Sweet potato vendor

Here’s a picture of a place I buy lunch once in a while. This lady has an old metal drum with one end cut off of it. She puts some coals inside and cooks sweet potatoes and corn on the cob on top. The corn on the cob in China is popular, but I’m not sure why. Its very bland tasting and sort of unpleasantly chewy. The sweet potatoes are good though. At first she charged me 4 RMB or about 50 cents U.S., but after a while she started charging me 2 RMB. I felt good that I had qualified for local pricing. My Chinese coworkers think its hilarious that I buy from the metal drum lady.

New digs

We moved into a new office this week. I found the place after a lot of looking around. I had real estate agents take me to probably 30 or 40 different locations over the course of a month or so. When I first started looking all I could find in our price range were sort of dingy high-rises. These were generally built in the late 90s when the Chinese were first figuring out how to build skyscrapers. Since then they basically mastered it and have some amazing buildings now. Anyway, I found the prospect of moving into a C class building with two elevators for 25 floors a little disheartening so I asked the real estate agent if he could find us some sort of loft-like space -- an old warehouse or factory conversion. They told me that they had actually started doing those things in Shanghai and they took me to a few. I finally settled on a space with ceilings that are probably 20 feet high. When I saw how high they were I figured we could probably build a mezzanine, which is what we ended up doing. It provided a pretty nice space since I had them push the mezzanine against the back wall and away from the windows so we now have an atrium-like feel to a good portion of the space. The designers were initially pushing these really wild colors; pinks, yellows and light greens. We ended up settling on something sort of modern but Chinese-y. I'm not sure I'm sold on the traditional red and yellow Chinese colors that they painted the main pillars, but all the employees seem to like it. It's still a work in progress and were occupying about half of the space currently while the rest of the furniture is coming in. These pictures are from a few weeks ago. They can really put things things together quickly once the basic construction is done.

Mr. Handsome pics

Here's some more pictures of young Zachary Woodward; a.k.a. Mr. Handsome. We think he's pretty cute now. When babies are first born you are supposed to say they are really cute but to be honest I think most newborns have this sort of smooshed face/space alien look to them. They're still nice to hold since they are so tiny, but I think they definitely get better looking as they get older.

Shanghai Springtime

Spring has sprung here in Shanghai and there are lots of flowers blooming all over the place. While they aren't the cultural phenomenon they are in Washington, DC or Japan, there are quite a few cherry trees as well as lots of peach and plum trees all blooming very nicely. The Chinese are very good and quite particular about their gardening. Traditional Chinese gardens are very specifically planned so that you have good views of different plants, rocks and water features everywhere you look. They do a good job in public parks and they are some nice blooming spots in them right now. The willows and the forsythias came on first as usual. I was happy when the metasequoias have started to leaf out. For the uninitiated, these are redwood looking trees with deciduous needles. When the new needles come on in the spring they are very tender, bright green and super pretty. I hate the winter so I'm a happy man again.

Anyway, this time of year I usually reread the A.E. Housman poem about cherry trees. As I get older I suppose the lines regarding how many more springs I will enjoy have a slightly different feel to them.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough,

And stands about the woodland ride

Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my three score years and ten,

Twenty will not come again,

And take from seventy springs a score,

It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom

Fifty springs are little room,

About the woodlands I will go

To see the cherry hung with snow.