Vegan Hot Pot and the Shanghai Natural History Museum!

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Now, on to this week’s adventures!

Life in Shanghai

This week was a normal week. I spent most of the week reading papers. The goal was to determine which research avenue to pursue as a postdoc at SJTU. For those Astronomers reading this, I’m going to be analyzing how the Luminosity Function of member galaxies in clusters is impacted by the magnitude gap and possibly redshift. This relates to my dissertation research (via the magnitude gap), while also pushing me in a new direction! I’m excited to start on my first project with my postdoc mentor, Prof. Ying Zu. Additionally, I have a longterm project of determining how the velocity caustic (yay the Chris Miller Research Group!) relates to the Splashback Radius.

That’s enough Astronomy for this week, so on to this week’s adventure!

During my commute and travels, for the first time, I noticed what seemed to be some holiday themed lights. While there’s nothing in China like Thanksgiving to mark the start of the Holiday season, it is been interesting to see holiday decorations start to pop up. However, unlike in the US, there is no doubt that Christmas is purely a commercial, gift giving, holiday here. Since I’m not 100% sure whether these are Christmas lights, I’ll keep my eyes out for them in the spring and let you know!

In addition to the lights, I saw a lot more cool sculptures, flowers, and advertisements during my adventures this weekend!

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For my first adventure of the weekend, I visited the Shanghai Natural History Museum! As many of you know, I spent a summer doing Astronomy research at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, during which I made a point of visiting each exhibit in the museum. So, needless to say, I am incredibly fond of these kinds of museums. On a rainy Saturday, I was excited to get lost in the museum!

The museum is located inside the Jing’an Sculpture gardens. On my way to the museum, I briefly visited the gardens. Unfortunately, the rain cut my visit short; however, I’ll definitely come back for another visit, since it’s only 1.5 miles away.

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The museum is very big. It has 5 floors full of exhibits on space, dinosaurs, animals, rocks, and the history of China. To visit the museum you work your way down.

The museum starts with an exhibit on the universe and space. As an astronomer, I loved this. I immediately knew I was in the right place when I saw the familiar images of structure formation from the MILLENNIUM simulation, which I use in my own research! The exhibit featured models of telescopes, descriptions and pictures of astronomical objects and events. While I knew all the material presented in the exhibit, I was incredibly impressed by how accessible the exhibit made Astronomy.

Following the Astronomy exhibit was the River of Life, a winding pathway which took you down a level while showcasing models and taxidermy of a wide variety of reptiles, mammals, birds, fish, and even dinosaurs! As you can tell, this area was overrun with children visiting on their days off from school. I really loved the innovative use of the space and how the museum used the River to connect the universe to life on earth! One thing I really liked about these exhibits was that each emphasized which species were native to China.

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Following the River of Life, there were more exhibits on the 4th, 3rd, and 2nd floors of dinosaurs and other prehistoric fossils. There were so many fossils! It was like being transported back to AMNH, visiting the dinosaurs during my lunch break!

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While it may seem like everything in the museum was dead, that was not the case. There were fish tanks and reptile cages that allowed visitors to see and interact with the species they were learning about! There were even opportunities to pet the animals.

On the third floor, they had a fascinating exhibit on both the species native to Shanghai as well as on the efforts that China and Shanghai are making to protect endangered species and reduce their carbon footprint. While other than the recycling effort, I’m not sure how heavily these policies things are enforced, it made me happy to see them mentioned here.

On the lower level they an amazing display of the African Savannah! While in the exhibit, they shut off the lights and played a video which showed the animals interact, eat, and hunt in their natural habitats. It was a really cool ! There were also great exhibits on unique animal survival methods as well as on a variety of other habitats such as the arctic, tundra, rain forest, and local Chinese mountains where pandas live.

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Additionally, on the bottom floor, they had amazing displays highlighting nature’s beauty. Butterflies elaborately displayed as a stained glass window and pine cones made into a Chandelier. It was breathtaking. They also had walls of seashells, which brought back fond memories of searching for shells while visiting my grandparents in Siesta Key, Florida.

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The bottom floor also featured exhibits which discussed the history of agriculture. They discussed how rice was cultivated and transplanted around the world. These exhibits lead into others which incorporated Chinese art and clothing to highlight different Chinese cultures. While I’ve learned a lot about these topics at the Shanghai Museum and Shanghai History Museum. There’s still much for me to see and learn!

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Overall, I had a fantastic time at the Shanghai Natural History Museum. It was a lovely way to spend a rainy day! While it’s not as big as it’s NYC counterpart, it’s modern touches made the museum a fantastic visit, especially if you’re visiting with children.

While nobody asked for my picture at the museum, I had a much nicer encounter. While in the exhibit for Arctic animals, a young boy (~5-7) with his father came over and said “Hello, nice to meet you.” A few minutes later, he came back and introduced himself and shook my hand. A few minutes after that he came over to say goodbye. I later waved to him when I passed him and his father as they were resting in another part of the museum. It was really nice to be viewed as someone interesting without having to be in a photo!

While most of the weekend was rainy, I still went for a run on Sunday (the rain stopped in the late morning). I did 4.5 miles this week. It’s still warm enough that I can run in shorts, but I had to break out my short tights for the first time. Temperature wise the highs are generally in the mid to low 50s while the lows are in the 30s/40s. I don’t think it’ll get below freezing here for quite a while. So, I should be able to keep running!

Food in Shanghai

My second adventure for the weekend was to try hot pot! I found a Vegan Hot Pot restaurant! For those of you, who like me, are unfamiliar with hot pot, here’s how it works. I was so unfamiliar with the concept that when the food was delivered, I had to quickly search (on Bing) on my phone how to eat a hot pot. 🙂

1). Select your soup base — I chose a fragrant maitake mushroom broth
2). Select your vegetables and proteins to add in — I chose lotus root, cauliflower/broccoli, tofu, and dried tofu noodles. They had a wide range of vegetarian proteins like vegetarian seafood and pork, but some of it looked too realistic for me, so I stuck to tofu.
3). Make your dipping sauce — I made a yummy sesame sauce, my favorite!

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4). Once all the food is delivered, you cook the ingredients in the hot pot from longest to shortest
5). When they’re ready (~5-10 minutes), you take them out of the broth, let them cool, then dip them in the sauce.

This was a fantastically fun and delicious experience. It could only be improved by going back with more people to try more vegetables and proteins. I’ll definitely do this again! Next time I want to try the different kinds of mushrooms, baby corns, vegetable dumplings, and noodles!

Jewish Life in Shanghai

For Shabbat this week, I joined my friend Julia at the Sephardic Community Center for Shabbat dinner. This is an Orthodox environment so services started at sundown (~5:00pm). It was a really interesting experience. During dinner, I heard conversations in Hebrew, Chinese, Spanish, and English. Even though I couldn’t understand what everyone was talking about, the people I spoke with were very friendly and the food was delicious! While I prefer to spend Shabbat with Kehilat Shanghai or Moishe House, it’s nice knowing that there are other welcoming places in Shanghai!

I hope you enjoyed seeing photos from the Natural History Museum and my hot pot adventure! This should be another normal week. I’m hoping to make progress on my DES and SJTU research. I’m sure I’ll find another awesome site to visit next weekend as well! If you have and questions/comments, let me know!

Until next week!

In peace,
Jesse