For now I am renaming it Poo-Dong (low-point, folks)

I am writing this as I sit in the back of a taxi on my way home (well, first to the subway station for a 30 minute ride and then home) from a long day at work. The sky is overcast; a smoggy, dirty, grey blanket tossed over the city. The air is thick with a pungent mist that dampens my skin. I feel like some sort of urban fungus. Needless to say, I’ve hit a low-point today. It all happened so quickly though: a precipitous drop in my mood in a matter of seconds. The plunge started once I left the office at five and started on my journey/commute/trek home. Facing the bus station just ahead, I heard the familiar sound of the machine lurching past me, only to careen by the empty stop and leave me behind in the dusty mist to wait in vain for another thirty minutes for the next one to show. It didn’t.
Normally I don’t mind the wait-- which by the way entails an invasion of uncomfortable gawking, pointing,and staring at the white girl in a suit and pearls. But today the attention really irked me, so I hailed a cab. Before I got in, I looked around with the loud honking and heavy traffic flooding by, and the “what the hell am I doing here?!” thought ballooned in my head, which I quickly tried to pop and toss out, but it still bobs up and down in my head like a slowly deflating birthday balloon. I hope that writing about my bad day will divulge myself of all of this negativity.

In moments like these I need (I must) to remind myself how unbelievably lucky I am to be here. Yes, my commute SUCKS. Yes, the city smells like a smoggy turd. Yes, China morphs simple, common tasks into the most complicated ventures that wreak havoc on my (im)patience and (in)flexibility. But, if I dwell on these inconveniences I will forget the real reason I am here. Why is that again? Oh yes.... If you’ll excuse me I have some soul searching to do.

(I’m just being dramatic...it really all isn’t that bad. I think I am just cranky, tired, and hungry).

August 30th: So, What do you do in Shanghai?

I’m beginning to really like this whole “grown-up” thing. At first I was just trying it on for size, but work suits me well. It feels really damn good to impress my boss, Mr. Kamen. It doesn’t happen easily, but when he approves my work, it only makes me want to push harder.

“What do you do in Shanghai?” is the first question that comes up in conversation here when I am out meeting new people. At first, I didn’t know how to explain my job, but after many explanations I have the report down. “I work for a company called Kito Group, a traditional manufacturing and consulting company based in Connecticut. With the downturn of the economy, my boss has looked toward other venues to make money, which is where I come into the picture. He is trying to tap into the legal consulting service market, offering legal services for Chinese companies who have intellectual property to protect in the US. Kito has partnered up with the largest and most respected law firm in the US which deals with IPR (their clients include Microsoft, Bose, Apple, Proctor and Gamble...). Even though their enormously successful in the US, they have yet to penetrate the Chinese market, and essentially the law firm is going through Kito as an arm to find Chinese companies with precious IPR. If we find the law firm (I’m not allowed to say which one) a client, we get a cut of the legal fees.
While the rest of the Kito’s workforce (two people in the US and three people in Shanghai office) is busy with the manufacturing/consulting business, the market research has fallen on my shoulders.

So, where the heck do I find
a Chinese company
who markets their products in the US
whose products have patents, trademarks, and/or copyrights
who can afford the law-firm’s $500-1000/hour legal fees

This is not an easy task. The way to find Chinese entrepreneurs is to think like one.

China is determined to change its reputation of imitation to INNOVATION. The Chinese government has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in China’s research and development sector, establishing hundreds of state-funded research institutions. After endless hours researching on the internet, I have learned that both domestic and foreign enterprises invest of lot of their own money into these RIs for the latest and greatest intellectual capital. For example, last month the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer pledged $500,000 per year for the next three years to the Shanghai Institute of Biological Sciences. Anyway, I have compiled an exhaustive list and detailed descriptions of these RIs.

Besides research institutions, I am researching China’s largest venture capitalist firms. In October Shanghai is sending me as a representative to a three-day long VC summit in Shanghai where all of the top VC firms in the world are convening. I am really looking forward to that! I am also in contact with various Chambers of Commerce, as well as different business organizations such as Shanghai Entrepreneurs and China Entrepreneurs.
Tomorrow morning (Monday), I am meeting with Shanghai Intellectual Property Association. I’m a little nervous about meeting the head of the department and I don’t know what to expect from Chinese bureaucracy. But I’m a grown-up now, so think I can handle it.

WuJiang Lu

Our apartment is on QingHai Lu, a small road in between Nanjingxi Lu and Weihai Lu. Around the corner is Wujiang lu. While most of the street has been refurbished into western shopping malls and Starbucks, one final strip remains where there is an abundance of street food vendors. Almost every night, my roommates and I will head down to wujiang for some cheap, delicious food! So far I can't imagine myself getting sick of all the options I have...fried dumplings, malatang, chicken skewers, lamb pitas..My favorite at the moment is char-grilled octopus. I can get three small octopi on a skewer for 10 RMB. Delicious! The picture is of the young man who makes them for me...

August 20th: Learning a lot

I spoke too soon. After getting cold feet about settling for such a high-priced apartment in Shanghai, we decided to go through several more agents. Sims and I filled out online inquiries explicitly stating our requirements on five or six websites of different firms. This time around, we were very explicit: “If the apartments do not meet these standards, then please do not bother to waste both our time.” Agents were not dissuaded by the intimidating tone and “taoji biaozhun;” the next morning my phone didn’t stop ringing. Caught without a pen and paper, I scrambled down the names of agents...Danny from Phoenix, Angel from Joanna, Prince from Homelink, Elle from ??...and hopped in a cab to meet the boys at yet another complex. As we assessed the 30th apartment-- does it have an oven? do all of the bedrooms have closets?- a kaleidoscopic rush of images of all of the previous apartments whirled through my head. My brain was saturated.

Before we knew it, we had gone from few options to way too many! While Sims was at work, Zack, Logan and I had to split up with different agents. We came close to an awkward encounter: as Danny and I pulled up to a complex, Logan and Tia were leaving the same one. When they walked by our van, I ducked to avoid being spotted with the paranoia of a Saving Private Ryan extra. As they lingered nearby, I pretended I needed to make a phone call to delay getting out of the van and avoid the run-in that would reveal our disloyalty.

In addition to the guilt of sneaking around, having several agents had another downside. Elle led Zack and me back to the Top of the City (our favorite compound). While Elle called the landlord, we looked up at the building with a sneaking suspicion of familiarity. The complex is a dizzying array of thirty identical buildings, but still we looked at each other with a mutual understanding that maybe...Oh yes... Elle opened the door into the corridor where the familiar fragrance haunted our senses. “I smell Chinese cedar!!” I nervously whispered to Zack. Seconds later, Ms. Wong opened the door, shot us an icy glare, said “Tamen lai guo le!” and quickly shut the door. Needless to say, we continued on our search for our home for the next year, maybe two.

With the help of Danny, we found a gem in Top of the City for 14500 RMB which I adore (by the way, it is located directly above The Lodge!). It is modern, clean, and comfortable. It even has a grande piano that we have been ordered to keep, which I guess isn’t a terrible con but looses us about 30 square meters of space in the living room! If we end up in this place, I predict drunken concerts of “Heart and Soul.” This morning Danny will show us some cheaper places in the French Concession. These are the last places we will see. After six full days of apartment hunting- albeit in 100 degree hotbox underneath the smoggy atmosphere- we have agreed to make a decision tonight.

For the record, I don’t think I have ever sweat more in my entire life. I am not talking about a dewy glow upon my forehead and glistening drops on the nape of my neck. No, this is full-on sweat, which then turns my skin into a sticky canvas on which the pollution can collect. In the late-afternoon dizzy spells start creeping up my spine. Insisting that I have perspired out all of my essential electrolytes, Zack encourages me to drink a Chinese carbonated beverage made out of pig sweat. Um, no thanks.

August 17th: Naive Apartment Hunters Are We....

I am sitting at the dinner table in the Hubner’s apartment in Pudong awaiting Zack’s phone call. Our agenda for the day is IKEA, an shopping mecca I have yet to experience. I am excited to sort through various home furnishings and see which storage units, lamps, rugs, throws, pillows, sheets, etc compliment my personality. Of course, this isn’t IKEA in Sweden...I have this horrible vision of walking into IKEA to see Chinese families road-testing the goods: slurping smelly noodles around tables, bathing babies in large flower pots, and a particularly unsettling image of a pot-bellied middle-aged man donned only in boxers while reclining on a bed smoking his pack of cigs. That’s one thing I’ve learned about living in China: have low expectations.

That’s one lesson you really need to take to heart when looking for apartments in Shanghai. After a grueling two days of apartment hunting, we finally found a place. But, it was an arduous journey that tested our future compatibility as roommates, and I must say we four passed with flying colors. The tactfulness, diplomacy, and compromise was of UN standards. We may as well been the Peace Corps of real-estate. Our agent, Tia (pronounced tea-AH!), finally pulled through in the end, but I did have to use my “you-better-step-it-up-girl” tone with her after some no-shows and dingy apartments. We gave her our specific requirements and price-range (15-20,000 RMB), but it just did not seem to register (lots of blank stares and awkward lingering eye-contact). Aimlessly wandering around Shanghai for three hours to kill time for the landlords to arrive was a standard we quickly adjusted to. On top of that, agents within Tia’s company were not allowed to share apartments, making the competition even steeper. One of her coworkers had a list of exactly what we wanted, but he would not share. I am not sure if this is standard real-estate practice, but it would seem to me that Shanghai’s largest realtor would encourage it’s agents to cooperate.

Many of the apartments we saw were decent, but would have a few quirks that absolutely do not mesh with western habits and expectations. While the pleasure of baking cookies in an oven is a comfort relatively easy to relinquish, I did not, however, want to have wash my face and brush my teeth in the bathroom sink in the hallway. Nor did Logan and I want to trek across the apartment into the main living room to get dressed since our closets had been deported there. But this story has a happy ending, but not without a little Sino-Japanese battle first. We ended up choosing this freaking fantastic apartment on the fourth floor in an expat compound called Top-of-the-City. We have christened our new home, “The Lodge” because the entire place from floor to ceiling is made of Chinese cedar, which has an industrial yet pleasant pungent smell hits you like a Maglev train going 400 mph. It oddly reminds me of my childhood because of the dozens of hamsters I brought home from Woolworth and tossed in a cage of cedar chips. The Lodge has a spacious living room, an open kitchen, three bedrooms, and massive deck that begs to have a grill and ping-pong table. But alas, my frat-tastic days of Vandy are over and I think we will just stick to potted plants and few tables and chairs like the adults we are tying to grow up to be.

After endless hours of a witnessing a passive and confused Tia, our agent morphed into a dragon in the final hours. This phoenix paced vigorously back and forth while shouting bargaining the rent down with the Japanese landlords, whom by the way HATED me because I put my feet on the couch (what was I thinking?!) and were very skeptical of the prospect of dirty Americans deflowering their immaculate wooden apartment.

After we put in the offer, Zack, Sims, Logan and I had some of our own negotiating to do with each other. The apartment is expensive, and we were retched with guilt and felt like spoiled brats living in such a nice place, especially in China. We knew that we are just out of college and don’t need such a fantastic place. But having a cheerful, comfortable and modern safe-haven to which to retreat is worth every penny. After two hours of exhaustive deliberation and adjusting the rent to meet everyone’s budget, we clinked our glasses and did some version of Three-Musketeers “all-for-one-and-one-for-all” handshake.

In the end, I am going to pay 810 USD in rent per month, which is redonkulous. But, allotting so much cash toward rent will force me to cut back in other areas, such as vigorous drinking, expensive night clubs, and other extravagances. We all concluded that we will are going to embrace domesticity and cut back. Instead of shopping for groceries at Carrefour, we will buy our produce on the street. Special deliveries from Sherpas and daily meals from Element Fresh will certainly be less frequent. I will eat a lot of baozi.

Eating aside, I think, in a way, that this apartment will help me mature and focus on the real reasons why I am here. To work my ass off, learn Chinese, and sink into Chinese culture.