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Chinese Fashion

I'm interested in all the different kinds of fashion and current culture in China. From clothes to accesories and even makeup!

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I'm just a college student studying Mandarin Chinese. I'm no expert on China

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Friday, August 16, 2013

Classes are over.

Today, we took the last final and we had our closing ceremony. Most of us then went out to KTV before heading out. It was really bittersweet. We were pretty glad that we made it to the end and that all our hard work has paid off. But at the same time, we're pretty sad because we all have to leave. It was the last time we were all together. Even if we come back to Shanghai, it won't be the same because all of students came from around the States to come here during one summer. Not trying to make this go down a super sad road but I'm pretty sad about the end.

Since we spent a lot of time this semester on class work and projects, we didn't really get to see much of China, or Shanghai even. I heard the non-summer semesters are more leisurely in that regards. We decided to dress up in our nice clothes (so basically, we all wore our tailored outfits, which I will detail about it another post) and head over to 东方明珠塔 (The Oriental Pearl Tower). We paid 220rmb for the top ticket. We didn't eat at the restaurant because we heard it was pretty bad. All the reviews and Chinese roommates said so. Also, the top floor of the Pearl Tower is not worth it. I mean, if you want to go up there, go for it. But I thought the second floor (not really floor I guess since there's a lot but the second floor which they take you to) was the best. If you go down one floor from the second floor, there's glass floors and the windows aren't completely sealed so it's nice and breezy. 

Afterwards, we met up with some other friends at a restaurant and ate xiaolongbao. Definitely a Shanghai filled day. 

Today was really tiring but I'll definitely remember all of this!
When we got back to Tonghe, I realized how oddly quiet it was. It wasn't as lively as it use to be for a Friday night. I realized a lot of people had left. Our friends from Boston. The Fudan students are on break. Most of us are well on our way packing and leaving. It just made me feel that it really is time to leave.


Shanghai, you've definitely been a city of wonder~

Thursday, August 8, 2013

新天地 Thursday splurging~

Hey Y'all,

Yesterday we only had morning classes! Today we took a group picture in front of the Fudan Main Gate and then took our exit exam, which is the same exam we take for the placement. Anways, since we had time yesterday, we decided to head to 新天地 (Xintiandi) for lunch. 新天地 is this really high-end developed area in Shanghai so a lot of things here are nicer and expensive. There's more foreigners in this area and most of the restaurants will be able to speak English.

I got this for 88rmb plus a sprite for 15rmb. A bit pricey but it was so good.
We went to this German restaurant that some of our friends went to before. The burgers were really good. I heard the Goulash was not so great, so definitely don't get that. I just hang out with my friends while we ate. I'm not sure what my friend, Giulianna, got but apparently she had a really good beer. That was also a bit pricey. But hey, 新天地 style!

After eating, we went around to browse the stores. Everything was literally so expensive. Little trinkets and charms were probably over 10USD and a tea set was over 100USD. Granted, it's probably nice quality and such but I could get something from Chinatown that looks just as nice for less.



We then went into the mall. On a side note, this mall has a club in it called G+ which we went to before. The stores in the mall were even more expensive then anything I've seen in China. The most expensive things were 6000USD and just the normal clothes ranged from 100-400USD. I've never seen stores like that in my life. You can literally just walk in and touch everything and what not. I've been to quite a bit of nice stores in the US but it definitely felt a lot classier if it was worth more. But then again, I guess 新天地 is more of a rich area compared to randomly walking into a mall. 

After browsing a bunch of stores, we decided to head to the international supermarket! Right next to the international supermarket was a store that sold this famous cat icon thing. Not sure how to explain it quite well but you'll understand. It's like going into a Disney store or something.  I got a bunch of stuff for friends here. 
Aren't they super cute?
Afterwards we went into the international store to check it out. I had been there before but I grabbed some granola bars because I just saw it and impulse bought it? Other than that, I bought a going away present for my roommate and his girlfriend. My roommate is here for the fall semester!!!! Win~

Only one more week :( I'll keep you all updated!

Friday, August 2, 2013

Food is worth every single cent!

Hey everyone,

It's going to a busy last couple of weeks. There's a lot of projects and tests and just everything. And I'm getting more and more frustrated that good things have to come to an end. Anyways, I just wanted to talk a bit about food.

As you all know, there's a lot of great cheap things. The main thing is food!


Obviously, there's a lot of meals that are more expensive but you can generally get a good meal for really cheap. Usually students around Tonghe like to grab something from the stores out in front. One of the popular ones right now is "Mom's." It's a nice store that cooks a box set for you or has a wrap (I think it might be jidan bing). My personal favorite is Taiwan's Best, which mainly sold fried chicken. I got a Crispy Chicken on Rice box from there almost everyday for ~20rmb. Another one is a Wonton place not too far away. I usually get Wonton with noodles for 9 rmb.

Recently, I went down to a nicer area closer to Wujiaochang. It's a lot cleaner and has pricer meals but honestly, it's still super affordable. Take a look!

Amazing Taiwanese Meal for 26rmb

A "Boss Girl" set for 28rmb
There's so many great places to eat in Shanghai. Definitely check it out. 

Signing off,
Thomas

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Qingdao Update~

Hey everyone,

After a week of resting and such, I’m finally feeling better! I’m having a tough time coping with having to leave soon and the relationships I’ve developed with people here, but everyone will always be in my heart. Also, it was my birthday this past weekend so it’s been a good reflection of who I am. Time will make everything better.





We had to present our trip in Chinese this past week so I feel like I have to do it over and over. But yeah… Our Alliance group left on a Thursday morning by plane to Qingdao. We met up with our tour guide Howard and he took us on our merry way. And I’m pretty sure we’re all sick of being a bus now because we spent a huge amount of time on the bus. For real!


Anqi and Lydia at the airport!

So many wedding pictures on the beach~
At Qingdao, we headed straight from the airport to the Badaguan area, and the beach. Sadly, the beach was not very pretty. It was rocky and gross. There was glass and such. And the water was cold. And honestly, the weather sucked the entire week we were at Shandong. It was more of a, “let’s just take pictures here…..” kind of deal. The pictures were nice? Some people went for a swim, but there were no locals really swimming. Most of them were just looking around for sea life and shells, and the like to sell to tourist. There was also a no swimming sign…..Awkward.


The water is cold!


After swimming, we went to a hotel to get some food. It was buffet style. The food was quite disappointing. I usually don’t like seafood so I never get any but since we were at Qingdao and I thought the seafood would be good by the seaside, I was like….Yeahhhh let’s try some! Nope. Not a great experience. I think people were more scared of eating the seafood and getting sick than it actually not tasting good. We went to the hotel right afterwards and it was a meh night. We mostly just chilled or watched TV.

Sad we didn't get to go on a boat tour~
The second morning, we were suppose to go on a boat tour but the weather and mist was so bad, we once again….only got to take pictures. Seriously, it was sad not being able to do anything. But after that, we went to the Beer Museum so it was redeemable. We basically just took pictures with some of the interesting scenery there and then drank Qingdao beer. After getting some lunch, we sat on the bus for a long time to get over to Tai’an. And since the weather was bad, it took pretty long.

Giulianna and I tasting some Qingdao Beer

Once we got to Tai’an, we went to see a shadow puppet show. It was refreshing to be able to enjoy that aspect of Chinese culture. It was neat and funny. I think the best part was the end, where they did gangnam style puppet show.

Right after the puppet show, we went to get supplies to hike up Tai Mountain! And everyone bought these sandwiches that turned out to be quite bad…..well, not so much bad but it barely had anything on it. The PB/J sandwiches had like a little smudge. Basically just eating white bread.

After spending another night at a hotel, we got up in the morning and bused over to Tai Mountain. Although a lot of people didn’t want to hike, we were all slowly getting pumped to hike it anyways. We got there and had to wait….and we didn’t know why. We ended up just taking the “before” pictures of hiking up the mountain. Quite a bit later, we were informed that we weren’t able to climb up the mountain because it wasn’t safe due to the weather. And we were so mad, because it had been raining for like 9 days prior, and they didn’t figure that ahead of time?

So Plan B was going to Jinan. We ended up at 大明湖 (da4 ming2 hu2), which is a huge lake. The weather wasn’t that great still and the scenery was just alright. The best part was just taking pictures and paying to get on a small electric boat that we drove around the lake. That was my favorite activity of the trip to be honest….spending our free time to do something we figured out. Just chatting and having fun with friends. And also “chatting” with the Chinese people around us.

We're on a boat!
They came at us head on! I thought we were gonna tip T.T

After the lake, we grabbed lunch and were told we’re going to a different mountain to hike. It was smaller and it had a lot of Buddhist statues and altars. It was tiring to hike all the way up. But getting to the very top was an accomplishment! There were quite a bit of hornets though. And I saw that there were locks up on the top; I’m assuming that it’s a couple related symbol since that’s a common thing to do, but I’m not entirely sure if that’s what it means here in China. Going down the mountain was the worst part for me because it was steep and wet. I had fell three times hiking up so I took extra caution with my slippery flat Nike’s. So advice: Bring some nice shoes with a grip if you’re planning on hiking. When I got to the bottom, I found out some people had taken a cable car up and a slide down. I mean, hiking up and down was an accomplishment, but that would have made my life easier!!!!!
The tallest point!

Eddie and I were excited we made it to the top!


We drove back to the hotel at Tai’an and had time to ourselves. I ended up showering and headed out with some friends to buy some snacks for the train ride and had some Pizza Hut. Also, Pizza Hut in China is like a nice sitdown place. After Pizza Hut, we went to a bar right across the street and had some drinks. It was fun because I was with people I didn’t usually hang out with and we were just enjoying ourselves in a different country.

The last day, we drove to Qufu, which is the hometown of Confucius. We waited a really long time to get in and it was so hot. And when we got in…..Blah, literally, it was not interesting. I mean, I enjoyed learning some history and seeing the traditional Chinese life but our tour guide just went from place to place with brief descriptions. Apparently, the other tour guides there did a lot better job explaining and such. I honestly just wanted to go home at that point.



After the tour of the mansion, we ended up going to a really shady restaurant. The plates weren’t very clean and the food was not good. After trying a little bit of the dishes, my friend and I just decided we were going for the snacks.

We went to the high speed train station and waited for over an hour to get on our train. I thought the fast train was nice but it literally stopped like every 15 minutes.  It was more of a train stopping everywhere in China than a train from point A to point B. And on the train, there were so many kids being so loud. I was going crazy from the noise! At one point, there was a fight that broke out because a kid touched a lady’s butt. I don’t even. We got delayed for a little while.


Best part of the train, I ended up getting sick and vomited all over myself….at first I thought it was motion sickness, but after vomiting a few times, it definitely was from the shady restaurant. And I was dying for awhile. Literally. I’m all better now though soooo. Enjoy my post. 

Monday, July 22, 2013

Food Poisoning

Hey all,

I got back from my Alliance trip Sunday evening and was planning to post and update then. But I got food poisoning from a restaurant we went to. So many people got food poisoning. I just can't. I didn't even want to miss class yesterday. BLAGH.


The trip was alright...I'll definitely update you all on it later this week, preferably on Friday. Just let me have my rest~

Friday, July 12, 2013

Almost half-way update

Hey everyone,

Sorry, I haven't updated as often as I wanted. I've been sick the past week because there's something going around. It's not the bird flu (my mom was freaking out when she found out I was sick). And I don't think it's the pollution because I barely go out that long and I just got sick after other people got sick. Totally blaming my roommate who was sick last week. Also, classes are kicking my butt! Everyday there's a lot of work to do and a lot of studying. We had two tests last week and I just had a test yesterday. Today I had an oral report. Individually they aren't too bad but they all start adding up. Next week we have a midterm but then we're going to Qingdao and Tai mountain. It'll be fun but that means it's already almost half-way done. Everyone is kind of bleh about it and people have been saying they should have done a semester. So definitely do the semester if you can. Plus it's kind of sad to think about leaving all the new teachers and friends I've met.

Anyways, hopefully I can update more soon. Here's some random pictures from today's cooking workshop. I didn't take pictures of the end result because everyone just wanted to eat it!

The cooking workshop 
Getting ready to cook!

The Dim Sum Team making Xiao Long Bao

小笼包~

Almost time to cook it.

Saturday, July 6, 2013

五角场 shopping

Hey everyone,

Today, I'm going to be talking about a recent experience at 五角场(Wu Jiao Chang)'s shopping. So yesterday night, we wanted to go to a place that required business casual clothing. I wasn't sure how business casual it was since in China, that could be pretty different. We finally settled upon the conclusion of collared shirt, nice pants and nice shoes - so pretty much the same... I packed a lot of clothes so I just tried to wing it with the clothes I had. My roommate, Eddie, on the other hand, didn't pack business casual. It's not very convenient to pack, as well as packing for summer classes. So we ended up have to miss the first hour or so of the group KTV party (which was also at Wujiaochang) to shop around.

五角场
Source: www.ypta.gov.cn
五角场 is a huge shopping plaza area. It's so huge!  The image is on the right. It's so awesome because at night, it's so bright and changes colors a lot. I can even see it from my room too. It's the closest shopping area by Fudan University. Everyone likes going here, but mainly for the Walmart. Also the Walmart here is huge. It's three stories.

Anyways! We looked around a bunch of places to shop. There's a lot of big brands here - ones that you can find in the US and ones that are from Korea as well.

We spent an hour looking around. I was a bit disappointed seeing all the prices. Definitely thought things were going to be a lot cheaper but everything pretty much is the same price. H&M, Zara, etc. All the same price. It had a bit different selection though. I thought the clothes were a lot more trendy (but that's just because I like some Asian fashion). Eddie ended up buying clothes from H&M, Zara, and (Shoes) Nike . I'm thinking it rounded to about 160USD for an outfit. So the big brands are pretty much price consistent here. Gotta look for the little shops if you want to find cheaper clothes. But honestly, I still thought Eddie's outfit was nice and suited him well. Cough~ I think so because I was there in the process of helping him pick.

Eddie and I (The Kiwi) in business casual before we left. Eddie's entire outfit was bought at 五角场!





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