Category: Uncategorized

Welcome to Astronomer in Shanghai! Thank you for following my blog and for your interest in my adventures in Shanghai! As covid-19 keeps many of you sheltered in place or working at home, I hope my blog continues to highlight that once the world recovers from this outbreak, things will improve. You should all treasure the small daily interactions. In Shanghai, life has returned to a new normal. I emphasize that the recovery timeline for Shanghai is not applicable everywhere. However, we are all in this together and if we wear masks and cooperate with social distancing guidelines things will improve.

If you find my blog inspiring or helpful, please subscribe and let me know! To subscribe, enter your name and e-mail on the right side of the page. Once subscribed, you’ll receive an e-mail with each new post. If you have any questions about how I’ve dealt with covid-19 or my life in Shanghai, please ask. Instructions are on the “To Comment” page. Also, please share this blog with anyone who needs reassurance that eventually life will return to a semblance of normalcy.

Life in Shanghai

I hope that all of you reading this are staying safe and healthy. Before diving into covid-19 and my life in Shanghai, I want to again take some time to talk about what’s happening in the US and emphasize again that Black Lives Matter. First, thank you all for sharing your thoughts and insights about the recent protests in the US and for your reactions to my words that Black Lives Matter. I remain encouraged to hear that many of you are participating in protests (I wish I had that option) and hopeful that this will lead to some tangible change. While I haven’t been able to get out and protest, I’ve spent a lot of time this week reading different think pieces about how to be a better ally and anti-rascist. My friend, Hannah Maia, and I are co-leading a joint Moishe House/Kehilat Shanghai Solidarity Shabbat on Juneteenth (June 19), so I’ve been doing a lot of learning about what the Jewish community must do to be more inclusive to the Black members of the Jewish community as well as to the Black community at large. While I don’t have all the answers, I know that I’ll continue to keep reading and listening and try to support the Black community (both here in Shanghai and back home) in any way that I can.

While I don’t usually recommend podcasts, I do want to make a few recommendations (as a side note these are sports related, but recent episodes discuss the current situation). First, the Locked on Sports podcast network (run by Utah Jazz play-by-play announcer David Locke, who I know from multiple conversations at Jazz v. Pistons games) organized a Black Lives Matter panel (90 minutes) run by 8 of the network’s Black hosts, in which each member shared their stories and discussed what it’s like to be Black in America. Hearing the similarities in each experience really highlighted how pervasive the systematic racism that exists in the US is. Additionally, I think everyone should listen to Bomani Jones’s podcast, “The Right Time.” Bomani is one of my favorite ESPN personalities and has recently been providing both eloquent and brutally honest insights into the situation in the US and why it’s different from 4 years ago. While I know there are plenty of others that I haven’t listened to, these are some that I found very moving.

In terms of the covid-19 situation, I am becoming increasingly concerned about the situation in the USA. It appears that many states have not implemented adequate reopening policies. Since we are now ~ 2 weeks out from Memorial Day, it is unsurprising that we are seeing cases again rise since many people did not adequately or properly socially distance or wear masks. Given the recent protests (which I believe are important and needed) I fear that numbers will continue to spike. The incompetent response by the Federal government is callous and it is clear that they have chosen to ignore the public health risk to our country. So, I encourage all of you to please continue to wear masks! Continue washing your hands. Continue to Socially Distance! While I know it’s hard when it’s hot outside to wear a mask, it’s still doable. It was 95 (felt like 108) yesterday and I still wore my mask outside. So, please remain cautious.

Unfortunately, I do not have good news to share about the situation in China. I’m sure by now some of you have seen the reports out of Beijing that there was another sizeable outbreak of covid-19 cases, this time of domestic cases. From what I’ve ascertained, there appears to be an outbreak associated with another food market in Beijing, this time associated with imported salmon. As of June 13th, there were 45 additional cases. This is concerning because prior, Beijing had almost no cases. Furthermore, due to these cases, Beijing (as a city) has once again tightened the restrictions and many schools have closed. I’ll keep you all updated about whether this spreads to Shanghai. Unfortunately, in Shanghai, there have also been a number of recent imported cases, primarily from Pakistan (though it’s unclear to me who is coming from Pakistan). As of June 14th, there are 18 cases in Shanghai, which places the recovery rate at 96.4% (still very good). There are 44 cases in Beijing. For China as a whole, the recovery rate currently still sits at 94.3%. However, due to the recent outbreak in Beijing, there is renewed and continued fear of a second wave coming to China.

This was a mildly productive research week. Part of the reason I wasn’t as productive was because I spent a lot of time reading articles and talking with my friends about the Black Lives Matter movement and how to be anti-racist. In terms of research, I spent most of my time reading papers and working on my Luminosity Function research. I’m still trying to disentangle some of the differences between my measurement and those from a previously measured work. In addition, we had another week of Zoom Astrocoffee as well as my now normal Zoom meetings. While I’m still hoping to start going to the office on a semi-regular basis in July, I’ll let you all know if the covid-19 situation changes that.

I also had some exciting work news to share. I was awarded a research fellowship from the Shanghai Municipal Government! This Fellowship will serve as additional funding/support for my research for the next two years! I was thrilled to learn I received this when Ying, my research supervisor, announced it in the group meeting! While it’s not entirely clear to me what the judging criteria were, I know that this fellowship is Merit based, so it’s nice to be rewarded for my hard work. For those of you who are curious, applying was easy, since I really didn’t have to do much because most of the application was in Chinese and thankfully the department secretary was able to help with that. 🙂

In addition to my research this week, I had the opportunity to talk to my Mom’s friend Lisa Cohen’s 9th grade History Class at the Heschel School in NYC. The students had learned about China in their class and I got the opportunity to share with them some of my experiences here. Many of the students were interested in hearing about how China’s handled covid-19 and what the response has been like, what the surveillance and internet monitoring situation is like, and what it’s like to be a Jew in China. I had a fantastic time talking to the students. They had so many really interesting questions! I was very impressed. This is definitely something I would be interested in doing again in the future. So, if you know me and are teaching about life in China and would like to share my perspective with your students, let me know!

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Chinese weather patterns, it is now Plum Rain season. This is a 3-4 week period in June/beginning of July where Shanghai gets tons of rain and thunderstorms (about 25% of it’s yearly rain). So, unsurprisingly, this weekend it was oppressively hot. On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, the temperatures all reached above 90 degrees, with high humidity. For comparison, my Dad thinks the weather is quite reminiscent of Washington D.C. Needless to say, I spent a lot of this weekend in my apartment, but each time I went outside, I was incredibly glad to return to enjoy some of the honeydew sorbet and watermelon popsicles that I had to cool off with!

Despite the heat, I still went for two runs (although those were on days when it was much cooler) and even went for a few walks (which in hindsight were probably not the smartest thing to do). Even with the uncomfortably warm temperatures, Shanghai is still beautiful!

Shanghai’s beauty isn’t just limited to it’s flowers!

Food in Shanghai

While I ate most of my meals at home this week, I did have one meal out on Saturday night, for Hannah Maia’s birthday! I had an interesting (albeit kind of weird) dish of Tofu, Cheese, and Honey bruschetta that I thought I’d share. It was kind of like a tofu and cream cheese mousse, which while good, wasn’t at all what I was expecting.

Aside from that I did a lot more cooking this week. I made sticky sesame cauliflower and black bean salsa, as well as vegan parmesan and vegan mozzerella cheese! So, it’ll be another week of yummy homemade food for me!

Even though this week was quieter as a result of the oppressive heat (fingers crossed it actually cools off to the 70s/80s this week like it says it will), this was another enjoyable week. Hopefully, I’ll be able to finally nail what’s causing the inconsistencies in my Luminosity Function measurement and move on to the actual science questions for that project as well! Additionally, I’ll be finalizing the plans for the Solidarity Shabbat that Hannah Maia and I are co-leading. I’m really proud to be helping co-lead this event. I think it’s really important that our community is showing that we care. We’ll be having a service, which I’ll lead, that will incorporate some readings in support of justice and equal rights, as well as a group discussion during dinner. I look forward to sharing the details of our Solidarity Shabbat with all of you next week.

I hope that this update about my life and the covid-19 situation in Shanghai reminds you that we have to remain vigilant. Even when the situation improves, there can still be set backs. This upcoming week should be productive while also thought provoking (because of the Shabbat). If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about the current covid-19 situation, please let me know. If you need someone to talk to about how to stay positive and productive while you shelter in place, please reach out. I want to help support you and assure all of you in any way that I can.

In peace,
Jesse

Welcome to Astronomer in Shanghai! Thank you for following my blog and for your interest in my adventures in Shanghai! As covid-19 keeps many of you sheltered in place or working at home, I hope this blog highlights that once the world recovers from this outbreak, things will improve. You should all treasure the small daily interactions. In Shanghai, life has returned to a new normal. I emphasize that the recovery timeline for Shanghai is not applicable everywhere. However, we are all in this together and if we cooperate with social distancing guidelines things will improve.

If you find my blog inspiring or helpful, please subscribe and let me know! To subscribe, enter your name and e-mail on the right side of the page. Once subscribed, you’ll receive an e-mail with each new post. If you have any questions about how I’ve dealt with covid-19 or my life in Shanghai, please ask. Instructions are on the “To Comment” page. Also, please share this blog with anyone who needs reassurance that eventually life will return to a semblance of normalcy.

Life in Shanghai

I hope that this latest entry continues to find all of you safe and healthy. While I usually begin each post talking about the covid-19 situation, the current unrest in the US, sparked by the senseless murder of George Floyd, has made me change this. I’m sure many of you are similarly troubled by what is the latest in a series of events highlighting the racial inequalities that exist in the US. Living in Shanghai, I feel very much like a spectator being so far from home. When I gathered with many of my ex-pat and European friends over the past week, we’ve found ourselves troubled and disturbed by these recent events. While I know that there is not a lot I can do to help, I do want to use this platform to share my beliefs. It is unconscionable that in 2020 we still live in a world where black and brown people are not treated equally by both laws and law enforcement officers. It’s not too much to ask for fair and equal treatment by police officers. It’s not fair that I as a white runner don’t have to worry about my safety and whether it’s not clear that I’m a good person as I run in my tights/shorts and sleeveless t-shirts even in Shanghai, while Ahmaud Arbery, and other black men are unable to run or walk around neighborhoods without fear that they will be viewed as a threat, attacked, arrested, or murdered. While some of you may say that there are good cops in your home town, I was particularly struck by the incident in Buffalo, NY, the city where my Mother grew up, where I still have family, and where I would visit with my family to see my grandparents twice a year. While I don’t have answers for what would improve the situation. All I can emphasize is that it’s important that we listen and it’s important that we acknowledge that Black Lives Matter.

If you’re still reading this, then I thank you for listening to my voice. I know I’m going to have to take time to reflect on these issues and also begin to learn how race permeates aspects of my life here in Shanghai. Please take the time to think about what you can do to improve the racial inequities that exist in the US and elsewhere. To transition, I do want to say that despite the protests dominating the news, I still remain incredible concerned about the situation in the US. Particularly, given the proliferation of public protests, which appear to be nesting grounds for spreading of covid-19. So, I implore all of you to continue to be vigilant. If you go to protests, wear masks (and gloves). When you go outside, wear masks. Remember to wash your hands. If you’re able, continue to work from home. Despite how the US is trying to pre-maturely reopen, the virus is still devastating the country and I believe it’s paramount to continue to take precautions.

As I’ve noted before, Shanghai has returned to a new normal. There are still temperature checks and masks worn. However, as the days go by, there are now fewer restrictions on the number of people in public spaces and the number of people wearing masks is decreasing (though the majority still do). I’ve been told that even the youngest children have now been sent back to school (which ends in July). SJTU, where I work, like many national Universities is still closed. While some of you may be wondering why, I believe that this is due to the number of students who would be coming from outside of Shanghai. Despite there being few cases in China, this kind of travel could help spread the virus.

Overall, the statistics in China have continued to improve. All of the new cases this week were imported cases of people returning to China (mostly students returning from abroad). There are just 6 remaining cases in Shanghai and 2 in Beijing. The recovery rate in Shanghai sits at 98.1% and for China as a whole, that number is 94.4%. Both numbers highlight that the restrictive actions taken by the Chinese government were successful in limiting the spread of the virus. Hopefully, recovery rates will continue to rise around the world.

This was another fairly productive research week. I spent most of my research time working on my Luminosity Function project. I’ve been able to actually measure the luminosity function for the first time! Although, I’m still not getting my values to match the previously published results, so I’ll be spending time this week investigating that. Additionally, I got to present my research on the spectroscopic completeness of cluster members for DESI, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, for the first time, which was cool! In addition, we’ve continued to do AstroCoffee via Zoom, which has been a great way to connect the students and postdocs (and a few faculty) since a lot of us are spread out. In terms of working in the office. The current plan is that once the semester ends (end of June), and Prof. Ying Zu, my research supervisor, is able to better plan his schedule, I’ll start coming to the office a few times per week.

Based on the photos I’ve shared, I think we all agree that the city is beautiful and its beauty is only enhanced by all the flowers. Despite the heat and humidity, I remain impressed by all the amazing flowers. Many are in little gardens on the corners of streets. So, it’s not as though Shanghai is full of parks, but I love that little pockets of green space exist.

Despite the heat, humidity, and increasingly more common thunderstorms, I still went for three runs this week. While I’m not sure if I still need to wear a mask when I run, I still do, mostly to take precautions and also because I still do when I go for walks.

I also visited Fuxing Park, the park near my apartment, for the first time since January. While the park has been opened, it has had restrictive hours. However, on Saturday, I was able to go! As you can see, there are tons of beautiful flowers and natural scenery just minutes from where I live! For comparison, for those of you in Saratoga Springs, Fuxing park is probably a similar size to Congress Park.

In addition to the natural beauty, there were also a few other man-made highlights!

I also saw the cat that lives in the women’s clothing store in Xintiandi again. 🙂 I think it’s pretty clear that this cat lives in the store and isn’t just sneaking inside.

In addition to my work and all the walking/running that I did this week, I still made some time for a fun activity. On Tuesday, Kehilat Shanghai and Moishe House joined forces to host a Jewish trivia night! As some of you know I really enjoy Trivia. Unfortunately, my team didn’t win (I think that we could have benefited from some questions covering the topics I’m best at: Astronomy, Physics, Sports, Comic Books, …), but it was still a lot of fun. Hopefully we’ll do it again sometime!

Afterwards, I biked back to Xintiandi with Heather, Shimi, and one of the other Kehilat Shanghai members. While I generally don’t bike, (I don’t like biking without a helmet and I don’t always know where I’m going), I’ll occasionally do it with groups of people, since they can help with directions. Although, the lack of bikes for tall people means I do a lot of pumping.

Food in Shanghai

Most of my meals this week were eaten at home, so I did lots of cooking. Since it’s been so hot, I made some more frozen deserts. I made watermelon popsicles and a very green honeydew sorbet! Additionally, I did a lot of other cooking this week. I made black bean burgers, roasted cauliflower, vegan mozzerella cheese, chickpea tahini salad, and tahini oatmeal cookies. So, like usual this will be another week of great eating.

I did have one meal out this week. Tuesday’s Trivia night was hosted at Tacolicious, which does somewhat of a Chinese-Mexican fusion for their tacos. I got the Buddhist delight taco, which was roasted vegetables and seitan in a taco. While I’ve never seen Chinese-Mexican fusion before, overall, I really enjoyed it.

This was another enjoyable week. Although I chose to have a quieter week, I still took advantage of a few opportunities to see friends and to explore the beautiful city that I now call home.

I hope that this update about my life and the covid-19 situation in Shanghai gives you optimism that things will improve wherever you are! This upcoming week should be another normal week. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about the current covid-19 situation, please let me know. If you need someone to talk to about how to stay positive and productive while you shelter in place, please reach out. I want to help support you and assure all of you in any way that I can.

In peace,
Jesse

Welcome to Astronomer in Shanghai! Thank you for supporting my blog and for your interest in my adventures (both culinary and life) living in Shanghai! As covid-19 continues to keep many of you sheltered in place or working at home, I hope this blog highlights that once the world begins to recover, things will improve, and you should treasure the small daily interactions. In Shanghai, life has returned to a new normal. I emphasize that the recovery timeline for Shanghai is not applicable everywhere. However, we are all in this together and if we cooperate with social distancing guidelines things will improve.

If you find my blog inspiring or helpful, please subscribe and let me know! To subscribe, enter your name and e-mail on the right side of the page. Once subscribed, you’ll receive an e-mail with each new post. If you have any questions about how I’ve dealt with covid-19 or life in Shanghai, please ask. Instructions are on the “To Comment” page. Also, please share this blog with anyone who needs reassurance that eventually life will return to a semblance of normalcy.

Life in Shanghai

I hope that this update continues to find you, your family, and your friends all staying safe and healthy. I’m sure that as the temperatures have warmed up, many of you are finding it more difficult to continue to stay at home. I encourage all of you to remain vigilant. Please continue to wear masks when you go outside and to social distance. Based on what I’ve heard from those of you who’ve written in, it comforts me to hear that many of you are taking a cautious approach. Hopefully things will slowly improve over the next two months (assuming people continue to wear masks and social distance).

As the outbreak and recovery(?) has continued in both the US and Europe, I hope that you are all doing your best to maintain a positive attitude even in these difficult times. While my experience here in Shanghai has been remarkably different from your own, I understand and empathize with the difficulties and fears that many of you are facing. The best advice that I can offer you is to try to find small enjoyments (either virtually or with your loved ones) to do each week. I know that for me, when things were at the worst here, I treasured getting coffee with friends, going for runs or walks, or chatting with friends and family on FaceTime back in the US. I hope you are able to do some of these same activities.

In Shanghai, things have mostly returned to normal. The schools and prevalence of masks are the primary differences. Most secondary and elementary schools are starting to bring students back to school (it runs through July). However, SJTU (and other universities) are still closed. My research supervisor, Prof. Ying Zu, has started to go in to the office a few times per week, so likely over the next couple weeks, I’ll start to return to the office on a limited basis. The primary reason I don’t want to go in/am recommended not to go in frequently is because I have to take public transportation for an hour to get to work.

The statistics have continued to maintain/improve. We are now in the period of very small number statistics. There are only 8 remaining active cases in Shanghai and just 3 in Beijing. The recovery rate in Shanghai is up to 97.7% and in China the rate is up to 94.4%. Given that China is ~ 6 months out from the outbreak of covid-10, these numbers are very encouraging and highlight how successful social distancing, quarantining, and stay at home orders can be. There have been a very small number of new cases each week; however, all of those are imported cases. So, I think a lot of the fear of a second outbreak is related to when China will reopen its borders.

After an exhausting week of my DES conference, this was a much needed quieter research week. I spent most of my time working on my measurements of the Luminosity Function and am very close to having the desired results for the 2nd of two plots I’m hoping to reproduce! I also spent time working to revise my DES paper on the Stellar Mass – Halo Mass Relation. Additionally, we also had another successful week of AstroCoffee presentations as well as my normal Zu Group meetings.

As I’ve mentioned, one of the things I’ve enjoyed during the covid-19 pandemic is the opportunity to talk to my friends and family more! On Monday morning (Sunday night in the US), my Mom organized a Zoom family reunion for members of her side of the family. It was great catching up and seeing many family members I hadn’t seen in years!

Like most weeks, I did a lot of running! I went for 4 runs this week. Thankfully, it was suprisingly cool on a few days (in the 60s/70s, which felt so amazing after days in the 90s), so, I had to take advantage of the cooler weather and go for some long runs!

While I didn’t get any great pictures of the flowers here in Shanghai this week, I did see a lot of other cool buildings,statues, and advertisements!

My personal favorites this week were the cat statues and the statue of the panda! As many of you know, I love pandas!

While this may not be as exciting to you, I ordered (successfully) from Taobao for the first time! Taobao is basically the Chinese Amazon. Although I have used the English version (which doesn’t have everything) frequently, successfully navigating the Chinese App (with some help from Shimi), which has no English was a big success! I ordered some delicious tempeh, which I turned into fajitas!

My other social interactions were food or Jewish related, so I’ll be posting the pictures and descriptions there!

Food in Shanghai

I had some fantastic and delicious meals this week! On Tuesday, I got dinner and ice cream with my friend Heather! We went to one of my favorite Chinese vegetarian restaurants! It’s been a while since I’ve gone to this restaurant and I really enjoyed getting to peruse the menu (on a tablet) and have so many options!

Heather and I had a got sword beans (which are amazing and a must try when in China!), spicy tofu, gluten (similar to seitan) with bamboo and mushrooms, and spring vegetables (okra, carrots, and baby corn!). My two favorites were the sword beans and the gluten! We also got gelato. I got coconut and strawberry with chocolate chips!

On Sunday, Heather and Shimi hosted a fantastic and delicious vegan potluck! There was so much amazing food. Thanks to Shimi for many of the mouthwatering photos (i.e., he took the artistic ones)! I think you’ll all be licking your lips after seeing the amazing spread! Heather made a jackfruit and mushroom bbq sandwich, I made tempeh fajitas, and we had delicious chinese style eggplant, pesto pasta, as well as salsas, tahini sauce, and peanut sauce! Heather also made homemade vegan coconut-peanut butter chocolate chip ice cream! If not for the stimulating conversations, all of this fantastic food would have put me into a food coma!

As you can tell, the food was undoubtedly fantastic! I want to thank Heather and Shimi for hosting such a fun afternoon! It was so great gathering together in a largish group and having conversations ranging from politics, academia, the current situation in the US, to international shipping, and economics! It’s events like these, getting together with new and old friends, that have helped mark how Shanghai has recovered from covid-19! Additionally, I’m so grateful to Heather and Shimi for being such supporting, inviting, and loving friends! I can’t emphasize enough how much more I’ve grown to enjoy my life here in Shanghai thanks to the two of you!

In addition to the amazing food you saw above, I did a ton of other cooking this weekend. I made Potato Kugel (for Moishe House’s Shavuout Shabbat), Buffalo chickpea burgers, roasted carrots and chickpeas, as well as Israeli salad. So, clearly this will be another week of great eating!

Jewish Life in Shanghai

On Friday, Moishe House hosted a Shavout Shabbat! Shavuot is a harvest holiday, which for reasons I’m not entirely sure of, people eat lots of dairy. Since I try to keep a mostly vegan diet, this concept is a little tricky. So I decided to make the Jewish staple, a potato kugel. This was my first attempt at a kugel and thankfully it was a hit!

I can’t talk about Moishe House without sharing a photo of Lucky, the dog the residents are fostering. She’s adorable and friendly, and makes going to Moishe House even more fun!

Another part of Shavuot is that many people spend 24 hours studying. As part of this, Moishe House international did a 24 hour Zoom learning session. I joined for the session led by my friend Hannah Maia. She gave a very interesting and informative talk on the history of Jews in Shanghai, which really helped to contextualize a lot of the history that I’ve previously learned on the walking tours with Historic Shanghai.

This was a very enjoyable week, filled with an assortment of fantastic meals and even better conversations. I’m so fortunate to have met so many interesting people through Moishe House, Kehilat Shanghai, and friends like Heather and Shimi. I’ve now been in Shanghai for 8 months, and it’s really nice that my social circle is expanding! While I’m sure some of you are jealous that I can see people in person, I hope that you all realize just how much you’ll enjoy it when you can. Prior to the lockdown, I know I didn’t enjoy these experiences as much as I do now!

I hope that this update about my culinary adventures, life, and the covid-19 situation in Shanghai gives you optimism that things will improve wherever you are and also makes you hungry! This upcoming week should be fairly normal. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about the current covid-19 situation, please let me know. If you need someone to talk to about how to stay positive and productive while you shelter in place, please reach out. I want to help support you and assure all of you in any way that I can.

In peace,
Jesse

Welcome to Astronomer in Shanghai! Thank you for supporting my blog and for your interest in my time living in Shanghai! As covid-19 continues to keep many of you sheltered in place or working at home, I hope this blog highlights that once the world begins to recover, things will improve. In Shanghai, life has returned to a new normal. I do emphasize that the recovery timeline for Shanghai is not applicable everywhere. However, we are all in this together and if we cooperate with social distancing guidelines things will improve.

If you find my blog inspiring or helpful, please subscribe and let me know! To subscribe, enter your name and e-mail on the right side of the page. Once subscribed, you’ll receive an e-mail with each new post. If you have any questions about how I’ve dealt with covid-19 or life in Shanghai, please ask. Instructions are on the “To Comment” page. Also, please share this blog with anyone who needs reassurance that eventually life will return to a semblance of normalcy.

Life in Shanghai

I hope that this update again finds you, your family, and your friends all remaining safe and healthy. I really want to emphasize again how reassuring I find hearing about how you are doing and how you are trying to make the best out of what is decidedly a difficult and trying situation. Hopefully, wherever you are things are beginning to improve and you are all seeing the signs of spring around you, much like the beautiful flowers and warm temperatures that surround me here in Shanghai.

As the US continues to prematurely reopen, I can’t stress to you enough that I think that you should continue to socially distance and work from home (if possible). Many of these places are reopening for economic not health reasons, which is dangerous and wrong. When Shanghai reopened, there were fewer than 100 cases in the city and the number of reported cases in both Wuhan and the rest of China had consistently decreased for a few weeks. While I know that it may seem difficult to not get back to your normal routines, I implore you to be cautious. With warmer weather, you can still enjoy some nice runs, walks, or even time just spent sitting on your porch while social distancing. Also, please continue to wear masks. While wearing masks are not nearly as ubiquitous in Shanghai (at least among the foreigners) as they once were, the majority of people here will likely continue to wear masks throughout the summer. Wearing a mask sends a message that you’re taking precautions, and that you care about your neighbors.

In Shanghai, other than the prevalence of masks, life has mostly returned to normal. Many of the primary – secondary schools have reopened (with students now back in classes). Nearly all stores and restaurants (that were able to survive financially) have reopened. We still have temperature checks at some locations (like malls and hotels), but by now those aren’t really a big deal any more and just basically part of my normal life. SJTU still has not officially reopened for students. Some graduate students are back on campus, but most undergrads and first-year grad students have not been allowed to come back.

Now, for this weeks covid-19 analytics update. Shanghai has 14 active cases (only 3 in Beijing). The recovery rate in Shanghai is up to 96.8%, while China as a whole is at 94%. Regardless of how you feel about the numbers, it’s comforting to see such a high recovery rate. I’ll note that since much of China (outside Wuhan and Hubei province) was not hit as hard by covid-19, due to the harsh restrictions placed on travel as well as the more forced lockdown, reaching this rate of recovery so soon is likely not going to happen elsewhere. However, it is comforting to see recovery rates rising around the globe.

I do want to note that two of the new cases this week in Shanghai were domestic cases of people traveling from outside of Shanghai to Shanghai and then testing positive for covid-19. There’s lots of contact tracing in China, so the government is able to track where everyone has been, which allowed people who came in contact with those individuals to be tested. However, there is a cognizance that a second wave is definitely possible. Given that reason, my supervisor has recommended I avoid public transportation, so I likely won’t be going back to the SJTU campus at least for a little bit longer.

In terms of Astronomy, this was an exhausting week. This week was the DES collaboration conference done on Zoom. DES is based out of FermiLab in Chicago, which unfortunately for me, led to a lot of really late nights. Generally, I was able to attend the morning sessions from 10:30pm – 1:00am. I presented my research on the evolution of the stellar mass-halo mass relation twice and received good feedback both times! Additionally, there were a lot of great talks that I got to listen to as well as a few others I watched recordings of. While it’s definitely convenient to not have to travel, I did miss getting to meet more members of the collaboration and talking about new projects with potential collaborators. Hopefully, we’ll be able to have in person conferences again next year. Below you can see me (5th row, third from the right) in our DES virtual group photo!

In addition to the DES meeting, I also spent time revising my DES paper (which is close to being submitted :)) and made a ton of progress on my Luminosity function research and hope to have results later this week, since I now have all the measurements I need to actually construct a Luminosity Function :)! Unsurprisingly, I spent a lot of time on Zoom this week. In addition to the DES telecon, we also had a successful first week of Zoom astrocoffee as well as my normal Zu group meetings.

The weather in Shanghai has continued to be warm, but not brutally hot yet (though everyone tells me that’s coming). Most days it’s in the low-mid 80s, so I’m still able to go running (either in the morning or evening). This week, I did four runs! For those of you who are curious, I generally run about 15-20 miles per week (each run is 4.5-5+ miles). One benefit of working from home is that it’s much easier to fit running into my schedule! As usual, I saw a lot of beautiful flowers this week. I really like how these kind of flowers are all around the city and the colors are just fantastic!

During my walks and runs, I also saw some cool sculptures and posters!

Having seen Degas’ ballet sculptures many times before, it was very cool to see this modern update in downtown Shanghai!

Since the DES weekend completely took over my week, I took Saturday as a rest day to recover. I followed that up with a busy and fun Sunday! I went on a walking tour of the Jewish sites within the Former French Concession (which I’ll talk about later) and then went to a picnic on the West Bund with my friends from Moishe House. The West Bund is a park that reminded me a lot of Riverside Park in NYC mixed with being transported back to the Main Green at Brown or Diag at Michigan! There were tons of people there with their pets. Mostly dogs, but a few cats. There were also people doing acro-yoga, slacklining, juggling, and playing basketball.

Additionally, you can also see some of the furry friends who joined us for our picnic as well as a picture of an adorable cat inside a local women’s clothing store!

Overall, a picnic in the park with friends was a fun way to relax and enjoy the beautiful and warm weather on Sunday afternoon! Additionally, I didn’t realize it, but there’s a really awesome running trail all along the Huangpu River, which I definitely need to check out for some long (8+ mile) runs!

Food in Shanghai

Unfortunately, I don’t have any amazing meals to share with you this week, since I ate all my meals at home. However, I did do some more cooking. I made a tofu pie as well as a couscous salad (for the picnic). I also got fresh lychees for the first time! I didn’t know what lychees looked like, since whenever I’ve had them they’re peeled!

They’re very sweet and I’m really enjoying them! It’s awesome trying all these different fruits here that are really hard to get back home.

Jewish Life in Shanghai

On Sunday morning, Patrick Cranley, from Historic Shanghai, led a walking tour of the Jewish heritage sites within the Former French Concession for members of the Kehilat Shanghai community. Many of these buildings were owned by members of the first two waves of Jewish immigrants to Shanghai. The first were the Sephardic Jewish families (like the Sassoon family) who came to Shanghai in the late 19th century. The second were members of the Russian Jewish community, who came following the Russian revolution. Since none of the sites are obvious Jewish landmarks (i.e., they aren’t synagogues), it was really interesting learning about them, especially since I often go running in and around the Former French Concession and pass by these locations frequently!

Aside from some of the group photos, you can see a few highlights of the art deco style that permeates many of the buildings built in Shanghai in the 1920s. Some of the sites on our tour included the Cathay Mansions, Little Moscow, the location of the New Synagogue, the Shanghai Jewish club, and the first Sassoon residence.

Overall, it was really nice getting to see so many of the Kehilat Shanghai community members, some of whom I hadn’t seen in months, come together to learn about different aspects of the Jewish heritage here in Shanghai!

Overall, this was a very eventful week! While I learned a lot and had a lot of fun, I’m actually looking forward to a quieter week (at least in terms of research) and getting back to my normal routine. It’s weird to say that working from home is my normal routine, but I’ve actually been working from home longer than I worked in the office at SJTU :).

I hope that this update about my life and the covid-19 situation in Shanghai gives you optimism that things will improve wherever you are. This upcoming week should be a fairly normal week. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about the current covid-19 situation, please let me know. If you need someone to talk to about how to stay positive and productive while you shelter in place, please reach out. I want to help support you and assure all of you in any way that I can.

In peace,
Jesse

Welcome to Astronomer in Shanghai! Thank you for supporting my blog and for expressing interest in my life and experiences in Shanghai! As covid-19 continues to keep many of you sheltered in place or working at home, I hope this blog highlights that while this period of enforced isolation is difficult and emotionally taxing, things will eventually improve. In Shanghai, life has returned to a new normal. I do emphasize that the recovery timeline for Shanghai is not be applicable everywhere. However, we are all in this together and if we cooperate with social distancing guidelines things will improve.

If you find my blog inspiring or helpful, please subscribe and let me know! To subscribe, enter your name and e-mail on the right side of the page. Once subscribed, you’ll receive an e-mail with each new post. If you have any questions about how I’ve dealt with covid-19 or life in Shanghai, please ask. Instructions are on the “To Comment” page. Also, please share this blog with anyone who needs reassurance that eventually life will return to a semblance of normalcy.

Life in Shanghai

I hope that this week’s post again finds you, your family, and your friends continuing to stay safe and healthy. I continue to be relieved every time I hear from you all about how you are doing. Being so far away from my family and friends, especially during this time of crisis, has been difficult. So, just as I appreciated your words of encouragement back in January and February, I know am comforted hearing from you after each post. Although I’ve been dealing with the ramifications of covid-19 for a few months longer than you have, I think we’ve all reached the point where we’ve gotten into new routines. Whether it’s working from home, doing exercise classes online, going for longer runs/walks, or finding new hobbies, I hope that each week you’re able to take some time to relax and do something enjoyable to stay positive. Whether it’s catching up with friends via Zoom, chatting with family, or getting some of your favorite foods, I hope that you find joy each week.

As I read the news from afar about the US and Europe reopening, I grow increasingly concerned. It seems like there is no strategy being employed consistently in the US. While New York state has actual goals that must be maintained for reopening, other states appear to be in a complete free for all. Given that most of these approaches are the exact opposite of the approach taken by the Shanghai Municipal government and China as a whole, I can’t help but fear that this will lead to a second surge (which I’m not entirely sure many in the US are cognizant of). Therefore, I really can’t emphasize enough the importance of maintaining social distancing, washing your hands, and wearing masks! Even as the number of cases has died down here, most people are still wearing masks.

In Shanghai, life is maintaining it’s new normalcy. Schools continue to reopen, including some elementary schools. Unfortunately, SJTU has yet to announce a reopening plan for the spring semester. However, my research supervisor, Prof. Ying Zu, went to the office for the first time since January last week. So, maybe in a week or two I’ll make the trek from Xintiandi to Minhang. Most people continue to wear masks when outside, though I’ve noticed it’s not as universal as it was (but still the vast majority). The big change in China recently has been the relaxing of travel quarantine requirements for domestic travelers to Beijing. One of the Kehilat Shanghai board members was able to travel to Beijing this week (via airplane), since there’s no longer a 14 day quarantine. So, maybe at some point this summer I’ll get to leave Shanghai (I’ve been in Shanghai and no other city since October) and visit another city/province in China! 🙂

In terms of the overall statistics, the numbers continue to improve. All new cases have been imported. There are just 17 cases in Shanghai and only 7 active cases in Beijing. The recovery rate in Shanghai has risen to 96.3% and the overall recovery rate in China is 94.3%. While the numbers differ in each country, and are likely not entirely accurate anywhere in the world, I think that it’s important to remember that if the actions taken by the government are swift, decisive, and backed by science, not economics, it is possible to recover from this pandemic.

In terms of my Astronomy research this was a fairly productive week. Much of my week was spent working on my DESI project studying the spectroscopic completeness of clusters. Additionally, I also began working on my Luminosity function project again. I’m currently working on 4 different projects, which makes it hard to balance each project and make sure they all are adequately being addressed at one time. In addition to my regular Zoom telecons, this past Friday, we restarted the SJTU astrocoffee, which is a discussion of recent relevant papers, selected by presenters. We’ll be returning to a 3x per week format done on Zoom! Also, this upcoming week is the DES virtual Collaboration Meeting, which I get to present twice at! Unfortunately all the talks are late at night, so there will be a lot of late nights this week. Yay international collaborations based in Chicago! 🙂

Shanghai has continued, at least in my opinion, to oscillate between very warm (upper 70s) and hot temperatures (upper 80s) with lots of humidity. While the heat is manageable to an extent, the humidity makes it hard to run, especially when wearing a mask. Despite that difficulty, I still managed to go for 3 runs this past week. However, I’ll need to look into a gym soon, since it’s starting to get too uncomfortable for me to run frequently.

Being outside as much as I was allowed me to get lots of great pictures of the lovely flowers in Shanghai!

One of my favorite parts of Shanghai is how artistic the city feels. Whether it’s beautiful flowers, interesting sculptures and advertisements, or the use of lights at night, the city always feels alive. You can even see the highways lit up and if you look closely can even see that the city puts flowerbeds on the sides of the highways.

I also saw a lot of really interesting statues/sculptures/advertisements this week!

Also, there’s a new mural of Hokusai’s wave being painted on on the doors to one of the buildings on the street that I live on!

Last, but not least, I got a few more cute pictures of cats living in Shanghai

The combination of warmer temperatures plus thunderstorms as well as the upcoming DES virtual collaboration made this week a little more work focused. However, I still was able to join my friends, Heather and Shimi for a Shabbat dinner! Along with great food we had interesting discussions about Israeli and US politics as well as how covid-19 has influenced education (i.e., taking classes online). I hope that eventually you’ll be able to safely enjoy each other’s company as I’m able to do here.

Food in Shanghai

As many of you know, I’m not super comfortable when it’s really hot and humid and I’m generally nervous that I’m going to melt this summer in Shanghai. I’ve had the benefit of living in colder climates all my life (Saratoga Springs, Providence, Ann Arbor) where it doesn’t get really hot until July/August. Unfortunately that’s decidedly not the case in Shanghai. So, to attempt to beat the heat, I’ve started making frozen deserts! For my first attempts, I made a strawberry sorbet and orange strawberry sunrise popsicles!

Both deserts were very refreshing! I also tried mangosteen for the first time. I think the only time I’d ever seen mangosteen in the US was at Juniper, the frozen yogurt/smoothie store Emmet and I frequented while we were at Brown. You only eat the white part and the fruit itself is very sweet and refreshing!

I also did a lot of cooking this week. I made Mushroom french dip style sandwiches, vegan mozzarella cheese (for the sandwiches), roasted chickpeas, and a quinoa salad with white beans, sword beans, peppers, onions, and preserved lemon! In addition to the frozen deserts, I also made tahini oatmeal date cookies, which taste like halva! So, I’ll have plenty of delicious food to enjoy!

As I mentioned, on Friday, I got Shabbat dinner with my friends at one of our favorite Indian restaurants! This week we tried a fried chickpea curry served with puffy white bread, saag paneer, and a vegetable curry! As usual everything was fantastic!

Additionally, after dinner, Heather and I went for desert. For those long time readers, you may recall that I’ve commented that I haven’t had any Chinese deserts since moving here. Most restaurants have gorgeous french style pastries. However, on Friday, Heather took me to a small Chinese desert restaurant. We got mango pomelo sago, which is a mango custard with tapioca balls topped with mango and pomelo, and a mango sticky rice ice cream, which was ice cream topped with black sticky rice and fresh mango!

Both deserts were really great! Other than the ingredients used, the biggest difference between Chinese and American style deserts is the amount of sugar. American deserts are very sweet (almost too much at times), whereas the the sweetness in these deserts came mostly from the fruit. I also really enjoyed all the different textures that these deserts had!

Although this was another quiet week, it allowed me to spend a lot of time on research, while also affording me the opportunity to catch up with friends from Brown and Michigan, as well as seeing friends here in Shanghai. I want to emphasize how nice even small interactions are. While some of you may be planning elaborate vacations, I think you’ll find that the first time you get together with friends or family for a nice meal will be just as rewarding!

I hope that this update about my life and the covid-19 situation in Shanghai leaves you with optimism that things will improve and reach a new normal. This upcoming week will be busier as the DES meeting will likely adjust my daily schedule to start and end a bit later than I’d like (in my attempt to stay up for a lot of Zoom presentations). If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about the current covid-19 situation, please let me know. If you need someone to talk to about how to stay positive and productive while you shelter in place, please reach out. I want to help support you and assure all of you in any way that I can.

In peace,
Jesse

Welcome to Astronomer in Shanghai! Thank you for supporting my blog and for your interest in my life and experiences in Shanghai! As covid-19 keeps many of you sheltered in place, I hope this blog highlights that while forced isolation is trying, eventually things will improve. In Shanghai, life is close to returning to a new normal. I do want to emphasize that the timeline of recovery in Shanghai will not be applicable everywhere. However, we are all in this together and if we cooperate with social distancing guidelines things will improve.

If you find my blog inspiring or helpful, please subscribe and let me know! To subscribe, enter your name and e-mail on the right side of the page. Once subscribed, you’ll receive an e-mail with each new post. If you have any questions about how Shanghai is recovering from covid-19, how I’ve dealt with it, or life in Shanghai, please ask. Instructions are on the “To Comment” page. Also, please share this blog with anyone who needs reassurance that eventually life will return to a semblance of normalcy.

Life in Shanghai

I hope that all of you are doing well and that you have continued to stay safe and healthy. It’s been very reassuring to hear from so many of you about how you are staying healthy and keeping yourselves occupied while remaining at home. I know that for some of you, like my parents, the academic semester has ended (or will be ending soon), and you now find yourself with more free time. I hope that this transition to a different schedule has gone well and that you are finding new activities (whether it’s reading, exercising, or other new hobbies) that keep you upbeat. I know that for me maintaining a positive attitude has been extremely helpful during the covid-19 pandemic. Regardless of whether it was a now normal week of working from home, or maybe your first week back at work (depending on where you live), or a transition week to the summer schedule, I hope that it was still an enjoyable and safe week.

As I write this, it’s Mother’s Day. Since I won’t be able to travel home (for a while) to see my Mom and wish her a Happy Mother’s Day! in person, I wanted to take the opportunity to do so here. Mom, thank you so much for your endless love and support, especially as I’m half way around the world on my academic journey! I miss you and hope to see you (and get more jam 🙂 ) soon! Also, to all the mothers who are reading this, I hope that you and your families are able to do something special to mark the day!

In Shanghai, life continues it’s gradual return to normalcy. While unfortunately SJTU remains closed (and my research supervisor, Prof. Ying Zu, remains skeptical that the university will reopen), some of the more senior graduate students have been allowed to return to campus. I think if I wanted to, I can go to campus. However, since Ying is still working from home and I would prefer to avoid the commute on the subway, I’ve chosen not to. Additionally, some of my friends who are teachers are now back at work (although for some, they are at school, but the students remain online). Almost all stores and restaurants are now open. The only really noticeable difference is that everyone still wears masks. I know that wearing a mask may seem difficult (they’re not always comfortable), but I think it’s really important that you wear one every time you go outside. Wearing a mask offers some safety benefits, but also emphasizes that you view the continued health and safety of your neighbors as a priority! So, don’t be like the current administration, please wear masks.

In terms of statistics, the numbers have continued to improve in Shanghai. In total, there are just 26 active cases (19 in Beijing). This update places the recovery rate at 95%. For China as a whole, the recovery rate has risen to 94.1%. While I admit there is a lot of skepticism about the numbers in China, I strongly believe that while these numbers may not be entirely accurate (they aren’t in the US for the same reasons they aren’t here), the general trend of a rising recovery rate remains. I strongly believe that if people continue to wear masks, social distance, and remain vigilant, the situation will improve. So, please continue to take the necessary precautions. Additionally, I also think it’s important to stay vigilant because as I’ve mentioned before it’s likely a second wave may occur and even here in China, we are cognizant of that.

In terms of Astronomy, this was a very productive week! Since you now can all understand my research a little bit better, I hope that this update makes sense! I made some very nice measurements on the spectroscopic completeness of galaxy clusters in DESI (the fraction of clusters in the galaxy that will have their spectrum measured). This should yield very interesting results in the future as Prof. Zu and I work to determine how this fraction may impact observational results using simulations. Additionally, I also made more progress on my DES project. I had to remeasure some of the simulated results, but that should be finished up in a day or two, so that paper remains close to submission. Additionally, I had quite a few telecons, including on Thursday, a late night meeting with my Ph.D. advisor and mentor, Prof. Chris Miller, followed by a later DES telecon, as well as my usual Zu Group meetings. Also, I’ll be presenting my research at the upcoming Zoom DES collaboration meeting telecon!

Unlike in the Northeast, where this past weekend was met with snow and cold weather, here in Shanghai it has remained warm. Much of the week it was still in the upper 70s/low 80s (though it rained a few days). This warmer (but not super hot) weather allowed me to go for 4 runs this week! I’m really glad that I’m able to run so frequently! During my runs and walks, I also got to take a lot of pictures of more beautiful flowers. Shanghai in the spring is absolutely lovely!

In addition to the productive research and running, this was another enjoyable week. On Monday, I got dinner with my friends Heather and Shimi. We went to one of the fancy local malls. Unlike in the US, in China most malls actually make most of their money from restaurants and the restaurants are really great! You can even see people (wearing masks) and hand rolling dumplings in the mall! As you can see, malls are both similar and different to what is in the US.

On Sunday, Moishe House hosted a games afternoon, which was a ton of fun! As per usual, I baked for the event and made a strawberry cake (strawberry season is actually almost over here, which is so weird since it usually hasn’t even begun by June in the US), which was a hit. I spent the afternoon playing Codenames with my friends and fellow Moishe House community members! It was a lot of fun to get out of the heat and humidity for a little bit and hang out with everyone else! I’m looking forward to the next game night! I’m also so thrilled that the community has remained vibrant throughout the covid-19 pandemic!

Additionally, I had to share some cute photos of furry friends! The Moishe House is fostering a community member’s dog and the cat that lives in my lane neighborhood came back!

Food in Shanghai

As I mentioned, on Monday, I got dinner with my friends Heather and Shimi! We went to a Chinese restaurant. One benefit of going with friends who speak Chinese is that we can go to non-vegetarian restaurants and they can help make sure the food is vegetarian for me!

We got lettuce rolls with peanut sauce, tofu, scallion noodles, fried sword beans, and vegetable dumplings! Everything was delicious. The sword beans are one of my favorites and super common here. However, I don’t remember ever seeing them in the US when I’d go to Chinese restaurants.

Additionally, on Friday, my friend Hannah Maia introduced me to chuan chuan, Chinese kebabs. We got a ton of different vegetable, tofu, and bao kebabs, which were fantastic!

I think my favorites were the tofu, mushroom, and cauliflower.

There is so much amazing and different food to try here in Shanghai! I hope I’m able to try as much as possible and introduce it to you all virtually.

Although this was a slower week, the more relaxed schedule allowed me to spend a lot of time getting work done and being productive, while still making time to see friends. I think the covid-19 pandemic has really made me more appreciative of these small dinners and group hangouts than I was before. I hope that you all feel the same once things return to normal in a few months.

I hope that this update about my life and the covid-19 situation in Shanghai leaves you feeling optimistic that things will improve and return to a new normal. This upcoming week should be another normal and productive research week. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about the current covid-19 situation, please let me know. If you need to talk to someone about how to stay positive and productive while you shelter in place, please reach out. I want to help support you and assure all of you in any way that I can.

In peace,
Jesse

Welcome to Astronomer in Shanghai! Thank you all for supporting this blog and for following my adventures and life in Shanghai! As covid-19 continues to keep many of you sheltered in place, I hope this blog highlights that while isolation is difficult, eventually things improve. In Shanghai, life is close to returning to a new normal. I do want to emphasize that the timeline here will not be applicable everywhere. However, we are all in this together and if we cooperate with social distancing guidelines things will improve.

If you find my blog inspiring or helpful, please subscribe and let me know! To subscribe, enter your name and e-mail on the right side of the page. Once subscribed, you’ll receive an e-mail with each new post. If you have any questions about how Shanghai is recovering from covid-19, how I’ve dealt with it, or life in Shanghai, please ask. Instructions are on the “To Comment” page. Also, please share this blog with anyone who needs reassurance that eventually life will return to a semblance of normalcy.

Life in Shanghai

As I’ve previously done, I want to begin this post by checking in with you. I hope that you, your family, and your friends are all staying safe and healthy. Regardless of whether you live in a state or country that has prematurely reopened, I hope that you are still following social distancing guidelines and are able to work from home. As April rolled into May and hopefully life around you began to bloom, I want to hear how sheltering in place has been going. I know, that it was much easier for me to stay indoors and not leave my apartment when it was colder and rainier. So, I’m sure that it may be more difficult to do stay at home now than it was a few weeks ago. Despite all that, I hope that, assuming you feel comfortable leaving your homes, you are able to go outside and enjoy the nicer weather, maybe for walks, runs, or hikes, while still staying away from others and wearing masks.

Life continues to maintain it’s new normal here in Shanghai. Some schools have already reopened. From what I understand, the reopening is staggered in an attempt to minimize the stress on the infrastructure. However, SJTU, the university where I work, still has not announced an official reopening date for students. On other notes, the temperature check policies have begun to relax here, but most everyone still wears masks. While I’ve discussed my views on the effectiveness of masks, I do wear them, even when it’s been very hot, which makes them more uncomfortable. The main reason it’s important to wear masks are 1). they prevent the spread of spittle between people, which is one of the main ways the virus can be transmitted and 2). solidarity and support that everyone needs to work together to slow the spread of the virus. So, even though the US leadership doesn’t seem to understand the importance of wearing masks (looking at you Mike Pence), please wear a mask when you go out. It doesn’t need to be an N95 mask. Cloth masks or hospital masks (what I wear now) do both tasks I previously mentioned.

In terms of the overall statistics here in Shanghai, the numbers have continued to improve, which I find very promising. I realized I’ve never divulged where I get my numbers, so to be completely transparent, my numbers come from SHINE, which is part of the Shanghai Daily, the largest English Language Newspaper in Shanghai (posted on WeChat). As of May 3rd, there are just 33 cases remaining in Shanghai (and 33 in Beijing). So, the recovery rate in Shanghai has increased up to 93.8%. For comparison, the reported recovery rate in China as a whole is 93.6%. While I know some of you are suspicious about the numbers being reported in China, I don’t think that the number of cases in China is any more misrepresented than it is in the US (i.e., not everyone who is sick actually went to the hospital or was correctly diagnosed early on). I spoke with my boss, Prof. Ying Zu, about this and he mentioned that the fatality rate in China is actually the median rate for East Asia. So, my guess is that the reason the numbers are lower (than in the US and Europe) has more to do with the quick, severe, and draconian response rather than falsified data. Additionally, practices like wearing masks are more commonly accepted here. That being said, I do think that (assuming people maintain social distancing and sheltering in place) for another month, things should improve. However, I will note that certain states and the current administration are playing a very dangerous game by attempting to reopen the economy before the curve is actually flattened.

In terms of Astronomy, this was a relatively normal and productive week. I had my regular Zu group telecon as well as a few other Zoom meetings. I spent most of my work working on my DESI project, looking at the spectroscopic completeness of clusters, and made some really nice headway and should have some interesting (at least to me) results soon! I also finished up the latest draft on my paper comparing different versions of the stellar mass halo mass relation, so hopefully that will be submitted soon! Also, since my friend Steve Schwartz asked, near the end of this post, I’m going to provide a deep dive into my research and attempt to explain the topics so you can all understand! :).

Here in Shanghai, the weather has transitioned from warm to very hot! On Sunday, the high was 95! The last few days have all been in the upper 80s. Thankfully it will cool off to the low 80s later this week. This is so much hotter than what I’ve been used to in Ann Arbor or Saratoga, especially for the beginning of May. Prior to the uncomfortably hot weather, I did go for 4 runs this week (with my new running shoes 🙂 )! My personal philosophy is that if it’s above the low 80s, then I won’t run outside (no need to hurt myself). So, I may have to find a local gym soon. Additionally, since it has been a mixture of hot and rainy the last few days, I didn’t take as many photos of Shanghai in bloom. Instead, I decided to showcase what Shanghai looks like at night!

Given the heat the last few days, it hasn’t been as crowded, but you can see that even at night, the Shanghai skyline is very majestic and Shanghai is always lit up!

While there were no birthday celebrations this week, I still had a lot of fun! On Thursday, my friend Heather organized a vegan cooking and dinner night (photos of the food in that section), which was a ton of fun! You can see an action shot of me making vegan mozerella cheese! I haven’t done a ton of group cooking, prior to moving to Shanghai, but it was so much fun exchanging recipes and experimenting in the kitchen! Following cooking, we enjoyed an amazing vegan feast and fantastic conversation! I look forward to trying more recipes soon!

I also had to share this photo of an adorable kitten that is living in my neighborhood! As you can see from the leash, thankfully this is not a stray kitten. Sadly, there are a lot of stray animals here in Shanghai.

Food in Shanghai

While this was another week where I didn’t go to any restaurants, as I mentioned, on Thurday, I had a fantastic vegan feast at my friends Heather and Shimi’s home. We made vegan mozzerella cheese, homemade seitan (which we saved for later), Pra Ram Tofu (tofu with a thai peanut sauce), Lebanese cauilflower (cauliflower with tahini sauce), kale pesto, and kale and mushroom salad! Additionally, my friend Anne-Sophie made mugwort and red bean paste glutinous rice balls (kind of like mochi)!

Everything we made was fantastic!! It was so much fun cooking together and I’m looking forward to doing it again! I think the Pra Ram Tofu was my favorite. I love a good peanut sauce! So even though I haven’t eaten out as much lately, I think we can all agree that you don’t really need to eat out when you can cook your own delicious food!

In addition, I turned my portion of the seitan into a delicious seitan and vegetable stir fry with peanut sauce and made tofu lettuce wraps and chocolate tahini brownies! So, I’ll have plenty of good eating for this upcoming week as well!

Jewish Life in Shanghai

This weekend is the Limmud China festival. For those of you, like myself, who are unfamiliar, Limmud is a Jewish learning festival hosted in different cities/countries around the world. Generally, in China, Beijing and Shanghai alternate hosting Limmud. This year it’s a digital event done on Zoom. So, this week, all of the Jewish activities that I participated in this week were part of Limmud.

On Friday, we had a virtual zoom Shabbat service. Then on Saturday, Moishe House hosted an in person Havdalah (a ritual to mark the end of Shabbat). It was really nice being able to interact with both friends and community members stuck abroad while also seeing some of my friends who are here in Shanghai! Additionally, the chocolate tahini brownies I made for the Havdalah were a hit!

On Sunday (and on Monday), there were a variety of different sessions for Limmud. I attended sessions discussing the history of Jews who left Shanghai to go to Macao, a discussion on the similarities between Jewish and Chinese cultures, and a discussion about Shanghai’s Jewish history! While I might be spending too much time staring at my computer (who isn’t these days), I found a lot of these discussions to be very interesting. Hopefully next year the in person event will resume!

Astronomy Lesson

Before I get started with my Astronomy lesson, I wanted to let you all know that I just passed the 1 year anniversary of successfully defending my dissertation and becoming Dr. Jesse Golden-Marx! It’s been an eventful year: visiting Shanghai, moving from Ann Arbor, moving to Shanghai, becoming a postdoc at SJTU, and building a life in Shanghai. So, to commemorate this anniversary, I’m going to explain my research to you. The goal of this is to explain it so that everyone can understand it. So, if you have questions, or are confused about any jargon please ask! Of note, all the images I provide are from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and are galaxy clusters that I’ve used in my research.

In the broadest terms, my research focuses on galaxy clusters. Galaxy clusters are the largest gravitationally bound systems in the universe. On average these systems are 10^14 times more massive than the sun. Clusters have three main components: galaxies, which are made up of stars; dark matter; and hot, x-ray emitting gas. Dark matter is non-luminous matter that doesn’t emit light in any wavelength (we don’t know what kind of particle it is). However, dark matter does exert a gravitational force on the galaxies.

My research focuses on the connection between galaxies and dark matter. Specifically, I work in a subfield known as the galaxy-dark matter halo connection. Since dark matter can’t be seen, you may be wondering what a dark matter halo is. The halo is the underlying substructure needed for a galaxy to form. One analogy I like to use is that the halo is the concrete base of a swimming pool that surrounds and defines the shape of the pool, while the water is the galaxy. Moreover, my primary interest within the galaxy-halo connection is understanding the formation and evolution of the brightest central galaxy (BCG), the bright, massive galaxy that is located at the center of each of these images and is most strongly connected to the dark matter halo (since it’s at the center).

Within the galaxy-dark matter halo connection, much of my dissertation and current research focuses on the stellar mass – halo mass relation. This is a scaling relation that compares the amount of stellar mass contained within the central galaxy to the amount of dark matter contained within the cluster. In general, the ratio of stellar mass to halo mass is anywhere between 1/100 to 1/1000. So, there’s a lot more dark matter! We can observationally measure the stellar mass by measuring the amount of light (or brightness of the galaxy). However, measuring the amount of dark matter is difficult. One method of doing that is richness – mass scaling relations, where richness is the number of cluster members. Another that I use is the caustic techniques, which uses the motion of the galaxies to trace the gravitational potential well of the cluster.

Within my studies of the stellar mass – halo mass relation, my analysis incorporates the magnitude gap, which is the difference in brightness between the central galaxy and faint satellite galaxy, as a third parameter. To determine which are the satellites, it’s important to understand that all cluster member galaxies (in fully formed clusters) have a similar reddish color (as shown visually) because they form at a similar time and run out of gas to form stars at a similar time. Incorporating this cluster membership information within the stellar mass – halo mass relation allows me to study the hierarchical formation of central galaxies. This is a model where the biggest galaxies grow by eating (or merging) with the fainter galaxies. To study this connection, I use a mixture of Bayesian statistics, statistical modelling, and computer coding. I’ve studied this relationship within nearby, intermediate, and higher redshift galaxy clusters (using the Dark Energy Survey data).

In addition to my work on the stellar mass – halo mass relation, I’m also working on a project at SJTU to measure the luminosity function of galaxies in clusters. The luminosity function is simply a distribution function that models the number of galaxies within a cluster (of a given mass) with a given brightness. Simply put this measurement counts the number of bright galaxies within a given region (corrected for area). This relationship can also be used to inform how central galaxies form and evolve.

Additionally, I’m also working on a project within DESI (Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument) that is looking at the spectroscopic completeness of galaxy cluster members. This just means determining what fractions of previously detected cluster members (all the red galaxies in the above images) will have spectra taken. A spectrum displays absorption and emission lines that tell us about the chemical composition of galaxies and stars and can be used to determine the distance to the galaxy. By having a spectrum of a galaxy, we can more accurately identify the cluster members.

That’s the science that I’m currently working on! I hope you find it interesting.

Overall, despite the oppressive heat, this was another enjoyable and productive week. Even though I’m sure many of you were staying home, I hope that you were also able to do some fun things this week.

I hope that this update about my life, Astronomy research, and the covid-19 situation in Shanghai interests you and provides you with hope that things will improve and reach a new normal. This upcoming week should be another fairly normal research week. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about the current covid-19 situation or my research, please let me know. If you need to talk to someone about how to stay positive and productive while you shelter in place, please reach out. I want to help support you and assure all of you in any way that I can.

In peace,
Jesse

Welcome to Astronomer in Shanghai! Thank you for following along with my adventures in Shanghai! As the covid-19 pandemic continues to keep many of you sheltered in place, I want this blog to highlight that while this isolation is difficult, eventually things improve. In Shanghai, life is close to returning to a new normal as my last few entries highlight. I do emphasize that the timeline will not be the same everywhere. However, we are all in this together and if we cooperate with social distance guidelines things will improve.

If you find my blog inspiring or helpful, please subscribe and let me know! To subscribe, enter your name and e-mail on the right side of the page. Once subscribed, you’ll receive an e-mail with each new post. If you have any questions about how Shanghai is recovering from covid-19, how I’ve dealt with it, or life in Shanghai, please ask. Instructions are on the “To Comment” page. Also, please share this blog with anyone who needs reassurance that eventually life will return to a semblance of normalcy.

Life in Shanghai

I want to begin this update by checking in with all of you. Even as the situation continues to either stabilize/improve here in Shanghai, know that I continue to think about all of you and your families. I hope that you all remain safe and healthy. I know how difficult being sheltered in place and having to work from home can be. So, I hope that you’re all staying positive, finding fun things to do (even if they’re small) to brighten your days, and making the most out of what is a trying situation. While I don’t know how long this situation will last, I do believe that eventually things will begin to improve in the US, Europe, and rest of the world as they have in Shanghai. With that in mind, I hope that this finds you after having another week of continued health and safety.

As I’ve discussed in my recent posts, life is close to returning to a new normal. Everyone is still wearing masks and it’s even gotten to the point that it’s shocking to see someone walking around without one. The only other noticeable changes are that we’re still required to show our green QR codes and get our temperatures taken when we enter public spaces. Even the gate to the little lane neighborhood I live in is no longer kept locked. The primary things that are different are that public places are capped (in terms of attendance) and schools remain closed. However, as far as I know, SJTU is planning to open it’s campus to students in the middle of May, so things are close to returning to our new normal.

In terms of my weekly covid-19 statistics update, the situation has continued to improve in Shanghai! There are currently just 77 cases in Shanghai (down from 112 last week) and 60 in Beijing. In Shanghai, that means that the recovery rate has risen up to 87%. For China as a whole the recovery rate is ~93%. I will again reiterate that even with these high numbers there is a lot of fear that the reopening of schools may trigger a second wave, so people here are remaining vigilant, which I agree with. I trust that as the recovery rate rises here, it will continue to rise elsewhere assuming social distancing guidelines are followed.

I know that currently there’s a lot of discussions about reopening states in the US and countries in Europe. This really scares me. When we were on week six of our quarantine, Shanghai was just beginning to reopen and even then that was mostly just certain restaurants reopening (with temperature checks) and people were not allowed to visit one another. Most offices were still closed and people were generally remaining home. I had just gone for my first run since the covid-19 outbreak began. More importantly, Shanghai took draconian actions to enforce sheltering in place, which led to this faster timeline of recovery. Given this, I highly recommend that regardless of whether you live in a state that is attempting to prematurely reopen, please continue social distancing. As I’ve emphasized, while life may be close to returning to normal, there’s still a sense that the everything is not quite normal and that precautions must be taken.

In terms of Astronomy, this was a moderately productive week. I continued revising my paper studying different methods of using the Stellar Mass – Halo Mass relation to estimate halo mass and to make that paper more self-contained. It’s been a good exercise to take a step back from this project and remember that not everyone has read my prior work (though I wish they would 🙂 ). I’ve also continued to work mostly on my DESI research on the spectroscopic completeness of galaxy cluster members and my Luminosity Function research. Overall, I’m making progress, which given the difficulties that you all now know about working from home, I view as a win! Additionally, we’ve continued to have weekly meetings within the Zu Group as well as weekly SJTU colloquiums. I’m curious when the campus opens up if we’ll have Zoom colloquiums or if we’ll do them in person (even if they’re just other Astronomers from Shanghai).

Here in Shanghai, the weather has started to really warm up and it’s been enjoyable. Most days it’s in the mid-70s to mid-80s, which is definitely hotter than what I’m used to from Ann Arbor or Saratoga. However, it’s made it really nice to go running! I went for three runs this week and during all my running and walking got many pictures of Shanghai blooming!

As you can see, there are tons of little parks and gardens around Shanghai! It’s one of the reasons I love walking everywhere!

This was a really fun week for me! On Thursday, I was invited over to my friends Heather and Shimi’s home (along with my friend Hannah Maia) for dinner and baking! (more on that in the food section). This was a very fun evening filled with delicious food, and wonderful conversation, which served as a great way to cap my 28th year!

For those of you who don’t know, Friday was my 29th birthday! Looking back, 28 was a very exciting year, I finished my Ph.D., moved from Ann Arbor to Shanghai, started my postdoc at SJTU, started this blog, and have made many wonderful friends in Shanghai! So, hopefully even though my 29th year may have started with the world being in turmoil, it will be equally eventful! I want to thank all of you who reached out to me last week via WeChat, Facebook, or e-mail with birthday wishes! It was so heartwarming to receive all of those.

This is the first birthday I’ve celebrated in Shanghai. While overall it was great, there were definitely some new experiences. First, as many of you know I’m an identical twin (Happy Birthday Emmet!) and it was a little weird celebrating my birthday 12 hours before he did, but we were still able to celebrate and virtually exchange gifts via Zoom (not sure when either of us will get them though 🙂 ). Additionally, because so many of my friends and family are in the US, it felt as though my birthday lasted 36 hours, which was really nice!

On Friday evening, my friends at Moishe House hosted a Birthday Shabbat dinner for me! Given how much of my social circle overlaps with the Moishe House group, this was a wonderful way for me to celebrate my birthday. Hannah Maia made a fantastic vegan Indian meal of chana masala, aloo gobi, and palak tofu! I also made a yummy sesame cauliflower, which was a hit! My friend Casey (one of the other Moishe House residents) also made a delicious vegan carrot cake, following my Mom’s recipe!

I had a pretty fantastic birthday! However, given the current situation around the world, I do want to reflect on how fortunate I was to celebrate with friends in person. I know, from talking to my brother, that it’s not quite as much fun to celebrate just via zoom, so this opportunity made me all the more thankful both for all the friends that I’ve made here in Shanghai and also that the situation has improved here.

To celebrate my birthday, I did buy myself some gifts. While I had an easy time finding a new pair of running shorts and an additional sleeveless running shirt (It’s hot here and I need more!), when I went to buy new ASICS Gel-Kayano sneakers I had a little more difficulty because I have big feet and unlike in the US, they don’t actually carry size 12.5 in stores (or any sizes bigger than 12). Thankfully, Hannah Maia helped me order a new pair of running shoes online via taobao! In addition to running stuff, I also returned to the anime store that I had previously visited near the Yu gardens. As I said in that post, I had to buy me (and my brother) a few anime statues! So, since I still love Dragon Ball Z, I bought myself a Vegeta statue and Emmet a Goku statue!

The Yu Gardens are exceptionally beautiful, so I decided to walk over and take a look on Saturday afternoon (https://astronomerinshanghai.com/uncategorized/the-yu-gardens-and-the-laoximen-district-and-its-history)!

As you can see, there was this amazing serpent sculpture snaking around the outer portion of the gardens! This sculpture added a new sense of wonder and majesty to the gardens!

There was also a ton of really cool graffiti in the area surrounding the gardens!

In addition to what was an incredibly fun Saturday, I also had fun hanging out with my friends Heather and Shimi on Sunday! The second photo is our reflections! 🙂

Food in Shanghai

While I didn’t go out to restaurants for any meals this week, I did have some fantastic home cooked meals! On Thursday, my friend Heather made an Ethiopian feast of lentils, spinach, and cabbage! Heather and I also made my now famous (at least here in Shanghai) chocolate tahini cookies! Hannah Maia and Heather also made injera, Ethiopian flat bread!

Overall, it was tons of fun cooking together and made for a really fun evening and delicious meal! Thanks to Shimi for all the fun food photos! I look forward to doing this again!

Jewish Life in Shanghai

As mentioned, on Friday, I went to Moishe House for my birthday Shabbat! Other than it being my birthday, it was also the first Shabbat that we’ve gotten to celebrate at the actual Moishe House since January! It was really nice being together with so many friends! I’m really glad that as Shanghai has continued to emerge from covid-19, the Moishe House community has re-emerged along with it!

Overall, this was a really fun week! I got to celebrate my 29th birthday with friends and even got to spend time outside, both running and exploring Shanghai! I’m really happy that the situation in Shanghai has improved and hope that it continues to maintain. While I’m sure many of you are unable to do similar activities now, know that once this situation improves, you’ll find yourself (as I have) so much more appreciative of the little things (whether it’s coffee with friends or going to dinner) than ever before!

I hope that this update about my life, birthday adventures, and the covid-19 situation in Shanghai provides you hope that things will improve and reach a new normal. This upcoming week should be mostly research focused and then next weekend is the Labor Day holiday. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about the current covid-19 situation, please let me know. If you need advice on staying positive based on how I’ve dealt with the situation or just want someone to talk to, please reach out. I want to help support you and assure all of you in any way that I can.

In peace,
Jesse

Welcome to Astronomer in Shanghai! Thank you for following along with my adventures in Shanghai! As the world remains on lockdown due to the covid-19 pandemic, I want this blog to highlight that while the isolation that comes with covid-19 is difficult, eventually things will improve. Here in China, life is close to returning to normal as my last few entries highlight. I do want to emphasize that the timeline will not be the same everywhere. However, we are all in this together. If we all do our part to cooperate with social distance guidelines things will improve. Also, if you’re looking for something to do during your time at home, please take a look at some of my earlier entries, they’ll give you a greater appreciation for how amazing of a city Shanghai is to live in.

If you find my blog inspiring or helpful, please subscribe and let me know! To subscribe, enter your name and e-mail on the right side of the page. Once subscribed, you’ll receive an e-mail with each new post. If you have any questions about how Shanghai is recovering from covid-19, how I’ve dealt with it, or life in Shanghai, please ask. Instructions are on the “To Comment” page. Also, please share this blog with anyone who needs reassurance that eventually life will return to a semblance of normalcy.

Life in Shanghai

Even as life creeps closer to returning to normal (but with masks) here in Shanghai, I can’t help but still remain nervous about the covid-19 pandemic. My family and friends back in the US are still feeling the brunt of the covid-19 pandemic and every time I get together with friends here in Shanghai, we can’t help but talk about the situation, mostly checking in that all of our families are staying healthy and safe and bemoaning the inaction of the US government. Given that, over the last few weeks, I’ve really appreciated that some of you either via e-mail or via the comments section of my blog have opened up and told me how you are doing. It’s reassuring for me to hear that so many of you are staying safe and that you have been helped or inspired by my writings. So, as I’ve done the last few weeks, I want to start this entry by checking in with all of you. How are you and your families doing? I hope that by now, you’ve started to adjust to social distancing guidelines and working from home. Most importantly, I hope that you are all continuing to stay safe and healthy.

As mentioned in the beginning of this post, life is slowly getting closer to reaching normalcy. The two main differences are 1). everyone is still wearing masks and 2). schools and universities are still closed. As I mentioned last week, the plan is still for schools to announce reopening plans on April 27th. However, for Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU; where I work), the rumors passed along to me suggest that the campus will likely open up by mid May. While it will likely take far longer for people to stop wearing masks in public, hopefully schools will reopen soon (they’ve been closed for ~ 4 months). One big recent improvement is that indoor museums are once again open! So, this week, I went to a museum for the first time in months (more on that later)!

Overall, the situation in Shanghai has continued to improve. There are currently 112 active covid-19 cases in Shanghai (a big decrease from last week), which increases the recovery rate to 81.2%. For comparison, there are just 75 active cases in Beijing. Overall, the recovery rate for China is estimated to be at 92.3%. Despite these positive numbers, when I talk with friends and colleagues, there’s still a general sense of fear of a second wave, mostly through imported cases. Also, as I’ve discussed previously, the prior absence of incorporating asymptomatic cases into the reported numbers likely skews all of these percentages high. However, the key takeaway that I would like to highlight is that while currently, the recovery rate in the US and other countries is rather low, over time (probably at least 1-2 months), the recovery rate will increase assuming everyone follows social distancing guidelines and leaders such as Governors Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom continue to rebuke the current occupant of the white house and prevent the economy from prematurely re-opening and causing a second surge.

In terms of Astronomy, I had another productive week. With my DES (Dark Energy Suvery) paper in it’s final writing stages, I’ve switched a lot of my research focus to my DESI (Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument) project looking at the spectroscopic completeness of clusters and my analysis of the Luminosity Function of bright galaxies. It’s been nice to dive back into these projects and spend time working on coding and analysis instead of just focusing on writing. Additionally, we had a very interesting virtual colloquium on scaling relations between galaxy properties and halo properties (my area of expertise) this week! As I’m sure is the case for many of you, virtual Zoom meetings are now a major part of my weekly routine consisting of meetings with DES collaborators, the Zu Group, and DESI groups. Unfortunately for me, that can sometime mean late nights, but those are the sacrifices of being in global collaborations.

While last week was spent preparing for the Passover Seders I led (https://astronomerinshanghai.com/uncategorized/life-in-quarantine-week-11-and-passover-in-shanghai/), this was a more relaxed and calmer week, which I really appreciated. With more time, I did a lot of cooking! I made vegan oatmeal craisin cookies, Tomato Soup with red lentils, mushroom carnitas tacos, and vegan parmesan cheese! To balance it out, I also went on three runs this week! Running in Shanghai in April is great! It’s warm (60s-70s) and I’m surrounded by tons of beautiful flowers!

I was also able to spend time hanging out with some of my friends this week! On Wednesday, I got together for a fantastic dinner and excellent conversations with my friends Heather and Shimi and on Thursday, Moishe House hosted a post-Passover dinner! While I had a lot of fun on both Wednesday and Thursday, I think the highlight of my week was on Saturday, when I got together with some of my friends/colleagues from SJTU and we went to the Shanghai Museum of Natural History! This was the first time in 3 months I had seen anyone from SJTU in person! It was great to catch up and hear how everyone’s been holding up during the last three months. I’m definitely looking forward to being able to return to work and see/interact with my SJTU friends on a more frequent basis!

For those longtime readers of my blog, you may remember that I went to the natural history museum last November. It’s a really nice and large museum, so I welcomed the opportunity to visit again. Additionally, this time there were far fewer attendees, so it was a lot easier to see the exhibits. One of my favorite parts of the museum is that it includes a lot of Astronomy! Below, you can see me and my friends all trying to find the different telescopes that we use on a map!

Overall, the museum is similar to the American Museum of Natural History in NYC, which i have fond memories of from my summer spent doing Astronomy research there. Since I’m sure many of you have been unable to visit a museum in a long time, I wanted to share some of my favorite parts of what I saw on Saturday!

There are tons of amazing dinosaur fossils as well as fossils from other animals!

And just like AMNH, there are a lot of animal models and taxidermy (which while interesting are a little creepy).

One of my other favorite parts of the museum is the butterfly exhibit! They have beautiful displays of butterflies as well as the butterflies arranged to make art!

Lastly, it wouldn’t be a natural history museum without cool rocks and seashells!

Overall, I had a great visit to the Natural History Museum. It’s definitely one of my favorite museums in Shanghai and it was a lot of fun to visit with friends! For those of you who are curious, museums do take a lot of precautions, everyone has to show their green QR codes, get their temperature taken, wear masks, and they cap the number of visitors per day.

Food in Shanghai

On Saturday, my SJTU friends and I went to an Indian restaurant for lunch! I got a very nice coconut vegetable curry with naan and samosa!

My favorite meal of the week was on Wednesday, when my friend Heather made an amazing dinner of peppers stuffed with tofu ricotta and cashew cream sauce (not pictured), a Kale Israeli Salad with tahini dressing (not pictured) and a lovely lemon pie with almond crust!

Heather is a fantastic cook and now that it’s easier to get together in people’s homes, I look forward to sharing my own cooking with Heather and Shimi in the near future. 🙂

Jewish Life in Shanghai

Passover ended on Thursday evening. To celebrate, Moishe House hosted a Mimouna celebration, which is Moroccan Jewish post-Passover tradition. For us, it was a dinner where we ate all the carbs we’d been missing! Most importantly, they were able to host the event at the actual Moishe House, for the first time in 3 months! So, another sign that things are returning to normal! I had a lot of fun catching up with friends over breakfast burritos, muffins, pancakes, and my homemade vegan oatmeal craisin cookies (which were a hit 🙂 )! While it’s been nice doing virtual events and dinners at restaurants it’s really nice to get back to doing some in person events within the Jewish community! Hopefully those will continue as life returns to normal.

I hope that this update about my life, adventures, and the covid-19 situation in Shanghai provides you with hope that eventually things will return to normal or at least reach a new normal. This upcoming week should be a fairly normal week filled with lots of research. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about the current covid-19 situation, please let me know. If you need advice based on how I’ve stayed positive and dealt with the situation or just someone to talk to, please reach out. I’d love to help support you and assure all of you in any way that I can.

In peace,
Jesse

Welcome to Astronomer in Shanghai! Thank you for following along with my life and experiences in Shanghai! As much of the world remains on lockdown due to the covid-19 pandemic, I want this blog will serve as a message of hope that eventually things will get better. As I’ve documented here, life during this pandemic is hard; however, eventually things will improve. Here in China, life is beginning to return to normal as my last few entries highlight. I will note that the timeline will not be the same everywhere. However, we are all in this together. If everyone cooperates with social distance guidelines things will improve.

If you find my blog uplifting please subscribe and let me know! To subscribe, enter your name and e-mail on the right side of the page. Once subscribed, you’ll receive an e-mail with each new post. If you have any questions about how Shanghai is recovering from covid-19, how I’ve dealt with it, or life in Shanghai, please ask. Instructions are on the “To Comment” page. Also, please share this blog with anyone who needs reassurance that eventually life will return to a semblance of normalcy.

Life in Shanghai

Even as the situation continues to improve here in Shanghai, it’s hard for me to fully relax because I remain very concerned about the spread of the covid-19 pandemic around the world, particularly in the US and Europe. So, I want to begin this post by checking in with all of you. I hope and pray that all of you, your families, and your friends, remain safe and healthy. How are you holding up? Have you been able to find a routine so that while working from, you’re still able to be productive?

For those of you that celebrated, I hope that you either enjoyed your Zoom Passover Seders or Zoom Easter celebrations. I’m sure there were a lot of you who found the absence of close in person activities particularly difficult this week. However, I hope that you used these holidays as an excuse to continue to connect with your family, friends, and colleagues virtually, and still were able to find them to be meaningful.

As the situation in Shanghai continues to improve, I’ve thought a lot about whether I should still refer to these posts as Life in Quarantine. I remain healthy, happy and safe. So, while life has not returned to normal, it isn’t the forced stay-at-home practices that many of you are thankfully required to partake in. The most restrictive times appear to have passed in Shanghai. While we still have temperature checks, personal QR codes, and are generally wearing masks, many of the more restrictive policies have been lifted. I’m now more easily able to visit friends, go to restaurants, and visit parks. However, the two biggest hurdles are schools, which still remain closed and enclosed public spaces, like museums and theaters. So, I’ve decided that until SJTU (where I work) reopens, I’ll keep referring to these posts as Life in Quarantine.

On a positive note, Shanghai announced that on April 27th, all secondary schools and Universities can either reopen or determine the date they will reopen! I was very excited to hear this, since I hadn’t received any update in quite a while. My boss/mentor, Prof. Ying Zu, believes that SJTU will reopen either the first or second week of May, giving students time to make plans to return from other provinces in China as well as accounting for the International Labor Day holiday (May 1st). As I noted many posts ago, my commute is about 75 minutes on the subway each way, which honestly is not something I would prefer to do daily under these circumstances. Thankfully, Ying (who also has an hour plus commute) completely agrees with me, so when the university reopens, I will only be going in 1-2 times per week (until life really returns to normal). I think that this will work out very well for me, since I’ve found a good rhythm of working from home.

Beyond the school announcement, life appears to be continuing on its upwards trajectory here in Shanghai. However, I will note that there still is concern about a second wave of cases. There are currently 162 active cases in Shanghai. However, all are imported cases where Chinese nationals were returning to Shanghai (and screened at the airport). In total, the recovery rate is up to 72%. Moreover, for China as a whole, the reported recovery rate is at 93.4%. As I mentioned last week, China only recently began reporting the number of asymptomatic cases, so this recovery rate may not be accurate. However, what is accurate is that if people act responsibly and follow social distancing guidelines (probably for at least another month), then signs of improvement will likely follow. On another positive note, Wuhan has reopened, and many of the previously isolated citizens are able to leave their homes again. While this policy was severe, I truly believe that the best way to help flatten the curve is to continue to wash your hands and to practice social distancing.

In addition to the news that SJTU should be reopening in a few weeks, this was a very productive research week for me! I finally was able to access all of my data stored on my Ph.D. advisor, Prof. Chris Miller’s computer. So I was able to finish all of the research and analysis for my first DES paper! I’m thrilled to have reached the stage where Chris, my collaborator Yuanyuan, and I can just go back and forth tweaking the arguments and strengthening the paper. Hopefully we’ll be submitting this paper for DES internal review soon! 🙂 Additionally, I was able to start making more progress on my Luminosity function analysis and look forward to focusing more of my efforts on that project in the coming weeks. On top of that, I also was a co-Investigator for an observing proposal for the first time! Since most of my science has been done with archival data, I haven’t had the opportunity to do this before!

Unsurprisingly, given the title of this entry, the majority of my time this week not spent doing work, was spent preparing for Passover. However, even with that, I still had to take advantage of the warm weather (mostly in the 60s-70s) and go for 4 runs! Even though I wear a mask when I run, I feel so much better now that I’m able to go running multiple times per week. I hope that you’re also able to still go outside for walks or runs as well! Below are some highlights from my runs!

Jewish Life in Shanghai

Passover began on Wednesday evening. As I mentioned in my last post, I helped co-lead the Moishe House Seder on Wednesday night and then lead the Kehilat Shanghai Seder on Thursday night. Given that prior to this year, I had only lead one Seder, I was incredibly nervous about how these would go. Thankfully, both Seders were lovely experiences! As one of the few communities where in person Seders were possible, I was thrilled that so many people came and enjoyed the Seders that I lead. It’s hard for me to believe that Passover marked having spent 6 months in Shanghai. I feel so fortunate that I’ve been able to become part of two warm and inviting communities and that I’ve made so many wonderful friends through those communities! 🙂

The Moishe House Seder on the first night was held on the 2nd floor of a French restaurant. We were joined by ~25 people, many of whom were my friends or people that I had met at previous Moishe House events.

Above you can see a few photos from the Seder! We were able to squeeze in to the space. You can see my influence on the Seder plate, where we had a mushroom as the vegetarian alternative to the shankbone. (As a side note, we did have eggs, they just came a little after the photo was taken.)

This Seder was a lot of fun to lead, we read a fun Passover play to tell the story of Passover and got lots of participation from members of the community to help lead other blessings and prayers. I even read my Dad’s Passover story, one of my favorite parts of my family’s Passover Seder, which many of the attendees told me they really enjoyed!

Since we were the only Moishe House hosting a Seder, the international Moishe House organization even put together a Youtube video highlighting our Seder!

On Thursday, I got to go through the process a second time! The Kehilat Shanghai Seder was hosted at the Millennium Hotel and had about 40 attendees. This was the first in person event that Kehilat Shanghai has done since January, so it was wonderful to see the community come to celebrate. It was also really nice to see so many of my friends there, some of which had been the previous night, which really helped me get comfortable!

One of my favorite parts of this Seder was continuing Kehilat Shanghai’s tradition of doing the four questions in as many languages as possible. First, I had the children lead the four questions (with the help of their parents) in Hebrew, then read in English. Then community members read the four questions in Mandarin, French, Spanish, Russian, and Latin! We truly are an international community! We also again told the Passover story through reading the play, in which one of the young children got to play G-d, which was adorable!

Overall, I’m really happy that I had the opportunity to lead these two Seders. While it was a lot of work putting the plan together (special thanks to my Dad for all his help and insight!) and exhausting, it was really special feeling the appreciation from my new community and getting the opportunity to be together again. It also made me so happy when as people left they thanked me for leading an enjoyable Seder and for helping them to celebrate the holiday. While generally we end Passover with next year in Jerusalem, I chose to end the Seders instead by saying “Next Year Together,” as a message that while we were lucky to be able to celebrate together, not everyone around the world was as fortunate as we were. Hopefully, next year, everyone will have this opportunity!

In addition to celebrating in person in Shanghai, I also woke up in time on both Thursday and Friday morning to join my parents, brother, and other friends and family for both of their Zoom Seders! While it was a different experience than being gathered around my parents dining room table, it was really nice to feel like part of their community as well! Maybe next year, I’ll have to convince my parents to Zoom me in again!

Food in Shanghai

Most of my food adventures this week centered around the Passover Seder. Both nights we had delicious meals; however, the first night’s food was incredibly photogenic, so I had to share some photos with you all! We had matzo ball soup (thanks to my friend Hannah Maia for the matzo balls), roasted green beans and mushrooms, carrots and peas, potatoes, cauliflower, fritata, and a delicious flourless chocolate cake for desert!

In addition to the wonderful Passover Seder meals, I also made some fun Passover treats! Of course, I had to make a Matzo pizza (using my homemade vegan cheese). I also made a Passover ice cream sandwhich, using chocolate covered matzo and filled with chocolate tofu mousse and a yummy vegan matzo brei! Lastly, but not pictured, I also made my Mom’s homemade applesauce to enjoy for breakfast.

With all that happened this week, it’s hard to believe that it’s only been a week since my last update. I’m glad that I was able to make significant progress on my research while also enjoying my Passover Seders. For those of you who celebrated either Passover or Easter, I hope that even though the celebrations were likely not normal, that you still found them meaningful and hopefully (virtually) spent with friends or family.

I hope that this update about my life and experiences in Shanghai offers hope that eventually things will return to normal. This week should be a relatively normal week. It’ll be nice to have a calmer week after all of the excitement last week. If you have any questions/comments or concerns about the current covid-19 situation, please let me know. As you reach your first month of life spent in lockdown, if you need advice for how I’ve dealt with it or just someone to talk to, please reach out. I’d love to help support you and assure all of you in any way that I can.

In peace,
Jesse