I live in Tonghe, a private dorm that resides just across the street from Fudan University. Coming in to Tonghe, I had extremely low expectations but as soon as I stepped through my apartment door, I was immediately blown away by the enormous size of everything. For about four hundred USD a month I get my own humongous room and bathroom. I share the apartment with a fellow EAP student from UC Davis coincidentally also named Jonathan and an Asia MBA student named Varun.
My massive and messy room
More Pictures of Tonghe
The area surrounding Tonghe is far from a happening place, but it does provide plenty of options for food and groceries. There are a variety of hole in the wall restaurants just a stone’s throw away that are relatively cheap compared to the US but I heard from other students that compared to other places in Shanghai are somewhat expensive. The quality of these restaurants varies greatly from place to place, however, one constant is that the staff is nice and more than used to dealing with foreigners who speak little to no mandarin. Just a two to three minute walk from my apartment is one of my favorite places to go nearby is the street market that opens at 8pm near the entrance to the Fudan dorms. Open till midnight and with meals costing at most 4.5 RMB (about .75 USD) the street market is one of my most frequented places. An added plus is that I do not really need to speak mandarin to order at the market, because each vendor serves only one dish and I can simply point at the ingredients I want.
The street market
What I have discovered in my limited forays into the city of Shanghai has not been as exciting or impressive as I imagined prior to coming here. On my first tour of the city with Jeanni and Pratik, I discovered just how extremely commercialized Shanghai was. This commercialization was further reinforced last Tuesday, when the EAP program hosted a tour of the city. During the tour, a lot of time was spent in museums which did not interest me much, in fact I spent the entirety of my time in the Shanghai museum discussing photography with another student instead of checking out the exhibits. When we arrived at the “old” city, the evidence of the commercialization was overwhelming. The ancient Chinese architecture that housed a shiny new Starbucks, epitomized what “selling out” meant to me.
Selling out
More Pictures from my city tour with Jeanni and Pratik
The best thing to happen from my two city excursions has to be the amazing pictures that I have been able to take. Shanghai despite its commercialization is a very photogenic city.
The Shanghai nightline
More pictures from EAP Shanghai City Tour
The touristy feel of most of Shanghai troubles me and has instilled in me a hunger to try to find something genuine. My next stop is 50 Moganshan lu, a street of warehouses that has been converted to art studios and galleries. If there were ever a group of people to resist commercialization and “keep it real,” my money would be on the artists.
-muffinman
