My One Year China-Versary, Sukkot, and Simchat Torah!

Welcome to Astronomer in Shanghai! Thank you for following my blog during my first year in Shanghai and for your interest in my future adventures in Shanghai! As covid-19 continues to plague the US, and you are (hopefully) wearing masks when you go outside and are social distancing, I hope that my blog highlights that the world can recover from covid-19 and that following these practices leads to recovery. Once things improve, I hope you’ll look forward to small interactions with friends and family. I’m sure you’ll find that these interactions will both be meaningful and enjoyable. In Shanghai, life has returned mostly to normal. Since outbreaks may still occur, it’s important that you wear masks and cooperate with social distancing guidelines so things improve.

If you find my blog interesting or enjoyable, please subscribe and let me know! To subscribe, enter your name and e-mail on the right side of the page. Once subscribed, you’ll receive an e-mail with each new post. If you have any questions about my life in Shanghai, please ask. Instructions are on the “To Comment” page. Also, please share this blog with anyone who needs reassurance that eventually life will return to a semblance of normalcy.

Life in Shanghai

I hope that this latest entry finds all of you staying safe and healthy! Especially now, as the weather starts to cool in the US, I hope that you are finding new ways to maintain social connectivity while also continuing to respect social distancing practices and mask wearing.

It pains me every week that I continue to write and express my concern for all of you in the US. While I know that many of you are being smart about covid-19, the current administration’s staunch, stubborn, and narcissistic refusal to follow basic moral principles with respect to people’s safety is terrifying. The president’s continued insistence that he is fully healthy (when he is clearly not), combined with his own disgusting level of selfishness and arrogance with respect to his own recovery are appalling. Covid-19 is a very serious threat and combined with the annual flu season, could be devastating in the USA. For that reason, I continue to implore all of you to follow protocols and stay safe. While I still wear masks on the subway, bus, or in taxis, I don’t have to wear it all the time. This outcome can only be reached through strict policies such as contact tracing, enforcing mask wearing, hand washing, and generally taking covid-19 seriously. For that reason, I again implore all of you to vote and vote early for the candidates who respect and listen to scientists, who want to try to make the US a more inclusive and welcoming country, who aren’t racist, sexist, or homophobic, and who care about the well being of the American people.

Here in China, even with the massive amount of travel that occurred during the mid-Autumn festival, covid-19 remains entirely under control. All cases are imported cases of people returning to China. These people are tested at the airport and taken directly to hotels, so they are not actually entering the city. In total, there are 61 imported cases in Shanghai (0 in Beijing). The recovery rate for Shanghai is 93.5% and for China as a whole the rate is 94.4%. So, clearly it is possible to contain covid-19.

As a result of the Mid-Autumn Festival (Golden Week) holiday, I spent the week working from home. This was a productive week overall. I’m just working on the final touches of our draft of the stellar mass – halo mass relation paper for DES, which is super exciting! I’ve been working on this paper for over 1.5 years, so it feels amazing to be wrapping it up! I also made more headway on my Luminosity Function analysis, which will move to the research forefront once the DES paper is submitted. Additionally, I’ve gotten a lot more involved in DESI. I’m working on a secondary observing proposal (that will be a major work focus this week) and I was also asked to serve on the selection committee for the secondary observations! This is the first time I’ve ever served on a telescope allocation committee (TAC)! So, I’m both nervous and also excited for the opportunity! Thankfully, the meetings are at 10 pm, so not too late for me. 🙂

Since I was working from home, I went running 5 times this week! My legs are a little tired, but it felt great to get out and enjoy the warm (low 70s) weather! It’s perfect running season here! The only downside is that it gets dark by 6pm, so I can’t run after work.

Since I did a lot of runs and walks this week, I also want to share some of the beautiful photos I took of Shanghai this week!

I also saw a lot of cats this week as well! Including a very friendly cat while I was getting lunch with friends from Moishe House on Sunday!

This was an enjoyable and social week for me as well! On Thursday, I met my Mom’s former Skidmore Honor’s Society student David Glassman, who works as a math teacher in Beijing! David was visiting Shanghai for the holiday. It was great sharing stories with David about what it’s like being ex-pats in China while also talking about how fortunate we are that the covid-19 situation has improved so much in China! I also enjoyed hearing what it’s like in Beijing as well. I look forward to having the opportunity to visit Beijing once Emmet moves to Beijing later this year!

The primary social highlight of this week was celebrating my One Year China-versary on Saturday night! Before describing it, I want to take reflect on my first year living in Shanghai.

I arrived in Shanghai on October 5th, 2019. So, before I talk about how I’ve grown over the course of the year, it fills me with great sadness that I haven’t seen my parents and brother in over 1 year. While I’m excited to see Emmet once he moves to Beijing, I don’t know when It’ll be safe for me to go home to Saratoga and see my parents. While FaceTime is a fantastic resource, I hope that the world can recover from the covid-19 pandemic so that I can see my family and friends in the US in person again.

In terms of Astronomy, this was a year of a lot of adjustments. Being a post-doc is hard. It’s quite different from being a graduate student. There’s not as much guidance and you’re not working towards the singular goal of a Ph.D. For me, I struggled to find balance working on 3-4 different projects at a time, something I’m now better at. I had to adjust to working with a new research supervisor, which I think has gone very well, while also adjusting to working with collaborators in vastly different time zones (which meant a lot of late nights, something I always avoided while at Michigan). While it wasn’t quite as productive as I hoped, I have high expectations that this upcoming year will be very productive both in terms of papers and also in terms of my involvement within the collaborations that I’m part of (DES and DESI)!

This was a year of a lot of firsts! My first time living in Asia, my first time living someplace where I didn’t speak the language, my first post-doc, my first conference as a post-doc, my first time living through a global pandemic, my first of many Zoom Astronomy conferences, my first time leading a Passover Seder with more than 3 people, my first time receiving a grant from the Shanghai government, my first time leading Shabbat Services in Shanghai, my first time taking an active role in learning and leading discussions about social justice and anti-racism, my first time traveling outside of Shanghai in China, my first time voting from abroad, my first time learning Mandarin Chinese (still working at it with my phone apps), and most significantly, my first time leading High Holy Day Services!

Hopefully this second year in Shanghai will be filled with just as many amazing firsts and wonderful new and exciting experiences! If you’re curious about the things I’ve mentioned or anything in my first year in Shanghai, take a look at some of my previous entries!

One of the areas I’ve most grown is how politically vocal I am. While I’ve always been a staunch liberal with strong progressive values, prior to living here, I haven’t taken the opportunity to vocally discuss issues that are troubling such as systemic racism and discrimination. Particularly, in the last few months, as you’ve all likely noticed on the blog, I’ve been actively involved in discussions on anti-racism as well as reading books and listening to podcasts to help confront my own prejudices and biases. While this is work that will never be finished, I’m proud to be actively involved in discussing these topics and working to improve myself and my communities.

Perhaps the area that I’m most proud in terms of personal growth is my ability to build a friend community here in Shanghai. When I was in grad school, I relied solely on the Michigan Astronomy department for my friend group. However, I realized that I wanted to meet more new and interesting people in Shanghai and couldn’t solely rely on the SJTU postdocs. When I moved to Shanghai, I knew two people, one was the professor who hired me, Ying, and another was one of the other SJTU postdocs, Haojie, who I met at a conference a few years prior. While it took a while to start making friends (it’s hard to make friends), over the course of this first year, I’ve forced myself to be more social, break out of my comfort zone, and build my own social network/ friend group. I’ve met so many interesting and caring friends through either Moishe House, Kehilat Shanghai, or friends of those within the Jewish communities. I feel blessed and grateful to have such a wonderful, supportive, and caring friend group! I hope that I can continue to grow these friendships into lifelong friendships while simultaneously building new friendships during my second year in Shanghai!

To celebrate my One Year China-Versary, I went to Vegetarian Lifestyle, the first vegetarian restaurant I ever went to in Shanghai, with my friends Heather, Hannah Maia, Kate, and Ilan! We had a wonderful dinner (photos further down)! While much of the dinner was spent providing me with advice about looking for a new apartment (more on that next week), it was wonderful to spend an evening with some of my closest friends! Since I know some of them read my blog, I wanted to take the opportunity to again thank them for being such amazing friends and people! I’m so fortunate to have all of you in my life!

Food in Shanghai

As I said above, I had an amazing vegan feast to celebrate my One Year China-versary!

We had stuffed lotus root, eggplant, vegetarian chik’n, cauliflower, lotus root balls with bok choy, sword beans, and dumplings! There was so much delicious food to enjoy!

Additionally, since it was still the mid-Autumn Festival, I had a lot of delicious mooncakes!

The different flavors included lotus jam, red bean paste, and ginger/almond!

Jewish Life in Shanghai

This past week, we celebrated the Jewish Holidays of Sukkot and Simchat Torah! Sukkot is a fall harvest holiday and Simchat Torah celebrates finishing the torah and starting it once again with Genesis chapter 1.

On Friday, Moishe House did their annual Shabbat in the Sukkah! They turned their small balcony into a lovely Sukkah! Since it’s Shanghai, they were of course adorned with Chinese lanterns!

While small, it was fun to squeeze as many of us in as possible into the Sukkah and say some of the blessings together. I later went back individually and did the traditional blessings (we did have a lulav and etrog!). To top it off, we had a wonderful meal of harvest fruits and vegetables (squash, pumpkin, pomegranate, apples and many others)! It was great celebrating Shabbat and Sukkot together with friends!

On Sunday morning, Kehilat Shanghai and Moishe House hosted a small Simchat Torah celebration for Tov! (Kehilat Shanghai’s religious school)! As part of that I got to spend a lot of time carrying the Torah around!

While we didn’t unroll the torah, we had a wonderful time dancing around with the torah on the top floor of the WeWork building where Tov is held!

This upcoming week will be busy: apartment visits planned for Tuesday (so hopefully I’ll write my next entry from my new apartment), plans to finish up the draft of my DES paper, our next anti-racism discussion, and the Kehilat Shanghai Community B’nei Mitzvah! So, it should be a fun, but likely stressful week (moving is stressful for everyone).

I hope that you enjoyed reading about my One Year China-versary and reflections on living in Shanghai for a year as well as my celebrations for Simchat Torah and Sukkot. If your curious about anything that I’ve done or experienced during my first year in Shanghai, please let me know.

In peace,
Jesse