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.
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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
Hi Jesse,
It certainly sounds like you had a nice week. I’m glad to hear that the colloquium you were looking forward to was good and that your research is going well. It’s nice to see you surrounded by friends in your pictures. I hope your fellow SJTU postdocs have been doing ok in quarantine. I love seeing the pictures of flowers from your run and the museum. That’s cool that you could find the telescopes you all use! Also, the fossils look amazing! I love how dynamic the museum layout is. I’m glad you got to enjoy an end of Passover get together. Mine was definitely a bit more anticlimactic, but that is the price of flattening the curve. As always, your food pictures look very yummy. I hope the next week is a productive, safe, healthy, and fun week.
Love,
Emmet
Thanks Emmet! My fellow SJTU postdocs have all been doing well. Some of them live in smaller apartments, which has not been great, but everyone’s stayed healthy. I’m glad that you enjoyed the seeing the photos from the museum. Hopefully next year you’ll have a more celebratory end of Passover. I hope that you also have a productive, safe, healthy, and fun week!
Jesse, it was wonderful to read your blog this morning. It is encouraging to see how life is improving in Shanghai as restrictions are lifted. I especially enjoyed seeing you gathering with friends at the Moishe House without masks!!! Laura and Michael have both had Covid. Michael feels that he contracted it while he was working in New York. They are now living in their Connecticut house. Fortunately they were able to recover at home without needing hospitalization. Their 7 year old son Ruben had a cough and 4 year old India was completely asymptomatic. Laura and Mike were tested at a drive through site in Connecticut. By the time that the positive result came through, they were well on their way to recovery. I hope that you continue to enjoy life in Shanghai. Thank you for your weekly blogs!
Jesse,
Its been so nice reading about your world reopening. It gives a lot of encouragement to those of us still in earlier phases of self-isolation. In New York State, (out in a Long Island house with a big outdoor space and walking trails and beach), I’m getting stir crazy and still want to break out of what is definitely a luxury confinement situation and just go to a local store and purchase some needed trash bags and light bulbs. But is it worth possibly putting myself and my family at risk? Your blog reminds me that there is light at the end of the tunnel and we all just have to hang on a bit longer to get to a more safe world. You, finding and sharing the joys in the little advances: more contact with friends, dinners out, running in the flowering spring days, anticipating the reopening of schools, a visit to a museum which had previously been closed, helps all of us to see that there is a progression that will lead to safety, better health possibilities for more people and ultimately more freedom. you inspire us to hang on and find the patience and resolve to wait for better times.
Many thanks!
Cousin Caren
Hi Caren! I’m glad my blog is providing you encouragement. I can completely understand feeling stir crazy. It was only a few weeks ago where the only times I would really leave my apartment was to take the trash out and get some of those same items from the grocery store. I’m glad to hear that you’re on Long Island and not stuck in NYC though. I really appreciate all of your sentiments about my blog! Thank you so much for sharing them! I hope you and your family continue to stay safe and healthy!
Thanks Peg! It was wonderful seeing you and Art at my parents Zoom Seder. I’m so glad that you’re finding my blog encouraging! I’m relieved to hear that Laura and Michael are both now recovered from covid-19 and that neither of them or their kids had to go to the hospital. Hopefully more drive through tests will be set up to help speed up the recovery! I hope that you, Art, and the rest of your family stay safe and healthy!
Thanks for this, Jesse. It’s actually quite moving–and encouraging–to see you out and about among museums and people. I hope this lies in our not-too-distant future as well.
Hi Mason! I’m glad to hear that you found this post particularly encouraging. I hope that that a return to normalcy lies in your near future as well! I hope that you continue to stay safe and healthy!
Another really interesting blog, Jesse. Great to hear that life is returning to normal in Shanghai. Here, being “shut in” (at least for Lisa and me) is not so terrible. We are lucky perhaps because we have a yard we can putter in, though yesterday (April 18th) it snowed! but we were able to take a walk and enjoy the sight of trees beginning to bud and the grass taking on stronger shades of green. The snow did not “stick” but it did snow for hours here in Saratoga. And it’s not so terrible because both Lisa and I are working from home (Lisa is head of history at a Jewish day school in Manhattan (Abraham Joshua Heschel HS) and I am with SUNY Empire State (located in Saratoga), so not only are we working (harder perhaps than normal) but have opportunities that we don’t normally have – the first is that Monday thru Thursday we are together (Lisa is in Riverdale all week and I get down to NYC Thursday evening thru Sunday when I return to Saratoga) and then we can watch birds alight on the feeder we have outside our “den” window where we work during the day and relax with Netflix or Amazon Prime in the evenings (currently “binge watching” Six Feet Under).
Your ability to cook (and eat) fabulous dishes is fascinating. Here, while the govt states that there should be no shortages of anything actually finding specific items in the supermarket is sometimes a challenge – soft soap, for example (OK that’s not an ingredient but you get the idea. In addition, for other items in other stores (eg Four Seasons) they want you to order by phone, and they package and give you a time to pick-up and when you get to the store you need to call them and identify your car and they come out with the box to put in your trunk. Spontaneous shopping is no longer on the cards.
Stay safe and stay well, Jesse – and good luck with both your write up of the data and your analysis of data. Wonderful that you are making good progress.
Hi Bernard! I’m glad to hear that you’re staying positive about the situation in upstate NY. It so nice that you and Lisa are able to be together instead of being separated! I hope that you don’t have too many ingredient shortages. For the most part I haven’t noticed any real shortages. Some luxury US goods have run out of stock, but I’m able to easily get substitutes, which helps. I’m glad to hear that local stores like Four seasons are using creative approaches to stay opened though. I hope that you and Lisa continue to stay safe and healthy!
Dear Jesse,
Once again I find your blog very inspirational. You certainly have been through a long period of sheltering in place, so it is just wonderful that life is getting back to normal. Things we took for granted, like dinner at a friend’s house or going to the movies (which I miss), seem like luxuries from my vantage point! It is great that you are able to see people in person from SJTU and Moishe House and even to go to a museum and a friend’s house for dinner. I greatly enjoyed seeing all the marine life at the natural history museum; I still wear the Tee-shirt you gave me from your summer at AMNH. The flowers you saw on your runs really make Shanghai look like a beautiful place. Here in Saratoga, spring is starting to come–today was beautiful and 63 degrees, so your Dad and I took a long walk. Our daffodils and forsythia are up in the backyard, and I am awaiting a shipment of black and gold raspberry bushes to add to our raspberry patch. If farms are not open for fruit picking this summer, at least I can pick in our backyard and make raspberry jam. I am also very proud of the hard work you are doing on your Astronomy research and that those two papers are getting closer to completion. Here is to a great week ahead, which includes your birthday! Much love, Mom
Thanks Mom! It has been really nice to have things be closer to normal. I think it’s also made me very appreciative of many of the smaller things in life and the simple interactions with friends. I’m glad that you enjoyed the photos from the museum and those of Shanghai in bloom! I’m glad to hear that spring is starting in Saratoga. That’s great to hear that you’re planting more raspberry bushes in our backyard! I look forward to trying that Jam the next time I’m home. I hope that you also have a great week and that you and Dad continue to stay safe and healthy!