Hi Everyone! Welcome back to Astronomer in Shanghai! I hope that all of you are doing well and continuing to stay safe and healthy. For those of you who celebrate, I hope that you are all having a wonderful Year of the Rabbit! My primary way of celebrating was enjoying all of the amazing decorations and the amazing Lantern Festival display at the Yu Gardens (see later)!

With China dropping almost all covid-19 policies, life has almost returned to what it was like in 2019 (just with a lot more masks). While this makes the last 3 years feel rather surreal, I am glad that this has allowed me to have a much fuller and more exciting life. In particular, as some of you know from Emmet’s fantastic blog (which you should all check out), I was finally able to visit Emmet in Beijing! Emmet arrived in Shanghai in August of 2021 and I hadn’t seen him in person since September, when he moved up to Beijing. 17 months is far too long so it was amazing to be able to easily buy a train ticket, get on the train, and go up to Beijing (the only thing needed was my passport)! So, I’m changing up the order of blog this month and start with visiting Emmet (and his cat Goldie) in Beijing!

My Trip to Beijing!

For those of you who are curious, the easiest way to travel between Shanghai and Beijing is by train. Thankfully, China has a fantastic infrastructure of high speed trains that can reach speeds of ~ 200mph! Shanghai and Beijing are ~ 700 miles apart, so in total, the journey only takes about 4 hours. This was my first experience on a high speed train and I was pleasantly surprised by both how easy and comfortable it was!

Since this was my first time traveling between Shanghai and Beijing, I also took some photos of the interesting and surprising things that I saw on my way up to Beijing!

Friday in Beijing!

After taking the train up to Beijing, Emmet met me at the train station. It was so fantastic to see him in person after so long! After bringing my stuff (which was mostly books and gifts for Emmet) to his apartment, I got to meet Goldie! I’ll share photos of her later, but I was thrilled that she wasn’t scared of me. It probably helped that I smell like Scottie and Charlie! She’s a very adorable cat and a great companion for Emmet!

Overall, Friday was a little bit of a hectic day though. One of the frustrating policies that exists in China is that foreigners have to register when they travel to different cities (and when they move apartments/homes in the city they live in as well). Generally this is handled by hotels (though not all claim they are able to handle it), but since I was staying at Emmet’s apartment, we had to handle it ourselves. There is a website to do this. However, on Friday, the website wasn’t working, so Emmet and I had to trek to the police station to do it there. While it wasn’t too much of a hassle to get to the police station, the police officers were definitely confused by us and whether I was registering as a resident or a visitor (probably since my name is so close to Emmet’s name on his lease). However, the only positive of going to the police station was that it allowed me to see a lot the area near where Emmet lives. For those of you who haven’t followed Emmet’s blog (which you should), Emmet lives near the Drum Tower in Beijing (which we visited on Saturday).

Emmet is also right by the Shichahai Lakes, which were mostly frozen over! There were tons of people skating and sliding on the lakes, which reminded me a lot of my trip to Harbin! The Shichahai area is definitely a popular destination, with tons of shops, and food stalls and was a fun place to walk around during my trip!

There was also some kind of fair for the Lunar New Year and Lantern Festival!

It was tons of fun to walk around and see all the lanterns lit up at night! As you’ll see more of, there are lanterns up all around Beijing! While this is true in Shanghai, many are just in front of buildings or neighborhoods and not lit at night (other than the Yu Gardens), so this was really fun to see! Plus, I got to try the candied strawberries! I had enjoyed them in Harbin, but they were completely frozen solid. It was so much more enjoyable to bite into a fresh sugar covered strawberry instead of gnawing on a frozen strawberry!

Saturday in Beijing

On Saturday, we spent the day exploring the area around the hutong neighborhood that Emmet lives in. Hutong’s are low rise (1-2 floor) stone houses that are stacked next to one another (kind of creating a maze) that are common all around Beijing! Emmet’s Hutong is very near the Bell Tower/Drum Tower complex as well as the Shichahai Lakes, so it allowed for us to do a lot of fun stuff on Saturday!

We started the day off by going to visit the Drum Tower! The square in between the Drum and Bell Towers is a popular spot for people to hang out on the weekends. One of the cool things was that there were people doing a kind of flag/ribbon dancing with Dragon shaped flags! Other people were playing some kind of hackysack, but with something more akin to a shuttlecock from badminton!

The original Bell and Drum Towers date back to the 13th century. However, in the interim, both have burned down, so these aren’t the originals. That said, they are still a few hundred years old, making them far older than anything that I have seen in Shanghai. Moreover, both were traditionally used as methods of alerting the public to the time! One of the earliest uses of Astronomy and astronomical observations was as a method of telling time. So, it was really cool that the Drum Tower had exhibits up about the different methods that were used to tell time in Ancient China! The Chinese system divided the day into 12 – 2 hour chunks and then those were marked. Along with the information about Astronomy, it was amazing to see the Drums up close! They’re gigantic and in order to enter, you have to climb up an incredibly steep flight of stairs! Amazingly people of all ages (small children to grandparents) were doing it! The drums look amazing! You can even see one of the original drums (which obviously can’t be used). You could feel the energy resonate from the drums when we watched the performance! The Drum Tower also provides an excellent view of Beijing!

Across the square from the Drum Tower is the Bell Tower! While unfortunately the Bell Tower is no longer used, it still has a functioning bell, which is the largest and first Chinese Iron Bell, referred to as the “King of Chinese Bells!” Like the Drum Tower, you get to see the Bell Tower by climbing up a very steep flight of stairs. There were also cool, engravings surrounding the history and mythology of the bell. One of the things that I find cool about these bells is that they’re rung by ramming a pole against the side (see the last image), which differs from how European bells work.

After seeing the Bell and Drum Towers, Emmet and I then returned to the Shichahai lakes! However, this time, for the express purpose of going out on the ice! When we tried on Friday, we saw that we needed tickets, so we bought them ahead of time. We made the smart choice of not ice skating, as given how much difficulty Emmet and I have had purchasing shoes while in China, we realized that there was no way they would have skates. So, instead, we tried both ice chair riding (propelled by cross country ski poles) and ice biking! The bike is somewhat like a snowmobile, with a back wheel and front skies, but human powered. While steering (outside of broad circles) was hard, it ended up being great fun! I’m so glad that Emmet suggested that we do it as unbeknownst to us, it was the last day of the season! Also, as you can see, the ice is pretty rough. While it was likely smoother in the parts for skating, you could see all the wear and tear from the biking/sliding, I think we made the right call sticking to what we did!

After biking from one side of the lakes to another, we treated ourselves with a vegan hot chocolate and more candied fruit! We tried one with an orange as well as a hawthorne on the bottom, but the strawberry is by far the best!

We also explored a bit more of the area around Shichahai later that day (on our way home) as well!

In the afternoon, we visited the Lama Temple, known as Yonghegong in Mandarin. Unsurprisingly, because it was during the Lunar New Year/Lantern Festival celebrations, the Temple was very crowded and there were many people gathered for prayers and offerings. The Lama Temple is a functioning Tibetan Buddhist Temple, so we were not allowed to take photos of the Buddhas or insides of the prayer areas. However, the grounds and architecture are still stunning. The Lama Temple is home to a series of progressively larger Buddhas in each of the following buildings, culminating in a 26m Matreiya Buddha! While the Jing’an Temple in Shanghai houses a 6m Buddha (the largest I had ever seen), this was incredible to look at. Being around such a gigantic statue gave me the sense of being in Attack on Titan and seeing a Titan staring at you!

As you can see, the architecture is absolutely stunning, with rich and ornate colors as well as plenty of manicured bonsai trees. Additionally, you’ll notice that a lot of people were burning incense as a form of prayer. There were also impossibly long lines for the gift shops. Though Emmet and I weren’t sure what was being sold, we assumed it must be something related to an offering/prayer.

Although you aren’t allowed to photograph the areas of prayer, the Lama Temple houses a small museum home to many of their Buddhist artifacts! It was really cool to see all of the different ornate Buddha statues or tools!

Sunday in Beijing

On Sunday, Emmet and I visited Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City! Having never been to Beijing, visiting the Forbidden City was at the top of my list of places to visit, so I’m so glad that Emmet and I (and two of his friends/colleagues, Pablo and Daniele) were able to get tickets on Sunday. Because Emmet’s hutong neighborhood is relatively centrally located, we were able to walk the 2 miles to the Forbidden City!

We arrived first at Tiananmen Square. Unsurprisingly, there’s tons of security (which is very slow) to enter Tiananmen Square. So, it took us ~ 30-40 minutes of waiting in line to get through. As Emmet eloquently discussed in his blog, there’s very much a disconnect between the Chinese and Western view of Tiananmen Square. In the West, most of our understanding of Tiananmen Square is because of the protests and massacre, so beyond the massively impressive buildings, it’s not really a celebratory location, but rather a solemn location. In contrast, Tiananmen Square houses Chairman Mao’s tomb, so there are many people who go solely to see that or take pictures there. It’s also an active government facility with an active military presence including exercise equipment and basketball hoops, which I assume are used by the soldiers.

The fact that this area is juxtaposed by the historical magnificence and more fun atmosphere of the Forbidden City is interesting. While I’m glad I had the opportunity to visit , I’d much rather spend more time visiting the Forbidden City in the future (which has far less security lines and we could enter almost automatically).

The Forbidden City is magnificent! It’s nearly impossible to state just how jaw-dropping and impressive of a palace this is! Everything is gigantic, built on what feels to me like the largest scale humanly possible! It’s mind-boggling to comprehend how this facility was built. Because of just how impressive everything is, I’m going to let the photos that I took show you. However, some of my favorite parts were the ornate stone carvings (often of dragons) that ran down the stair cases, as well as the exquisite tile work and carvings used to decorate the exterior of many of the buildings and their ceilings. It was also really cool to see all the bright and vibrant colors used (along with the red walls)! I think the only disappointing aspect is that you can’t go in to any of the palace buildings. To the best of my knowledge this is not a covid restriction. While some of the palaces have opened doors, it’s very hard to see in to them. That said, despite that, the grounds are amazing! Emmet, Daniele, Pablo, and I spent about 3+ hours wandering the grounds. While we saw most of it, there are still so many side palaces, gardens, and buildings that we weren’t able to see. I hope that Emmet has the opportunity to visit again (particularly when it’s a bit warmer) and all the gardens are in bloom!

For those of you unfamiliar, the Forbidden City dates back to 1406 (so the oldest thing I saw during this trip) and has different buildings built in different time periods. Moreover, because it was the home to the emperor (who was believed to have descended from the heavens), it is entirely separate from the rest of the city, even surrounded by a mote. So, the larger than life scale may serve to stress the divine nature of the emperor. One of the first times I remember seeing the Forbidden City was in the Thirty Seconds to Mars music video for From Yesterday. Since then, I’ve seen pictures (from Emmet) of the Forbidden City as well, but it’s hard to say whether pictures or videos really capture the Forbidden City’s magnificence. Regardless, I hope that the photos below show you just how amazing it was to see!

One of the other interesting things that you’ll notice is that some people are dressed in traditional clothing. Unlike historic sites in the US, these aren’t re-enactors, instead these are often couples taking photos for their weddings or women taking photos for instagram.

The last part of the Forbidden City is the gardens! Even though it is winter in Beijing, they were still magnificent because they were a mixture of green and stone gardens! It was really cool to see all the natural and carved stones as well as the ornate garden pagodas! I’m sure this must be even more breathtaking in the spring/summer!

So, as you can see, the Forbidden City is absolutely amazing! It’s probably the single most impressive thing I’ve seen in China and definitely a must visit if you’re able to come to Beijing! I’m so glad Emmet and I got to explore it together (even if he’d been before)!

In addition to all of the amazing historic sites that I saw in Beijing, I also wanted to share some of the cool and fun things that I saw (anime stuff will go later) on the trip!

The other highlight of my trip to Beijing was meeting Emmet’s cat Goldie! As you can see, we got along very well! She’s a very sweet, kind, and talkative girl! I was surprised by how affectionate she was to me! She even tried to wake me up to feed her during the night. Hopefully, Scottie and Charlie will be just as friendly to Emmet when he visits in March!

As you can see, this was a fantastic and full three day weekend! On Monday, I took the train back to Shanghai and was greeted by Scottie and Charlie who were very excited to see me and very affectionate! I can’t wait to see Emmet again in March!

I’m sure one other thing that you’re all thinking is how do Shanghai and Beijing compare? It’s not really a difficult question as the two cities are somewhat opposites. Shanghai is a hyper-modern city. While there are some things that are fairly old, almost nothing in Shanghai existed prior to roughly the 1920s. Shanghai is filled with modern buildings, with a more global aesthetic. In contrast, Beijing is an old city. Although there is a modern downtown, there are a lot of buildings that are built in stone and there are historic sites that are hundreds of years old. While Shanghai is the seat of China’s global economy, Beijing is the heart of the government, so the different vibes are also felt. That said, I greatly enjoyed visiting Emmet in Beijing and am excited to visit again in the spring!

When I reflect back on this trip, it’s hard for it not to feel bittersweet. On one hand, it was a fantastic trip. I got to see Emmet after so long and go to a lot of really cool historic sites, including the Forbidden City! It was really as fun and enjoyable weekend as I could have hoped for! Emmet was a wonderful host and shared so many of his favorite places with me. On the other hand, it’s incredibly frustrating that this trip happened 17 months after Emmet moved to Beijing. While some of this was because Emmet and I were cautious (i.e., I could have gone up in January instead of February) a lot of this results from the overly strict and stringent policies that both Shanghai and Beijing put in place restricting travel or access to certain locations for visitors. Moreover, the overbearing policies that SJTU and Tsinghua put in place for employees (basically don’t travel, unless it’s to your home town or if you do, don’t come to work for 2 weeks) greatly prohibited Emmet and I from visiting as well. While I’m grateful that the situation has drastically changed and allowed me to visit Emmet and will be able to easily have him visit me, part of this does feel as though China, through it’s policies is trying to make it seem like 2020 – 2022 didn’t happen.

Astronomy in Shanghai

Since this past month was the Lunar New Year Holiday vacation, I took a bit of time off from research. That said, it was still a productive and important month! As I’m sure some of you are curious, I finished applying for new positions. In total, I ended up applying for 41 positions (the overwhelming majority of which were postdocs), which is about the same number of positions as I applied for when I was finishing my Ph.D. at Michigan. Thankfully this was a bit more successful job application process as I received a number of interviews, an experience that I greatly enjoyed and appreciated. Following the interviews, I’m excited to share with you all that Scottie, Charlie, and I will be moving to Nottingham, UK in August! On February 15th, I accepted a position as a Senior Research Associate (essentially a more senior postdoc) at the University of Nottingham to work with Dr. Nina Hatch starting a new research group studying the Intracluster Light at high-redshift using the new European space based telescope Euclid (which launches this summer)! Given that the ICL has been a major focus of my research for the past 3 years, this is a wonderful opportunity for me to continue that research path and also gain the opportunity to mentor and guide undergraduate and graduate researchers! Additionally, Emmet knows Dr. Hatch very well as she is an expert on high-redshift galaxy clusters and he’s met her at a number of conferences. So, it was reassuring to know that I’ll be working with a great faculty mentor! While I’m excited to be moving to the UK this summer, I will certainly make an effort to make the most of my last 6 months at SJTU and in Shanghai and be productive to set myself up for success at my 2nd postdoctoral position. I also want to thank Emmet, my parents, my letter writers, and many of my friends/colleagues for their advice, support, and help (especially Emmet for reading all those research statements). If you’re traveling to the UK (or Europe) at some point when I’m there, let me know!

Along with making a major career decision, this month was relatively productive research wise. My paper on the Intracluster Light in DES-ACT data (that lead Dr. Hatch to reach out to me and Yuanyuan to ask if we knew people who would be interested in the position in the first place) was accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS)! I just received the page proofs and will share the link next month. Additionally, I wrapped up a few minor revisions to my Conditional Luminosity Function analysis and should be submitting that paper to MNRAS for publication shortly!

So, for the next few months, I’ll be working on my DESI project looking at the spectroscopic completeness of redMaPPer, starting a follow-up ICL project, working on a few follow-ups to my conditional luminosity function paper (one looking at the magnitude gap and another using machine learning to identify cluster centers), as well as working on a new project with Emmet studying low-redshift bent-radio AGN and their galaxy cluster properties! Overall, I’m hoping to get some of these projects submitted or close before moving to Nottingham! So, even with the new position, I’ll still be putting a lot of focus on Astronomy as always.

Also, for those of you who are wondering, I am able to go on to campus (without pre-registering) now! I’ll be going in on Wednesdays and Fridays this semester (when I have group meetings and colloquiums). Hopefully when it warms up, I’ll share a few more photos of the campus!

Life in Shanghai

As you can see, this past month was obviously incredibly full! However, as things have returned to normal, it also allowed me to do more fun things.

The Lantern Festival at the Yu Gardens

As I’ve previously mentioned, this past month featured the Lantern Festival, which is celebrated two weeks after the lunar new year! One of my favorite things in Shanghai is the magnificent Lantern Festival at Yuyuan or the Yu Gardens (the display is up for about 2 months)! This year was no different, though with the covid restrictions, there were more food vendors setup outside.

The Lantern Festival at the Yu Gardens is a mixture of more traditional lanterns

with a more modern light show with huge decorations and commercial displays!

At the center of the Gardens (where the water lillies and fountains in my cover photo are) there was a huge magical garden with dragons and other mythical creatures! The last two years, I’ve gone on the weekend, so not had the opportunity to walk through this area (because the weekend and covid policies made the line incredibly long). So, I got to enjoy it for the first time this year!

This was absolutely amazing! I’m so glad that I could visit it this year!

There was also this really cool exhibit of animals carved out of chocolate and boy did that smell good!

As you can see, the Yu Gardens are a visual feast at the Lantern Festival! I’m so glad I got to go again this year! While I won’t get to go next year, I hope I get to see it in the future (or at least have friends who share photos of it on WeChat)!

Cosmological Elements: Astronomy Exhibition

Another fun thing that I did this past month was to go see the Cosmological Elements: Astronomy Exhibition. This is a combination of a lot of different art forms, from sculptures, to digital media, to astrophotography! It was a really cool exhibit with a lot of interactive displays (at least in the sense of projections you could walk around in). So, I wanted to share some of my favorite parts with you! Some of the things you’ll see are a visualization of the different elements created by a supernova (the hanging jars), visualization of exoplanet worlds, photographs of the Moon and other examples of astrophotography, and a 3D visualization of the Rosette Nebula also known as the Eyes of G-d.

Below is a visualization of stars reflecting off of the wishing well cluster!

Lastly, is an amazing video of the visualization of the Rosette Nebula!

On a more melancholy note, I got to see my friends Kate and Ilan as well as their dog Pina and cat Maguey one last time before they moved. I met Kate and Ilan at Moishe House within weeks of moving to Shanghai and we’ve been friends ever since. So, I’ll greatly miss getting to hang out with, celebrate Shabbat together, and play with Pina and Maguey! Thankfully, they all safely arrived to their new home. So hopefully I’ll get to see them outside of China once I move! Also, as you can see, Scottie and Charlie aren’t the only cats who enjoy sitting on backs!

Along with all of these other highlights, since this past month was still the Lunar New Year and Lantern Festival, there were a lot of cool decorations that I wanted to share with you!

There were also a lot of cool photos of buildings, including the Jing’an Temple, the Shanghai Bund Skyline, and displays of things other than the Lunar New Year that I wanted to share!

And in both Beijing and Shanghai there were tons of cool anime and comics related things I wanted to share!

Scottie and Charlie

This was an eventful (and at times a little stressful) month for Scottie and Charlie. My trip up to Beijing was my first time traveling since I adopted them (almost 1 year ago). While they’ve slowly gotten used to me leaving to go to the gym or go to work, this was much longer time without me, so I’m sure it was confusing for them. To help prepare, I got an automatic cat feeder as well as a cat video camera to peak in on them. Unfortunately, the automatic feeder lead to 2 problems. The first was that Scottie hogged the feeder, so that I’d have to feed Scottie, then wait for Charlie to come over and add more food. The second was that Scottie got hungry and knocked over the feeder. Thankfully my friend/neighbor Anna who was stopping by each day to check on them was able to stand it up and tape it down to prevent another such accident.

That said, Scottie and Charlie continue to be absolutely adorable. They both love to sit on my lab and on my back! And were so thrilled to have me home and immediately cuddled with me.

They also continue to constantly snuggle with one another, which always brings a smile to my face!

They’re also super adorable when they’re not cuddling and always look like they’re so happy! You can even see some of the adventures they got up to while I was in Beijing!

Food in Shanghai (and Beijing)

This month, the great meals out that I had were with Emmet in Beijing! After visiting the Lama Temple, we had a delicious hot pot lunch. Unlike the hot pots I’ve gotten in Shanghai, these were more of a manicured hot pot (so premade). One had a miso-soy milk broth and the other a spicy broth! We also enjoyed fresh hawthorne juice with it!

Emmet and I also went to Silence Coffee (a coffee shop run entirely by deaf baristas). Emmet had found out about it from one of the vegan bakers, since they sell there amazing cookies there and Emmet and I had ordered cookies to support the training of one of the baristas! We enjoyed a “Wizard of Oz” matcha tea! For those wondering, I’m not sure what level of training and support exists for those with disabilities in China. I believe some does exist, but things like handicap accessible entrances/exits don’t exist in many older buildings.

Following our day at the Forbidden City, we went to one of Emmet’s favorite vegetarian restaurants in Beijing (along with Pablo and Daniele)! We had a fantastic feast! I had a papaya juice and South African black tea to drink (which came with a fruit plate). We then enjoyed kaofu, a fantastic fried mushroom dish (a perfect finger food), a black mushroom and toon stuffed cake/turnover (which was kind of like a quesadilla without the cheese), a spicy mushroom dish, a curry soup with noodles and mushrooms, mustard mushrooms (mustard is not something I associate with Chinese cuisine), baked tofu with a spicy relish, spicy lotus root dry pot, and the show stopper of fried eggplant served in an eggplant (the eggplant just melted in your mouth) and it was visually stunning! For desert, since it was the lantern festival, we were given tangyuan, a glutinous rice ball that is filled with sesame/peanut paste, and then ordered a fried glutinous rice stick topped with a sweet glaze! I also shared a few images of the decor of the restaurant, which was really cool!

Overall, it was a fantastic meal! I’m so glad I got to try so many interesting dishes. The turnover, was particularly cool, since I’ve never seen something like that in Shanghai. I also loved the eggplant and fried mushrooms! Everything was fantastic and it’s great that Emmet has so many amazing options in Beijing!

In addition to the delicious food I had in Beijing, I also did a bunch of cooking! Since it’s still cool, I made a lot of soup. I made roasted cauliflower soup, roasted tomato and red pepper soup, black bean soup, and quinoa and black bean chili! I also made some traditional chinese food, including stir-fried sword beans, and while in Beijing, Emmet and I tried a few more new Chinese recipes, including Dongpo tofu (a Buddhist style pan fried tofu with mushrooms and bamboo) and Dan Dan noodles! I also made two fantastic deserts food, delicious brownies (I gave some to Kate and Ilan before they left as a farewell gift) and sea salt topped chocolate brownie cookies! Additionally, I had dinner with my friends Heather and Shimi (and their baby daughter) and Heather and I made chickpea and spinach curry! I also made spicy kidney bean burgers! So, lots of good cooking!

However, the main culinary highlight for this month was making jam with my Mom twice on Zoom/FaceTime! First, I made white strawberry jam! As some of you may remember, white strawberries are very popular in China! They’re easy to get, but can sometimes be expensive. They’re a little sweeter than regular strawberries, too. I’ve had them every year, but this year, I was determined to use them to make jam! And the came out fantastically!

As you can see the jam has a lovely color! I really had no idea what it would look like. It’s almost more similar in color to pear jam! I was able to bring up a few jars to Emmet and he really enjoyed it! Since this is such an exotic flavor, I’ll definitely be saving a jar for my Mom to enjoy!

Additionally, last weekend, we made regular strawberry jam! While not quite as exciting, the strawberry jam came out amazingly well as well!

Even though I’ve been so far away for so long, it’s great that I’ve been able to make jam with my Mom! I look forward to doing it again in the spring/summer, maybe when Emmet visits!

Jewish Life in Shanghai

With the Lunar New Year Holiday, there weren’t many Kehilat Shanghai (or Kehillat Beijing) events this past month. However, when I was in Beijing, Emmet and I did lead a Zoom service together. It was so much fun to be together in the same room and sing together. I don’t think we’ve gotten to do that since we lead the Reform Minyan at Brown our senior year of college (almost 10 years ago)! Hopefully during one of our upcoming visits Emmet and I can do this again in person for either or both of Kehilat Shanghai or Kehillat Beijing (since for my next trip I’d love for there to be an in person Shabbat)! With things returning to normal, Kehilat Shanghai will be having events for Purim as well as our regular Shabbats and trivia nights as well. We’re also just starting to plan for Passover, which will be my last major event leading the KS community.

What I’m Reading and Watching

With all that I did this month, I still managed to get some reading and tv watching in (mostly since it was still a vacation). This month, I finished reading the 4th book in The Witcher Series: Time of Contempt! I greatly enjoyed this one. It’s interesting to see how much the shows and books have diverged. The story in the books is far more complex, in terms of world building and political machinations, and I’m excited to continue reading the series!

In terms of TV, I finished the anime of Fairy Tail! A few months ago, I had finished reading the manga, but Emmet and I were also simultaneously watching the anime. Fairy Tail tells the raucous adventures of Natsu and the other members of the Fairy Tail Wizard Guild as they go on jobs, fight evil sorcerers, and save the world. It’s one of my favorites and Emmet and I had been watching a few episodes a week for the past 2 years, so it was exciting to finish all 328 episodes of it! I also finished the 2nd season of Made in Abyss, which is about a fantastical world where there’s a huge abyss that reaches the center of the world and a group of children who are exploring it, it’s mysteries, and it’s curses. While the 2nd season was far darker, it’s still great.

In terms of live action TV, I finished the 2nd season of Leverage: Redemption. I really enjoyed Leverage when it was on ~ 10 years ago, so this has been a lot of fun nostalgia, even if it’s sometimes formulaic. As a tennis fan, like Emmet, I also finished the first half of the Tennis documentary show, Break Point, about the 2022 Tennis season. While interesting at times, I found the show more frustrating and disappointing. Because they were highlighting the accomplishments of only a handful of players, they weren’t telling the complete story of the Tennis Season. How do you discuss 2022 without emphasizing Rafa’s amazing comeback from 2 sets down to win the Australian Open or acknowledging that he won the French Open without being able to feel his foot. Moreover, the coverage of the Women’s game was even more disappointing with almost no mention of Iga Swiatek who went on a 37 match winning streak (including the French Open) and no mention of Ash Barty’s win (and then retirement) at the Australian Open. While I enjoy some of the stars that are highlighted (Casper Ruud, Felix Auger-Aliassime, Paula Badosa, …) and I hope that the show brings more new fans to tennis, I can’t help but wonder if there’s a better way to do this (either follow 1 player or tell a more complete story).

If you’ve gotten this far, thank you for reading my blog! I know that this has been an extra long update, but there were so many interesting things and amazing photos in Shanghai, Beijing, and my life that I wanted to share with all of you! I hope you all enjoyed seeing all of my adventures this month! Hopefully my last few months in China will be equally as exciting! If you have any questions about anything I shared, please let me know.

In peace,

Jesse