Welcome to Astronomer in Shanghai! Thank you for following my blog and for your interest in my life and adventures in Shanghai! As covid-19 persists in the US and around the world, and you are (hopefully) continuing to remain vigilant, avoiding large gatherings, and social distancing, I hope that you are all staying safe and healthy and that my blog highlights what the world can look like once recovery begins. Once things improve, I hope you enjoy small gatherings with friends and family and outdoor activities. I’m sure you’ll find these interactions meaningful and enjoyable as I have.

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Life in Shanghai

I hope that this latest entry finds all of you continuing to stay safe and healthy and hopefully vaccinated (or in the process of getting vaccinated). I hope that all of you are taking advantage of spring and starting to spend some more time outside going for runs, walks, or hikes, as well.

I want to start this entry by thanking all of you for so many wonderful birthday wishes. It was really nice receiving comments, e-mails, and Facebook messages from so many of you wishing me Happy Birthday :).

In terms of covid-19, the situation in Shanghai and China as a whole remains entirely under control. However, given that the US recently ended the mask mandate, I want to discuss what the “normal situation” is here in Shanghai. On a daily basis, some people still where masks all the time. However, masks are only required when you’re inside (in crowded areas), or public transportation (and taxis). So, I wear my mask every day when I take the bus to work. Whenever I go out, I always carry my mask with me just in case. Nowadays, when I go running, I don’t where a mask. So, depending on what you’re comfortable with, keep wearing masks. I think it’s important for those in the US to recognize that wearing a mask is not and has never been a hardship. It’s quite commonplace in China (and other parts of Asia) for people to wear masks when they have a cold, fever, or the flu. In terms of covid-19 cases, Shanghai currently has 67 imported cases, and a recovery rate of 96.28%. Beijing has just 5 cases and a recovery rate of 98.67%. For China as a whole, there are 532 cases and a recovery rate of 94.79%. So, despite the fact that we no longer are required to wear masks all the time in Shanghai, the situation is quite different than the current situation in the US.

In terms of Astronomy, this was another productive week. First, my DES paper on the evolution of the Stellar Mass – Halo Mass Relation officially entered the 2 week period of collaboration wide review! So, hopefully it will move to publication soon after that! In terms of my actual research, I spent much of the week working on my mock Luminosity Function. However, much to my frustration, I caught a bug in my analysis when I was making science plots. However, that bug had actually forced me to generate almost 100x more random galaxies than I actually needed. So, what took me about 3 weeks to run took me about 2 days to redo! That code that I was parallelizing that took 25 minutes now can be done in ~ 10 seconds! 🙂

The weather in Shanghai for the most part has still been nice (mid to upper 70s). However, Friday was our first very hot day, reaching 88. I’m not mentally prepared for the Shanghai heat and humidity, so thankfully the temperature cooled off this weekend. This week I went for 3 runs! Here are some photos from my walks and runs around Shanghai. I really liked the butterfly statue garden built in the nearby Xujiahui park!

There was also this really interesting Bull sculptures, that reminded me of the horses that are set up around Saratoga!

In addition to the runs, on Thursday, I attended the most recent Unravel storytelling event. This month’s theme was Down to Earth in honor of Earth Day! Though not all the stories were related to the Earth, it was a really interesting and captivating series of stories. Topics included overcoming depression, an experience skydiving, and learning to love to eat bugs. Overall, I really enjoyed it and look forward to the next one!

The highlight of my week was on Sunday. On Sunday morning, my brother Emmet messaged me to tell me that there was a full scale Gundam built and set-up in front of a mall in Shanghai! For those of you who are unfamiliar, Gundam is a long running anime franchise that Emmet and I have been watching since 2000 (with Gundam Wing). So, I knew I had to go see this! So, on Sunday afternoon, I trekked out to the LaLaporte mall in Pudong (other side of the river). This is a Japanese mall (though having been there, other than some Japanese stores, I’m not sure what made it a Japanese mall).

As you can see, the statue of the Freedom Gundam (from Gundam Seed) was really amazing! It was gigantic and looked so awesome!

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As a huge Gundam fan, seeing a Gundam in person was truly a breathtaking! This is only the third time one has been built to scale (the first two were in Japan). So, I was really lucky to get to go see it!

As you can see, the mall itself was really cool, too. There were plenty of Gundam ads set up all over as well and you can see people building Gundam models inside!

I’m really thankful that Emmet saw the article about this, because it was definitely something I wouldn’t have wanted to miss!

Food in Shanghai

Friday was International Jianbing day. For those of you who are unfamiliar, a jianbing is a Chinese style crepe that is then filled with egg, vegetables, sauces, and sometimes meat. This is a really common breakfast or morning food in Shanghai. As a vegan, I’ve never actually had a jianbing. However, again, thanks to Emmet, I found out that Just Egg, a vegan egg substitute company that is building an audience in China was providing their Just Egg product to local jianbing shops and then offering free jianbing. So, on Friday for lunch I got a free jianbing filled with a scallions, chives, onions, just egg, spicy sauce, and a cracker (made from the dough batter). It was really good, so I’ll definitely have to get them again and encourage them to keep stocking just egg!

Jewish Life in Shanghai

On Friday, my friend Ha hosted another lovely family Shabbat! This month’s Shabbat was a really nice mix of young professionals as well as some families. It was really lovely to gather everyone together to celebrate Shabbat and it was adorable to watch the kids do the blessings and then devour the challah. 🙂 I’ve been going to the Family Shabbats for almost a year now, and it’s been a great way for me to get to know and become friends with so many of the community members!

As you can see, we enjoyed homemade Challah, pizza (including both vegan pizza and jianbing pizza), and a delicious strawberry cake that I made (which was a big hit with everyone, including the kids)!

Overall, this was a really nice, calm, and relaxing week. I was even able to bounce back quickly from a research mistake and redo my analysis :). It’s currently the International Labor Day holiday here in China, so SJTU is closed through Wednesday. So, I’ll be doing some work at home for the first half of this week. This upcoming week, we have a community Shabbat on Friday as well as some other fun things that I’ll share with you all!

I hope that you enjoyed seeing my photos of a full sized Gundam and of family Shabbat! I hope that you all have a safe, happy, and healthy week.

In peace,

Jesse

Trivia

Here are the answers to my trivia questions!

This Day in History

1). In 2008, this racer became the first woman to win an IndyCar Series Race?
— Danica Patrick

2). In 1986, Michael Jordan set an NBA record scoring 63 points in a playoff game against what team?
— Boston Celtics

3). In 1980, Fidel Castro opened this port, allowing ~ 125,000 Cubans to leave the country over the next 5-6 months
–Mariel Port

4). In 1940, this type of microscope, that significantly improved upon the resolving power of light based microscopes was first demonstrated
— Electron Microscope

5). In 1920, this Declaration officially made Palestine a British mandate
–Balfour Declaration

6). On this day in 1916 and 1912, these two famous and still used Baseball stadiums were opened
–Fenway Park and Wrigley Field

7). In 1862, the first of these tests, which later would extend the life of processed goods was done by this famed scientist
-Louis Pasteur

8). In 1611, this Shakespeare Tragedy featuring characters including Banquo, Hecate, Donalbain premiered
–MacBeth

9). In 295 and 1910, this Astronomical Object was recorded as being seen in the night sky?
–Halley’s Comet

10). In 1937, this actor known best for his role as Sulu on Star Trek was born
— George Takei

Where in the World

1). Where did Dr. James Naismith invent basketball?
–Springfield, MA

2). In what city was Arch Duke Franz-Ferdinand assassinated, leading to WWI?
–Sarajevo

3). What was the first city outside of the UK where the Beatles performed?
–Hamburg
Bonus: Name the two former members who played in this show, but would soon after leave the Beatles
–Pete Best and Stuart Sutcliffe

4). What was the first city outside of Greece to host the Olympics?
–Paris

5). The emperors of China had seasonal homes, the northern capital was Beijing, name this southern capital?
–Nanjing

6). In January of 1790, which city was the capital of the United States?
–New York City

7). What is the name of the Island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned from 1964 – 1982
–Robben Island

8). The first manned flight by Orville and Wilbur Wright occurred near what North Carolina town?
–Kitty Hawk

9). The battle of this location in 1600 led way to the formation of the Tokugawa Shogunate?
–Sekigahara

10). Many of the world’s best and largest Telescopes are built in Chile in the Atacama Desert Region. This nearest city is 100 km to the Northeast and ~ 500km north of Santiago?
–La Serena

Units of Measurement

1). Which of these astronomical related distance measurements is the largest: parsec, Astronomical Unit, lightyear
–Parsec

2). Named after a French mathematician and physicist, this is the unit of electrical current?
–Ampere

3). Named for English Physicist, mathematician, and brewer, James Prescott Joule, the joule is the SI derived unit of what?
–Energy

4). Name the three units that are commonly used to measure temperature
–Fahrenheit, Celsius (centigrade), Kelvin

5). In chemistry, this is the unit used to describe luminous intensity
–Candela

6). In astronomy, for measures of the mass of stars and galaxies, we use the unit solar masses. For planets, we use either earth masses or Jupiter masses. Which of these answers best describes how much more massive the sun is than the earth?
— 1 Msun = 300 Mearth
— 1 Msun = 30 million Mearth
— 1 Msun = 300 hundred thousand Mearth
— I Msun = 3 billion Earth

7). The Watt is a unit that is used to measure radiant power, in Astronomy, this is referred to as what inherent property
–Luminosity

8). When this unit of measurement was originally introduced it was defined as the weight of a cubic centimeter of water
–Gram

9). The modern formulations of Newton’s two Most famous equations begin with this quantity, that is measured in Newton’s
–Force

10). Named for a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, writer and Catholic Theologian, this is the SI unit of Pressure
–Pascal