Welcome to Astronomer in Shanghai! Thank you for following my blog and for your interest in my adventures in Shanghai! As you continue to wear masks (like me) and maintain social distancing practices, I hope that my blog illustrates that once the world recovers from this outbreak (which is not now in the US), things will improve. You should all look forward to small interactions with friends and family. I’m sure you’ll find, as I have, that these are the interactions you will cherish. In Shanghai, life has returned to a new normal. The recovery timeline for Shanghai is not applicable to the US and new outbreaks may still occur. However, we are all in this together and if we wear masks and cooperate with social distancing guidelines things will improve.
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Life in Shanghai
I hope that you all continue to remain safe and healthy. Hopefully, you, your friends, and your family are all taking covid-19 seriously and are continuing to maintain social distancing practices and wear masks when you go outside. It’s regularly hot and humid in Shanghai, so I understand that wearing masks in this weather can be uncomfortable; however, you all need to wear masks to help slow the spread of covid-19. One thing I hope that you’ve learned from this blog is that despite covid-19, you can still do some fun activities (including while wearing a mask). Whether it’s running, hiking, going for walks, or finding ways to connect with friends and family in a safe manner, I hope that all of you are able to find some moments of enjoyment this summer.
For much of this blog, I haven’t discussed a lot about the relationship between the US and China. Although, I have discussed how the foreign student ban will likely lead to fewer scholars and educated workers coming from China to the US. I’ve avoided this topic, mostly because I don’t have any valuable insights to share. However, the relationship appears to have further deteriorated in the past week, with the closing of the Chinese consulate in Houston, which was then followed by the closing of the consulate in Chengdu (where the Panda reserves are). From my perspective, the inconsistent messaging from the current administration is problematic. They seem to jump around on which issues they care about deems important and remain unaware that the US is no longer able to boss China around. Furthermore, the trade war cannot be won and is only negatively impacting both countries. However, if you want an educated discussion of the topic, I highly recommend listening to a recent episode of the Make Me Smart Podcast from Marketplace with Kai Ryssdal and Molly Wood (linked below). They interview Jennifer Pak, a marketplace reporter based in Shanghai. While much of what was discussed was troublesome, I greatly appreciated learning their insights and opinions.
As reassurance for you all, I don’t believe that this will impact my work (and none of my expat friends, particularly those who have lived here for a while, seem super concerned). In terms of my work, China is heavily invested in growing it’s scientific research (with international scholars), particularly in Astronomy with the upcoming launch of the Chinese Space Station Telescope.
In terms of covid-19, I continue to remain concerned about the lack of improvement I’ve seen in the US. There are now over 4 million cases in the US and I can’t understand why both governors and the current administration aren’t taking this more seriously. Not everyone is as lucky as my parents in NY to have had the firm hand of Gov. Cuomo. In stark contrast, the situation remains stable in China. There are cases on the rise in Hong Kong and in Xinjiang (but these are only on the range of tens to hundreds, not millions). In Beijing, there are now only 42 active cases, so that outbreak has been effectively contained. In Shanghai, there are just 18 cases (all imported from people returning to China). The recovery rate in Shanghai is at 96.6% and the recovery rate for China as a whole is at 93.1%. So, the situation appears to be under control.
On the Astronomy side of things, this was a relatively productive week. I spent most of my week working on my Luminosity Function analysis, where I finally solved why my results didn’t match the previously published results (there were some nuances to the evaluation of good and bad data that we were doing differently)! So, it feels great to have finally made some tangible progress on that front. Unfortunately, I still am working on solving the bugs related to the calibration of my DES SMHM relation analysis. Somewhat unsurprisingly and weirdly normal at this point, I have multiple Zoom meetings at different times each week, including our AstroCoffee presentations (morning), Zu Group meetings (afternoon), and a very late night DES telecon. Overall, I definitely have enough projects and meetings to keep me busy!
It is now the start of the real summer weather in Shanghai, which means it’s hot and humid (but not rainy). Most days it reaches about 90 (or hotter), but with high humidity, so it gets pretty uncomfortable. Despite that, I still went for two runs (when it was a little cooler) this week! Even though it’s so hot outside, Shanghai is still very beautiful!
Additionally, I saw lots of cats this week! Sadly, there are a lot of strays in Shanghai (although, I’m never 100% sure if cats are strays or just outdoor cats). The one in the store is not a stray.
I think I can now say, that I have a pretty active social life, which is very nice (and a pleasant change from my pre-covid normalcy)! I’m really happy to be part of a few (intertwined) friend groups! On Wednesday, my group of friends got together again for another improv game night! For those of you who are unfamiliar with improv games, they’re basically acting/theater games where you act out different scenarios, mostly trying to be funny. I’m having a lot of fun with it and slowly getting better! It’s a great opportunity to be silly.
The highlight of my weekend was making Cherry Jam with my friends Heather and Hannah Maia! Unlike my Mom’s cherry jam (which is great), we made sweet cherry jam, which turned out fantastically!
As you can see, we had a blast! From pitting the cherries (which was much less messy than when Emmet and I would do it and cover the whole dining room table with cherry juice) to juicing the lemons to smushing the cherries, to cooking the jam (and boiling the jars to sanitize them), we were able to make some delicious cherry jam in a few hours! I also used some of my previously made peach jam to make jam squares (my Mom’s signature cookie) for the first time in Shanghai, which were a hit!
Overall, we had a fantastic afternoon! I think this may be the best jam yet! We figured out that the liquid pectin we got wasn’t actually 100% pectin (it had sugar and water as the primary ingredients, unlike certo, which is what my Mom uses), so using the powdered pectin (and knowing how much to use) made the consistency of the jam much nicer! I look forward to enjoying it more in upcoming weeks! Also, we’re going to be making fig jam as well as citrus marmalade later this summer/fall!
To follow up such a fun Saturday, on Sunday, Heather and Shimi organized a board game afternoon! We played Cards Against Humanity, which is always a little more interesting when everyone is from different places (our group included Americans, Israelis, Chinese, and French people), Codenames, and Bananagrams! It was a lot of fun! I really enjoyed playing codenames again, since I have fond memories of playing with my friends in Ann Arbor during my last night in Michigan. 🙂
Throughout my week, I also saw a lot of other cool things I wanted to share! I love the Shanghai skyline!
Food in Shanghai
In addition to the delicious food that I made this week, which was General Tso’s chickpeas, vegan mozzarella, and roasted chickpeas, I had two fantastic meals out!
On Monday, I was invited to a dinner for Community Leaders who are working on topics related to social justice and Black Lives Matter. I am as part of the leadership for the Moishe House BLM discussion series and organizer of the Kehilat Shanghai/ Moishe House Solidarity Shabbat. It was very interesting meeting different leaders from many different communities, and hopefully we can do some activities together. Most are associated with business or US political groups. The dinner was at an amazing vegetarian buffet! So, I had to take tons of photos of the fantastic food (most of which I tried).
In an attempt to summarize everything, there was fruit juices, grilled mushrooms and eggplant, different types of seitan (gluten, including delicious gluten balls) and tofu dishes, sauteed mushrooms and other vegetables, greens, cauliflower, bamboo, pineapple rice, different dim sum (dumplings and baozi), as well as beautiful deserts (mine was a raspberry tart)! This was a vegan/vegetarian heaven! It was located right behind the Jing’an temple, so I’ll definitely be back!
On Friday, we had our Community Shabbat (more on that later). We had a delicious Chinese dinner! We had tofu, fruit (the purple fruit is dragonfruit or pitaya), smoked tofu (which was funky), amazing eggplant, and tomato with tofu skins! The eggplant was my favorite!
As you can see, there’s tons of amazing vegan and vegetarian food in Shanghai and I look forward to trying more! Additionally, although I forgot to take a photo, Hannah Maia made an amazing marbled red bean and black sesame flavored challah!
Jewish Life in Shanghai
This week, we had our second joint Kehilat Shanghai/Moishe House Shabbat! We had 15 people and one dog 🙂 come for the dinner and service! I had the pleasure of leading services again! I lead services with Emmet while we were seniors at Brown and I really enjoy the opportunity to lead the community! It was great to gather members of the community (including some new faces) to celebrate Shabbat and enjoy fascinating conversations ranging from the situation in the US, to a discussion of cosmology and life in the Universe (since generally everyone loves asking the Astronomer questions!). A special highlight for me was that my friends Kate and Ilan brought Pina!
Overall, this was another really fun week! I’m so glad I’ve found such a wonderful friend group! This upcoming week I think should be a little bit quieter (though I’ve been wrong before). So, I hope to make more progress on my research, too.
I hope that you enjoyed hearing about my week and seeing the delicious food I enjoyed and the fantastic jam I made! I hope this update reminds you that life really isn’t that different here in China and that for you as well things will improve (though the process to get there can’t be rushed). If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about the current covid-19 situation, please let me know. If you want to talk about how to stay positive and productive, reach out. I want to help support you and assure all of you in any way that I can.
In peace,
Jesse
Hi Jesse, it sounds like you had a really great week! I’m glad to hear you matched the luminosity functions! I’m sure you’ll get the other bugs worked out, too! It certainly looks like you all had fun making Cherry jam! I’m interested to see how the fig jam comes out. I hope you have some peanut butter for sandwiches! I can totally understand the oppressive heat. Boston has been hot and humid the last week and it isn’t fun. At least we have AC. I love the picture of the mouse? Statue! It’s super cute. Are the stray cats friendly? You really hit the jackpot with vegetarian food this week! It all looks amazing! Also, that challah sounds delicious! I’m glad you had a fun game night! I really miss those! Also, congrats on leading services. I’ve done it a few times at BU’s Hillel, But I always remember how much fun the services we lead at Brown were. I hope you have a fun and productive week! Stay safe and healthy!
Love,
Emmet
Hi Emmet! Thanks! It felt really good to make some progress on the LF research. Thankfully, peanut butter is pretty easy to get, so I’ve been enjoying lots of PB&J sandwiches! It is a mouse statue! Most of the street cats are friendly (if you approach them calmly). Some have let me pet them! The food was fantastic! I completely agree about our services at Brown! It was a blast leading them together. I hope that you also have a productive, safe, and healthy week!
Hi, Jesse.
I really enjoyed reading about your week of research, jam making, and evenings with friends to celebrate Shabbat and important social issues. To think you have not been in Shanghai a year, and you attended a meeting for community leaders on important social justice issues with delicious vegetarian food to boot.
Of course, I enjoyed seeing the pictures of the cats of Shanghai. It reminds me of how there were many stray cats in Israel that could live outside year round given the climate there. And the jam making pictures made me smile a lot! I am so excited to see you enjoying making jam. Now I will have to try to make sweet cherry jam. I know that in the past summers in Ann Arbor you enjoyed picking fruit, and I am excited for the day when you can pick your own fruit and make jam from that. But in the meantime, how neat that you can make flavors that would be hard to make in other places–like lychee and the prospect of a varied citrus marmalade and a fig jam since fresh figs are inexpensive in China. I look forward to hearing more about those upcoming ventures. And it is great that you made my signature cookie–jam squares! So glad they were a hit.
I am still picking raspberries from our garden as well as rhubarb and currants. I shared some currants with Bernard and Lisa! I made gold raspberry jam this week and raspberry shortbread bars, all from the garden. You might like that recipe, too. We also picked blueberries again, and it is a marvelous season. I also gave a brief presentation on a Zoom event for the North American Victorian Studies Association with a very large and international audience! So it has been a busy week here too.
It is great news that you have made progress on your research, and I hope that you will be able to bring one of the projects to paper submission soon. I know that closure will make you happy.
Here is to another wonderful week, Jesse. I love you and miss you. Mom
Hi Mom! Thanks! I completely agree that it’s hard to believe that I’ve become a community leader here having lived here less than a year! The cats in Shanghai are similar to Israel. Although, many of the cats in Shanghai live near public parks, which I don’t remember from Israel.
Making jam has been a blast! I’m so glad that Heather, Hannah Maia, and I decided to do it! I do miss being able to pick my own fruit, but maybe I’ll figure out how to do that in the future. For the interim, I agree with you that it’s exciting to try some new (more exotic) flavors!
It’s great to hear that you’ve had such a great crop of raspberries and currants from the garden this summer! Please do share the raspberry shortbread cookies (though raspberries are really expensive here). Congratulations on your virtual presentation at the North American Victorian Studies Association!
I hope that I’ll get a few of the papers done later this summer as well! I hope you also have a safe and healthy week!
Looks like the jam was a lot of fun to make! Where were the cherries from? Were they grown locally? I’d be interested to hear how they compared to Michigan cherries, and if you could tell the difference once you’d made them into jam!
Hi Juliette! Great to hear from you! We got the cherries from a farm in China. My friend Heather ordered them, so I don’t know exactly, but I’m trying to find out!
Thinking of Michigan cherries makes me miss Cherry Republic and all the amazing cherry goodies! The cherries here are very good, and made great jam, but nothing really beats a Michigan cherry!
I hope that you and Michael are doing well!
Hi Jesse. Always really enjoy your blogs. I suspect the admin here in the states cannot focus on Covid as a public health issue because the idea of society as an entity is so heretical to Trump and his devotees in the GOP (now the party of Trump). Radical individualism is the only game in town and so the Feds and many state governors simply cannot make any sense of “public health” – either you are healthy or you are sick and if you are sick then you are a loser and you deserve what happens to you and if you are not sick then you are performing what is expected of you to be a true blue American.
Your mother very graciously permitted me to pick some black currents and rather than make jam from them or eat them I decided to steep them in some spirits to which I will add some sugar and so make a black current liqueur.
Not sure if I mentioned but I foraged some sumac berry clusters (the non poisonous variety ) and am making a sumac wine.
Last week I made some hard cheese from kefir from grains I have to which I added some garlic and onion and some Italian herbs.. I have to say that it is incredibly tasty. You have to press the curds with about 50 lbs+ weights for more than 3 days AFTER you have allowed the kefir to drain about 24 hours… But if you can get kefir or even better kefir grains and you are OK with milk based cheeses (not vegan) then this is something you might want to try.
Been reading White Fragility and I have lots of questions about the key ideas and the value of the author’s thesis… In my opinion, rather than a focus on the defensiveness of those who are charged with unintentional acts of racism the author should about face and focus on the institutions that produce and reproduce system racism into which we are all socialized so that it is for many as invisible as water is to fish and air is to mammals.
Stay well.
Hi Bernard! I think your comments on the lack of response to this public health crisis are spot on (and really disheartening). It’s ridiculous that something like this has become so heavily politicized. I’m glad to hear that you’ll be using some of the black currants! That sounds like a nice way to enjoy them!
Making cheese sounds hard! For the most part, I keep a vegan diet (I’ll occasionally eat cheese), so I don’t think I’ll be making my own cheese here (plus dairy is very expensive in China).
Your thoughts on White Fragility are quite interesting. I’ve not read it, but I agree that focusing on the institutions that have created the systemic racism is definitely needed at this time. I hope that you and Lisa are staying safe and healthy!
Hi Jesse,
I am glad to see you are doing well, jam making sounds fun and your food picture always make me hungry ^^.
Thanks a lot for the podcast link too, it is very interesting !!
Have a nice week and looking forward to the new post next week.
Guillaume
Hi Guillaume! Great to hear from you! Jam making is lots of fun! I wish I had done it when I was in Michigan. I’m glad that you enjoyed the podcast! Make me Smart is one of my favorites and has been really helpful for me to understand the current situation better. I hope that you’re staying safe and healthy as well! Are you still in Michigan or did you leave for your new position in the UK?
Hey Jesse! What a fun food-filled week! I also thought the pictures of the flowers you took on your run looked nice. I hope you have another great week!
Hi Ryan! Thanks! I agree it was a fun food filled week! I really like how different all the types of Chinese food are! I’m glad you enjoyed seeing the flowers (though the heat isn’t helping them stay for much longer). I hope that you continue to stay safe and healthy!