. Though, Charlie also likes to play with my hair, something Scottie does not do!
Scottie has also continued to be fascinated with my beard, licking it every day (almost as soon as I hop in bed). Charlie will sniff it, but he hasn’t started licking it, yet.
They also love to snuggle on top of me!
They also love snuggling with one another (often in their catbed)!
Even when they’re not cuddling together, they’re absolutely adorable!
As I said earlier, both boys have continued to explore every corner of my apartment and have even found a few new places to jump around!
And speaking of new places, at long last, Scottie and Charlie finally realized that they can jump up on top of my refrigerator (time to move the cat food), which was something Solo did all the time when he would visit me. They now frequently jump up there to survey the apartment!
As you can see, Scottie and Charlie can now jump above my kitchen cabinets. I didn’t realize it, but the ceiling above the kitchen is metal panels (to cover wiring), on Friday, Charlie terrified me by disappearing in between the cabinet and the ceiling and then crashing down from the ceiling. Thankfully Charlie is fine and the ceiling wasn’t damaged. However, as a result, I’ve covered the crawl space between the ceiling and cabinet with cardboard boxes (you can see them in Scottie’s photo) to prevent future such “adventures.”
Food in Shanghai
Last weekend was the Mid-Autumn or Moon festival. One of the popular ways to celebrate is by eating mooncakes a circular pastry dough surrounding a thick filling. However, many often have an egg in the center (or use lard as the main fat in the pastry). However, Godly, one of my favorite vegetarian restaurants (and one the oldest vegetarian restaurants in all of China, was selling them, so I got to enjoy some as well! I had red bean ones as well as others filled with nuts and seeds. They were very tasty! I also wanted to share the cool card that the SJTU Astronomy department shared.
This month, I also got food from one of my favorite vegetarian restaurants, Vegetarian Lifestyle, which just reopened from the lockdown! I enjoyed kaofu, mushrooms with sprouts, spicy tofu, seitan meatballs, spicy rice cakes and potatoes, cauliflower dry pot, and tofu! The tofu and the rice cakes were my favorites!
Also, as Emmet has shared in his recent blogs, he’s been attending Chinese vegan cooking classes. As a benefit for me, Emmet’s taught me how to make the dishes. We made Ma Po Tofu, sichuan stir fried sword beans, stir fried cumin mushrooms, and spinach with peanuts (no photo). Emmet is a great teacher and It was great fun to get to cook some authentic Chinese food. I look forward to sharing some of these recipes with friends and family back home!
I also made a bunch of other tasty dishes this month! Some highlights include the seitan nuggets following my friend Bernard’s recipe, kung pao tofu, and cauliflower curry!
Jewish Life in Shanghai
In last month’s post, I shared that I had the opportunity to chant torah at this year’s community B’nei Mitzvah. Since I didn’t have photos then, I wanted to share some of the lovely photos of me from the event!
This past month, we also had two Shabbats, one farewell Family Shabbat for Hannah Maia and another regular Community Shabbat. Even though we’ve lost some community members, some people who were able to leave during the summer are returning to Shanghai, so we still have a nice group gathering each month! Special thanks to our community member Michael for making more delicious challah!
Additionally, as I’ve done the past two years, this year, I will once again be leading the Kehilat Shanghai community High Holiday observances. While they’ll be a bit smaller than past years, we’re still expecting a lovely turnout. Thankfully, a lot of community members have volunteered to help with readings, which is great. In addition to service leading, I’ll be delivering a D’var Torah and chanting torah. For those of you who are celebrating Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, I hope that you have a meaningful holiday and a safe and easy fast. I look forward to sharing with you the highlights of our celebrations next month.
What I’m Reading and Watching
With all the research work, I’m still working my way through the third Witcher book, so did not finish reading anything this month. However, I did finish some enjoyable TV series. I just finished the 2nd season of the Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba anime series, which was fantastic. For any anime fans, I highly recommend this show. I also finally watched HBO’s Watchmen television series. While it was a loose sequel to the Watchmen graphic novel, the social commentary and backstory are significantly more compelling and interesting than the actual “superhero” part of the show. I also finished the first season of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan series on Amazon Prime. Though at times, it felt a bit to much like real life, John Krasinksi played a compelling Jack Ryan and I look forward to starting the 2nd season. I also finished Apple TV’s Suspiscion, something of a whodunnit where everyone has secrets to hide. Although this is a genre that I greatly enjoy, I didn’t find that the narrative came together clearly at the end. I also greatly enjoyed watching the US Open. While I missed most of the non-night matches, I had a lot of fun rooting for Rafa Nadal for the first few rounds. Although I was disappointed that he lost in the 4th round, it was exciting to see great performances by Casper Ruud and the rise of US Open Champion Carlos Alcaraz!
Thank you for so much for reading my blog and for your interest in my life and experiences in Shanghai. I hope that you enjoy this update and take a look at my paper (if interested), as well as enjoy the adorable photos of Scottie and Charlie! If you have any questions about anything I’ve written don’t hesitate to reach out either in the comments or via e-mail. I hope that all of you have a safe, happy, healthy, end of September and beginning of Fall!
In peace,
Jesse
