First Week of Classes

Xiaolongbao-filled with soup and pork

Wujiaochang area-about 20 min walk from our apartment.  It is a very commercial and busy area

Wujiaochang again

More Wujaochiang

Shanghai subway-very clean!  You can also kind of see our reflections

Amusing shop name

Mask from Shanghai Museum

Ancient coins from Shanghai Museum

Bronze Ding (bronze cooking vessel)

Noodles from my favorite Chinese restaurant

Fried Rice!!

Fried banana

Adorable kitten!

After the first few days of classes, I can tell that they are definitely going to pretty intense.  Chinese especially requires a lot of daily work.  I am finding characters very difficult to write and memorize, so hopefully it gets somewhat easier.  I have also started learning sentence structures.  I think that I am really going to enjoy my culture and society class.  We watched a movie during our first class.  It is called To Live.  The film follows a family through the civil war of the 1940s and all of the subsequent movements (Hundred Flowers, Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution).  Our professor told us that the film is banned in China.  Later this summer, we also get to watch some documentaries that should be interesting.  The class also has interesting reading assignments and "field observation" assignments.  Our first assignment is to observe people this weekend in two contrasting settings: Tian Ze Fang and Xin Tian Di.  The class is definitely very interesting and provides a nice contrast with the Chinese class.  Other than classes, I have not done many interesting things over the past few days.  I am looking forward to Friday afternoon when we will venture into the city again!  I am attaching some pictures from the museum and of some local food as well as the cutest kitten we saw on Fudan's campus.