First, some statistics:
Total Continents Visited: 4
Total Number of Flights: 16 (and one camel ride)
Total Countries Visited: 6 (soon to be 7! More on that later.)
Anyway, with my time in Shanghai drawing to a close, it’s time for another retrospective! Let’s do this shindig.
The two months I spent working at the BoAi center were eye-opening. My center had two floors: one for mainly physical disorders and another for mental illnesses. I spent my time between the two, helping with physical therapy classes for kids with cerebral palsy on the first and working through brain-function-boosting classes and exercises to students with Down’s Syndrome and Autism on the second.
The work was intense but very enjoyable. My time with the kids was interspersed with the jarring realization that for all of the training and time and love they got, there is only so much progress they can make. Cerebral Palsy is not a one-off sort of thing. It is a lifelong battle, and it’s tragic to watch. When I was teaching in Morocco, there was always the possibility I may have sparked a passion for scholarship in the next big Moroccan tech mogul. I was giving my students something that would afford them a tangible advantage. That felt great – as did this job. However, the happiness I’d get whenever one of the students at BoAi would suddenly understand the difference between red and blue or stop obsessively biting his or her hands was soon tempered as I remembered the permanence of their maladies.
One day, I asked the head of our center what happens to these children after they get older. She replied, “Exactly. That’s the question.”
She’s a remarkable woman. Moved by her son’s battle with Cerebral Palsy, she quit her lucrative career in finance to found the BoAi Center. This was back in the 90s. It was the first NGO and NPO in Shanghai. That wasn’t easy. Since then, she’s done a lot of good, and it was a pleasure to help her. Apart from my activities with the children, I also did a lot of translation for her and the center. I even served as her translator at a big event hosted by the Irish Consulate!
Gaelic and Chinese is an interesting combination.
Here are some pictures of the kids with whom I worked:
So work was great. Another thing really stands out in hindsight, though: this was the first time I’ve lived in a foreign country without a host family, and I got the chance to sample an entirely different lifestyle. While I spent my days working entirely in Chinese, I came home to my English-speaking flatmates. That was totally new to me. I ended up with two separate social lives – one with my Chinese buddies and another with my friends from Projects Abroad. It was somewhere between the experiences of an expat and a native, and that combination was pretty fantastic.
I spent my days at work chatting with Wang Hong and Xu Da Ge (literally “older brother Xu”) about Eastern medicinal approaches to treating birth defects, the news (there was a lot to talk about these past few months), Lady Gaga, and everything in between. At night, I hung out with other volunteers. Some of my good friends included Pedro, the loveable Spaniard; Arryl, the Norwegian who won a pancake-flipping contest sponsored by the British Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai; Katya, the Dutch-speaking Russian; Sean, a witty Brit who studies in Florida; Courtney, an Australian who personally knows a member of a band I love; David, a med-school student from Texas; and Izzy, my Brown-bound buddy from Manhattan. It was a diverse group, and we learned loads from each other.
Through my interactions with these two disparate social circles, I gained much of my second-hand knowledge of the city through contrasting cultural lenses. I ended up with a pretty unique map of this metropolis in my head by the end. For example, I can tell you where all of the nifty expat hangouts are - and I’ll automatically think of the best parks for early morning Taichi around them. I also know that the best Thai restaurant in the French Concession is near a local antique-store haven.
My existing Chinese habits became more deeply engrained. I drank hot water (in lieu of cold) almost exclusively during my time here. My Chinese friends loved it. It makes so much sense – if it’s cold outside outside, why not drink hot water? I also retained my love of local restaurants. I ate at least one meal a day at a charming hole-in-the-wall restaurant next to my flat. In fact, I had breakfast there not three hours ago. They have the best fried rice in Shanghai – hands-down. I went there so often that my roommates began to call it “Gavin’s”! I became really close with the family that runs the restaurant, and I’m sad to leave them.
As you can see, we’re pretty tight.
More importantly, though, is that I got know the differences between the two cultures more intimately than ever before. Fun little fact: they’re a lot smaller than you might think. I was a little bit shocked at how similar the daily shooting-the-breeze was with my coworkers and flatmates. When all was said and done, though, I developed two discrete modes speech – one with people my age, irreverent of language spoken, and another for older Chinese people. That was surprising. Comparing the generation gap in the States to the one here is like sticking your hand in a kiddie pool and then the Mariana Trench. That became apparent only this time around.
You probably read about it every day, but I can’t emphasize strongly enough how quickly China is changing. It’s downright freaky. In just two years, man-powered bikes went from patently ubiquitous to just above rare. The clink of chains and ringing of bells that I associated so strongly with my time in Beijing is all but gone. The new hotness? E-bikes - electric bikes.
I guess the question Shanghai poses is: what happens when development outstrips a culture’s ability to adapt? It’s a little bit frightening. I remember when I was a sophomore and phones with internet were a novelty. After coming home from my junior year in Beijing, the 3G networks were commonplace, and everybody quickly became accustomed to checking their Facebooks at lunch. That’s pretty revolutionary when you think about it. Now, imagine if the principal mode of transportation were utterly transformed in the same span of time.
Remember the 7th country I mentioned at the beginning of this post? Well, it’s Cambodia!
The next portion of my year is dedicated to Brendan Kutler. As the inaugural Two Hats Fellow, I will spend two months on a Cambodian island in the Gulf of Thailand (Koh Rong Samleom) working at a center for marine research and conservation. In addition to salvage diving to remove debris from the seafloor, I will be collecting data on seahorse migration patterns and taking extensive reef surveys. I chose to pursue this project because it’s the sort unique interdisciplinary synthesis that Brendan and I love. I will combine our shared loves of foreign cultures, Asia, science, the sea, and volunteer work (along with good food and weird tropical fruit!) in the two months I spend on the island.
I’m excited! As always, I’ll keep you posted.
Fun with infinity pools in Hong Kong. Taken when I visited a friend who goes to college in the mountains of Hong Kong Island.
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