Life in Quarantine: Week 16

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.

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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