Experiencing the fabric markets What a crazy environment. I recently explored the famous fabric markets of Shanghai. They are quite huge and quite a site to see. If you like clothes for a good price, that is the place to be. We entered a warehouse like structure and through the dusty plastic doors it was…
Category: China: IFSA Shanghai
Strolling Shanghai
When you study or travel abroad, one of the things I must recommend everybody to do is to take a random day and stroll the city or place of travel. It can give you one of the best and most clear views and feels for the place you are at. In terms of culture and…
Click It or Ticket
“Shanghai is (relatively) one of the safest cities in the world,” this is a quote from one of the wonderful Chinese roommates who volunteered to live with us for the rest of the semester. He gave me this fun little nugget of knowledge on my first full day in China, and admittedly when I heard…
Hong Kong
This past week we had our first scheduled vacation. We went to Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Macau. It was an incredible experience. I absolutely fell in love with Hong Kong. The people may not speak mandarin, however most of the people living in Hong Kong speak English as well as Cantonese. The air quality in…
Sleepless in Seattle, Shivering in Shanghai
“Every week in Shanghai is a fun new challenge,” I say as I smile through gritted teeth. Fun fact: central heating isn’t really a thing in Shanghai, a harsh truth that I was told about earlier in the semester, but hadn’t given much thought to. Especially, since the weather has been pretty hot and humid…
Chinglish at its Finest
While learning a second language, there is always a stage where you’re getting ahold of grammar but your vocabulary is limited. During this stage you tend to develop a highly entertaining mixture of your native language and the one you’re studying. During our trip one of our favorite jokes was to use “Chinglish”: the mixture…
For all the Foodies!
Traveling to China comes with all sorts of intricacies when it comes to the topic of food. It all comes down to the type of eater you are. If you’re coming from a completely westernized way of life, where you have not developed a sense of adventure for food, well, China can come as a…
Travels to Beijing
The great capital of one of the biggest counties in the world! Most people get to experience this city through the fabrication of many tails about it, the stereotypes built upon its reputation, as well as what the wonderful World Wide Web gives us to understand it. I will say that all expectations about it…
One Way to Meet Locals
One of the special parts of studying abroad is interacting and speaking with locals. Sometimes locals will come up to you because they wanted to practice English for a little while; it has happened to us in a mosque in Xi’an, an art museum in Beijing, a park in Shaoxing and both a cafeteria and the subway in Shanghai. Other times they…
A Bird’s-eye View of Shanghai
During orientation in August, the Shanghai Alliance program we’re studying through gave us a “Must-See, Must-Do” list for Shanghai to give us ideas and help us make the most of our stay in this ginormous city. Even though it’s so large, whenever you web image search the term “Shanghai,” most pictures that fill the page are of The Bund and the city’s icon: the Oriental Pearl…