Hi Everyone! Welcome back to Astronomer in Shanghai. I know it’s been a while since many of you heard from me, but as I promised in my last update (upon arrival to Nottingham), I wanted to take time to reflect on my experiences in Shanghai before writing my final post. Before I get started, I hope that all of you are doing well. I know that for many of you it’s been a challenging few months, for some as a result of the terrorist attack in Israel and the ongoing war. While I won’t focus on that here, I just want to say I know how challenging this situation is as well as the simultaneous rise in anti-semitism around the world. I hope that a peaceful resolution, which must include the return of all hostages, can be reached. On a more fun note, I wanted to wish all of you either a Happy Channukkah (for those who celebrated last week), a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!

Before reflecting on my time in Shanghai, I want to clarify that this is not be a recap of my time in China. As I’ve shown throughout this blog, I have a lot of thoughts and even more photos. So, I’ve attempted to put together some of my overarching thoughts on my life and experiences in Shanghai . Additionally, at the end, I’ll briefly update on how my life in Nottingham with Scottie and Charlie is going!

Reflections on Shanghai

I’ve been thinking a lot about my time in Shanghai. Maybe it’s because as I meet more new people, many of them are curious about my experiences in China (both during the pandemic and thoughts on it now), but it seems to be something I talk about almost every week. Overall, despite all of the challenges (mostly as a result of COVID-19, border closures, and lockdowns), I did enjoy my time living in Shanghai. By no means was it a perfect experience (or even the one that I expected when I moved there). However, it was my experience and for me it was a life changing and life shaping event. While I greatly appreciated experiencing different cultures, I don’t really think that’s why I found it to be a transformative experience. For me, living in Shanghai forced me to grow as a person. Prior to Shanghai, I had spent the last decade living on college campuses (Brown and then Michigan). The experience of living within such a different and foreign culture (where I don’t speak the language fluently) was challenging. Almost everything in China forced me out of my comfort zone. Day-to-day interactions were either non-existent (despite my neighbors being friendly, most didn’t speak English) or stressful because I knew I couldn’t communicate well. However, overall, I think the perseverance that I showed not only living, but making the most of this experience (as I hope I’ve shown you throughout this blog), made me more resilient and independent. Despite the “inactive” political climate in China, I think somewhat ironically, living in China made me far more politically aware of what was happening in the world and how people see the US. Meeting people from many different backgrounds (most working outside of academia) made me more sensitive and empathetic towards the challenges of being a person of color in the US, as my own experiences in China allowed me to understand what it’s like to be judged, stand out, and stared at solely based on the color of my skin.

Overall, this was four years of a large amounts of personal growth. If I honestly assess myself, I know there are still many things I want and need to improve upon (being more outgoing and proactive, having more confidence in myself as a researcher, learning how to not to take on every responsibility (or to delgate), …) Regardless, I know that I’m not the same person I was when I received my Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2019. Before moving to Shanghai, there were a lot of things I was nervous about. Prior to living in Shanghai (outside of a summer in NYC), I hadn’t spent much time in large cities. I was moving to a megacity where I knew 2 people (both in the Astronomy department), although I had only met each once before. I didn’t speak Mandarin (I’m still doing Duolingo, but my Mandarin is far from good). So, knowing that I was able to overcome the challenges of living in a big city where I don’t speak the language and actually be comfortable there shows some of my growth. While as I’ve transitioned back to the smaller city life in Nottingham (and completely recognize just how much more comfortable I am in a city of this size and speed and have been reminded when I’ve visited London), it’s good to know that I can essentially live in a city of any size and make the most of it. Moreover, in Shanghai, I was able to adapt and figure out all the different technological systems that China uses (even with my limited mandarin). And most importantly, I was able to step outside of my university environment (something I had not done much in Michigan) to find friends and community! I think that my strengthened resilience, other than Scottie and Charlie, was the best thing that came out of my time in Shanghai.

The single thing I miss the most from my time in Shanghai is my friends and community. With Shanghai being such a transient city, I know that if I were to go back today most of my friends would no longer be there (many actually left before I did). However, I’m grateful for the many friends (mostly within the Kehilat Shanghai community) that I made over the last four years. Most importantly, are the friends who helped me overcome the challenges of not seeing my own family in person (my parents for almost 4 years). Since I know some of them are reading this, I’d be remiss not to acknowledge all the wonderful memories and people who made my time in Shanghai so special. While I can’t make an exhaustive list (or else again this post would end up being far too long), I do want to thank my friends Heather & Shimi, Kate & Ilan ( & Pina & Maguey), John & Alex, Ha and her family, Kitty and her family, Sarah, Hannah Maia, Sydney, Clem, David & Nati, Logan (and the Tacolicious team), my F45 workout friends, and many more! I have so many fond memories of Shabbat dinners (with Kehilat and Moishe House friends), High Holiday celebrations, Channukkah parties, Passover Seders, as well as fun and relaxing dinner parties, and even some fun and challenging workouts! While I probably haven’t done a good enough job keeping in touch with everyone (another thing I need to get better at), it’s nice to know that I have friends in so many different places around the world! Hopefully, I’ll get to see some, if not all of them, again soon!

I also do want to take the time to further acknowledge the Kehilat Shanghai community. I think you all know how important this community was (and remains) to me. So many of us became very close when we were all stuck in China between 2020-2022. I still regularly message with some of the members (both in and outside of Shanghai). Moreover, unexpectedly and ironically, living in Shanghai allowed me to grow as a Jewish leader, not because I learned from great leaders already in place (though I did and continue to learn a lot from my Dad), but because I realized that if I wanted to have these religious observances happen, I would have to lead them. I lead 3 High Holiday services, 4 large Passover Seders (in person and on Zoom), countless Shabbats, and many social activities. While I’m grateful to no longer have to organize all these activities, I am already enjoying being an active member of the Nottingham Liberal Synagogue community!

I of course also can’t say enough about how special it was to get to experience China with Emmet. While we both certainly faced many difficulties (most Covid-19 related), it was quite nice knowing that even though we were a 4 hour high-speed train ride away, we were in the same time-zone and could talk whenever we wanted. Even though we didn’t see each other during his first year, we were still close, which gave us solidarity in our lockdowns and made the experience over my last 8 months in China (two trips to Beijing, two visits to Shanghai, and trips to Xi’an, Huangshan, and Chengdu) so special! I have so many lasting China memories with Emmet (the Great Wall, seeing the pandas in Chengdu, the terra cotta warriors of Xi’an, the Bund and Yu Guardens in Shanghai, and the Forbidden City). While it’s strange that Emmet and I aren’t currently in the same time zone, that hasn’t prevented us from staying in pretty constant contact.

Outside of my social activities, the primary thing that occupied my time in China was my research at SJTU. Given how almost every astronomer that I know was impacted (in terms of productivity, health, and ability to go to conferences) by the pandemic, it’s a bit hard to judge just how productive I was. I did publish 3 first author papers and was co-author on 7 others (a big improvement from graduate school). So, on one level I was quite productive. However, I spent a lot of time doing research and working on DESI, a project that I’m no longer able to work on (due to membership restrictions, as Nottingham is not a member), so not everything worked exactly in my favor (as most of the external collaborations I worked with were part of DESI). That said, I did have an excellent research mentor in Prof. Ying Zu, who I was able to learn a lot from (in terms of how to approach science and coding, think about topics related to cosmology, …). However, working at SJTU was not a perfect fit work wise. Over the four years, I worked from home a ton (for about half the time I exclusively worked from home), something I’ve changed dramatically at Nottingham. That combined with the unfortunately low amount of English spoken in regular department conversations (from 2020-2022) really prevented me from having the fun, informative, and spontaneous research conversations that I enjoyed at Michigan with friends like Juliette and that I’m enjoying at Nottingham with my fellow postdocs, graduate students, and the faculty. I’m also excited that I’ll have the opportunity to serve as a mentor for graduate students (and undergraduates) in the coming semesters. Despite some of these difficulties, overall I do think that working at SJTU was a very good research experience and allowed me to grow into a more capable researcher. I look forward to continuing to grow as a researcher by working with Prof. Nina Hatch and the Euclid mission in the coming years!

While work, friends, and the Kehilat community were probably what occupied most of my time in China, I do want to touch on the travel in China a bit more. Shanghai is very much a mixture of a Chinese and a European/Western city. Most of the buildings in Shanghai were built in the early-mid 20th century, so it doesn’t look and feel like an ancient Chinese city (the way parts of Beijing do). While the pandemic and the associated travel restrictions (both legal and suggested by SJTU) prevented me from visiting many of the different places that I may have otherwise visited, I’m grateful for the opportunities that I did have. Prior to moving to China, the main things that I wanted to see were the pandas, the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, and the Terracotta warriors. Thanks to relaxed travel restrictions, in 2023 alone, I was able to check all of those items off of my China bucket list! And I also got to see the Snow and Ice Festivals in Harbin, visit Moganshan, and explore all that Shanghai had to offer! While I hope that in the future I’m able to return to visit China and see more of the natural wonders, I’m grateful for what I was able to see!

Another highlight was the food! While I certainly enjoyed Chinese food beforehand, prior to living in Shanghai, I can probably count the number of times I’d eaten authentic Chinese food on one hand. I was completely unaware of all of the varieties of Chinese cuisine and different kinds of ingredients that exist (all the mushrooms, peppers, tofu, …)! I think many of you can attest, outside of when I was locked down, I shared tons of photos of delicious vegan Chinese food! I’m a little scared to try the Chinese food in the UK (I have had delicious Indian food), mostly because I know it won’t be the same as what I enjoyed in Shanghai. There are so many dishes that I miss and I’m always envious when Emmet shares photos of his meals out with his friends and colleagues. However, I am grateful that I had the culinary opportunity (through Emmet) to learn how to make some of these unique foods! Though finding ingredients may be challenging, I look forward to cooking Chinese cuisine for some of my friends here in Nottingham, like I did for my parents when we were all in Bath! Additionally, though not Chinese food, being away from home for so long, forced me to learn how to make jam! My Mom makes the most delicious jam and I really missed it. I’m so grateful that Heather and Hannah Maia helped me find all the equipment and tricky ingredients to make jam together and that my Mom and I could grow closer over making jam together on Zoom! I’m looking forward to doing it in person with her soon!

While I’ve stayed away from politics (at least in terms of China) for most of the blog, it’s hard not to look at my time in China and think about my experiences and the direction that China appears to be heading. If you’re like me and paying attention to the global news and economy (Drum tower from the Economist helps a lot), it’s hard not to see that China is becoming more isolationist (in terms of self-reliance and it’s attitude towards the west). I don’t view China the same way politically as I did in 2019. I’ll be honest and say that I did not (and still don’t completely) understand all of the nuances of Chinese politics. However, the way China is asserting itself (in terms of it’s position regarding the invasion of Ukraine, the war in Israel, and Taiwan) is concerning. While I obviously don’t know what China will do, the China I left doesn’t seem as open (both economically or scientifically — some universities are trying, but outside of the large universities like SJTU and Tsinghua, some of the smaller ones are doing away with English) as the China I arrived to in 2019. The pandemic was a big step back and it was quite disheartening to see how with borders closed, so much science reverted back to Mandarin (regardless of foreigners in the audience or the fact that English is the standard language used in Astronomy). Lastly, while I never personally felt in danger or threatened (many of the students I met were more curious about the US, my background — though separating Judaism from Israel was not something many could fully grasp), I did see students I know post nationalist rhetoric attacking the US (like Representative Nancy Pelosi), which made me uncomfortable. While their words were troublesome, I don’t think many of them recognized what exactly they were saying, which made the whole situation more uncomfortable. One final point is that it really is so nice to be able to access all parts of the internet (things like google, Facebook, …) without using a VPN. Life does feel so much less restrictive when trying to learn about what’s going on in the world and to stay in touch with friends/family without such restrictions.

While this last note does come across as negative. I want to emphasize that almost all of my experiences were positive. From interactions with Chinese friends at F45, to my local vets office, to friendly fruit sellers who would recognize me when I came in every week, to friendly neighbors who would attempt to communicate with me even though I couldn’t speak Mandarin (or Shanghainese), most of my interactions were positive. That said, like in the rest of the world, the internet tends to let people act in their worst ways.

I think as I’ve shown here that despite my overall positive and enjoyable experience, my thoughts on China remain mixed. On one hand, I got to spend four years living in one of the largest most fascinating cities and countries in the world, but on another, I spent most of that time without being able to leave Shanghai and unable to go home. I made many friends, but now most of them are scattered across the globe and once again I’m in the process of rebuilding a friend group (now in Nottingham). I also did accomplish a lot research wise, which set me up for my new position at Nottingham! However, China’s political climate (and it’s attitude towards the US), makes it entirely unclear to me just what kind of continued collaboration I will have with colleagues based in China going forward (will visiting remain easy or will that change again). That said, maybe it’s just to difficulty to try to fully understand everything and have a fixed view on China after just 4 years. Regardless, I’m grateful for the insight my time living in Shanghai provided me. Even though it wasn’t a perfect chapter, it was my chapter: a compelling, challenging, fun, at times difficult, and important part of my life. I’m grateful that I could share so much of it with all of you!

Life in Nottingham

The last few months have been a whirlwind. Overall I’m greatly enjoying my time in Nottingham so far (you can see a bit of it below)! In brief: I really like my new research group (The NottICL — Nottingham ICL group) and have a great research supervisor in Prof. Nina Hatch; the Jewish community, the Nottingham Liberal Synagogue, has been welcoming and wonderful; Scottie and Charlie are enjoying the large windows in our new apartment; and I’m starting (though slowly) to make friends!

While I won’t be giving you a play by play of the last 3-4 months, I do want to share some of the highlights. While it did take a while (about 6 weeks), I was finally able to get a lovely 2 bedroom apartment, right by Nottingham Castle! It took a bit of time (and a visit from my parents), but the apartment is now completely set up. It’s so nice to give Scottie and Charlie a bit more space to play and run around in! After getting an apartment, I was finally able to get a bank account (English bureaucracy is different from the Chinese version, but still a lot to deal with, including requiring a permanent residence for a bank account) and get paid, which has allowed me to much more easily live my life.

In the last few months, the main highlight was a Thanksgiving visit from my parents! After not seeing them from 10/2019 – 6/2023, it was so nice to see them so soon! You can see some lovely photos from their visit to Nottingham, where we visited Chattsworth and Nottingham Castle. It was so nice to get to share some of the places I’ve enjoyed in Nottingham (the Prickly Pear vegan pub, cat cafe, and campus) with my parents! Plus, it was really nice to have them help me finish furnishing my apartment and it’s great that I have an apartment where they can actually stay and get to spend time with Scottie and Charlie (as you’ll see below)! I can’t wait to see them again in less than 2 weeks for my first trip home to the US for New Year’s! I also had a lovely visit with my Uncle Grant and Aunt Deborah who came to visit London in October! It was so fun exploring the National Portrait Gallery and National Gallery with them! If any of you are planning any trips to the UK, please let me know!

I’ve also gotten to do some fun Nottingham and UK events! There was the Goose Fair (the oldest fair in the country — basically a county fair without the animals), Beeston Light Night for Bonfire Night (Guy Fawkes Day), the Thought Bubble Comic Convention (in Harrogate — my first comic convention since 2019), and the Nottingham Winter Wonderland (which is setup from the end of Thanksgiving through New Years in the city center)!

Outside of fun travel and events, I had two work related trips. First my research group participated in an intracluster light specific meeting in Bern, Switzerland! While most of the photos show just how much I enjoyed the one day it snowed, it was an excellent meeting! I got to meet many of my colleagues who I’d only met on Zoom and also have a few more new projects mapped out (so I know what I’ll be working on for the foreseeable future)! Then this past week, I attended the Euclid UK meeting at the Royal Astronomical Society in London!

As you saw above, I love the snow, so when it did snow (once) in Nottingham, I had to go out and explore the snow and have a fun walk through town! Though I really hope there’s snow when I visit Saratoga!

Most importantly, throughout the whole process of moving (including 6 weeks in a lovely AirBnB) and then moving to our apartment, Scottie and Charlie have been wonderful! They continue to bring me so much joy and positivity in my life! They’ve had great fun exploring all of the new places to climb in our apartment. I’ve also tried to get them a few new toys and structures to play on (as you can see below), but they still love snuggling with each other, climbing on my back, or relaxing on my lap! Plus, it was so wonderful to have my parents finally meet them! While Scottie and Charlie are still a bit cautious (Scottie in particular), both have continued to warm up to people, Charlie in particular (including to pet sitters), which is great!

Before signing off, I again want to thank all of you who are reading to the end of this post and for reading each of my previous posts over the last four years. This will be the last post for the Astronomer in Shanghai blog. I’ve given it a lot of thought and I’ve decided that I won’t be continuing to archive my life through a blog going forward. Blogging was a fun way for me to stay in touch, particularly since other forms of social media were challenging to access while in China. However, as I’ve said before, it takes a lot of time, and I’d like to invest my time differently here in Nottingham. That said, I’m so grateful to all of you who have followed along with me on this journey for the past four years! It’s been so nice to stay connected to all of you, despite being so far away. I’m still contemplating whether I’ll do some kind of yearly e-mail or join many of my friends on instagram (I definitely won’t be joining X), so there will be other ways to stay connected now that social media is much easier. That said, if any of you would like to stay in touch, please e-mail me and let me know. It’d be wonderful to stay connected. Thanks again to all of you for being a part of this journey with me! Wishing you all a Happy New Year and a wonderful 2024!

In peace,
Jesse

Hi Everyone! Welcome back to Astronomer in Shanghai! I hope that this update finds all of you enjoying the end of what I hope was a safe, happy, and healthy summer! This past month was rather hectic with wrapping up my time in China (so much packing and logistical things to do), but I still wanted to take the time to enjoy my final few weeks in Shanghai. Also, with my time in China over, I wanted to start this blog by thanking all of you who have followed along with my China experience over the past four years.

This entry will be structured slightly differently, I’ll start by discussing the month, the fun activities and such, then I’ll transition to a discussion of my Chexit (China exit) and journey to Nottingham. Thankfully, Emmet was able to come down from Beijing to join me for my last few days in Shanghai, which was lovely and amazing helpful! However, before I begin, I do want to let you all know that Scottie, Charlie, and I safely arrived in the UK on 8/16 and have been spending the last few days resting and relaxing in a nice AirBnB in Nottingham!

Astronomy in Shanghai

Given that this was my last few weeks in Shanghai, I don’t think any of you will be surprised to learn that it wasn’t a very productive month. With all the packing I had to do, I didn’t have nearly as much time to work on my different research projects. I’m really looking forward to getting back into the swing of research in the coming weeks! That said, I did want to share that my paper on the Conditional Luminosity Function was published by MNRAS! I’ve attached the link, though you need an academic internet account to log in to view it. If you can’t access it and would like to, let me know and I’ll e-mail you a pdf.

Even though I wasn’t doing as much research, I did have work to do. I had to do a lot of exit paperwork for SJTU. Thankfully, much of this, including compiling a dissertation constructed from my published papers (an unusual requirement unique only for postdocs in China), was a formality. Thanks to the amazing help from one of the secretary’s, Jie, I was able to get all the right forms submitted before leaving.

I also wanted to highlight some fun things. On August 8th, I had my last Zu group meeting. As I’ve said before, I’ve really enjoyed the opportunity to work with Ying Zu at SJTU for the past 4 years. He’s been a very good mentor and provided me lots of opportunities to grow as a scientist through DESI! We had a lovely final group meeting/discussion. Sadly, many group members were traveling, but the sentiment was still there! Also, Ying posted a lovely write up about my leaving SJTU in his group WeChat page!

On the 11th, Emmet gave a fantastic talk on his research on bent radio AGN at SJTU! I have wanted Emmet to be able to visit SJTU and with the campus finally becoming much more open we were able to set up a talk! Emmet is a great speaker and it was fantastic to watch him explain his research!

I also got an opportunity to say goodbye to the department where (when I was able to go into campus, which only equated to half of my time in Shanghai) I worked for the past 4 years.

I also got to show Emmet the campus! It’s been quite a while since I’ve walked around the campus lake, but it was really nice to show Emmet the lovely SJTU campus (even if it was uncomfortably hot)!

Life in Shanghai

With this being my last weeks in Shanghai, I wanted to visit a lot of the places that I have enjoyed going to or walking by over the last four years. A lot of this was done during Emmet’s visit to Shanghai, which became somewhat of a whirlwind tour. However, I’m grateful that I could share these places with Emmet one last time!

Historic Shanghai: Marble House

Throughout my time in Shanghai, I’ve participated in many walks done by Historic Shanghai. Patrick and Tina (the founders) are lovely people and I’ve learned so much about the city I called home for four years from them! So, it was my pleasure to get to join them for one last walking tour.

Of course, we began the walk by looking at some of the gorgeous art deco style architecture in Shanghai!

We then went on a tour of Marble House, the mansion in Shanghai that was home to the Kadoorie family. The Kadoorie’s were one of the three wealthy Jewish families that set up large multinational business empires in Shanghai (the other two were the Sassoon family and the Hardoon family). Marble House is a mansion originally built to house only three people and servants, but could realistically hold many more. It’s currently used as the Children’s Palace, a place that provides after school extracurricular activities for children. I will note that there was an art exhibition (of the kids art), but even with that, the majesty of Marble House was amazing!

If you’re ever in Shanghai and are looking for a way to get to learn more about the city, I highly recommend joining Historic Shanghai for a walking tour!

Jewish Refugee Museum

Although I’ve been to the Shanghai Jewish Refugee Museum more than any other museum in Shanghai (probably double digits), when Emmet was visiting we went for one last quick visit, mostly because during Emmet’s last visit, we were unable to go into the Ohel Moishe synagogue. This time that was not the case. Given how important Kehilat Shanghai has been throughout my four years in Shanghai, it felt fitting to visit one of the places tied to Jewish History in Shanghai one last time!

Even though it’s not located at the same place, while walking around Jing’an, Emmet and I stopped by to see the outside of the Ohel Rachel Synagogue. This synagogue is now a government building, but there is still a historic marker.

Jade Buddha Temple

Emmet and I also went to the Jade Buddha Temple. Some of you may remember that earlier this spring, I discovered that in my initial visit to the Jade Buddha Temple in 2019, I didn’t actually see both Jade Buddhas! These Buddhas were imported to Shanghai in 1882 from Myanmar. Emmet hadn’t visited this Temple and because the two jade Buddha’s are both gorgeous, I wanted to take him! However, because it’s an active prayer site, I didn’t take photos of the Buddhas. One of my favorite parts of this temple is the manicured trees and gardens, which you can see below!

Jing’an Temple

Even though Emmet and I didn’t go in to visit the Jing’an Temple this time, we walked by it a few times at night and it’s so gorgeous when lit up that I had to include it!

Xujiahui Park

As some of you may recall, Xujiahui Park is a park that is ~ 1 mile from my apartment and when it was cooler, I would often go running in and around the park. Even though it was way too hot to go running, I wanted to do one last visit because it’s so beautiful! While the majestic flowers of the spring are gone, the trees and pond are still absolutely stunning!

Fuxing Park and my old lane house in Xintiandi

For those of you who are longtime readers, you may remember that during my first year in Shanghai, I lived in Xintiandi in an old lane neighborhood. One of my favorite things about that location was how close it was to Fuxing Park (which has the statues of Marx & Engles). When Emmet and I walked to the Yu Gardens, we stopped by for a quick visit!

The Yu Gardens (Yuyuan)

The Yu Gardens (or Yuyuan) are a familial home and gardens built by Pan Yunduan in the 1570s (so one of the few old things remaining in Shanghai). It’s now surrounded by a fun (and somewhat touristy) shopping area built in the old style. It is reminiscent of many of the shopping areas I highlighted in Xi’an and Chengdu. Even though it’s somewhat of a tourist trap, it’s one of my favorite places in Shanghai because it always reminds me that I’m in China!

First the traditional gardens!

Then the shopping area (with a chocolate shop featuring chocolate animals!) and the water garden! Some of you should recognize the water garden from my cover photo!

The Bund

After a fun trip to Yuyuan, Emmet and I visited the Bund in the evening! While it’s been a while since I’ve visited the Bund at night (as you can see, it’s incredibly crowded), the way the Bund is lit up at night is absolutely breathtaking! My favorite building is the Pearl Tower!

The last couple of photos include photos of the Peace Hotel, which was built by the Sassoon family, another one of the wealthy Jewish families from old Shanghai!

The Former French Concession

Throughout my last few days in Shanghai, a lot of the places and restaurants that Emmet and I went to were in the former French Concession (which is basically the extended neighborhood where I live). So, I wanted to share some photos of this area! I’ve loved living in this part of the city! From the overarching and gorgeous treelined streets, to the wide streets, it’s been a great place to live in Shanghai without feeling like I’m living in a metropolis!

F45

With the weather being uncomfortably warm for my last few weeks in Shanghai, I basically went to F45 every day since returning from Chengdu! I also enjoyed getting to have Emmet join for a few workouts when he visited! It was his first time at F45! Though I don’t usually share workout photos, I wanted to share a few from my last workout at the Xuhui F45. Thanks to all the trainers for their coaching over the years and to my workout friends for making it so much fun!

I’m looking forward to checking out F45 Nottingham in the coming weeks!

Although not quite worthy of their own subsections, I also wanted to highlight some of the other cool things I saw around Shanghai in my final month, from interesting and neat looking buildings and statues, to cool anime statues (many at the anime toy stores in the Yu Gardens), to the adorable cats that I fed at F45 and in my neighborhood!

As you can see, I often feed many of the cats in my neighborhood and in F45. Thankfully, many of my other workout friends also feed the F45 cats and I gave them my leftover catfood. While I love seeing the street cats throughout Shanghai, it can often be sad because Shanghai (and many other places in China) are overrun with street cats. While these ones are well taken care of, that’s not always the case and it can be sad seeing sickly or malnourished cats who are in need of love.

Scottie and Charlie

As you can probably guess, this was a rather stressful month for Scottie and Charlie! With packing up the apartment and having to go to the vet’s office for their exit checkup, I knew that they sensed that something was up. Thankfully, they’re both adjusting well to UK life!

I was also pleasantly surprised by how friendly they were to Emmet! Scottie, in particular, spent a lot of time cuddling with Emmet! Given that it took Scottie 3 days to be nice to Emmet last time, this was a big change! Scottie and Charlie also turned 2! While we didn’t do any celebrations because we flew out of China on their birthday, once I’m settled in my new apartment, they will be getting some belated birthday presents!

And here you can see Scottie and Charlie playing or cuddling with Emmet and me!

Food in Shanghai

With my time in China coming to an end (and not wanting to get a lot more groceries), I ate out a lot. Emmet and I had a ton of fantastic meals together!

First, before the Historic Shanghai walking tour, my friend Sarah and I went to Godly for lunch! We enjoyed crispy vegetarian duck, Sichuan sword beans, cabbage, vegetarian eel (seitan), and dumplings with peanut sauce! The duck and sword beans were my favorites!

On Emmet’s first night in Shanghai, we had a fantastic vegan hot pot feast at Yan GeGe! Although hot pot is best enjoyed in large groups, Emmet and I were able to get a delicious appropriately sized hot pot and some delicious dim sum (including the Shanghai specialty xiaolongbao — soup dumplings)! This was Emmet’s first time at a traditional hot pot restaurant and I’m so glad we could go together!

First, you see the drinks (a hawthorne juice, fruit tea, traditional tea, and apple & greens juice)! Then you see the array of amazing vegetables that we could select to add to our hot pot! Additionally, you can see some of the delicious sides as well as some of the amazing Yunnan mushrooms for us to enjoy! The dim sum were tofu in curry, a mushroom bread, pan fried boazi, shanghai noodles, wild rice, xiaolongbao, and tofu and kaofu! Then you can see the hotpot being made for us! We had a tomato broth! The top pot was filled with the Yunnan mushrooms, which were amazing. The bottom pot was filled with all the delicious veggies and tofu that we selected! Emmet and I greatly enjoyed it! Then we got a cocounut milk and red bean desert! So glad I got to do another fun hot pot meal before I left!

After visiting SJTU on Friday, Emmet and I ordered lunch from Carrot & Cleaver, a take away vegan restaurant! We enjoyed a noodle salad with braised veggie meatballs, cold noodles with spring vegetables, a lotus leaf and seitan baozi, and a coffee and berry mousse!

On Saturday, after visiting the Jewish Refugee Museum and the Jade Buddha Temple, Emmet and I went for a fantastic lunch at Vegetarian Lifestyle! This was the first vegetarian/vegan restaurant I went to in Shanghai. I was so glad that we could go again as it’s one of my favorites! We enjoyed tofu skin rolls filled with mushrooms, spicy mushroom skewers, seitan with basil and peppers, fried lotus root, melt in your mouth soft braised tofu, crispy shiitake mushrooms, grapefruit and mango juice, and sword beans! My favorites were the mushroom dishes, tofu and sword beans!

On Saturday night, Emmet and I went to Tacolicious for a final Taco Night! Tacolicious is probably the restaurant I’ve been to the most (thanks to Logan, Thijs, and Saira letting me host trivia nights there and also hosting so many other wonderful KS events)! I’ll definitely miss their tacos and fun atmosphere! Emmet and I enjoyed vegan zrou nuggets, limeade, bean and corn salad, chips & salsa, mapo tofu tacos, nopales (cactus) tacos, and zrou chorizo tacos! The zrou chorizo tacos are definitely my favorite!

On Sunday, Emmet and I went to LN Fortunate Vegan Cafe for a lovely lunch before going to Yuyuan! We enjoyed watermelon juice, a delicious vegan lemon cheesecake, Hong Kong style satay noodles, tofu and seaweed rolls, and eggplant with a spicy ragout!

After spending the afternoon exploring Yuyuan, Emmet and I went to a fantastic meal at Hui Yuan Vegetarian! We enjoyed stir fried cauliflower, sword beans, stir fried teatree mushrooms, a spicy cauliflower/lotus/potato/tofu dry pot, and Beijing style baozi with seitan and cucumber! The baozi and sword beans were my favorite! The spicy dry pot was one of the first dishes I had in China, so it was fun to share that with Emmet!

On Monday, Emmet and I went to Ru If Vegan for lunch! My Mom had treated my friends and I to a meal here for my 30th birthday (she paid for the meal since she wasn’t able to send me gifts in person) and it was so nice to be back and this time bring Emmet! We enjoyed a blueberry seltzer, eggplant in peanut sauce, ginger mushrooms, a dried tofu, mushroom, and pickle soup, and walnut mushrooms! We also tried a rose and a green bean bun for dessert! The walnut mushrooms were my favorite!

On Monday night, we had a wonderful last meal at Duli! Duli is unique from a lot of the other Chinese vegetarian restaurants because it is a fusion restaurant! We enjoyed mapo tofu hummus, corn and chickpea baozi, a mango smoothie, corn ribs, a tofu/pear/seaweed cold noodle salad, and Dan Dan gnocchi! The hummus and baozi were my favorites!

Lastly for my final meal, my friend Heather and her daughter Rae joined us for a final delicious meal at Godly! Shimi was unfortunately out of town working. It was so nice to have a final meal with friends and have it be a sendoff from Shanghai! Godly is one of the original vegetarian restaurants in Shanghai and certainly one of my favorites! I love this location because it still feels small and homey! We enjoyed kaofu, crispy vegetarian duck, Yunnan mushrooms, dumplings in peanut sauce, stir fried eggplant with sichuan chili garlic sauce, sword beans, mapo tofu, and a tofu and mushroom clay pot! The kaofu, sword beans, vegetarian duck, and eggplant were my favorites! Though everything was delicious!

It was so wonderful to get to see Heather right before I left! Heather and Shimi have been my friends for almost my entire time in Shanghai and it was so nice to get to share one more Shanghai memory together!!

In addition to all these amazing meals because it was so hot, Emmet and I enjoyed a few cool treats as well as sugar covered strawberries!

Plus, Emmet and I had to get one last jianbang after one of our F45 workouts! Although they’re no longer selling them with the vegan just egg, we were able to get them without egg and they were a delicious breakfast!

Even with all of these delicious meals, I did do a little bit of cooking in my last few weeks, too! I made DanDan noodles, jam squares, chocolate tahini cookies, chocolate brownie cookies (not shown), and sloppy joes!

Jewish Life in Shanghai

On August 11th, my final Shabbat in Shanghai, Kehilat Shanghai hosted one final Community Shabbat gathering for me before I left! We’ve been able to have a few lovely Shabbats this summer, thanks in large part to my friend Larry who will be organizing them going forward! I’ve loved being such an active member of the Kehilat Shanghai community throughout my entire time in Shanghai! It was so wonderful to see so many friends one last time before I left! I’ll greatly miss the KS community and hope to reunite with some of them in the future whether visiting China or visiting other places around the world! Kehilat Shanghai will always hold a special place in my heart and I’m so glad that I could do so much to help the community share meaningful and fun religious experiences over these past four years. Also special thanks to our community member and baker extraordinaire, Michael, for making the fantastic challah!

What I’m Reading and Watching

With all the moving stuff, I didn’t actually finish reading anything this month. However, I did watch a few good things. First, I finally watched HBO’s adaptation of Philip Roth’s A Plot Against America. I read the book in 2019, while in Shanghai. Due to the subject matter, I wouldn’t say that I enjoyed the show, but I did think that it was well done, though I wish it had been more faithful to the book. I also finished the Kuroko’s Basketball anime, which was excellent! If you’re a fan of sports and manga/anime, this is a great blend! Lastly, I watched the Superpowered: The DC Story documentary on Max! While I know a lot about DC’s history, I thought that this was a really well done overview, though I would have loved even more focus on the comics.

In terms of movies, upon my arrival in Nottingham, I finally got to see Oppenheimer! As an Astrophysicist, I am relatively familiar with the Manhattan Project, but I found the movie to be fascinating. There was so much history I was unaware of! I loved Nolan’s use of visuals to convey Oppenheimer’s struggles surrounding the bomb and found the sound use to be amazing! Cillian Murphy did a fantastic job capturing the title role! On the plane, I also watched two DC animated movies, Legion of Superheros and Batman & Superman: Battle of the Supersons, which were great fun! I also was compelled to watch the 2010 Robin Hood starring Russel Crowe, which was an interesting take on the origins of the folk hero (even if Crowe looked far too old). I also watched Pitch Perfect 2 and The Man from U.N.C.L.E, both of which were fun!

Chexit: The End of my Time in Shanghai

I now want to turn to my departure from China. First, I want to let you all know that I’m going to be doing another blog post which will serve as a reflection upon my time in China at some point in the next few months. So, this will not be that.

Let’s begin with what was needed for Scottie and Charlie. On Monday 8/7, 8 days before exiting, I took Scottie and Charlie to Shenpu, the state run veterinary hospital in Shanghai to do their exit health check and prepare their forms for both EU and UK entry. The UK requires extra forms, which thankfully the vets were able to fill out. The health check is just to make sure the pets are healthy enough to fly, so somewhat trivial. In order for pets to enter the UK, they need to have been vaccinated against rabies and pass the titre test (in addition to being microchipped and having the proper forms). Thankfully, other than the forms, all of this was done months in advance. So, after Monday, I had the UK forms. Additionally, because I wanted them to fly in the cabin with me, I had to have the documents for my friend Evelyn who flew to Paris with me (then on to Dublin). But that all went smoothly as well. On Friday, after Emmet’s talk at SJTU we went to the Shanghai Huangpu Custom’s office to pick up the EU paperwork. However, because I wasn’t sure where to go, we ended up first at the historical Customs House on the Bund, which is a museum, so we had to trek back to the right place (by people’s square). Thankfully, once again, all the paperwork was correct.

After Friday, I had all the paperwork needed for Scottie and Charlie! Between Friday and Monday, Emmet and I spent a lot of time packing (and repacking) my suitcases. I’m super grateful to Emmet because he definitely helped me more efficiently pack the suitcases (and get them to close) as well as convincing me to order cat food and litter instead of trying to bring it with me (I definitely didn’t have space). In total, I had 2 very overweight suitcases (~ 30kg) and 1 underweight (but packed to the brim) suitcase, as well as my backpack. So, counting what I brought in June, I moved with 6 suitcases, 1 backpack, and 2 cats in cat carriers. For comparison, I came over with 4 suitcases and 1 backpack, though Emmet did bring me things when he moved to China 2 years ago.

In terms of packing up my suitcases and taking apart my apartment, Emmet is definitely the MVP! I just want to reiterate how amazing he was the final week as I was definitely a bit of a mess. Emmet also helped me take trash out, organize clothes and shoes for donation, as well as decide what to leave for my neighbors. Many of my neighbors were happy to take things like my air filter, storage containers, and some food! Though I also left a lot of cooking and cleaning supplies for future tenants and gave some of the nicer things to my friends Heather and Shimi!

On Tuesday afternoon, after a lovely lunch at Godly with Heather and Rae, Emmet and I packed up Scottie and Charlie into their cat carriers and did one final sweep of my apartment. Before leaving I got to say goodbye to the apartment I’ve lived in for the last three years. I’ll definitely miss the painting behind me.

At 5 pm, I arranged for a taxi to pick us up and take us to the airport. While Scottie and Charlie were not thrilled to be in the cat carriers, they calmed down once we were in the car.

At about 6pm, we arrived at the Pudong Airport Terminal 1 for our flight. This was where the real adventure began. Rather confusingly, when we went through the security that is needed to actually enter the airport (not to go to the gate), which I believe may be unique to China, I needed to show the paperwork for Scottie and Charlie. However, the security didn’t know the English phrasing and I didn’t know the Mandarin, which made it a bit confusing. However, once it was resolved, we went then went to the section for Air France Check in and waited for Evelyne.

Once Evelyne arrived, we lined up for baggage check (we had thankfully checked in earlier). We also decided to upgrade to premium economy so that we could all (Scottie and Charlie included) have a bit more space, which was definitely the right call. After doing that and checking in my bags, we had to go to another window to actually pay for the cats space on the plane (I’m still unsure why this couldn’t have been done in advance) and then got our boarding pass. However, thanks to some eagle eyes by Emmet and Eveylne we noticed that my underweight blue suitcase was flagged and had not been loaded (annoyingly nobody told me this, so I likely wouldn’t have noticed if not for them). It was flagged because I brought a clock and cat toys and forgot to take out the batteries. Definitely something to keep in mind for the future. We also got the security forms saying that we had permission to bring the cats through on to the plane.

After this, it was time to go through China customs and security. Somewhat annoyingly China still requires a health declaration, though it’s really just a formality at this point. This was definitely the most emotional part of the journey, because this is where I said goodbye to Emmet. I was really sad to leave Emmet. Maybe it’s because we’ve gone both 2 years and then 1 year without seeing each other in person, but it’s been so special to see each other so frequently in 2023. You all know how close Emmet and I are and while I know he’ll succeed in his last year in Beijing, it is certainly sad knowing that I likely won’t see him until next summer.

After an emotional goodbye to Emmet, I got in line for security and customs. Customs was rather easy. However, security was a mess. First, I was required to take out all of my computer, phone, and ipad chargers, despite only being told that I needed to take out battery packs, not the ones you put into the wall. Then, I needed to take out all my pencils because they thought there were knives (they were not). This lead me to have to basically repack my backpack at the gate. Thankfully they were much kinder about the cats. Evelyne and I knew that Scottie and Charlie (who was already starting to hyperventilate) were way too stressed to be taken out and carried through the metal detector while their bags were checked. So, we asked if we could go to a separate room, which they were happy to do. There they went for a ride through the X-ray machine, which was only okay, because the security guard didn’t turn it on, it was just done purely as a formality. With all my stress about repacking my backpack, I’m so grateful that Evelyne could take charge and help me get Scottie and Charlie through security as comfortable as possible.

By the time we got through security it was ~ 8:20. We waited for ~ 1 hour by the gate (where I met two other people bringing their cats to the UK) and then boarded the flight! I carried Scottie and Charlie onto the plane and until take off, we kept the two of them on our laps.

Once the flight took off, I put Scottie and Charlie below the seats. Scottie was a real champ throughout this whole process. He was surprisingly very chill. Charlie was a bit of a wreck. He was hyperventilating for the first half of the flight, but then finally calmed down, much to my relief. Every hour or so, I would check on them and pet them throughout the flight. We left Shanghai at 10pm on Tuesday 8/15 and then arrived in Paris at 6am on 8/16 (due to the time change 14 hours later). With that my time and life in China officially came to a close,

Upon arrival in Paris, things were very relaxed. We went through customs and immigration, which other than having to maneuver a bit because I was carrying two cats, nobody seemed to notice or care that I was bringing cats with me. None of the EU forms were checked (they were only looked at in Shanghai). We then went to baggage claim, which was definitely a bit stressful for Scottie and Charlie because of all the noise. After collecting all of our bags and somehow figuring out how to maneuver them and the cats, we made our way to the exit. I also helped one of the other passengers who had a cat, but was also the flight volunteer for 3 dogs get the dogs to the exit, which was really challenging, since the dog crates are humongous (though they only had to move about 100 ft)! However, at about 7:05 am, we were through to the exit of the Charles de Gaulle Airport.

After that, I said goodbye to Evelyne (who was on her way to Dublin for a conference) and met Alex my Pet Taxi driver who shepherded me to Nottingham! For those of you who are curious, the Pet Taxi is basically just a large van, where the drivers are familiar with all of the paperwork and logistical processes needed to enter the UK with pets. It certainly helped and made the process go by much quicker! We left the airport at ~ 7:30 am. We then drove to the Calais entrance to the Eurotunnel. There, Scottie and Charlie had their UK entry forms checked, their titre (rabies antibody level) tests checked, and their microchip numbers. Thankfully I had brought a Chinese microchip reader as the UK one didn’t work. Much to my relief all of the paperwork was in order and we were set to enter the UK via the Eurotunnel! After that, we went through French and UK customs. For the UK customs, I had to go out of the car and get my work visa stamped and to be fingerprinted, since this was my first time entering the UK on a work visa.

At ~ 11:45 am, we drove the pet taxi on to the train which took us across the Eurotunnel. It was really neat. Basically, cars are loaded on and then taken by train through the Eurotunnel under the English channel. The cars are turned off, so people can walk around if they want, though I just stayed in the car. I had thought we would just drive through the Eurotunnel, but as you can see from the photos, this was not the case!

After getting out of the Eurotunnel at Folkstone, we then continued the long drive up to Nottingham. We arrived in the UK at ~ 11:30 UK time (45 minutes after entering the Eurotunnel). Other than stopping to get food, we drove straight to Nottingham. However, because of traffic and because the speed limit in the UK is ~ 70km/h (~42mph) we didn’t arrive in Nottingham until ~ 4:30. Scottie was fine the whole way, but Charlie definitely got very antsy and was ready to be let out of his carrier.

So, by about 5pm UK time, 31 hours after we left my apartment, Scottie, Charlie, and I were all safely in the UK! It was a long, stressful, and exhausting journey, but I’m thrilled to say that we’re here!

Much to my delight Scottie and Charlie have taken a quick liking to the AirBnB in Nottingham! They’ve been exploring a lot over the last few days, and definitely miss their high perches, but they seem to be adjusting well. It only took ~ 1 hour for them to get comfortable in the space.

While I haven’t done much exploring yet, I did want to share that I already meet Robin Hood, or at least his statue in front of Nottingham Castle during my first run!

So, despite all the stress and anxiety about leaving Shanghai (and Emmet), I’m happy to say that Scottie, Charlie, and I are all starting our next Chapter of Life in Nottingham. We hope that this is a fantastic chapter for all of us, filled with excellent work and more fun adventures!

For those of you who have gotten this far (and been reading since the beginning four years ago), thank you for all of your support and interest in my experiences in Shanghai! It truly was an experience over the last four years. With that said, this will not be my last post, as I said earlier, I plan to write a reflection piece about my time in China in the next few months. However, at this point, I don’t know what the future of the blog will be. Part of the reason that I chose to write the blog was because so much social media is challenging to access or banned in China. As that’s not the case in the UK, I plan to investigate whether there are other ways to share updates and photos (maybe instagram). Additionally writing a weekly and then monthly blog was a huge and time consuming undertaking and I’m not sure I want to document my life so regularly going forward. Whatever I decide, I’ll make sure to let you all know.

Lastly, thank you all again for reading! If you have any questions or comments about my life in China, any of my adventures in the final month, or about my exit from China please reach out. Thank you all so much for joining on this journey with me! See you in a few months (likely October) for my reflections on my four years in Shanghai!

In peace,

Jesse

Hi Everyone! Welcome back to Astronomer in Shanghai! I hope that this update finds all of you having a safe, happy, healthy, and fun summer! Hopefully you’ve been able to enjoy the warmer weather and gotten to do some traveling to either explore new places or visit family and friends! With my time in China coming to a close, I wanted to make sure that I got to visit a bit more of the country. So, this month, I went on two fantastic trips (both with Emmet)! First, I went to visit the Terracotta Warriors in Xi’an and then I went to visit the pandas in Chengdu! Both of these were at the top of my China bucket list, so I was thrilled to be able to go to both places before moving from China!

I’ll begin this entry by sharing with you the highlights and a ton of photos from the two trips! Afterwards, I’ll continue with an update about starting to wrap up my life in Shanghai.

Visiting Xi’an

Day 1: Arrival and the Muslim Quarter/Street Market

The trip to Xi’an was my first long distance trip by train! Xi’an is in Shaanxi province and the high speed rail took about 8 hours from Shanghai. Emmet and I then met in Xi’an and began exploring the city. Almost immediately upon arrival, I could sense the differences between Xi’an and cities like Beijing and Shanghai. While you might think that this is largely because those are humongous mega-cities, the primary reason is that because Xi’an was an endpoint on the silk road, there is a large Muslim population within the city, so the look and feel of the people, food, and architecture is different.

Emmet and I were only doing a short visit to Xi’an, so after arriving at our hotel in the early evening, we set out to explore the Muslim Quarter in Xi’an, attempt to find some tasty street food snacks, and get a delicious dinner at a vegetarian restaurant!

Below are a ton of photos of the Muslim Quarter, which is a popular street market for snacks and shopping! It was one of the first times I’d been surrounded by so many people in quite a while. I can’t imagine what it would have been like with COVID-19 restrictions being enforced. One thing I wanted to note is that while these types of streets exist in Shanghai (Tianzifang, the Yu Gardens), they’re confined to shopping areas, not spread out over many city blocks as these kinds of street vendors aren’t allowed, so it was quite cool to explore!

One other cool thing was that across from the vegetarian restaurant we went to, there was a Tibetan Buddhist Temple! Although we didn’t get to explore the inside (it was already closed for the day), the outside was gorgeous!

Day 2: The Terracotta Warriors

Early on the next day, Emmet and I got up early to trek out to see the Terracotta Warriors. Although the site is near Xi’an, they’re actually about an hour away by car. I was incredibly excited to get to see them in person. When I spent the summer in New York (doing Astronomy research at the American Museum of Natural History) in 2012, I got to see a touring exhibit of some of the warriors (Emmet also joined)! However, this time we got to see the warriors in their locale!

The main part of the Terracotta Warriors excavation site facility is divided into 4 different areas, the three excavation pits and the exhibition hall.

The First Pit

The first pit at the terracotta warriors is the largest (and grandest) and is likely the one many of you have seen photos of. However, it’s also, unsurprisingly, the most popular, with thousands of people pouring into the outside edge of the pits trying to take photos. I don’t think I’ve ever been that crammed in with so many people. It was definitely a little overwhelming and made the first part of the experience a little more stressful. That said, because you’re at the edge of the pits, you can’t see everything up close here (the pit is gigantic). However, the shear scale of the pit and number of warriors and horses uncovered is amazing!

While it’s a bit overwhelming to see so many figures at once, it was so cool to look at all the differences between the warriors. Whether it was slightly different hair styles, hand positions, or even that some were horses, it was really cool to see all the different styles! I didn’t even know that they came in so many different variations!

Pit 2

The second pit is smaller, but is noteworthy because it contains cavalry, infantry, and war chariots! It was actually a little more fun to visit pit 2 because Emmet and I could get much closer and were surrounded by a lot less people. So, we could get a better view at all angles of the warriors. One other thing that was highlighted in images in Pits 2 and 3 was that the warriors weren’t just made of terracotta, they were initially painted. Though as a result of restoration/uncovering, most of the color has faded, it was really interesting to learn that!

Pit 3

The third pit was unique because it’s still actively being excavated! You can see a few photos of the archaeologists actively working at the site! This is the command post with war chariots and the high ranking military officials. Additionally, there were a few fully excavated and free standing warriors displayed in this pit that were really amazing to see! You could see all the details in these figures!

The Exhibition Hall and other Cool statues around the Grounds!

Lastly, there was an exhibition hall where a few more warriors were put on display (there were also some historical exhibits describing the process of uncovering the warriors, but all of those were in Mandarin).

Overall across all of the pictures I’ve shared of the warriors, I hope that you can tell just how impressive this is to see! It was truly a fantastic experience!

There are also a ton of other cool modern statues on the grounds! And they even sold Terracotta warrior shaped ice cream popsicles! Since it was hot, Emmet and I couldn’t resist getting one!

Day 2: The Wild Goose Pagoda, Daxingshan Temple, Xi’an Wall, Drum Tower, and Bell Tower

After an amazing morning spent exploring the Terracotta warriors, we returned to downtown Xi’an and set out to explore the city!

The Wild Goose Pagoda

The Wild Goose Pagoda, located outside the traditional wall surrounding the heart of Xi’an, is a Buddhist temple built in the Tang Dynasty ~ 1350 years ago. The Pagoda was actually used to store sacred religious texts and items that were brought from India in the 7th century.

Before arriving at the Pagoda, we wandered around and saw a lot of really cool statues!

Since parts of the grounds are used for active prayer, as you’ll see throughout this post, I chose not to take photos of the prayer shrines. That said, there’s still a lot to see! The architecture of the Wild Goose Pagoda is amazing. The pagoda itself is 60m tall and it was daunting and a bit exhausting to climb to the top on a narrow staircase! But it was worth it for the fantastic view of Xi’an!

Although you can see the clear Chinese flourishes (the dragons and lions), you can also see more of an Indian influence (and this exists around the city) with elephants as well! The grounds of the Temple are also incredibly gorgeous!

Daxingshan Temple

After the Wild Goose Pagoda, Emmet and I walked to the Daxingshan Buddhist temple where we had lunch. After a fantastic lunch (see at the end), we explored the temple!

I loved seeing the different statues! The lions at this temple were also really unique! Plus, it was cool to see a turtle pond in the temple!

The Xi’an Walled City

One of the things that makes Xi’an unique is that it is a walled city (kind of like the forbidden city in Beijing, though Beijing also has traditional walls). That said, these walls are gigantic, wide enough to drive multiple cars across and serve as a real clear delineation of when you are entering the core of the city. Though many friends suggested biking around the walls, Emmet and I chose to just walk a portion of the wall (It had rained earlier and was a bit to crowded for us to want to bike). Regardless, it was really cool to walk along these walls which date back to the 14th century.

The Xi’an Drum and Bell Towers

In another similarity to Beijing, Xi’an has both a Drum and a Bell Tower. Emmet lives right by them in Beijing, so it was fun to get to see the ones in Xi’an. For those of you who don’t recall, the Bell and Drum towers were early Chinese methods of keeping time! As an astronomer, it’s always cool to learn about ancient methods of time keeping and calendars! The biggest difference (other than the one in Xi’an not having it’s traditional bell set up) is that the ones in Xi’an are far grander than the ones in Beijing (which are still really cool)! So, Emmet and I had fun exploring these! Plus, they look really cool lit up at night!

The Drum Tower

It was fun for Emmet and I to get to try the drums! Plus, inside there was some cool traditional Chinese art!

The Bell Tower

Like the Drum Tower, there was also a really cool exhibition inside the Bell Tower!

Overall, it was really cool to get to see these up close! When we drove into the heart of Xi’an these were the first historic things that we saw, so I’m glad we had the opportunity to explore them!

In addition to all the cool sites we visited in Xi’an, there were so many cool sculptures and signs that I saw around the city that I wanted to share with you!

Emmet and I had a fantastic trip to Xi’an! Unlike our trip to Chengdu, we planned everything (no tour guide). I was really proud that given our low level of Mandarin, we were able to do it! Seeing the Terracotta warriors was amazing and it was such a neat city to explore! One other thing that I’ll note is that I was surprised that so many people kept asking us where we were from. Though tourism is staring to return to China, it seems as though many people were excited (or at least interested) to see foreigners in both Xi’an and Chengdu.

1 Day Trip to Beijing

Since it took just as long to go to Beijing and then back to Shanghai, I decided to go back to Beijing with Emmet so I could have a quick last visit to Beijing, visit the always adorable and friendly Goldie, and get to join Kehillat Beijing for a Shabbat hosted by Kehillat Beijing’s founders, Roberta and Ted!

Emmet lives right by the Shichihai lakes, so we had to do a quick walk around the lakes, even though it was hot!

Then on our way to Shabbat, we stopped by the 798 art district to look at some of the cool statues! There are a bunch of neat exhibits that Emmet’s planning to visit this summer/fall!

However the main highlight was getting to join Kehillat Beijing for a Shabbat! When I went in April, Roberta and Ted were in the USA, so it was so nice this time to attend one when they hosted! As Emmet’s shown in his blog, these Shabbats are fantastic! It was nice to meet some of Emmet’s friends within the community and to enjoy Ted’s delicious food and Roberta’s challah! This time it was Bastille Day Shabbat!

The other highlight was of course getting to spend time with Goldie! Emmet’s cat is such a wonderful companion.

As you can tell, Goldie is so friendly to me and it’s always a treat to see her when I visit Emmet!

Even though it was a quick visit, I’m so glad I could stop by Beijing (my third time visiting Emmet in Beijing) one more time before my move.

The Great Panda Adventure in Chengdu!

Many of you know that I love pandas! When I was very little, my Mom got me a panda hat and since then they’ve always been my favorite wild animal! So, when I moved to Shanghai 4 years ago, I knew that I wanted to go see the pandas! While I’ve been waiting four years to do it, at long last, I finally had my own Great Panda Adventure and was able to see the pandas! Emmet and his two colleagues, Tom and Daniele, joined us on a tour of Chengdu! Overall, it was certainly a memorable and fun trip and I’m so glad that I have appeased my childhood self and seen pandas close to their natural habitats!

One thing I want to mention is that these aren’t pandas out in the wild. In Chengdu, there are 4 panda centers. These are basically large panda zoos where the pandas are kept in large enclosures (pandas prefer to live by themselves once they’re more than a few years old). Because pandas are endangered, a lot of work has been done at these research centers to help improve panda birth rates and to keep the animals healthy. Additionally, some work has been done to help release pandas back into the wild mountains of China (though we didn’t get to visit that location)!

Day 1: Arriving in Chengdu and Kuanzhi Wide and Narrow Street

This past Saturday, I flew to Chengdu (my first domestic flight in China since visiting Harbin). Chengdu, in Sichuan province, is a city famous for two things, pandas and spicy food. Immediately upon arrival,the first became clear! There were so many cool statues, billboards, and advertisements both in the airport and in the city!

You may be curious about the 2nd image, which looks like it’s for the Olympics. It’s not, instead it’s for the FISU University Games (an international sports competition for college students), Chengdu was originally supposed to host it in 2021, but as a result of COVID-19, it was delayed until this year (it started on July 28th).

After checking in to our hotel, Emmet, Tom, Daniele, and I went to Kuanzhi, the Wide and Narrow Street known for it’s shopping and street food! Just like in Xi’an, street food is really popular (as you’ll see). This was a really crowded area, but despite the crowds (and heat), a lot of fun to explore and browse!

Chengdu is a city that loves it’s pandas and there were so many cute panda statues to see! You also can get a taste of just how crowded this area is! I’ll go in to more depth about the street food later on.

Day 2: Dujiangyan Giant Panda Base and the Dujiangyan Irrigation System

Volunteering at the Dujiangyan Giant Panda Base

Our 2nd day in Chengdu began very early as we had to drive out of Chengdu to the neighboring mountain town of Dujiangyan where the Giant Panda Base is located. I was incredibly excited and couldn’t wait for this experience! Through our tour we were able to do a special program where we could volunteer to help take care of the pandas for the day. While this didn’t include getting to hold any pandas, it did allow us to see how the panda care givers clean their habitats and prepare their food for them. Our group was a mix of kids and adults (including three other Americans who were visiting China from Texas) so unsurprisingly the four of us ended up doing a bit of manual labor including cleaning panda poop, cleaning the enclosure, and breaking bamboo (which is kind of like swinging a giant sword).

We also got to make snack cakes for the pandas (made of bamboo, apples, and carrots) and trim bamboo leaves, which are a nutritious part of the bamboo that pandas eat! Pandas eat ~ 80kg of bamboo a day, so it makes sense that we needed to prep so much! Thanks to our tour guide, Kevin, you can see a few videos of us doing our volunteer work!

While we couldn’t take pictures we also got to see the panda caregiver feed one of the pandas (it was so cute and very well behaved) as well as visit some of the pandas that were recovering from ailments. We also watched a documentary about the efforts that the Chengdu panda centers are doing to return some of these pandas to the wild, which was really fascinating! It was such a great experience getting to help take care of the pandas! I would definitely recommend doing it if you have the chance!

The Pandas at the Dujiangyan Giant Panda Center

After all the volunteer work (we did the snack making in the afternoon), we spent a few hours exploring the panda center and getting to watch all of the pandas and red pandas! Since Dujiangyan is at a higher elevation, it wasn’t quite as hot, so as you’ll see the pandas were very active, eating, walking around, playing, and generally being absolutely adorable!

And now a few videos for you to see the pandas moving around their habitats!

As you can see, this was a magical experience! The grin didn’t leave my face the entire time I spent staring at the pandas! I’ve been a panda lover my entire life and though I’ve seen pandas at the National Zoo in Washington DC, being surrounded by so many pandas was such a unique and memorable experience!

We also got to see red pandas! Interestingly, red pandas are much more social with one another and live in habitats with many red pandas (as you can see)! One fascinating thing that I learned was that red pandas were discovered first (by westerners). They were discovered in 1825 and initially named pandas. When giant pandas were discovered in 1869 (and the two species were linked based on their similar skeletal structure), they were renamed red or lesser pandas. I’ll note that the Chinese names xiong mao (bear cat – for giant panda) and hun-ho (fire fox – for the red panda) are quite different.

Since my primary experience seeing red pandas has been at the Buffalo Zoo (where they were usually asleep), I greatly enjoyed getting to watch them play around with one another!

Lastly, I wanted to share some other photos from the Dujiangyan Giant Panda Center of some of the sculptures and signage! Plus a tasty panda ice cream popsicle!

The Dujiangyan Irrigation System (and Scenic Area)

After an amazing morning and afternoon spent with the pandas, we went to the see the Dujiangyan irrigation system. This is an irrigation system built in 256 BCE that was used to prevent the Chengdu plain from flooding and make the land suitable for farming. By building a manmade island to add a small bend into the Min River, the Irrigation system was able to effectively work. While I was unfamiliar with this beforehand, it was really cool to see! Plus, when you put four astronomers together, we ended up talking about the fluid dynamics that lead to the slowing of the water!

Before actually seeing the river and surrounding areas, there are some gorgeous temple-like grounds that we got to explore!

After that we reached the area where we could see the river bend surrounded by mountains! It was so cool to see the rushing water (until it started raining) as well as the impressive man-made island!

After seeing the whole irrigation system, we hiked back through a gorgeous mountainous pathway! Having spent so long in the city, it was so great to be in so much nature!

Towards the end, you can see a fun shopping area setup near the entrance of the irrigation system (there were a lot of these in Chengdu and they were always fun to explore)!

We spent the evening in Dujiangyan and had a fun time exploring the different shopping streets, which were lit up (including lighting up the river)!

Overall, this was an amazing first full day in Chengdu! From fulfilling a lifelong dream of seeing pandas to learning about a fascinating 2000+ year old irrigation system, I couldn’t have imagined a better day!

Day 3: Qingcheng Mountain, the Jiansha Site Museum, and Jinli Street

Qingcheng Mountain (A Daoist mountain site)

We began our third day by visiting Qingcheng Mountain, which is a scared site in Daoism and considered to be the birthplace of Daoism. This mountain, like the Panda center was also in Dujiangyan. While I’ve been to many Buddhist temples in China, I hadn’t been to a Daoist temple before. So, it was interesting to see the different statues to the Daoist gods as well as some real historical figures including Laozi, instead of to the Buddha.

To reach the top of Qingcheng Mountain, we hiked up to a lake, then took a ferry across a lake, after which we took a gondola to the top of the mountain (it would have taken a few hours to do the entire hike by foot). Even with the assistance, it was so amazing to spend some time in the mountains and catch some amazing views!

After reaching the top of the mountain, we spent time exploring the temple grounds, which were really cool to see!

At the top of the mountain is a giant pagoda! Unlike the one in Xi’an this one was a Daoist shrine. Although we didn’t get to climb to the top of it, the view was amazing!

Jinsha Site Museum

After hiking up Qingcheng mountain, we returned to Chengdu to visit the Jinsha Site Museum. This is a museum built on top of part of the Jinsha excavation site, which in the early 2000s was where the remains of the Shu people who lived in the Chengdu region ~ 2500 years ago, were discovered. Prior to visiting the museum, I was entirely unfamiliar with this history. So, it was really cool to learn part of the history and then see some of the many relics that were uncovered.

First we visited some of the excavation sites that are within the museum complex.

In the bottom row you can see some preserved wood and where elephant tusks were found!

Then we visited the exhibition halls where we could see the many amazingly well preserved artifacts. I will note that there are a ton of artifacts, so it was a little overwhelming. The two most famous are the gold mask and the golden sun bird disk.

There was so much cool jade, gold, bone, and ceramic works to see!

Jinli Old Street

In the evening, the four of us went to explore the Jinli Old Street, which is a large walking/shopping district in Chengdu where they sell a ton of different street foods as well as different panda and traditional items! We had a great time trying a bunch of different street foods and exploring the street. However, it was incredibly crowded. Maybe it’s because of the years of COVID-19 restrictions, but I always remain shocked by these packed crowds (and how now almost nobody is wearing masks).

Plus as you can see there were a ton of cute pandas, including some wearing Batman, Superman, and Spider-man costumes!

On our way home, Emmet and I also saw a really cool lights display! This was very reminiscent of what is set up in the Yu Gardens for the Lantern Festival and since Emmet’s never gotten to experience that, it was great fun to get to see this together!

Day 4: Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Research Base and the Giant Leshan Buddha

The Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Research Base

On our last day, we went to explore the Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Research Base. After a day of not seeing pandas, I was really excited for a second opportunity! This is located much closer to Chengdu, so at a lower elevation, which means that it is hotter. Unlike in Dujiangyan, many of the pandas were either sleeping in the shade or in their enclosures. Despite the heat, we still got to see a lot of very adorable pandas! Although you might not be able to tell, this panda center is also incredibly crowded. Every time we found a panda out and about, there were huge crowds of people around it. Despite the heat and crowds, it was still another wonderful and magical experience!

The pandas were super adorable and it was such a great experience getting to spend another day with them! Below are two more videos of the pandas for you to enjoy!

Lastly, I wanted to share photos of a ton of the different panda sculptures and decorations at the Panda center (and the surrounding area). Of course, once again, Emmet and I enjoyed Panda ice cream pops!

Overall, this was another fantastic panda experience! I’m so glad that we got to have two such fun and enjoyable panda experiences and that we were able to spend so much time with the pandas watching them nap, play, and eat! As I’ve already said, this part of the trip created lifelong memories and I’m so glad I got to share the experience with Emmet!

The Leshan Giant Buddha

After another amazing panda experience, we drove ~ 3 hours south to Leshan to see the Giant Buddha! The Leshan Giant Buddha is amazing to see! It’s 71 meters tall and built into the rockface of the cliffs. Due to difficulties securing funding for the building, it took about 90 years to carve the entire Buddha, which was finished in 803. It’s a carving of the Buddha of the future and was initially built to help calm the surrounding waters to prevent ships from sinking into the area.

Prior to actually arriving at the Buddha, there were some other really cool statues to look at on the grounds of the site!

To actually see the Buddha, we took a boat tour (due to very long lines, which you may be able to see in the photos; it takes a few hours to walk up to and down to see the Buddha). The boat tour was such a fantastic way for us to take in the majesty and size of the Leshan Buddha!

As you can see the Buddha is so impressive! I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a statue that large! The shear size of it is breathtaking! Plus, the natural cliff face that it was carved into (made of sandstone) was so colorful, that it only added to the beauty of the Buddha!

After an amazing 4 day experience, we returned to the Chengdu airport and I flew back to Shanghai. The only problem was that my flight back got delayed (due to weather) from 9pm to 11pm, so instead of getting home close to 1am, I arrived home at almost 3am. Despite the annoyance, it was such an amazing experience and I’m so glad that Emmet and I could make such lasting China memories together!

Before wrapping up my trip to Chengdu, there were so many other great photos (mostly of panda related things) that I wanted to share with you all!

After being in China for almost 4 years, I’m so glad that I was finally able to do a bit more traveling and see more of the country. While I’ve been up to explore Beijing with Emmet, and got to go to Harbin 2.5 years ago, it was such a great experience for the two of us to see Xi’an and Chengdu together! From the pandas to the terracotta warriors, we made so many lifelong memories and I’m so glad we could experience these places together!

Astronomy in Shanghai

With all of the traveling this past month (and with the preparations for my upcoming move), it’s probably not that surprising that this month hasn’t been quite as research focused. However, I have still been working. The biggest highlight was that my Luminosity Function paper was accepted for publication in MNRAS! We’re done with the copy edits, so I should receive the final, published version soon! This is the project I’ve been working with my supervisor Ying for most of my postdoc, so it’s great to finally have some results to share!

Additionally, prior to my trip to Chengdu, there was the DESI collaboration meeting in Durham (UK). While it would have been great to go, it was a bit close to my upcoming move. Instead, I gave a virtual presentation at the galaxy cluster session and one of the graduate students from Ying’s group who was there in person, shared a cool photo of me on all of the tv screens!

I’ve also continued to slowly work on my follow-up to both my ICL and luminosity function projects as well as working on the analysis with Emmet about the cluster’s hosting bent radio sources at low-z. Hopefully once I’m settled in Nottingham, I’ll be able to get back to being a bit more productive.

Life in Shanghai

With all of the fun trips this month, my time in Shanghai was spent more relaxing and catching up with friends (and preparing for my move). With so many of my friends having already moved or traveling for the summer, I’ve been trying to see everyone I can before I go. I did get to see my friends Clem, Sarah, and Heather and Shimi (and their daughter Rae)! Though only Clem and I got a photo together, but I’ll see Sarah, Heather, and Shimi again before I go. Other than that, I’ve continued to go to F45 basically every day (a few of my friends from the gym are still here, so it’s always fun to work out together)!

Additionally, this past month, I finally reached 1000 days of doing Duolingo in Mandarin! While my mandarin is still not very good, I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to use it to successfully order food and answer simple questions on my trips!

While I didn’t do quite as much fun things in Shanghai, I have been busy getting ready for my move. A few weeks ago, I got my work entry visa for the UK (which thanks to Nottingham was relatively straightforward and I just had to go to an office by the Bund). I’ve also been getting suitcases and starting to pack up the rest of my apartment. I also stopped by Tianzifang to pick up a couple of gifts to give to friends!

This month, I also saw a lot of cool anime and comics related things!

Also, in addition to the always adorable Scottie, Charlie, and Goldie, I also saw a lot of other cute animals. Most of them are cats (some from Xi’an and Chengdu), but also dogs (at Kehillat Beijing’s Shabbat), as well as a llama and peacock in Chengdu!

Scottie and Charlie

This was a little bit of a hectic month for Scottie and Charlie. Mostly because of my two trips. Thankfully one of my friends from F45 was able to check in on them while I was gone and they even seemed to warm up to her by the end! However, the other main stress was that they had to get their yearly vaccine and rabies shot (which is done yearly in China and needed to be updated before the move to the UK). The positive was that both were much better behaved and more relaxed at the vet.

Unfortunately, Charlie had an allergic reaction to one of the shots and ended up needing to go back to the vet to get an anti-histamine. His face and paws started to get bloated, which terrified me and thankfully the vet was able to see him right away. While Charlie started to improve immediately, it was rather stressful for me (and he looked very sad while not feeling well). Luckily, a day later, Charlie was back to his normal self, much to my relief! Unfortunately, the next month with the trip to the Shenpu government vet 1 week before leaving and the move won’t be much easier on them. The one positive is that they have been enjoying their travel cat carriers (not so much their thunder shirts and harnesses). Other then the stuff at Shenpu, which can’t be done until a week before the trip, they’re all set to travel.

Even with all the business of this month, Scottie and Charlie still remain absolutely adorable and are constantly cuddling or playing together!

Even when they’re not together (or just napping on me) they’re so cute!

Food in Shanghai, Xi’an, and Chengdu

Given all the traveling that I did this month, it should come as no surprise that I enjoyed a lot of different and unique Chinese foods! Thanks to some of Emmet’s friends from the Vegans of Beijing, the Happy Cow app, and another Chinese vegetarian food app, Emmet and I were able to try so many amazing foods in both Chendgu and Xi’an!

Xi’an

Traditionally, the primary specialties in Xi’an are meats. In particular, two popular dishes are rou mian (basically a Chinese hamburger) and biang biang noodles (wide spicy noodles, a version of which is vegetarian).

On our first night, we had an amazing meal across from the Tibetan Buddhist temple! We enjoyed a traditional tea, a fantastic mushroom dish, thin cut tofu, vegetarian rou mian (made of mushrooms or seitan), vegetable noodle soup, and another fantastic tofu and mushroom dish!

I think my favorites were the tofu dishes and the mushrooms.

After visiting the terracotta warriors and the wild goose pagoda, we had a fantastic lunch at the Daxingshan temple! We enjoyed mapo tofu with mushrooms, vegetable jiaozi (dumplings), spicy fried mock meat, eggplant and green beans, spicy seitan stew, traditional xi’an stew, and a waxberry tea to drink!

One thing that differentiates Xi’an cuisine from Shanghai and Beijing is the bread, so I’m glad Emmet and I got to try it! It was really tasty! I think my favorites were the seitan stew, bread, and the spicy fried mock meat!

In addition to these great meals, we also enjoyed some tasty street food! We got freeze dried corn pops, fresh cut cantaloupe (it was fun eating the skewer), biang biang noodles (we were amazed by how wide and thick the noodles were), a sticky rice cake, and shown is one of many fruit juices or teas (this one was waxberry)!

Chengdu

On our first day in Chengdu, the four us had an amazing meal at Vegetarian Lifestyle. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because the restaurant has multiple locations in Shanghai and was actually the first vegetarian restaurant I went to in Shanghai. However, in Chengdu, we were able to order a bunch of dishes that are unique to Chengdu and Sichuan cuisine!

We enjoyed tea, watermelon juice, Sichuan mushrooms, cold vinegar black noodles, eggplant with basil, lion manes mushroom with rice flour, dan dan noodles, fried stuffed eggplant, stinky tofu, vegetarian fish, and sword beans! My favorites were the black noodles, the stuffed eggplant, and vegetarian fish!

In Dujiangyan, we found another amazing vegetarian restaurant. The staff was very excited to serve foreigners and were very interested in hearing where we were from and what we were visiting there.

We enjoyed tea, mapo tofu, kung pao chik’n, fried mushrooms, spicy mushrooms, sword beans, potato, seitan, and chestnut stir fry, and cauliflower dry pot. My favorites were the mushrooms, mapo tofu, and seitan stirfry!

Lastly, thanks to the help of our guide, at the restaurant we went to in Leshan, Emmet and I were able to get some vegetarian food. We enjoyed buckwheat tea, sweet and sour tofu, steamed celtuse, and sweet sticky rice flour fritters!

Like in Xi’an, Emmet and I enjoyed some street food! Chengdu and Sichuan are famous for their spicy chili oil. Some of the main highlights are sweetwater noodles (noodles in chili sauce) a soft tofu dish with chili oil, as well as hot pot (which we didn’t get to do). You can see what we enjoyed below!

You can see three kinds of spicy noodles (all with different types of noodle), the soft tofu dish, chili garlic tofu, a chilled fruit and tea dish, ice cream, an amazing ice cream filled bubble waffle (a Hong Kong specialty that’s become popular in China), some of the cold drinks we enjoyed (fresh orange juice, pomelo juice, and watermelon juice), plus fresh pomelo! Pomelo is my favorite Chinese fruit and it’s not being sold in Shanghai at the moment (it’s out of season), so I knew I had to get it!

Beijing

Even though I was only in Beijing briefly, it was so hot that Emmet and I enjoyed two frozen treats! We had a frozen strawberry popsicle, and a vegan fudgsicle/brownie pop!

Shanghai

This month in Shanghai, I enjoyed two great meals with friends! First, I caught up with my friend Clem and we enjoyed a great meal at Duli (I forgot to take photos of all the dishes). You can see the gongbao pizza, the yuba and avacado salad, and an orange smoothie!

Then my friend Sarah and I tried the LN Fortunate Vegan Cafe, which was great! We enjoyed pear juice, tofu and seaweed rolls, stir fried noodles with tofu, and Hong Kong style vegan char siu (seitan)!

In addition to all of the amazing food that I enjoyed, I still did some tasty cooking myself! I made dan dan noodles, an edamame and tofu noodle salad, vegetarian duck (tofu skins), and homemade seitan with roasted cauliflower!

Jewish Life in Shanghai

Even with it being summer and many people being gone, we still had a few fun Kehilat Shanghai events! First, we had my final trivia night! I’ve been organizing or co-organizing Trivia for the past 3 years and it’s been so fun to write the challenging questions for all the participants! For the final trivia night at Tacolicious, I enlisted Emmet as well as my friends David and Sam (who had co-hosted the trivia nights with me when they were living in Shanghai), which made it extra special! Logan even had Chef Thijs make a special vegan Zrou taco for that week’s special (which was delicious)!

While I’m not sure I’ll organize my own trivia nights in Nottingham, I’ll definitely plan to participate in one!

Additionally, one of our community members, Lali Michaeli, did a poetry reading for her new book of poetry (written in Hebrew and translated into mandarin) at the Ohel Moishe synagogue. Even though I don’t understand Hebrew or Mandarin well enough to appreciate the poems, I did enjoy them when they were read and discussed in English. Plus, it’s always wonderful to be in the Ohel Moishe synagogue (part of the Jewish Refuge Museum).

Lastly, this past weekend, we had another community Shabbat. Thankfully, my friend Larry has taken them over, so they’ll keep happening even after I leave Shanghai! We’ll also have one more before I go! This week’s shabbat was lovely, it was so nice to gather together for communal prayer and then to see so many community members and get to hear what other people have been up to this summer! Plus, one of our community members, Michael, made an amazing 12 braid challah!

What I’m Reading and Watching

Even with the the travel this month, I did finish a few tv shows. First, I finished the 10th and final season of The Blacklist (on NBC). While the show hasn’t been as captivating for the last few seasons, I did enjoy the conclusion of the Raymond Reddington story. I also finished the 4th and final season of Jack Ryan (on Amazon Prime). While this season didn’t feel quite as possible (for the real world) as the previous season (which I preferred), I still enjoyed the suspense, action, and political intrigue centered on Jack Ryan and his adventures. If you’re looking for a good action show, I’d recommend it. I finished the first season of the Lazarus Project, which is a British science fiction show built around the concept that the British government has a secret machine that allows them to reset the time back 6 months in the event of a global emergency. Only certain people (who work for Project Lazarus) actually know that this is happening and the show does a great job of dealing with the troubling implications of reliving the same time period again and again and how through the butterfly effect minute things can change what you’ve experienced! Plus, the season ended on a cliffhanger, so I’m glad there’s a second season! I also finished the 2nd and latest season of B: the Beginning, an anime series that tells the story of Killer B, a vigilante serial killer, who has thrown the city into chaos. The show is a little tricky to explain, but I really enjoyed it and loved the animation!

I also read a few physical graphic novels that I got on my trip to the UK! I read Superman Birthright by Mark Waid and Leinil Francis Yu! This is a fantastic retelling and modernization of the Superman origin story. Mark Waid does an excellent job capturing Superman and I hope that it serves as part of the inspiration for the upcoming Superman: Legacy film from James Gunn! I also read The Mighty by Peter J, Tomasi and Keith Champagne, art by Peter Snejbjerg and Chris Samnee! This is an excellent series! It examines a superman like character, Alpha One, and the normal people who work with him and what happens when we learn that Alpha One’s motivations might not be really altruistic. This was a really interesting book and I’d definitely check it out. Lastly, I just Finished Catwoman: Selina’s Big Score by Ed Brubaker and Darwyn Cooke! Darwyn Cooke’s art is amazing and this was such a fine and timeless Catwoman heist book! It was really fun to see a Selina Kyle outside of the Catwoman costume and Gotham! I highly recommend it!

If you’ve gotten this far, you can tell that my last full month in China was incredibly full! So, thank you so much for reading! I hope that you enjoyed reading about and seeing the photos from my two amazing trips to Xi’an and Chengdu! As I write this, my time in China is winding down, as I fly out and move to Nottingham in just over 2 weeks. Emmet will come down from Beijing for my last few days and to help me pack up. I’m grateful we’ll get to spend the last few days together. So, my next post will be sent from Nottingham ! If you have any questions about anything that I shared from my trips or anything else about my time in Shanghai, please let me know!

In peace,

Jesse

Trivia

Before and After (fill in the blank), by me
1). Books of the Torah: Exodus — __ — Numbers
2). US Presidents: Grover Cleveland — __ — Grover Cleveland
3). Beatles Albums (by Release Date): Revolver (1966) — __ — The Beatles (White Album)
4). Summer Olympic Host Cities: Beijing — __ — Rio de Janeiro
5). English Kings: Aethelred (866-871) — __ — Edward 1 (the Elder) (899-924)
6). Harry Potter Books: The Goblet of Fire — __ — The Half-Blood Prince
7). Marvel Cinematic Movie Release Dates: Shang Chi and the Legend of the 10 Rings — __ — Spider-Man: No Way Home
8). Batman Live Action Actors: Adam West — __ — Val Kilmer
9). James Bond Actors: Timothy Dalton — __ — Daniel Craig
10). Eurovision Winners: Italy (2021) — __ — Sweden (2023)
Bonus: Name the song/artist

Answers: 1). Leviticus 2). Benjamin Harrison 3). Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band 4). London 5). Alfred the Great 6). The Order of the Phoenix 7). Eternals 8). Michael Keaton 9). Pierce Brosnan 10). Ukraine — Kalush Orchestra — Stefania

TV Finales by Emmet
1). žAlthough not a finale in the usual sense, the final episode of this long running syndicated game show that he hosted aired on January 8, 2021
2).žThis TV show’s finale is considered the most watched TV show episode of all time
3). žThis classic American TV show ended leaving the viewers wondering J.R. Ewing’s fate
4).žThese three major US TV streaming/premium TV shows all aired their series finales between May 26 and May 31, 2023
5). After a 9 year run on the CW, this TV show ended only to have a movie of the same name launch nearly a month later
6). After 207 episodes, the final episode of this show, episode 208, finally answered the titular question that the show asked
7). This TV show surprised fans when the finale ends by cutting the screen to black
8). The conclusion of this show saw Elizabeth and Phillip Jennings returning to Moscow, while their daughter Paige chooses to remain in the US
9). žThe show ends with the iconic 1971 “Hilltop” add for Coca-Cola
10). žThis show ended its four season run by seeing an architect become mortal and the main character finally finding peace so she is able to move on to a new place

Answers: 1). Jeopardy, Alex Trebek 2). M*A*S*H 3). Dallas 4). The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Ted Lasso, Succession 5). The Flash 6). How I met your Mother 7). The Sopranos 8). The Americans 9). Mad Men 10). The Good Place

This is the END by Emmet
1). žThis movie essentially wrapped up Marvel’s Phase 3 and to date is the final movie featuring the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes
2).ž žThis Orson Scott Card sci-fi novel presents a humankind fighting an insectoid alien species called “buggers”
3). žžWhen a touchdown is scored in football, the ball has entered this portion of the field
4).ž žThe major glands in this system in the human body are the thyroid, parathyroid, pituitary, pineal, testes/ovaries, and adrenal
5). The fifth and final operational space shuttle built by NASA
6). The most popular songs from this album by this band were “Boom Boom Pow” and “I Got a Feeling”
7). The final book in this children’s book series by Lemony Snicket, which featured alliterative titles, was aptly named “The End”
8). This leafy green vegetable fits the category
9). The wreck of this ship, which sunk in 1915, is a protected historic monument in Antarctica.  Bonus points if you can name the captain
10). žWhat do the Giant panda, South China Tiger, Golden Snub-Nosed Monkey, and Black Crested Gibbon All have in Common?

Answers: 1). Avengers Endgame 2). Ender’s Game 3). Endzone 4). The endocrine system 5). Endeavor 6). The E.N.D. The Black Eyed Peas 7). A Series of Unfortunate Events 8). Endive 9). Endurance, Shackleton 10). Endangered species found in China

Connections by me
1). žFDR’s speech where he said “Yesterday, December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy, …” is a reference to the attack on this location?
2).ž žThis typically green mineral is used in jewelry or for ornaments and is common throughout East Asia?
3). žžThis Japanese pitcher currently pitches for the San Diego Padres.  In 2022, he recorded his 3000 strikeout in MLB and joined Hideo Nomo as the only other pitcher to throw 3000 strikeouts in MLB with 1000 strikeouts in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball League
4).ž žFollowing the 2020 election, Donald Trump refused to give this type of speech, breaking a 124 year tradition.
5). žName this German born philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, and journalist who wrote  The German Ideology (criticizing Hegel),  The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, and Das Capital?
6). žIn the US, two famous examples of this kind of political outreach strategy are the Uncle Sam and Rosie the Riveter posters.
7). žName this Toyota car brand that is a line-up of full-size luxury cars and limousines, the flagship car within Japan.  This brand was introduced in 1967 to honor the 100th birthday of Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of Toyota Industries.
8). žThe last three CEOs of this company include Bob Chapek, Michael Eisner, and Bob Iger?
9). žName this football league, that is the top of the German system and consists of 18 teams?
10). What is the Connection?

Answers: 1). Pearl Harbor 2). Jade 3). Yu Darvish 4). Concession Speech 5). Karl Marx 6). Propaganda 7). Century 8). Disney 9). Bundesliga 10). Things in Shanghai (Pearl Tower, Jade Buddha Temple, Yu Gardens, French Concession, Karl Marx statue in Fuxing Park, Propaganda Poster Art Center, Century Park, Shanghai Disney, The Bund)

Hi Everyone! Welcome back to Astronomer in Shanghai! I hope that this latest update finds all of you having a safe, happy, and healthy start of your summer! Hopefully you’ve been able to enjoy the warmer weather! Here in Shanghai, we’re just starting plum rain season, where it’s hot, humid, and rainy almost every day for the next month (so not the greatest month for outdoor activities). That said, I still have some fun things to share with you all!

For those of you who recall my last post, I mentioned that in June, I would be traveling to the UK. This was my first time leaving China since my arrival in 2019! It was also the first time that I’ve seen my parents in person since October, 2019 (45 months), which is far longer than I ever anticipated. It was an absolutely wonderful trip to Nottingham and Bath! However, because I want this blog to focus on my time in Shanghai, I won’t go into quite as much detail about the trip, but I’ll still share some photos and highlights with you later on.

Astronomy in Shanghai

With my trip to the UK, which was basically the first extended vacation (longer than a weekend) I’ve taken since my trip to Harbin almost 2 years ago, this wasn’t quite as productive a month. I’m still continuing to make steady progress on my follow-up analysis of the Stellar Mass – Halo Mass relation of the Intracluster light (ICL) and it’s correlation with the magnitude gap. This is an amalgamation of two of my primary research areas, and to my delight, we’re finding promising results that I look forward to sharing! Additionally, I’ve also updated my analysis of the spectroscopic completeness of redMaPPer cluster members from DESI. Lastly, I’ve been continuing to work on looking at the impact of the magnitude gap on the weak lensing measurements, but am currently hitting a bug when trying to link the two sets of measurements in my MCMC code.

In addition to my own research, at the beginning of June, I did another DESI support observer shift! Thankfully the weather was pretty good this time! This is all done remotely, so it was rather pleasant to sit in front of my TV in the late morning/early afternoon and analyze the DESI data as it was observed! Scottie and Charlie also did a good job entertaining the other Astronomers (who were at the mountain) by continuing to climb on top of me while I was on the Zoom chat! You can see Scottie and Charlie trying to distract me from observing below!

Life in Shanghai

With preparing for the trip to the UK, I didn’t have quite as much free time this month. That said, I still made time to go to F45 pretty much every day. At this point in the summer it’s way too hot and humid for me to go running. I’m definitely looking forward to the much cooler, less humid, Nottingham climate.

The main highlight in Shanghai this month was a walking tour with Historic Shanghai! It’s been a while since I’ve gone on one of their tours (the tours are always fantastic, it’s just hard for me to always have time, or want to go out in the summer heat). This one focused on Huashan Rd. and the hidden gardens located there! My favorite part about Historic Shanghai tours is that Patrick and Tina do an amazing job of sharing the history and highlights of places I often walk by without even noticing. Whether it’s pointing out an Art Deco building, telling a story about a famous resident (though the residents aren’t always people I’ve heard of), or taking us down an alley that I wasn’t sure we could enter, it’s always a fun adventure on these walking tours!

Below are a ton of photos from the different buildings and hidden gardens. My two favorite things were the bridge in the middle of the pond (located in the Huashan hospital gardens) and the fence that turned into a dragon pointing toward a pagoda with a phoenix!

In addition to the gorgeous gardens, so many of which I had never seen before (and I didn’t know that any of them were there), I also saw some very cute cats that were not Scottie and Charlie! Most of these are my neighborhood cats and the F45 cats. I often bring them treats when I go to the gym in the morning.

Additionally, I also saw some cool things, including movie posters that I wanted to share (though the Flash poster was in the UK)!

Scottie and Charlie

This was not a very fun month for Scottie and Charlie. As you can probably guess neither was very happy to have me gone. Thankfully for the two weeks I was gone my friend Bec’s kids came over to clean their litter box, refill their automatic feeder, refill their water, and attempt to play with them. I say attempt because much to the kids disappointment, Scottie hid the entire time, first under the blanket and then on top of the kitchen cabinet, and Charlie was a little standoffish until the last day when he came out and said hello. Based on their behavior when I’ve had other pet sitters, this is what I expected. Though, hopefully they’ll get more adjusted to other people when I move. That said, they were both incredibly happy to have me home (they’ve basically been on top of or next to me the entire time I’ve been home), though immediately upon my arrival they were upset at me, meowing constantly for a while, especially Scottie.

In terms of the move, I found a friend to fly to Paris with me, so we’ll all be in the cabin together. Scottie and Charlie get their rabies booster in ~ 1 week, and then I just need to do all the paperwork for having them exit China.

Even with this being a difficult month, Scottie and Charlie continue to be absolutely adorable together!

They’re also incredibly adorable on their own or when finding new places to climb on, nap, or play!

Trip to the UK

On June 6th, ~45 months after my arrival in Shanghai (and rarely leaving Shanghai during that period), I finally left China. I haven’t been on a plane since my trip to Harbin, so it was a bit surreal to actually be in an airport and get on a plane. Flying into and out of China is always a bit stressful. While the lines weren’t nearly as long as they were in 2019, the process of going through customs and security in China is long, not just because of long lines, but because of all the checks that China requires (from your fingerprints, to your visa, to the health check — a formality at this point thankfully). Moreover, it’s not ever 100% clear what you need to take out of your bags. For example, in China, my phone chargers had to be taken out, but not in the UK. That said, the Shanghai airport was just as I remembered it, even down to the panda gift shop. Since I’ll be moving to the UK in August, I brought with me three 50lb suitcases (plus my carry-on and backpack), with about 2/3 of my stuff. So, hopefully I’ll only need another 2 suitcases for the next trip!

For these flights, I splurged for the Global World Travelers Plus Level on British Airways, so I got a comfortable seat with plenty of leg room for the 14 hour flight from Shanghai to the UK. Once I was actually on the plane and knowing that I would be leaving China, it certainly felt weird. For the better part of the last 3 years, I really didn’t think I would ever leave until departing China for good. Even though it’s so close to the end of my time in China, I think having the opportunity to leave China allowed me to reflect on what I’ve enjoyed in China while also recognizing some of the differences that await me in the UK (like using paper money, credit cards, or actually having conversations with strangers). Additionally, even though not everyone was wearing a mask on the plane or the airport, I definitely felt more comfortable wearing a mask on the plane (and the trains and subways).

After arriving in the London in the evening, I spent the night in a hotel and then met my Mom at St. Pancras Train Station to go up to Nottingham for the rest of the week! It was so wonderful to see my Mom in person again! We got to spend two days together in Nottingham (before she went back to Bath, where I joined her a few days later)!

I really enjoyed getting to explore Nottingham (my first visit)! By Shanghai standards, Nottingham is not large (~300,000 people). However, having not been in the UK in over 20 years, there was still so much to explore! Even visiting grocery stores (in Nottingham and Bath) was more fun (and there’s certainly a lot more vegan food!) That said, the highlight was spending the time with my Mom walking around downtown Nottingham and exploring different neighborhoods I’m thinking of living in, and even visiting a cat cafe (I was already missing Scottie and Charlie)! I really felt like I got a good sense of Nottingham!

One thing to note is that almost nobody wears masks in the UK (it was the same throughout the entire trip). While the rate of mask wearing has decreased in China, it was almost non-existent in the UK. So, I decided to wear masks on public transportation and in indoor areas where it was crowded (which seemed to work for me as I didn’t get sick).

During the rest of my time in Nottingham, I did other activities that helped show me what my life will be like! On Thursday night and Friday, I met my new research group, led by Prof. Nina Hatch! For those of you who don’t recall, I’ll be the Senior Research Associate within Prof. Hatch’s research group, working with Euclid, a European Space Telescope that launches in ~ 1 week, to study the intracluster light at high-redshift! It was great meeting the group and since we’ll all be working on ICL projects, feels like there will be great synergy! I really enjoyed discussing future projects and am excited to officially join at the beginning of September! Plus it was great getting to walk around the gorgeous campus!

On Saturday, I joined the Nottingham Liberal Synagogue for Shabbat morning services! For those of you unfamiliar, liberal Judaism is similar to Reform/Progressive Judaism, but believes that all practices and laws need to be modernized. Given the similarities, I felt very comfortable in the service! Plus, the community members I met were very friendly and I look forward to being an active part of the community once I move! Later that afternoon, I went to a vegan market! This was so reminiscent of the vegan markets that Emmet has enjoyed in Beijing! Since I didn’t have a refrigerator at my hotel, I couldn’t buy tons of food, but there were so many amazing baked goods and dishes! I look forward to going each month! Lastly, I even got to visit the Forbidden Planet comic book store in Nottingham!

So, in my short time in Nottingham, I got a sense of how four things that are very important to me (Astronomy, Judaism, veganism, and comics) will fit into my life in Nottingham. There is also an F45 in Nottingham, so I’ll definitely check it out once I move and the weather is perfect for running!

Following my trip to Nottingham, I went back to London, where I picked up Emmet, and then went to Bath, where we spent time with our parents, the first time together since 2019!

I had a wonderful time in Bath! For those of your who don’t know ~ 22 years ago when Emmet and I were in fourth grade, we spent ~ 6 weeks of the summer in Bath (my Mom taught a summer school course then, this time my Dad was teaching a course), so Bath is a special place for our family! After seeing my Mom in Nottingham, it was so wonderful to see my Dad in person and for the four of us to be together after far too long!

Aside from spending time together and enjoying each other’s company, some of the highlights include visiting the Roman Baths, going to the Herschel (Astronomy) Museum, visiting Cardiff (Wales), and many walks in nature! As an aside, I love that in both Nottingham and Bath, there is so much green space that is secluded from the city. While Shanghai has tons of parks, they all still feel like you’re in the city.

Here are some photos of Bath!

Some of the Roman Baths!

Some from the Herschel Museum (this is the house of Astronomers William and Caroline Herschel)! William improved telescope designs allowing him to resolve stars in Nebulae and discover Uranus, while Caroline discovered many comets and was the first paid woman scientist in England!

Some from Bristol (including a Banksy piece)!

Some photos from our visit to Cardiff in Wales!

And lastly from some of our trips to parks in Bath!

Another highlight was also getting to have my Mom and Dad try my strawberry (both white and regular) jam! After such a wonderful trip it was sad to depart the UK. However, I know I’ll get to see my parents soon (either at Thanksgiving, New Years, or both)!

Overall, the trip to the UK was fantastic! It was a wonderful family reunion. After not seeing my parents for almost 4 years, I’m so grateful that we could finally be together! The trip also gave me insight into what my life in Nottingham will be like for the next three years! I’m excited to move in August with Scottie and Charlie and look forward to more UK and European adventures!

After such a wonderful trip, the flight back was not quite as exciting (though I was anxious to get home to Scottie and Charlie)! On the way back, I was surprised by how few people were wearing masks on the plane (or in the Shanghai airport), though it was certainly nice during the second flight to have a row entirely to myself on the plane!

Food in Shanghai

Although not shown here, I had fantastic vegan food throughout my trip to the UK! It is so much easier to get vegan food (both at restaurants and at grocery stores)! Nottingham and Bath have many vegan restaurants, and vegan food is far more accessible, which is definitely something I’m looking forward to!

While I didn’t eat out much this month in Shanghai, I did enjoy the last Jiashan Market of the season (they’re not happening in the summer, so it’ll likely be my last Jiashan Market). I enjoyed vanilla gelato, a refreshing lychee drink, and vegan dumplings!

I also did some great cooking! making my own vegan duck (made of tofu skins). Kung Pao lentils, dan dan noodles, and a mushroom sandwich (made on my Mom’s homemade sourdough bread), jam squares, and a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie!

Additionally, Emmet and I made Chinese food for our parents! It was so fun to cook together with Emmet and to share some of our favorite recipes! We made tofu with mushrooms and baby corn, eggplant and green beans, potato with peppers, cumin mushrooms, and sword beans!

Jewish Life in Shanghai

With the school year wrapping up, and many Kehilat Shanghai members traveling for the summer (and a few moving out of Shanghai), things are starting to wind down for me on the Kehilat front. That said, we’ll still have smaller Shabbat’s throughout the summer! This past weekend, we had an end of the year/beginning of summer/farewell & thank you to Jesse Shabbat! It was so nice to be recognized for all of the hard work and leadership that I’ve provided the Kehilat community over the past four years. As many of you know this community has been so important to me throughout my Shanghai experience, providing so many friends and wonderful memories. I don’t think my time in Shanghai would have been nearly as enjoyable and comfortable without the community! So, it was wonderful to see so many friends (especially since some will be traveling for the summer)! Although, I’m glad we will still have a few more Shabbat gatherings for me to enjoy before I go!

What I’m Reading and Watching

Despite my travels, I still managed to finish reading a lot of things. Somewhat ironically, a few days before Cormac McCarthy passed away, I finished reading The Road, which was fantastic! Set in a post-Apocalyptic America, a father and his son travel the road in search of food, life, and hope. Though grim, it’s an excellent read. I also finished the fantastic manga series Haikyu!! This is a story about the Karasuno high school boys volleyball team and their two star players Hinata and Kageyama as they compete for the National Championship! Unlike US comics, manga often delves into slice of life comics and sports! This is an excellent example of that (and unlike other sports manga doesn’t devolve into a battle manga nearly as much)! It’s a great story of hard work and overcoming adversity! I’d definitely recommend this to any sports fans! Additionally, I finished the comic series (by reading the graphic novels) of Jack of Fables! Since this is part of the Fables series (that I’m still reading), I won’t spoil much beyond saying that this is the story of Jack of Tales (from the fables we all know) and his mishaps and adventures.

Prior to my UK trip, I also finished quite a few TV shows. First, I finished Ted Lasso season 3 on Apple TV, which was fantastic! I’ve loved every season of Ted Lasso. Maybe there’s something about the fact that I’ll be moving to the UK (unfortunately, Richmond is not a real team – I’ll definitely go to a few football matches, though – and maybe visit the real place, too), but I found that many of the life lessons throughout the show and this season really hit home for me. I loved how the dynamic between Roy and Jaime evolved from antagonists to best friends over the three seasons and I really enjoyed seeing how all the characters grew from Ted’s wisdom. While I hope there’s more, I’ll definitely rewatch it again! I also finished the 5th and final season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon Prime! Unlike season 4, which I was very disappointed in (outside the finale), I found this season to be much more enjoyable! While I didn’t like the time jumps (especially at first), I enjoyed getting to see where the creators wanted Midge’s life to go. I also loved seeing Midge finally get her big break and shine in a real spotlight in the finale! Next, I finished the fourth and final season of Titans on Max. This season follows the adventure of Nightwing (Dick Grayson), Starfire, Beastboy, Raven, Superboy, and Robin as they battle with Brother Blood! I’ve loved Titans from the beginning, the costumes are great, and the team dynamic works really well! As a huge Nightwing fan, I think that Brendon Thwaites has done a fantastic job capturing different aspects of Dick Grayson. I really enjoyed how they explored the Red with Beast Boy and also throughout the show exploring Dick’s identity as separate from Batman. I also finished watching the Jeopardy Masters tournament! Since Jeopardy isn’t on any streaming services, these tournaments are all I get to watch, so it was great fun watching James Holzhauer dominate again! Additionally, I finished the final season of The Flash on the CW. As a DC fan, I’ve watched all the Arrowverse shows, and it saddens me how mediocre they’ve become for the better part of the last five years. While The Flash started strong in its first few seasons, this season (like the last few) repeated so many themes and arcs that it hardly felt new or interesting. So, even though the final arc was better than the rest of the season, it still wasn’t great. Additionally, after my trip, I finished the final season of the anime Food Wars, which tells the fun (albeit sometimes ridiculous) adventures of culinary student Soma Yukihira and his friends and his quest to become a world class chef! While at times over the top, Food Wars is definitely fun and highlights all the different genres that anime and manga can encompass!

In addition to the TV, during my flights (they were 14 and 12 hours and I didn’t sleep much), I watched a lot of movies: Booksmart, Black Panther, Contact, Elvis, Ocean’s Eight, King Richard, A Man Called Otto, Zodiac, The Woman King, and Kimi. My favorites were A Man Called Otto (a fantastic performance by Tom Hanks), Contact (as an Astronomer, I’m not sure how I hadn’t seen this before), and King Richard!

Lastly, I just saw the new DC Comics movie, The Flash! I had wanted to see it with Emmet in Bath, but we didn’t have time. That said, I thought it was a fantastic and fun movie! It’s a great time travel adventure, with awesome superhero action, and a ton of heart! I loved the way that they showed the Flash run and move. Ezra Miller gave a fantastic performance as The Flash/Barry Allen and it was fun to see Michael Keaton return as Batman! I really enjoyed seeing it in an IMAX theater, too!

Thank you so much to all of you who’ve gotten this far. I hope that you enjoyed hearing about what I’ve been up to in Shanghai this month and seeing some of the highlights from my trip and family reunion in the UK! It certainly made for a memorable month and hopefully our next family reunion will be much sooner! This upcoming month, I’ll be starting to wrap up my time in Shanghai, but I’m planning a few short trips around China with Emmet as well! So, there will still be more fun things for me to share with you all! If you have any questions about anything that I shared or anything else about my time in Shanghai, please let me know!

In peace,

Jesse

Hi Everyone! Welcome back to Astronomer in Shanghai! I hope that this latest update finds all of you safe, happy, and healthy! I apologize for this post being a week late. Emmet and I were both at an Astronomy Conference near Huangshan last weekend, so I didn’t have time to write. Hopefully you are all already enjoying Spring (or the start of summer if you live in a climate like Shanghai)! For those of you working in academia, I hope that the end of the semester has gone or is going well for you, too!

As I mentioned in my last post, this Spring has been such a stark contrast to last year, where I was locked down, unable to do anything. Maybe it’s because of my upcoming move to Nottingham, but I’m really trying to make the most of my time in Shanghai (and China) and visit as many interesting places as possible and do some fun things! So, with that in mind, this was another busy month.

Visit to Beijing

About 4 weeks ago, I went up to Beijing for the weekend! Part of the reason I chose that weekend was because it allowed Emmet and me to celebrate our 32nd birthday together! Even though we’ve both been in China for the last 2 years, this was the first time we’ve been able to celebrate together since 2018, so it was very special (particularly given last year’s more challenging lockdown birthday celebrations)! As you’ll see below, I’m so glad that we were able to make some lasting China memories together! It’s been so wonderful getting to see Emmet every month for the last few months. We have a few more fun trips planned during my time in China, so I’ll definitely be taking the opportunity to see Emmet more frequently before I move to Nottingham! As you’ll see below, it’s been great to see Emmet in Beijing, meet some of his friends, and get a sense of what his life is like!

Friday in Beijing: Kehillat Beijing Shabbat and 798

On Friday morning, I took the train up from Shanghai to Beijing. Having done this before, the whole process is so easy (though definitely less exciting as I’d seen the scenery). It’s a high-speed train, so it only takes ~ 4.5 hours to reach Beijing. Emmet met me at the Train Station, after which we went to his apartment. After once again I was unable to successfully register with the police online (as both Emmet and I have mentioned, all foreigners have to register with the police within 24 hours of arrival in a city in China. If you stay at a hotel, they do that for you), so Emmet and I decided to go in person on Saturday. We then went to 798, the original Beijing art district that is housed in old converted factories. It’s near where Kehillat Beijing does their Shabbat services/dinners (hosted at Roberta and Ted’s home).

One of the biggest highlights for me was getting to see the giant mecha-panda sculpture in front of the metro station by 798. Emmet and I had gotten a little statue of this panda at XII in Shanghai, so I was very excited to see the statue in person!

After seeing the panda, we went into 798, which was very cool! Even though it was a little chilly, it was fun to walk around 798 and see the different art exhibits, shops, and galleries!

One of the exhibits that we went to was by artist Inoue Naoku, who worked as a background artist on many of Hayao Miyazaki’s films! As a huge Miyazaki fan, this was really cool to see and you could really see the influence in some of the my favorite Miyazaki films like Nausicaa, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Howl’s Moving Castle!

We also went to a few other really cool galleries!

One other really neat thing was that 798 featured these fully automated desert trucks. Basically, you scan a QR code, open the door and take a cake. Emmet and I had no clue what everything was, so we didn’t end up getting anything, but it was still really cool to see! Moreover, it even talked to us when we approached. Is this a sign of what’s to come at tourist/popular spots in the future?

After exploring 798, we went to Kehillat Beijing’s Friday Night Shabbat! Ever since Emmet arrived in Beijing I’ve wanted to join Kehillat Beijing for a Shabbat in person (partly to get to know some of the people who’ve been so kind to Emmet, but also because they have amazing and fun food). Even though Roberta and Ted were away, I was not disappointed. Students from Peking University had volunteered to make a fun Earth Day/Italian Themed Shabbat dinner! I loved the funny/pun-inspired names! Emmet even made a tasty quinoa and tofu dish! Emmet did a wonderful job leading the service! It was so much fun to sing together again in person! Plus, it was fun to meet Mimi and Honey, the puppies Emmet plays with every week!

Saturday: The Ancient Observatory and Vegan Market!

On Saturday morning, we began the day by walking by the Shichahai Lakes on our way to the police station to register. Thankfully this time, the process was much easier. Ironically, the same officer who had helped Emmet with his registration ~ 1.5 years earlier was there (she spoke English), so this time they registered me as a visitor for the weekend, not as a resident. While a frustrating process, it was certainly much smoother this time around!

After getting that taken care of, Emmet and I went to the Ancient Observatory, which is located on the outer walls (of the historical part of the Beijing) and near the heart of Beijing! Since Emmet and I are Astronomers, I knew we had to go see it! It dates back to the 1400s, which is really impressive! I will note that many of the larger instruments (that you’ll see at the end) are the originals. However, they haven’t always been in Beijing. The French and Germans actually stole some of the instruments (some were even put on display in Germany) during the Opium Wars. Thankfully all have been returned, though a few were sent to other locations around China (including Purple Mountain Observatory).

For those of you wondering, the Ancient observatory is quite different from modern observatories. While still Astronomy, the main purpose of the Observatory was measuring the positions of objects in the heavens precisely (for timekeeping), not Astronomical discovery, so the different instruments weren’t telescopes. Many of these instruments were brought by Jesuit Astronomers who visited China and then updated the equipment used by their Chinese counterparts (a theme that you’ll see repeated later in this entry). Each instrument (and replica) had amazingly ornate dragons surrounding it, which are really cool! However, they actually don’t serve a practical purpose.

My favorite part of the museum was that on top of the tower they had many of the different instruments! While they’re no longer set up for use, it was so cool to see them up close! Many of them were huge! Thanks to Emmet, I’m able to share with you what each instrument is and how it was used. For the most part, these were not instruments that I was familiar with! The instruments include an armilla, which was used to determine solar time; a quadrant, which can be used to estimate altitude and zenith; a celestial globe, which can be used to estimate the rising and setting times of celestial bodies; an ecliptic armilla, which is used to determine the ecliptic latitude and longitude (the ecliptic is the plane the planets orbit the sun in); an altazimuth, which is used to determine the azimuth of celestial bodies; an azimuth theolodite, which can be used to determine the azimuth and altitude of celestial bodies; a sextant, which is used to measure the angular distance between two points; and an equatorial armilla, which can be used to determine the true solar time and the right ascension and declination of celestial bodies (in Astronomy right ascension and declination are the equivalent of latitude and longitude in the plane of the sky)

Along with the amazing instruments, there were also some cool exhibits within the Ancient Observatory highlighting different discoveries and theories from Chinese Astronomers (like their lunar calendar and different ways of keeping time) as well as the role the Jesuit Astronomers played! While Emmet and I had learned a bit about Chinese Astronomy when we were at Brown and took a History of Astronomy Class (Astronomy before the Telescope), it was fun to learn more!

After our visit to the Ancient Observatory, Emmet and I went to the April Vegan Market! As many of you know from my comments on Emmet’s blog, I’m super jealous of the fact that Emmet is able to go to these amazing vegan markets and enjoy all of the fantastic food every month! So, I was thrilled that my visit coincided with a vegan market! And it certainly did not disappoint!

We enjoyed amazing vegan peanut butter cups, vegan goat cheese with vegetables, some amazing crepes (both savory — mushroom and caprese — and sweet — vegan nutella and nutella and banana), a vegan meatball dish, falafel, and an amazing vegan mac n’cheese (that was saved for dinner later)!

Having not had this kind of vegan food in almost 4 years, it was so much fun to enjoy so much amazing vegan food! Emmet is so lucky that he can enjoy this so frequently! Plus, it was nice to meet some of his friends in the vegan community! Along with the amazing food, there was also a raffle to support a local animal shelter and cute dogs visiting from that shelter. Emmet and I even won a few free food items from the raffle!

After such an amazing day, we ended the day by going for a walk around the Shichahai lakes near Emmet’s apartment! It’s hard to believe that in my visit just 10 weeks earlier, it was cold enough and the lakes were frozen enough that people (including us) could skate or slide across them! And of course, Emmet and I got the always delicious sugar glazed strawberries!

Sunday: A Hike on the “Wild” part of the Great Wall!

On Sunday, Emmet and I (along with Emmet’s friends Kevin and Pablo) went for a hike on the “Wild” part of the Great Wall! After almost 3.5 years in China, I finally got to experience the Great Wall!! As I’m sure you’ll be able to tell below, this was an amazing experience! It was probably one of the coolest things that I’ve ever done during my time in China and I certainly made lifelong China memories! The four of us, along with our guide, Dom, had a fantastic hike. Because we were a small group and all able to move both easily and quickly, we were able to move at a good pace and explore a lot of different parts of the Wall! For those of you unfamiliar with what I mean by the “Wild” wall, it’s important to remember that the Great Wall of China is thousands of miles long. There are certain parts that have been refurbished/restored and are used as tourist cites. These are what’s often shown when the Olympics have been in Beijing or in travel guides. In contrast, this portion of the Wall (all ~ 700+ years old) has not been restored. That said, you can still see just how amazing the Wall is! Another thing to remember is that the wall was built on the mountainous terrain, so parts of the wall slope steeply with the mountains. As a result, during our hike, often we were holding on to trees, branches, and rocks as well as a bit of sliding on our butts. Overall, it was an amazing experience and one I’ll remember for the rest of my life! I’m so glad that Emmet and I got to experience it together and use it as a way to celebrate our birthday!

To actually get up to the Great Wall, we had to hike for a bit from the road. Also, It’s amazing that after driving for 1.5 hours, we actually were still in Beijing! Below you can see the first part of the hike as well as parts of the wall that we saw on our drive in!

After the first part of our hike, we finally reached the first part of the Great Wall! Even though the first part we reached was not that wide, it was still amazing! You could feel the history around you. We then went to a small watchtower, followed by another watchtower on the other side!

After the first two watch towers, we trekked to an even further third watch tower. This time, we were slowly hiking up and down an incredibly steep and wide portion of the wall! It was somewhat terrifying because of how steep the wall was! I can’t imagine how people would ride horses up and down this portion of the wall!

After exploring so much of the Wall, we then headed back (still along the wall), but now a bit more downhill.

Since this is the last (and really only) birthday that Emmet and I were able to celebrate together in China, I’m so glad that we were able to be together and make some lasting memories during our birthday weekend! The hike was certainly amazing! In total, we climbed over 100 flights of stairs during the hike! Even though we only went a few miles, it was exhausting, but 100% worth it! If you’re in Beijing for an extended period of time, I’d definitely recommend getting out and exploring some of the “Wild” portions of the wall as it’s amazing to see how even after 700 years so much of the original (untouched) wall is still in impressive shape!

Monday & Tuesday: Our Birthday, Exploring Tsinghua, and The Olympic Park!

Monday, April 24th, Emmet and I turned 32! We started the day (actually the day before) with a wonderful call with our Aunt Pam and then on our birthday with our parents! After Emmet and I exchanged some small presents, we went up to Tsinghua’s campus for the day (Emmet and I both needed to do a bit of work). This is the first time that I’ve been on another Chinese University’s campus (I’ve been to NYU Shanghai, but it’s campus is very different from other Chinese Universities). Unfortunately, actually getting onto campus proved a bit tricky. Emmet had confirmed with one of the faculty that I was registered to be able to enter campus on Monday and Tuesday (I gave a talk on Tuesday). However, it didn’t work on Monday. Thankfully, a kind student was able to help me register on the spot. It’s certainly frustrating that it remains so difficult for foreigners to enter campus. Hopefully as China continues to open up, many of these restrictions are lessened.

During the afternoon, we met up with Emmet’s friend Miriam, who also works at Tsinghua. Miriam taught a great virtual Chinese class that Emmet and I took when Emmet arrived! So, it was really nice to actually meet her in person! Emmet showed me around a lot of the different parts of the campus, which is both large and gorgeous! First you have the more traditional parts of the campus. By traditional, I mean things that look like college campuses in the US (though there were really nice flower gardens as well)!

We could even see the observatory! Though Emmet hasn’t actually been able to enter it.

There’s also a traditional garden part of the campus! This area, along with the flower gardens and waterways are so different from what I’ve seen at US universities. Some of these aesthetics (waterways, trees, flowers) exist at SJTU, but the traditional garden reminded me more of the Yu Gardens! I can see why Emmet’s taken a lot of photos in this part of campus!

After spending the day at Tsinghua, we returned to Emmet’s apartment to go to our birthday dinner (all the food pictures will be at the end). On our way home, we stopped to see the Olympic Park, where a lot of the competitions for the 2008 Summer Olympics and 2022 Winter Olympics occurred! Below you can see the iconic Bird’s Nest, which hosted the Opening and Closing ceremonies! You can also see the Water/Ice Cube, which was used for swimming and skating! These are such iconic Olympic sites, that along with the giant snowflake from the 2022 opening ceremony and the always cute Bing Dwen Dwen, it was so cool to see!

Even though we only walked through it, I’m glad that I got to see it (as back in 2022, I was really hoping to go up to Beijing with friends to go to some of the games)! That said, it’s clear from the way that this location is setup, that Beijing certainly expects to host the Olympics again in the future.

After the Olympic Park, we enjoyed a fantastic vegan dinner at Ye Bo Zhai, a vegetarian Chinese restaurant near the Lama Temple (see photos later). However, no birthday is complete without a birthday cake! Emmet and I made a delicious strawberry cake with vegan icing and topped with vegan dolce du leche that Emmet had gotten from the vegan market! It was a tasty way to cap off our 32nd birthday!

Before heading back to Shanghai on Tuesday, Emmet and I went into Tsinghua again because Emmet set up a talk for me! While I was somewhat disappointed that both of the faculty who I am friends/collaborators with at Tsinghua were out of town, there was still a fantastic turnout. I got to present on both my research on the ICL and on the conditional luminosity function and Prof. Cheng Li asked a ton of great questions!

After my talk, Emmet and I had a great lunch at a vegan restaurant near Tsinghua, then I was off to the train station (this time, with plenty of time to spare)!

Now before wrapping up my trip to Beijing, I of course had to share photos of Goldie! While I terribly missed Scottie and Charlie, it was very nice coming home to Emmet’s cat Goldie each day! She was very friendly and really enjoyed sitting next to me! Emmet is so lucky to have her to keep him company!

I also wanted to share some other photos of all of the cool things that I saw in Beijing!

As you have likely seen throughout this entry so far, I had a fantastic birthday weekend in Beijing! Since I don’t know when Emmet and I will next live in the same country and be able to easily celebrate our birthday together, I’m so glad we had the opportunity to do so this year! This was likely my last long trip to Beijing before I move. I’m glad I was able to check off both the Forbidden City (previous trip) and the Great Wall! Truly this trip provided Emmet and me with some amazing China memories!

Lastly, just some thoughts on Beijing vs. Shanghai. Unlike my last trip, this time, we saw more of downtown Beijing, with large modern looking buildings, which were more reminiscent of Shanghai. However, I think the largest difference is the way that in Beijing the old is interspersed with the new in terms of architecture. Shanghai is super-modern, whereas Beijing has many ancient sites. Shanghai also has a more international vibe, whereas Beijing feels more Chinese (Western stores and food stand out a bit more). That said, both cities are fun places to visit!

Astronomy in Shanghai

Despite this being a very busy month (as you’ll see more of below), I still am working hard at getting as much Astronomy research done as possible. At long last, my paper on the conditional luminosity function was submitted to Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS)! Hopefully, I’ll get a positive referee report in the coming weeks. Regardless, it’s great to finally have that paper submitted!

In terms of my other projects, I’ve been spending a bunch of time on Project Low-z, the COBRA X redMaPPer project that Emmet and I are working on. I’ve done a lot of the cross-correlating of the COBRA radio catalogues to redMaPPer so we now have a lot of our statistics measured for how these radio sources occupy clusters of different masses. Hopefully, Emmet and I can get this project done this summer! I’ve also spent a lot of time updating my analysis on the fraction of cluster members observed by DESI using the new Year 1: Iron data release! Lastly, I’m starting a follow-up to my previous paper on the ICL to look at the correlation between the ICL and the magnitude gap to see if we can learn more about the hierarchical assembly of these massive galaxies!

Visiting NYU Shanghai

This past month, I also had the opportunity to visit NYU: Shanghai and give a guest lecture again! It was the same class as last time, though the version this semester was aimed at students who plan to major in the sciences (English for Academic Purposes: Foundation of Sciences – Gaze into Space)! I had the opportunity to present my research on brightest central galaxies, their evolution, the intracluster light, and galaxy populations! While not all the students asked questions, those that did asked some very specific questions (about Astronomy/Cosmology in general) on topics ranging from the nature of dark matter to the idea of parallel universes! I’m certainly hoping to do a bit more guest lecturing/outreach while I’m in Nottingham, so this was a great opportunity!

Plus, I got to visit NYU: Shanghai’s new campus!

Outside of my own research and guest lecture, this was a rather Astronomy focused month! Earlier in May, my Ph.D. supervisor, Prof. Chris Miller visited Shanghai (and SJTU) again! I was able to set up a colloquium for him and it was great to hear about what he’s been working on for the last few years! It’s always fun to discuss new research ideas with Chris and it was fun chatting with Chris and Ying together!

Tianma Radio Telescope and the Shanghai Astronomical Museum

The day before Chris’s talk at SJTU, Chris had the opportunity to visit the 65m Tianma radio telescope outside of Shanghai and he invited me and one of his former undergraduate students (who’s from Shanghai) to join! The Tianma telescope is part of the VLBI, radio telescope array! I didn’t even realize there was a huge radio telescope near Shanghai (in Sheshan)! As you can see below, it’s humongous! Even though I don’t do radio Astronomy, it was still cool to see! Plus, even though it’s so big, it’s steerable!

After visiting the Tianma telescope, we went to the nearby Shanghai Astronomical Museum in Mount Sheshan, home to the Zi-Ka-Wei Observatory! I had heard about the Observatory and Astronomical museum a few years ago (my friends Heather and Shimi had asked me about it a few years ago when it was closed and they saw it while hiking in Sheshan), so it was exciting to get to visit! While Sheshan is not really a mountain, it is higher than most of the elevation in Shanghai!

Although the Observatory is no longer operational, it was exciting to see the different kinds of telescopes that were used (both a traditional refractor and a meridian telescope, which is used to accurately map the positions of stars). Interestingly, the museum was entirely in French and Mandarin. Thankfully my high school French knowledge allowed me to still understand most of the exhibits. Much like the Ancient Observatory in Beijing, a lot of the key advancements and observations made here were done by Jesuit Astronomers who had come to China in the early 20th century.

Above you can see some of the images observed by the telescope, little bits of history associated with the Observatory, as well as the large refracting telescope. Even though it’s no longer used, it was really cool to see and I’m so glad I had the opportunity (especially since Sheshan is ~ 20 miles outside of downtown Shanghai).

The 25th Chinese Astronomical Society Guoshoujing Symposium on Galaxies and Cosmology in Huanghshan

This past weekend, Emmet and I (along with other members of both of our research groups) attended a conference near Huangshan. While it was somewhat disappointing that we didn’t actually get to see Huangshan (Yellow Mountain), it was still a good opportunity to present our research. Even though we didn’t get to go to the mountain, on Friday afternoon, we explored the Old Town, which was still cool to see!

One highlight of the Old Town was the amazing dried fruit! Emmet and I got pineapple, orange, and peaches! Since the food options weren’t great at the conference, Emmet and I were thrilled to have some tasty dried fruit we could snack on!

One really cool thing, was that Emmet and I were able to get traditional Chinese stamps made! Ideally, you use your names, but since we don’t have Chinese names, Emmet had one made that says truth, and I had one made that says Golden. Below, you can see the craftsperson carving the words!

The conference venue was a very fancy, and weirdly Italian inspired hotel.

Now to the actual conference. The conference began on Friday with registration. One highlight was that a few of our friends were there (Paulo, a former Tsinghua postdoc, and Hui, who is know a professor at Tsinghau, but did his Ph.D. with me at Michigan)! Additionally, my Ph.D. supervisor Chris was there, so it was great for Emmet and I to chat with Chris some more about Project Low-z and some follow-ups as well as having him get to hear our research! On Saturday morning, Chris gave a great talk about using machine learning to study galaxy evolution, my Zu group member, Qi’an presented on his research on bar galaxies, and Emmet gave an excellent talk on his research on galaxy morphology in protoclusters. Then on Sunday, Hui presented on his research on simulating the baryon cycle in galaxies and I presented my research on the Conditional Luminosity Function!

The primary challenge of the conference was because this was a local meeting (not targeted for an international audience), not all the talks were in English. While all the slides and posters were in English it was rather challenging to learn anything when I couldn’t follow along with what was actually being said.

Below you can see some photos from my talk, Emmet’s talk, as well as those from our friends/colleagues!

One other highlight was that I won an award for my presentation! I was surprised and thrilled to win an award for Best Oral Presentation!

After the conference, Emmet and I took the trains back to Shanghai and Beijing respectively (it was only a 3 hour train ride for me). Plus, as we left, we could see the silhouette of Huangshan, which was sadly as close to the mountain as we got.

Life in Shanghai

As you can likely tell, this was a very busy month, with two trips as well as a lot of Astronomy work. However, I did make some time for some fun activities (outside of Astronomy)! As my time in Shanghai is winding down, I wanted to make sure that I spent some time seeing my friends!

Early in May, I got to see my friend (and fellow KS board member) John before he left China (his husband, Alex, left after Passover). It was great fun to get to see John one last time before he moves. John and Alex have been such great friends the last 2-3 years in Shanghai (from holiday celebrations, to birthday parties, to Shabbats, and Trivia), so I’ll greatly miss getting to see them. Wishing them the best of luck in Fiji!

Later in May, I caught up with my friends Heather and Shimi (and their cute infant daughter) for a lovely lunch at a new Turkish restaurant (see the food section for the photos). They had been traveling in April, so it was so much fun to catch up with them and here about how their travels went! Plus their daughter is absolutely adorable!

As it’s starting to heat up in Shanghai, I haven’t gotten to go for too many runs. However, one of the things that I’ve wanted to do is run from my apartment to the Bund! I’ve done shorter runs ending at the bund, but this weekend, I did an 8.5 mile run from my apartment. This is probably the longest run I’ve done in Shanghai! While it was exhausting it was great to see my old neighborhood in Xintiandi, run by the Yu Gardens, and then end with the iconic Shanghai skyline before heading back! While it’ll likely be too hot (most days are reaching the 90s now) to do too many more runs in Shanghai, I’m glad I got to do this one!

Additionally, right by the Yu Gardens, there was this amazing street art exhibit of cat art! It was a mixture of fun cat cartoons and paintings of people’s actual cats! I love going through it (though I did just stop and walk through it)!

The F45 Playoffs!

As many of you know, I’ve been going to the F45 gym in Shanghai (Xuhui studio) for the last 2 years (thanks to my friends Hannah Maia and Sydney for convincing me to join)! It’s been a great way for me to get stronger and to stay in shape during the summer (when it’s way too hot to run). I’ve also made friends there! So, this month, I took part in the F45 playoffs! The playoffs are basically a 10 minute fitness competition where you do 10 different activities for 45 seconds, followed by 15 seconds of rest, while moving to the next station. The 10 exercises are the rower, bench hops, suspension trainer push-ups and knee tucks, lateral cone hops, box jump burpees, chin-ups, barbell squat press (30kg), medicine ball russian twist (9kg), deadball drop over shoulder (25kg), and hurdle hop sprint. As you probably suspect, this was super exhausting! But I was really proud that I was able to do it!

Across these 10 exercises, I did 221 meters on the rower, 58 bench hops, 17 suspension trainer push-ups and knee tucks, 65 cone lateral hops, 9 box jump burpees, 2 chin-ups, 11 barbell squat presses, 49 medicine ball russian twists, 10 deadball drop over shoulders, and 8 hurdle hop sprints. Now, a lot of this likely doesn’t mean much to you, but thanks to the Nike photographer and my friend from F45, Indira, I have a bunch of photos and videos to show you just what it was!

First a few photos from before I ran!

And now some photos from my actual run!

And now some videos of my run!

Doing suspension trainer and knee tuck push-ups.

Doing lateral cone hops.

Doing box jump burpees.

Doing barbell squat presses.

And doing medicine ball russian twists.

And lastly a few photos from after my run!

Overall, I got a score of 447, which for my first time, I was thrilled with (the winning men’s score was 700+)! Even though it was rather exhausting, I hope that when I’m in Nottingham I have the opportunity to compete again (there is an X11 in Nottingham)! Plus, special thanks to my friend John (who ran at the same time as me) and my friend/trainer Daniel for pushing me while scoring me in the run! Plus, I need to thank my fellow 7:15 workout buddies (Leigh, Matteo, and Indira) as well as our regular trainers Veronika and Anas for pushing me to work and train harder every day I go to F45!

Also, since I spent a lot of time walking around Shanghai this month, there were also so many cool images to share! A bunch of these are from just walking around Shanghai at night! Even after 4 years in Shanghai, I love the way the city is lit up at night!

Plus it’s so nice to enjoy walking around Shanghai and seeing all of the beautiful flowers!

While Scottie and Charlie are my favorite cats and absolutely adorable, there were also a lot of other cute cats that I saw this month, including some in Huangshan.

And as usual, there were a ton of cool anime and comics related things that I saw this month! A bunch of these were at an awesome anime store in 798 (in Beijing), then a Japanese bookstore, and some are from Uniqlo where there was a new Dragon Ball Z collection!

As I’ve said before, I love how I can see so many of the anime/manga series that I love whenever I wander around Shanghai or Beijing!

Scottie & Charlie

This was a bit of a stressful month for Scottie and Charlie. Mostly, because neither of them really enjoys when I travel. Thankfully some of my friends from F45 were able to check in on them while I was gone (and clean the litter). Charlie was at least interested and said hello, but Scottie hid (one time under the covers). Hopefully, over time, they’ll adjust to liking other people.

I’m in the process of finalizing all of the details for our move (as moving to the UK with pets adds some complications, namely that I can’t fly into the UK directly, and will instead fly to France). Also, I’m sure they will be confused/upset when I go away in June for two weeks.

That said, they still remain incredibly loving and sweet companions and are always so happy when I come home! As usual, they’re so cute when they’re cuddling, snuggling, and playing with one another!

And they’re also cute when by themselves!

They also both continue to enjoy different high perches! So, clearly there’s no places that Scottie and Charlie can’t get to in my apartment!

Food in Shanghai

With the trip up to Beijing, I had so many fantastic meals this month! Plus, I definitely want to enjoy the Chinese vegetarian food as much as possible the next few months. 🙂

After I visited NYU Shanghai, I got tea with the professor who hosted me. We went to a Japanese coffee shop (inside the Japanese bookstore) and enjoyed two fantastic deserts, the first is a yuzu cake and the second is a chocolate cake!

After our hike on the “Wild” part of the Great Wall, Emmet, Pablo, Kevin and I went for a fantastic dinner at Blossom, one of Emmet’s favorite Buddhist vegetarian restaurants. We enjoyed traditional pear soup (warm pear juice – almost a smoothie), cumin roasted mushroom skewers, kaofu, sweet veggie ribs, broad beans, kung pao mushrooms, braised bamboo, curry tofu, and three kingdoms spicy hot pot! I think the mushroom skewers, bamboo, and curry tofu were my favorites!

To celebrate our birthday, Emmet and I went for a festive meal at Ye Bo Zhai (Thank you to Mom and Dad for treating us)! We enjoyed traditional sour plum juice, fried mushrooms, bamboo/mushroom/carrot rolls, Beijing style eggplant, spicy mushrooms and peppers, tofu with matsutake mushrooms, and spicy seitan with bamboo. While it was definitely a bit too much food, given that Emmet and I won’t be celebrating a birthday together in China again, we wanted to take the opportunity to indulge. I think my favorites were the eggplant, spicy mushrooms with peppers, and spicy seitan with bamboo!

Just prior to leaving Beijing, Emmet, Pablo, and I went to Tianchun MiaoXiang, the vegetarian restaurant that is located right next to Tsinghua’s campus! We enjoyed Coconunt milk with mango and sago (tapioca balls), chestnuts and taro balls, flame tofu, fried lotus root, tofu skin rolls filled with mushrooms, vegetarian eel (tofu), and cauliflower! It was another fantastic meal and I can see why Emmet and his friends go there regularly! My favorites were the chestnuts and taro balls and all the tofu dishes!

Early in May, at John’s farewell party, I enjoyed some delicious buffalo cauliflower! While not Chinese in the slightest, I haven’t enjoyed buffalo cauliflower that I haven’t made in quite a few years, so it was a treat to get to eat something I used to enjoy in the US!

Additionally, during the May Day Holiday (International workers day), I got lunch at Godly with one of my friends. We enjoyed the fried vegetarian duck (tofu skin), tofu knots with vegetarian pork (seitan), stir fried broad beans, and cauliflower. Afterwards we tried another vegan cafe (Fortunate Vegan Cafe) and enjoyed a delicious blueberry cheesecake! While I love the tofu knots, the vegetarian duck is probably my favorite!

During this past month, I enjoyed dumplings twice. The first are from the Jiashan market and filled with mushrooms (and proved to be a great treat after the F45 playoffs). I also steamed dumplings (filled with tofu and greens) that I got from Godly!

As you can see by all the different types of Chinese food that I enjoyed, I love how diverse and different each restaurant is. Even though many of the restaurants are Buddhist vegetarian restaurants and some have similar menus, it’s always fun to try new dishes!

While I often highlight all the amazing vegan/vegetarian food. I do want to note that it can be challenging to get this kind of food in China, particularly outside of large cities. While Emmet and I were at the conference, it was particularly challenging. While breakfast was pretty good (there were baozi, steamed corn, yams, and pumpkin, salad, and cereal), lunch was often rice or bao buns with steamed corn and bok choy. Not exactly a balanced meal. Emmet and I supplemented this with pb&j sandwiches, but it still made the conference meals less enjoyable.

As previously mentioned, I had a fantastic turkish meal with my friends Heather and Shimi! We enjoyed Turksh bagels, hummus, Mediterranean salsa, bulgur, roasted peppers, pickles, eggplant, grape leaves, and I got a fruit punch! While I haven’t had much Turkish food before, I thought this was excellent!

Lastly, as it’s started to get quite warm, I enjoyed two frozen treats! The first is an Oatly ice cream bar (you can get it at most convenience stores). Oatly is insanely popular in China. The second is an interesting green pea flavored ice cream I got on Mount Sheshan. I’ll note that I thought it was lime when I grabbed it. I also enjoyed a refreshing waxberry juice while in Huangshan!

Even though I ate a ton of delicious meals, I still did some cooking, too! I enjoyed vegan brownie cookies, black bean and quinoa tex mex burgers, homemade seitan with roasted vegetables, and two different tofu and vegetable stir-fries!

Jewish Life in Shanghai

This past month, we had our first Kehilat Shanghai Community Shabbat since John and Alex left. As such, we had to test out a new location (using the WeWork space), which worked out quite well! While I didn’t take any photos, I’m thrilled that we have new community members (Community Shabbat regulars) who have stepped up to help organize community shabbat so that it can continue to happen monthly going forward!

We also had two more Trivia nights (the penultimate one). While the attendance is starting to get smaller as many of the regulars have moved or are traveling more frequently for work, it still was great fun to get to do it! I’ve included my questions at the end!

What I’m Reading and Watching

This month, I finished two books. The first being The Best Sports Writing of 2019, edited by Charlie Pierce (who Emmet, my Dad, and I all loved on the radio show/podcast Only a Game)! While I had read some of the stories years ago it amazes me how timeless a great sports story can be and also reiterates how important long-form journalism is, particularly in sports where things often seem to be dominated by talking heads and podcasts! The second book that I finished was Peony: A Novel of China, by Pearl Buck. I have rather conflicting thoughts on this book. While the historical setting of the book (set in the 1800s in Kaifeng as the Jewish community is starting to fully assimilate into the Chinese community) was interesting. I couldn’t help by feel that many of the characters were portrayed in somewhat stereotypical ways. Moreover, it felt like each character (in particular Peony, David, and Madame Ezra) were dominated entirely by their own selfishness (in terms of who David should marry and for what reasons). This made it hard to read at times because the primary characters were often unlikeable. Overall, the historical setting of the book was rather interesting and the Kaifeng Jewish community remains something that I still know very little about, which makes it interesting, but perhaps I would enjoy an actual history book on the topic as opposed to a romance novel.

In terms of TV, this month, I finished watching the 2nd season of Perry Mason on Max (formerly HBOMax), which I thought was fantastic! Matthew Rhys, Juliet Rylance, and Chris Chalk, provide excellent performances and create characters with far more nuance and depth than we see in many modern law shows. I love the approach that this show takes with a single case for the entire season. Plus, the way that Los Angeles is treated, very much as a seedy underbelly almost makes the city a character in the show. I hope that there’s a third season as I’d love to see more in this world! Speaking of Los Angeles, I finished the 14th and final season of NCIS: Los Angeles. It’s somewhat the end of an era, as Emmet and I have been watching it since college. While it’s nothing amazing, it’s always fun and enjoyable, even if it often does over glorify the military and guns. I also finished Hello Tomorrow on Apple TV, something of a dark comedy re-imagining a future where it would be possible for people to live on the moon. The series follows Billy Crudup who plays a business man/con-man whose convinced people to move to the Bright Side despite their being no homes on the moon. It’s overall a very interesting series, but not heartwarming or fun like other Apple TV shows such as Ted Lasso or Shrinking. I also finished Extrapolations on Apple TV as well. This is a show which imagines what will happen to the world if climate change gets out of hand and how we can try and fail to overcome it. The show is fascinating. As someone who is very worried about climate change (and skeptical that big businesses can or will help), this show did an excellent job of imagining my worst fears for the future. Even though it’s not always fun, it was so interesting to see how the future may end up and the long term ramifications of our continued inaction. I also finished watching Season 6 of My Hero Academia, which was fantastic! My Hero Academia is one of my favorite manga/anime series and this season was non-stop action from the start! If you’re a fan of the superhero genre I would definitely check it out! Lastly, I also finished watching the mid-2000s anime Air Gear, which builds on the hype of roller blades and invents air tracks, which are motorized roller blades allowing riders to fly through the air. While a bit cheese-cakey at times, it was a fun series. For those of you wondering, I have 1 more episode of Mrs. Maisel and Ted Lasso, so I will comment on those next time.

If you’ve gotten this far, thank you for reading. I know this was another rather long update, and comes a week later, but as you can see it was a very busy month! Next month, should be a little quieter as I’m going to the UK for two weeks. My parents will be in Bath, and Emmet is also joining, so we’ll have our first family reunion in almost 4 years!! I’ll share a few highlights from that, but not as many details, since the focus of this blog is about my time in Shanghai. If you have any questions about anything that I shared or anything else related to life in Shanghai, please reach out and let me know!

In peace,
Jesse

Trivia

April

Round 1: April Showers (Weather and Precipitation)

1).žName this type of menacing looking cloud that is multilevel and known to produce thunder and lightning storms?
2). žIn the Bible, how long did it rain when G-d Flooded the earth (in the Noah story)
3). žSan Antonio de Ureca on the island of Bioko, a city in this country located on the top of the equator receives the most rainfall in the year, averaging 418 inches per year
4). žThese two weather storms that occur every year only differ depending on the location.  If it’s in the North Atlantic, central/eastern North Pacific it’s this.  If it’s in the Northwestern Pacific (East Asia) it’s called this.  
5). žAomori, a city in this country, located at an elevation of 5000 ft, gets an average of 312 inches of snow per year making it the snowiest city in the world
6). žIt’s raining cats and dogs is this type of expression in English?
7). žIn the northern hemisphere, does a cyclone rotate clockwise or counterclockwise?
8). žName these 4 main types of clouds?
9). žName this type of precipitation that consists of small balls or lumps of solid rain.  It typically lasts 15 minutes but can damage buildings, vehicles, and crops.
10). žIn the Passover Story, this type of weather phenomenon occurred, which ultimately led Jacob and his sons to migrate to Egypt (because Joseph had foreseen this in his vision and prepared for it)

Answers: 1). Cumulonimbus 2). 40 days and 40 nights 3). Equitorial Guinea 4). Hurricane and Typhoon 5). Japan 6). Idiom 7). Counterclockwise 8). Cirrus, cumulus, stratus, nimbus 9). Hail 10). Drought

Round 2: Why on this Night do we Eat … (Emmet wrote this one)

1).žThe Feast of Seven Fishes is a popular Italian-American way to celebrate this holiday
2). žBecause the Muslim calendar has no intercalation (no leap months), the length of fasting required by this holiday fluctuates depending on the time of the year
3). žAlthough most Jews associate a Seder with Passover, we also celebrate a Seder for Tu B’shvat.  What are the three types of fruits and nuts served
4). žIn China, people celebrate Tomb Sweeping day by eating delicious green Qing Tian cakes.  The green cake gets its color from this.
5). In Japan, the Hanami Celebration, which celebrates the appearance of this, includes making onigiri, miso, and Sakura mochi
6). This cake, which is eaten during Mardi Gras, is known for the prize hidden inside
7). In Thailand, Tesagan Gin Jay is a holiday celebrated during the 9^th month of the Lunar calendar and is observed by partaking in a 10 day festival where people follow this type of diet
8). Turkeys are the primary main course eaten during Thanksgiving.  How many turkeys does the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign estimate Americans eat during Thanksgiving? (within 10 million)
9). žThese sticky rice dumplings are enjoyed on Dragon Boat Festival in China 
10). žAlthough most American Jews only fast on Yom Kippur, Orthodox Judaism has how many fasting holidays?

Answers 1). Christmas 2). Ramadan 3). Fruits & nuts with a hard (inedible) exterior and a soft interior; Fruits & nuts with a soft exterior and a hard inside bit;; Fruits that are eaten whole 4). Mugwort 5). Cherry Blossoms 6). King Cake 7). Vegetarian 8). 46 million 9). Zongzi 10). 6, Fast of Gedilah, Yom Kippur, Asarah B’Tevet, Fast of Esther, Shivah Asar B’Tammuz, Tisha B’Av

Round 3: Passover

1). In the Passover story, who rescues baby Moses from the Nile and also names him?
2). žName the 10 plagues (for 5 points)
3). žIn the song song at the end of the Seder, Chad Gad ye, how much is the goat purchased for?
4). žWhat are the ingredients used in the Hillel sandwich?
5). Moses is appointed to lead the Israelites out of Egypt when he encounters G-d in the form of this plant?
6). žWhich prophet is invited in to join the Seder after the festive meal?
7). žWhat is the vegetarian alternative for a shankbone on the Seder plate?
8). When the Israelites are wandering for 40 years in the desert, what food item is provided by G-d?
9). žWho is Miriam, who has her own cup of water on the Seder plate?
10). žName the Four Sons who ask questions about Passover (2 points)

Answers: 1). Pharaoh’s daughter 2). blood, frogs, lice, wild animals, pestilence, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, death of the firstborn 3). 2 zuzim 4). Matzah, maror, charoset 5). Burning bush 6). Elijah 7). Mushroom or Beet 8). Mana 9). Moses’s sister 10). The wise son, the wicked son, the simple son, the son who doesn’t know how to ask

Round 4: April Fools (the Wonderful world of Jewish Comedians) (Emmet wrote this)

1). žThis comedian, who’s returned to the zeitgeist thanks to The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, tragically died at age 40 in 1966
2). žThis ground-breaking female comedian (who was known for her role on the Fashion Police in the 2000s) is the inspiration for Midge Maisel
3). žAlthough he’s best known for his work on Curb Your Enthusiasm and playing Bernie Sanders on SNL, Larry David is also the co-creator of this iconic sitcom that premiered in 1989. 
4). žThis modern day political commentator/comedian who’s won multiple Emmy and Grammy awards actually has Chinese roots!  His grandfather was an Ashkenazi Jew born in Manzhouli (which is now part of inner Mongolia)
5). Best known for movies like Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, and Spaceballs, Mel Brooks recently returned to television by writing and producing this sequel (to a previous work of his)
6). Well, you must have seen this one coming.  While my brother and I were often referred to as the Marx brothers as children, these are the stage names of the five Marx brothers
7). Other than Bob Hope, this comedian has hosted the Oscars more than anyone else
8). Best known for his shrill New York accent, he was the voice of Iago the parrot in Aladdin
9). žThis original “nutty professor” teamed with Dean Martin early in his career and later mastered the art of telethons raising money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association 
10). žOf the original “The Not Ready for Prime Time Players” on Saturday Night Live, these are the only ones who fit the category

Answers: 1). Lenny Bruce 2). Joan Rivers 3). Seinfeld 4). Jon Stewart 5). History of the World, Part II 6). Chico, Harpo, Groucho, Gummo, Zeppo 7). Billy Crystal 8). Gilbert Goffried 9). Jerry Lewis 10). Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman

Round 5: Connections

1). žName this pickled relish dish that is used to preserve summer vegetables and is a staple of Southern American cuisine
2). Name this savory popover-like dish made from eggs, milk, and flour that originated in a town in England.
3). žName this song by Paul Simon, where the titular character is a poor boy whose story is seldom told.
4). žCharles Darwin’s voyage to the Americas to study the finches and evolution occurred on this ship.
5). Name this actress who was recently nominated for an Academy Award and is known for her roles in the Black Panther franchise (what she was nominated for), Malcolm X, Mission Impossible Fallout, and What’s Love got to do with it.
6). žEach year on Patriot’s Day, this sporting event in the US is run (it happened yesterday).
7). žThis classic Italian sauce for pasta is made with ground meat, a soffrito of onions, carrots, and celery, tomato and milk
8).  In 1971, this women’s college merged with Brown University
9). žArmando Christian Perez is the birth name of this Cuban-American rapper and singer known for songs including “I know you want me,” “Give me Everything,” “Feel this Moment.” And “We are One”
10). What is the Connection?

Answers: 1). Chowchow 2). Yorkshire Pudding 3). The Boxer 4). The Beagle 5). Angela Bassett 6). The Boston Marathon 7). Bolognese 8). Pembroke 9). Pitt Bull 10). Dogs

May Trivia

Round 1: Mayhem (Famous Crashes)

1). žAuto Racing Legend, Dale Earnhardt Sr, died in a horrific car crash at this motor speed way?
2). The largest airplane crash occurred in 1977 when two Boeing 747’s collided on the runway in this airport located in the Canary Islands?
3). žIn 1987, the largest single day decline (or crash) in the Dow Jones Industrial Average occurred and has since been renamed this?
4). žIn this 1988 film about minor league baseball, Kevin Costner stars as “Crash” Davis, a veteran catcher brought in to teach “Nuke” Laloosh how to prepare for the big leagues.
5). In 2022, this lost vessel of Edmund Shackleton, which collided with sea ice in 1915 was found at the bottom of the Weddel Sea in Antarctica
6). žThe largest shipwreck in history (during peacetime) occurred in 1987 in this country when the Dona Paz passenger ferry collided with the oil tanker MT Vector.
7). žThis beloved British royal died following a car crash in 1997, at just 36 years old.
8). This video game series/character that is exclusive to PlayStation has had many games and spinoffs (including racing).  Most games are set on the Wumpa Ilsands south of Australia, and all star this genetically enhanced animal?  The next installment of the game __ Team Rumble will be released in June.
9). žThe sinking of this British passenger ship by German U-Boats in 1915 is often credited as one of the reasons that the US chose to enter WWI
10). žSomewhat ironically, this star of the Fast and Furious Franchise died in a car accident caused by the car reaching speeds greater than 93 mph

Answers: 1). Daytona 2). Tenerife 3). Black Monday 4). Bull Durham 5). Endurance 6). Phillipines 7). Princess Diana 8). Crash Bandicoot 9). Lusitania 10). Paul Walker

Round 2: MAYonnaise: Condiments from Around the World (Emmet wrote)

1). žBring on the spice!  This chili paste is a staple of North African cuisine
2). žAlthough not thought of as a condiment in the US, this condiment is a staple of fish & chips in the UK
3). žBe careful when you’re eating this condiment.  Its potent flavor can really blow your palette if you’re not careful when adding it to your sushi (or peas)!
4). žOne of my favorites, this savory pepper and walnut spread hails originally from Syria
5). This King of American condiments has a long mytho-history, which includes claims that the name comes from Cantonese
6). Another spicy Chili paste, this is an essential part of Bibimbap and other Korean dishes (and no, we’re not talking about kimchi!)
7). A staple of Sichuan cuisine, this oil is an essential part of the topping in DanDan noodles (and again, bring on the heat!)
8). A key ingredient in both Hummus and Babaganouch, this Israeli condiment is known for its nutty flavor
9). žAlso called “rooster sauce”, this Thai condiment is a staple of hipster diners everywhere
10). žThis classic Italian relish is a mixture of pickled vegetables and usually served on antipasto platters

Answers: 1). Harissa 2). Malt vinegar 3). wasabi 4). Muhammara 5). Ketchup 6). Gochujang 7). Chili Oil 8). Tahini 9). Sriracha 10). Giardiniera (or sottaceti)

Round 3: Famous Beards — All photos, so I can’t include it

Round 4: The Fab Five (Emmet wrote it)

1). žThe “Fab Five” was the moniker of this college basketball team in the 1990s featuring Jalen Rose and Chris Webber
2). žAlthough Pete Best was technically the 5^th person to be in the Beatles (well, 4^th really, Ringo replaced him), these two men are often referred to as the 5^th Beatle
3). žThese are the 5 books of Moses
4). žThe classic Take 5 bar from Hershey includes these 5 key ingredients
5). There have been two incarnations of this police tv show.  The first starred Jack Lord as Steve McGarret, while in the remake, Steve McGarrett was played by Alex O’Laughlin
6). Although this band, known for songs like “Superman (It’s Not Easy)” and “100 Years” fits the category, all of the music is played and sung by one man, John Ondrasik
7). These are the five pillars of Islam (English is fine)
8). Xi Jinping’s current 5 year plan for China is what number five year plan for the PRC?
9). ž5 Centimeters per Second is an anime film by this modern master of anime movies
10). This team of DC comics villains is known for fighting the Teen Titans and features villains including Dr. Light, Jinx, Mammoth, Shimmar, Gizmo, and Psimon

Answers: 1). the University of Michigan Men’s basketball team 2). Brian Epstein, George Martin 3). Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy 4). Chocolate, Peanuts, Peanut Butter, Caramel, Pretzels 5). Hawaii Five-0 6). Five for Fighting 7). Declaration of Faith, Prayer, Almsgiving, Fasting, Pilgrimage 8). 14th (it ends in 2025). 9). Makoto Shinkai 10). The Fearsome Five

Round 5: Connections

1). žWhat is the name that Wolverine (the comic book character) is called when not in costume?
2). This royal from Monaco provided the world a fairy tale story when he married Hollywood Actress Grace Kelley in 1956?
3). žIn the Knives Out franchises, Daniel Craig plays this character, the greatest detective in the world?
4). žIn Chess, this action is the only time two pieces can move at once?
5). In Greek Mythology, this titan is condemned to hold up the heavens/sky?
6). žIn British English, this phrase means to begin the consideration of a process, in American English, it has the opposite meaning and instead means to put aside a topic for consideration for a later date
7). žThis song by Coldplay has been described by Chris Martin as being about devotion or unrequited love.  It begins with the lines “Look at the stars, Look how they shine for you,…”
8). This American professional boxer held the world heavyweight title from 1952 to 1956 and was the only heavyweight champion to have finished his career undefeated.
9). žThis type of apple was a cross between Red Delicious and Old Virigina Ralls Janet apples and was cultivated at the Tohoko Research Station near Aomori, Japan?
10). What is the Connection?

Answers: 1). Logan 2). Prince Rainier III 3). Benoit Blanc 4). Castle 5). Atlas 6). To Table 7). Yellow 8). Rocky Marciano 9). Fuji Apples 10). Mountains

Hi Everyone! Welcome back to Astronomer in Shanghai! I hope that this latest entry finds all of you doing well, staying safe and healthy, and hopefully enjoying the start of spring! For those of you who celebrate, I hope that you either had a wonderful Passover, a nice Easter, or a happy Ramadan.

When I wrote to you all last April, it was early on in what became one of the most challenging experiences of my life. A little over 1 year ago (April 1, 2022 on the Puxi side), Shanghai began it’s 5 day lockdown that lasted for 2 months. In mid-March of 2022, the COVID case numbers in Shanghai began increasing and COVID testing became mandatory, with neighborhoods locking down for a single positive case. So, the lockdown wasn’t the start of the troubles. SJTU locked down its campus for almost 3 months (thankfully I wasn’t there) starting in March. Given that I’m now able to experience April for the first time since 2021, it’s hard not to reflect on just how challenging the lockdown was. I was fortunate that my compound had almost no cases (none in my building), that I never got sick, that I had enough food to eat (and was given more than I needed by the Xuhui government), that I was able to get vegan food (vegetarian meatballs and tofu thanks to my neighbors), and that I was even able to get Matzah (thanks to the Israeli consulate and Chabad). However, the same can’t be said for many of my friends and colleagues and for the majority of people living in the poorer, less affluent parts of Shanghai. Despite my good fortune, the situation was incredible stressful, depressing, and isolating. While I have many friends in Shanghai, everyone was so stressed and dealing with these challenges that often times, days would go by without hearing from anyone outside of my family (though there were a few Kehilat friends who checked in on me every week or so). Going outside, even to take out the trash or for a PCR test became nerve-wracking. I was wearing jackets, pants, gloves, multiple masks even when it was hot and I’d have to wait outside to be tested. Most days, the lone highlight (outside of talking with Emmet, my parents, or other friends) was the morning F45 classes that I did on Zoom with Scottie and Charlie watching. Those classes, because of the situation at SJTU, were the only regularity I had in my life. So, it’s hard for me not to look at everything I’ve been able to do this month with that in mind. With that said, I remain grateful for all the messages of support I got from so many of you. It really helped me get through the whole ordeal. I’m grateful that the strict policies ended in December. While the lockdown was certainly miserable, I wanted to note it because of how China is attempting to rewrite the narrative of 2023 and the lockdowns, almost erasing them from having happened. Those lockdowns had a huge impact on my time in Shanghai, both in terms of my day-to-day life, and also because it led many of my friends to leave Shanghai earlier than planned.

Emmet’s Visit to Shanghai

After reflecting on last year, I want to focus on how much better my life is this year than one year ago! I’ll begin by sharing the highlights of Emmet’s recent visit to Shanghai! Emmet last visited in August of 2021 when he arrived in China (and spent ~ 4 weeks in Shanghai, 2 in quarantine), so it was great to have him come visit again and get to meet Scottie and Charlie! For those of you who are long-time readers, you’ll recognize a lot of the places I took Emmet. While not new for me, most of these places (including the temples and gardens) were places I hadn’t visited in 2 or even 3 years, so it was great to go back!

Friday

Emmet arrived in Shanghai on Friday and I picked him up at the train station. When we arrived back at my apartment, I was very curious how Scottie and Charlie would react. Thankfully, it wasn’t too extreme. Charlie hid for a little bit, but pretty quickly came out to say hi and warmed up to Emmet by the end of the day. Scottie was a bit more standoffish, though thankfully he began to sniff around Emmet and his things.

As Emmet and I have mentioned, upon arrival in another city, foreigners are required to register with the police (within 24 hours). When you stay at a hotel, this is done for you. However, since Emmet was staying with me, we had to use the online system. Thankfully, we were able to get the system to work (though there was some issue with getting the photo done correctly and with selecting my address). Afterwards, we relaxed and enjoyed a delicious delivery lunch from Duli!

Friday was more low key. Even with the rainy weather, we visited the Jing’an Temple. The Jing’an Temple is one of the coolest temples in Shanghai, partly because it’s quite lavish, but also because it’s in the heart of Jing’an district in downtown Shanghai. It creates an interesting juxtaposition of the traditional and ultra-modern (there’s stores built into the outside of the temple), though the temple itself is not old, rebuilt in the 1980s and renovated in ~2010, it has been in that location since the 1200s.

As you can see, the gold trim that highlights the temple makes it feel very ornate! As Emmet pointed out, it’s interesting how this temple (rebuilt in the 1980s) features so much wood as opposed to the stone temples in Beijing. There are also many magnificent Buddha statues in the temple. However, because the Jing’an Temple along with the others we visited are active temples, I chose not to take photos of the actual Buddhas or of people praying. That said, the Jing’an Temple does feature a very magnificent 6.2m Buddha! Another fun thing to do at temples is to throw coins into these large pots. Like throwing a coin into a fountain, you add a wish of luck when you do it!

After going to the Jing’an Temple, we went to our monthly Kehilat Shanghai community Shabbat, hosted by my friends John and Alex! Sadly, this was the last Shabbat that they’ll be hosting as they’ll be moving this month. I greatly enjoyed the opportunity to introduce Emmet to many of my friends within the Kehilat community! A lot of them have heard so much about Emmet or seen him on Zoom, so it was nice to have him meet them in person!

The Kehilat Community’s been such an important part of my time in Shanghai, so I’m glad that Emmet got to join us! I look forward to joining Emmet’s Kehillat community in Beijing this month!

Saturday

On Saturday, we began the day by visiting the Longhua Temple. Unlike the Jing’an Temple, which is very compact, with a large multi-floored complex, the Longhua Temple is much more spread out and longer. The distinguishing part of the Longhua Temple is its amazing 40m Pagoda that you can see as you approach the temple! The original Temple dates back to 200 CE, but the current design (as a result of reconstruction) follows the architectural style of the Song Dynasty (~1000 CE), though most of the buildings were rebuilt in the 1880s. Additionally, unlike the Jing’an Temple, the Longhua Temple grounds are filled with many beautiful trees, including some gorgeous cherry blossoms!

Though you can’t exactly tell, the Longhua Temple is a set up as a series of different prayer halls to different Buddhas (along with smaller prayer halls on the sides). So, it’s really interesting to walk the entire grounds and see how the size and depiction of the deities changes. Having not seen the temple since 2019, I loved seeing the amazing pagoda again, but this time with Emmet and cherry blossoms in bloom! It was also neat that so many of the Lunar New Year’s lanterns were still up!

Right before Passover was the Qingming (Tomb Sweeping) Festival, a festival where you honor your ancestors. Traditionally, at Qingming, people eat Qing tuan, a green mugwort dumpling filled with red bean paste. They were selling them at the temple (which also sells other vegan foods), so Emmet and I bought some to try (they’re the green dumpling below).

Next to the Longhua Temple is the Longhua Gardens, which house the Longhua Martyr’s Cemetery that commemorates martyrs who were killed by the Kuomintang in the 1920s for being communists. The primary way that this is conveyed is through the statues on the grounds. Interestingly, many of the statues have a Greco-Roman aesthetic to them. Even with spring just starting, the grounds are beautiful, especially the lovely bamboo gardens.

Right near the Longhua Gardens, we saw a Toyota Prius! As some of you know Emmet and I (and both of our parents) all used to drive Toyota Prius’s (our Mom still does, our Dad now drives a Nissan Leaf). Though I’ve seen lots of other Toyota cars in Shanghai, I hadn’t seen a Prius since moving to Shanghai! Electric cars are incredibly popular (there’s a Tesla factory outside of Shanghai)! While I don’t need to drive here (or want to), It’s exciting just how much of the car/bus infrastructure is electrified.

Following our visit to the Longhua Temple and Gardens, Emmet and I walked back to downtown Xuhui. One of my favorite parts of walking around in the spring is that there’s so many flowers! On our way back to the area closer to where I live, we walked by Xujiahui park (where I often run) so I could show Emmet the gorgeous flowers there!

Although Emmet wasn’t able to go visit the SJTU campus (it’s unclear how unofficial guests can be brought on to campus), we did get to walk by the downtown SJTU campus near Xujiahui! Even though I don’t work at that campus (and haven’t actually been inside since the lockdown), it was nice to show Emmet part of the campus.

We then walked around the absolutely gorgeous Former French Concession and went to lunch at Godly, one of my favorite vegetarian restaurants in Shanghai, which happens to be over 100 years old. The Former French Concession (which extends from the SJTU campus to near where I live) is one of my favorite parts of Shanghai! From the French plane trees that line every street to the gorgeous architecture (you’ll see a lot more photos), it’s one of my favorite places to walk or run (when it’s not too crowded)!

While in the FFC, we saw these humongous (and very well behaved) dogs! There were at least 30 people petting and photographing them! Following lunch at Godly (more on food at the end), Emmet and I did a bit of shopping at a bunch of different stores, mostly looking at some of the cool anime/manga statues and toys! While we’ve definitely slowed down in what we’ve purchased (we can’t buy everything that looks cool, we only have so much space in our suitcases), it is always fun to go to the different stores, whether it be X11, Popmart, or Uniqlo and see what they have! I’ll share some of the anime highlights from this month at the end.

Afterwards, we went and saw Shazam: Fury of the Gods at the IAPM mall! Emmet and I are huge DC Comics fans. Prior to moving to China, we saw all of the DC movies together. So, this was actually the first one we’ld seen together since the first Shazam movie in 2019. This was only the 2nd movie I’ve seen in theaters while in China. The first was Wonder Woman 1984 in December of 2020 (at that time, there was no fear of COVID in Shanghai). If you recall, I never got to see The Batman in theaters, because it opened in China just as Shanghai was entering the lockdown. One interesting thing was that there were no previews, the movie just starts. I’m not sure if this is because it’s a foreign movie or if previews just aren’t a thing here.

I loved Shazam: Fury of the Gods! Just like in the first one, Zachary Levi and the rest of the cast do an excellent job at portraying what it’s like for Billy Batson and his foster family to gain super powers. It was great fun to see Shazam battle Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu along with a slew of mythical monsters! The fight scenes and the effects were fantastic! While, I think I still preferred the first film, it’s still a lot of fun and definitely a movie everyone can enjoy! Though maybe my favorite part was getting to see it with Emmet!

After such a full day, we spent the evening hanging out in my apartment with Scottie and Charlie! As you can see, Charlie fully embraced Emmet as a member of the family (i.e., someone he can climb on or cuddle with) and Scottie was starting to warm up to Emmet!

Sunday

On Sunday, we began the day by going to the Shanghai Jewish Refugee Museum! Given that this museum is as close as I can get to finding a little personal history in Shanghai (though to the best of my knowledge none of my family escaped through Shanghai), it’s probably unsurprising that I’ve been here many times. That said, despite some of the more propaganda aspects that are weaved into the narrative of the museum (mostly towards the end), it’s still an excellent museum. So, I was glad that Emmet had the opportunity to visit! While I’m not sharing a ton of photos, you can see more in past entries or on Emmet’s blog.

The first part of the museum is my favorite, it tells the story of the Jews who escaped persecution from the Nazis and fled to Shanghai. It also interweaves some of the history of the Jewish families (namely the Sassoons and Khadouri’s) who came to Shanghai for business in the late 19th century. That earlier history, which is not the emphasis of the museum, is something I am fascinated by. I’ve gotten to learn about it through talks with Historic Shanghai. There’s also the excellent book, The Last Kings of Shanghai, which I look forward to reading. Part of the reason I like the first part of the museum the most is that it uses personal narratives, through items, pictures, and testimonies shared by people who lived or grew up in Shanghai. While some of it is repetitive, you get the sense of how difficult it was to live in Shanghai. In the 1920s, Shanghai was a small port town, not the gleaming metropolis of today. While the area of the Former French Concession was nice and affluent, much of the Jews lived in the Hongkou area (and were ultimately forced to live there when it became a Jewish ghetto), which was smaller and less developed. Below, you can see some of the Judaica and personal objects/pictures that caught my eye.

The second part of the museum, which I didn’t include photos from tells the story of the Holocaust. Since it’s unclear to me what history of WWII is taught in schools, this is important to include to contextualize why this museum exists in the first place. Weirdly, this is juxtaposed with an exhibit of Jews who assisted the communist party, which feels out of place. The last part of the museum, which you can see are tablets with the names of people who came through Shanghai. So, if you or someone you know has family who escaped through Shanghai, let me know and I’d be happy to look them up!

Unfortunately, the Ohel Moishe synagogue (probably my favorite part of the museum, since the inside is still set up to look and feel like the synagogue it was when it was built) was closed when we went. Hopefully, Emmet and I will get to visit again!

After the Shanghai Jewish Refugee Museum, we went to the nearby Xiahai Temple. This is a much smaller, local Buddhist temple. However, it was still really neat to see! Unlike the other temples, this was originally a temple to the sea gods and later turned into a Buddhist temple. My favorite parts were the dragon statues as well the distinctive yellow coloring!

After our visit to the Xiahai temple, we went back to downtown Shanghai for a fantastic lunch at Vegetarian Lifestyle (also known as Jujube)! After our delicious lunch, we went to the nearby Jing’an sculpture gardens! This is one of my favorite places in Shanghai (especially in the springtime)! My friend Shimi took me there in 2020 to see and photograph the tulips. However, in 2021, I went too late and many of the tulips were already dying. Of course, I missed out on all springtime related activities in 2022, so I was so glad that I could enjoy it with Emmet this year! For those of you wondering, the sculptures are there year round, but the tulips are only there for ~ 1 month.

As you can see, the tulips, along with the sculptures are absolutely amazing! My favorites are the Bulls and the Ostriches! You can see that this was one of the areas that we went to that was incredibly popular and it’s obvious why! One of the other really cool parts is that there’s also a more traditional Asian garden. There was even a neat student art exhibit set up in that area!

After going to the Jing’an sculpture gardens, we went on an extended walk to People’s square and then to Fuxing park (for those longtime readers, that’s the area where I lived during my first year in Shanghai)! I hadn’t been back in a while, so it was fun to see that area, especially in full spring bloom! While Emmet had seen some of those places during his first visit, it was nice to share all of the different places that were an active part of my time in Shanghai with him!

Afterwards, we did some shopping in Tianzifang, somewhat of a shopping and artist area near the French concession! We were able to get some cool statues and some gorgeous scarves! I’ll definitely be back to pick up a few more gifts before I leave!

On our way home, we even stopped by F45 so that Emmet could see where I work out most mornings and meet the friendly cats! After such a long day, it was so nice to spend some time in the evening relaxing with Scottie and Charlie! Plus, as you can see, by Monday morning, Scottie had completely warmed up to Emmet and even sat on his lap!

It was such a fun visit! I’m so glad that Emmet was able to come visit Shanghai again! It was so much easier without all of the COVID restrictions that were in place during Emmet’s last visit! I’ll be visiting Emmet next week (we’ll get to celebrate our birthday together!!). It’s so nice that we’re able to see each other every month!

The one thing we need to get better at is arriving to the train station early. We definitely cut it closer than desired. Emmet arrived at the 8:00am train at 7:55 and was the last person allowed to board. Thankfully he made it, marking a fantastic end to a wonderful weekend together!

Astronomy in Shanghai

With all that happened this month, you may think that I’m not spending that much time on research. However, even with the new and exciting position in Nottingham, I’m still devoting the vast majority of my time to Astronomy research. This month, I officially signed my contract to join the University of Nottingham in September! There’s still a lot of visa paperwork I’m working through, but things are definitely moving in the right direction.

Even though things are dragging a little with finalizing the luminosity function paper, I’ve already started some follow-up analyses looking at the impact of larger radial apertures and the magnitude gap on galaxy populations within clusters. We have some interesting, though modest findings so far, but there’s definitely more for me to investigate.

I’ve probably spent the most time working on Project Low-z, my project with Emmet! It’s definitely fun to work together and since we’ve both been working on cluster science for a long time now, feels great to collaborate! We have some very promising results updating the low-z COBRA clusters to newer SDSS data and also cross-correlating the catalog with SDSS redMaPPer! Moreover, we have some interesting findings related to the mass distribution of bent radio sources vs other radio sources. The goal is to get this analysis drafted and written up this summer so that we can submit it before I move!

I’ve also been working on some follow-up ICL analyses, looking at the ICL in the entire redMaPPer cluster sample. Mostly I’m looking to determine whether there’s any correlation between the ICL and the magnitude gap to determine whether both processes result from central galaxy hierarchical growth. This is something that I aim to continue to do throughout my postdoc at Nottingham, so it’s great to get some of this started with my DES collaborators and friends Yuanyuan and Ricardo!

Zu Group Retreat at Zhujiajiao

This past weekend, the Zu Group did a research group retreat and mini-conference (a series of presentations) at Zhujiajiao (a water town that’s on the outskirts of Shanghai)! Due to the food difficulties (vegan + the last day of Passover) I only spent Friday there, but it was a great opportunity to both explore Zhujiajiao and also present my work and hear what many of the graduate students have been working on!

After the presentations and group lunch, I spent the afternoon with some of my colleagues exploring Zhujiajiao! It was really cool to see the water town, full of bridges and canals. Though the shopping was a bit similar to a lot of different tourist places I’ve been. One unique highlight was the pungent scent of stinky tofu that permeated Zhujiajiao. While I generally love tofu, I still can’t get over the smell of stinky tofu (the smell did not make me want to eat it).

We also went to an interesting nearby park that had cool statues of famous people (writers, artists, and scientists)! Here are some of my favorites!

My Ph.D. Supervisor, Chris Miller, visits Shanghai!

Additionally, my Ph.D. supervisor Chris Miller is currently visiting China (he has a colleague at USTC in Hefei). Chris came and visited Shanghai last weekend and it was wonderful to be reunited and to catch up and talk about research, my experience in Shanghai, Michigan, and my new position at Nottingham! Other than Emmet, Chris is the only person that I know who’s visited China since my arrival, so it was really nice to show him around the Former French Concession!

Chris will be in China for the next month, so we’re planning another visit so he can give a talk at SJTU (Plus he’ll be at the conference Emmet and I are going to in Huangshan next month)! It’ll be nice to get to see him again in person before he leaves! For those of you interested, it is possible to get visas to China; however, flights still remain rather expensive and PCR testing is required to enter China.

Life in Shanghai

As I said in my last blog post, I’m trying to make the most of my last few months in Shanghai, so as you can already tell, I’m doing a bit more (making sure to see and experience as much of this city as possible). That said, I’m still making time for going to F45 or going running! Unfortunately the air quality hasn’t been great for the last couple weeks, so it’s been more of F45 than running. That said, I am definitely getting stronger and it’s a lot of fun to work out at F45 (which has a Nottingham branch)!

Outside of Emmet’s visit, here are a few other highlights I wanted to share with all of you!

Anime Exhibit

As many of you know, Emmet and I are huge anime fans! So, when I saw that a nearby art gallery was doing an exhibit of anime animation cells (the drawings and cutouts that are used to make anime), I jumped at the opportunity to go! They had art from a lot of series I’ve enjoyed including Dragon Ball Z, Once Piece, Naruto, Slam Dunk, and Astro Boy! They also had pieces from Sailor Moon, Detective Conan, other works by Osamu Tezuka, and multiple Miyazaki films.

Being a fan of both comics and manga, it’s a lot of fun to see the process of how anime used to be made! So, I’m glad I had the chance to see it!

Jade Buddha Temple

On my way home from the anime exhibit, I went to the Jade Buddha Temple! I hadn’t been here in ~ 3 years. It was just as stunning as I remembered. However, the biggest shock was that I realized that the last time I visited, I hadn’t actually seen the Jade Buddha! I was so glad I decided to come by and visit! As you can see, this temple is something of a combination of the Jing’an Temple and the Longhua Temple. It’s in the middle of the city (surrounded by skyscrapers), but is set up in a similar manner to the Longhua Temple, such that there are many prayer halls with progressively larger Buddhas. Interestingly, the Jade Buddha is in the back, offset from the rest of the temple, which explains why I missed it last time. This temple was built in the 1880s when two jade Buddhas were brought to Shanghai from Myanmar. I had seen the smaller reclining Buddha (there’s also a larger marble reclining Buddha next to it), but this time I got to see the sitting Jade Buddha as well!

As you can see, the architecture and the grounds are pristine! I’m so glad I was able to visit it again and this time see the Jade Buddha!

The Yuyuan Flower Festival

This month, Yuyuan (the Yu Gardens) hosted a Flower Festival to celebrate Spring! As many of you may remember, I love the Yu Gardens! They’re one of my favorite places in Shanghai! The flower festival was a mixture of the lantern festival style decorations with flowers along with a temple fair, with traditional vendors! It made for a great afternoon on a beautiful day! Plus it was fun seeing some of the Lantern Festival lanterns again!

As you can tell by so many of the photos I’ve shared in this update, one of my favorite parts of Shanghai in the spring is all of the lovely flowers! Whether it’s walking or running by the nearby Xujiahui Park or just walking around the city, I love how vibrant and full of life Shanghai feels in the spring. After not getting to experience it last year, I’m so glad that I did this year!

There are also so many other interesting things to see just walking around. From interesting statues, to advertisements, to street art, you never know what you’ll see! While some of these are things I’ve seen before, it’s nice that so much of the city is recognizable to me!

As usual, there were also a ton of cool anime and manga things that I saw! Some of these were at toy stores while shopping with Emmet, but it’s still really neat to see some of my favorite characters in regular stores instead of just part of a subculture.

There were also these really cool Pokemon sculptures at one of the Malls in Xintiandi!

Although Charlie and Scottie are my favorite cats, there are a lot of street cats in Shanghai. It’s almost impossible to walk somewhere without seeing a cat. While many of them are looked after (in particular the ones who live in residential neighborhoods or the F45 cats), some are more feral. Many are friendly, so I sometimes try to carry cat treats with me when I walk. I’m glad so many of them are looked after.

Scottie and Charlie

As you’ve already seen, this was a fun month for Scottie and Charlie! They got to meet Emmet! Thankfully, Scottie and Charlie (Charlie in particular) have warmed up a lot to guests. While they’re still somewhat startled when people knock on my door, they are now much more friendly with my Ayi and when I have had friends over! That said, I’m so grateful that I had them last year during the lockdown. They provided so much love and comfort then and they continue to be such wonderful companions!

As you can see they continue to be incredibly adorable together!

They are so photogenic when they’re sleeping or just hanging out!

Charlie also reached the shelves in my bathroom for the first time! While Scottie can jump up unassisted, Charlie had to jump from my back to get there. While Scottie is bigger, Charlie is definitely a bit more curious and I was glad he finally got up there! That said, Scottie was not thrilled and came up to shove him out.

Food in Shanghai

Since this month I had Emmet’s visit and Chris’s visit, I had a lot of really delicious meals!

First, We enjoyed a delicious delivery meal from Duli! We had the Gangbao pizza with tofu, a dumpling soup, and chickpea-cauliflower baozi! The boazi are one of my favorite dishes!

We then had a delicious meal at Godly, the 100 year old vegetarian restaurant! We enjoyed kaofu (spongy seitan), fried vegetarian duck (tofu skins), fried mushrooms, sword beans, tofu hot pot, and a stir fry with seitan and vegetables. The seitan in the stirfry was super soft and unlike the texture I normally eat! I think the seitan and vegetarian duck were my favorites!

Next we enjoyed a fantastic meal at Vegetarian Lifestyle (Jujube)! We enjoyed pear juice, sword beans (one of my favorite dishes to eat and cook), fried mushroom skewers, vegetarian chicken (seitan) with a spicy sauce, braised tofu (that melts in your mouth), a stew of vegetarian fish (tofu) and pickles, and lions mane mushroom baozi! The baozi were so much fun to eat! I think the baozi, mushroom skewers, and sword beans were my favorites!

When I met up with Chris it was during Passover, so when we went to Duli, I had to pick dishes I could eat. I enjoyed a berry and banana smoothie, mapo tofu hummus (I didn’t eat the pita), a delicious salad, dan dan potato gnocchi, and a tempeh and king oyster mushroom curry! I think the gnocchi and the hummus were my favorites!

Additionally, though not vegan, when my friend Alex and I were planning the Kehilat Shanghai Community Passover Seder, we went to Bottega, a pizzeria that Emmet’s been to in Beijing. It won the award for best Pizza in Asia (which includes Australia and Japan – Japan has the most Neopolitan pizzerias outside of Italy)! We enjoyed a salad and a delicious eggplant pizza! The pizza was very light, much more similar to what I enjoyed when my family visited Italy!

Additionally, earlier this month, I went to the Jiashan market again. This time, I got some homemade chili oil, vegan energy balls (lemon and chocolate) as well as what you see below, a vegan tiramisu and vegan jiaozi (dumplings)! I love pan fried dumplings, it adds a great texture. Plus, I think this is the first vegan tiramisu I’ve had since I lived in the US! It was fantastic!

Despite all of the delicious food that I enjoyed, I still did a lot of cooking (including for Passover)! I made dan dan noodles, corn chowder, cauliflower chili, red curry noodle soup, and Emmet and I made sword beans while he was here!

Passover in China is always a little different than in the US. While Chabad does a great job bringing in matzah, they haven’t (or at least as far as I know) brought in the different mixes and cakes that I enjoyed growing up. So, I had to make some tasty food for me!

Of course, I made quite a few matzah pizzas topped with tofu and veggies. I also made my Dad’s recipe for charset, as well as a fantastic vegan matzah ball soup!

However, my biggest culinary accomplishment was a fantastic frozen desert that I made for the Seder my friends John and Alex hosted! I made something almost like an ice cream cake using a vegan mousse! It started with a layer of chocolate covered matzah. Then I added the the chocolate peanut butter mousse, followed by another layer of chocolate covered matzah. Once that set, I added the peanut butter mousse and then a layer of matzah cruch! I was so thrilled with how it came out! It was a big hit!

Jewish Life in Shanghai

As I already mentioned, this past month, we had a fantastic Community Shabbat, hosted by my friends John and Alex. It was so nice to have Emmet join us. However, this month, much of my Jewish life revolved around Passover!

I spent the first night of Passover celebrating with my friends John and Alex (and a few of their friends/colleagues)! They hosted a wonderful Seder and it was so nice getting to celebrate together before they move! Since they had already packed up their haggadahs, we used a modified version of the Zoom Seder that Alex and I had made the year before.

For the Second night, Alex and I co-lead the Kehilat Shanghai Community Passover Seder. This is the 4th Seder I’ve lead/co-lead for the community. Since the lockdown last year, one of the things that we’ve struggled with is determining how big the community currently is. So, I was thrilled that we had over 50 people join (including some former community members who came to visit Shanghai for the week)!

After not being able to gather in person, it was so wonderful to be able to celebrate Passover together as a community! I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to once again lead the community and that everyone seemed to enjoy the Seder! This Seder was my last big Kehilat Shanghai event (there will be some smaller Shabbats and trivia nights this summer), so I’m glad that we had such a wonderful group, that it went so well, and that everyone enjoyed it!

In addition to the inperson Seders, on the morning (for me) after the First night, I joined my parents for their First night Seder (their 2nd night Seder was their big one). We’ve done this the last few years and while it’s not quite as fun and special as being together around the Seder does make it seem like I’m not as far away as I am. I hope that I’m able to join for Passover in Saratoga next year and that all four of us can celebrate together in person in the coming years!

What I’m Reading and Watching

This month, I didn’t finish reading any books (I’m in the middle of the Best of 2019 Sports Writing). However, I did read all four volumes of the French Graphic Novel series Ogre Gods (it’s unclear if more will be published), which was fantastic! It tells the story and history of a world in which there’s a tribe of Giants that rules over a small kingdom. However, the kingdom is plagued by interbreeding among the giants until Petit, a human sized giant is born who has the potential to change everything. I loved the way the narrative between volumes shifted perspectives and time periods. It’s really great, with excellent art, and I’d definitely recommend it!

In terms of TV, I finished the 1st season of Shrinking on Apple TV. Shrinking was created by some of the creators of Ted Lasso, including Brett Goldstein (who plays Roy Kent) and tells the story of a Psychiatrist (played by Jason Segel) whose wife unexpectedly passes away and is left picking up the pieces of his life and raising his teenage daughter with the help of his friends, neighbors, and colleagues. While dealing with very real and human emotions and situations, the show has a similar positivity and attitude to Ted Lasso and I found it incredibly enjoyable! Plus, there’s excellent performances by the main cast including Jason Segel, Harrison Ford, and Jessica Williams! I’d definitely recommend it! I also finished watching the 2nd season of Game Theory with Bomani Jones on HBO Max! Bomani Jones is an ESPN talking head who I was first introduced to on Around the Horn and now listen to his 3x per week podcast (The Right Time). Bomani does a fantastic job of adding his critical perspective, intellect, and wit to topics in each week of sports. This is like a late night show about sports, but also offers a needed social commentary about many of the sports infrastructures. While not as evergreen, it’s definitely worth a watch!

If you’ve gotten this far, thank you so much for reading. I know this month was a very long update, but there was so much that I wanted to share and with my time in Shanghai coming to an end wanted to make sure I didn’t miss anything! Next month, I’ll share some of the highlights from my trip up to Beijing! If you have any questions about anything that I shared or anything else related to life in Shanghai, please reach out and let me know!

In peace,

Jesse