Shanghai Healing Home

Slightly different NGO helping Chinese orphans, this time with cleft palates; Shanghai Healing Home takes cares of babies with cleft palates, feed them up so that they can take on surgery and then looks after them while they recover.

They recently moved to a new location deep in Pudong, near Guanglan [广兰] station on Line 2. The new home is much more spacious and homely compared to the old place in Puxi.

They even had 3 new babies (who looked only a couple of months old) who don't have names yet and are provisionally called no. 1, 2, and 3.

Rachel [Left], who has no toy truck to hit me with and Anna [Right].

a very smiley little boy (Benjamin)

More Baobei...

Apparently, Ke Xin [可馨] is now staying with a Baobei Ayi in Shanghai, until they manage to find a 'healing home' (foster family) to look after her and then hopefully an adopter.

According to some other volunteers I met the other day, one of the previous babies (about 3months old) who was born with a massive Teratoma (aparently bigger than her head)possibly a fetus in fetu, and had surgery to remove the growth at 15days old which resulted in her being sliced from hip to hip both at the front and back. She apparently has a waiting list of 200 people (mainly American: lots of Chinese orphans are adopted over to the States) waiting to adopt her. Despite this they think it will take well over a year until she is with her new adoptive parents due to the paperwork involved with the Chinese orphanage, the Chinese Government and the American Government.

I spent my Wednesday lunch time with a little boy (nearly 4 years old) who has some Gastro Intestinal problems and who throughly enjoyed hitting me with a little toy car.

Expo Benefits

So, in addition to the HUGE drive to clean up and green up Shanghai City the Expo has other benefits too. Until the end of the Expo its possible to avoid the normal list of official paperwork and form filling needed to transfer RMB into a foreign currency. Instead all that is needed is your passport and for the value of money that you have exchanged into foreign currency, this year, to be less than $50 000 USD in value. For values over 50 000USD you need to do something special - although I didn't bother finding out what that was on the account of not having 50 000 USD.

So, if you need to get your RMB out of China it's best to do it before this October.

Buying Train Tickets at Shanghai Railway Station

I tried buy train tickets today, before we had just bought them on the day from the ticket counter, but we are attempting some vague 'organisation' for this weekend's trip to Nanjing [南京].

I heard that 'there's a china eastern airline counter where you can buy train and airtickets inside this tomson centre along ZhangYang Road adjacent to Pucheng Road & PuMing Road' LIES! I went and asked the lady at the counter and she said 'No'.

Mind you this guy is a little more helpful on the whole topic of buying train tickets.

Anyhoo...I went off to the station itself and to the HUGE ticketing office [lian ge shou piao chu - 联合售票处] which lies at the corner of Meiyuan Road [梅园路] and Moling Road [秣陵路]. Which is just a big hall with a line of windows on one side and long queues of people trying to buy tickets, there is meant to be a queue for foreigners but I didn't immediately see one. I waited about 20mins in a queue to be confused by the lady behind the counter - i think each counter only sells specific types of tickets - there seemed to be particular queues for slow trains, rapids and expresses. So, I went to a different queue where I finally bought 2 tickets to Nanjing (cost 146RMB per single ticket, train takes 2 hrs to get there and leaves from Shanghai Hong Qiao Railway Station [上海虹桥火车站]). After all the bustle of the ticket hall I passed some funky ticket machines - which it turns out are much simpler to use to book your tickets and have a choice of an english menu (huzzah!). Although I must point out that I only saw the route for Nanjing (and all the stations in between there and Shanghai) on the screen and I didn't check if you could book other routes on it.

How to get to the magic ticket machines? Well from Line 1 metro station, head towards Exit 1

Then before you go up the stairs to exit, turn left down a small shopping alley

the entrance to the small shopping alley

walk to the end of the small shop lined corridor, then at the end face right and go up the stairs to ground level. Once at ground level (at least one of) the ticket vending machine hall(s) [自助售票处] is on the right.

Entrance to the ticket vending machine hall

Magic ticket machines with English

Baobei Babies...

I finally managed to find some volunteering (which doesn't involve paying money to do worthwhile causes - weird i know) with the Baobei Foundataion which basically involved poking a little orphan who is in hospital either waiting for or recovering from an operation.

The Baobei Foundataion basically works with orphanages all over China to fund operations for children mainly born with from some kind of spinal problems, like spina bifida and some other thing which i had never heard of... anyway the foundation organises for the orphans to come to Shanghai, they then pay for their operation and once recovered they try and place the baby in a 'healing home' - a foster family who look after the baby until they are adopted.

The Ayi and baby, 'Ke Xin' [可馨]

Often they try and get an Ayi (carer) from the same orphanage the baby is from to bring the baby to Shanghai and stay with the baby 24/7 during the baby's hospital stay. So I spent some time with Ke Xin (a 9month baby girl with spina bifida) to allow the Ayi to have a little break, like have a shower or go buy lunch.

Attempting to speak to the Ayi in Chinese, she said that many of the children from her orphanage (in HeNan province [河南]) tend to be adopted by americans, however some children, especially those with more serious disabilities tend to stay in the orphange long term. According to one of the ladies who works for Baobei Foundation, some of the children are found days after birth and some with no information on their birth or name, which leads to some babies having to have their birth date estimated from the state of their umbilical cord and names given to them by the orphanage.

You'll be happy to know that Ke Xin recovered very quickly from her little surgery and was discharged on thursday to stay in her foster home. Even the Ayi was impressed at how well Ke Xin had been doing and that she had put on weight since the operation.

Expo!

So we finally got to the Expo (after Tanya generously let us steal her tickets for a day - Thank you Tanya!). The place is HUGE, and we spent most of the day (and a bit of the evening) just wondering around the site looking at the pavilions, and considering the fact that most of the queues were 3-4 hours long, we only managed to go inside two pavilions: the first was the Netherlands - which had a very fast moving queue and the Phillpines which had NO queue on the account that the inside held almost zero cultural interest and looked like a cross between a night club and a trinket shop.

Israel had a very funky pavilion

...but it was apparently being held together by duct tape

[Left] There were people sleeping on benches (and on grass) all over the site, and after walking around for 4 hrs it started to look like a great idea.
[Right] Kids with Haibao dolls

Resting in the shade playing cards - please note the 'expo seats' which 90% of people were carrying around.

[Left] British Pavilion [Right] Korean Pavilion with a really cool facade made up of Korean characters

Italian Pavilion

Start of the Expo?

We were on the way to the airport and drove past a convey of army truck full of guards... probably being ferried into increase security in the lead up to the Expo on the 1st May...

The Rumoured Free Expo Tickets...

So there has been a rumour floating around for the last few months that there would be some snazzy benefits for Shanghai residents as a form of compensation for having to host the Expo 2010.

The first rumour suggested that there would be holidays for people working in Shanghai on the 30th April and 3rd of May. So that there could be some reduction in congestion for the opening weekend of the Expo, by eliminating the normal commuting load on the transport systems...allowing Shanghai to be taken over by the Expo visitors. Sadly this wasn’t exactly the case, companies are obviously not that keen on just giving 2 extra days of holidays to workers, especially when they have to pay them for not actually doing any work, so it's actually turned into 'all offices will be shut' days, but with most companies expecting people to work from home instead.

The other rumour was about each household being given a free Expo ticket and a transport card with a value of 200RMB (that is a LOT of travel - especially if you are planning to use the metro and buses). We just got a notice in our mail box the other day (like yesterday) confirming it. It turns out that even foreigners can claim their free ticket and transport card. It seems to be being organised by each local neighbourhood committee.

Basically the note said:
Each family, which has been registered in shanghai for more than 6 months is entitled to 1 ticket and 1 transport card. In order to claim the ticket and transport card you need to take your passport and residence permit or home visit permit (HK and Macao) or more than 6months visa endorsement to the neighbourhood committee between the 25th - 28th April, with the address of the neighbourhood committee in our compound.

City Weekend

Trash a Go Go at Logos

Who can resist a free gig, especially when its a crazy mix of garage punk and rock and roll bands from Japan?

pre-gig joy

Logos might be small but it's a cute little venue. Particularly liked the scrawlings on the walls, and the inconveniently placed foozeball table just behind the entrance so that the door will hit one player anytime anyone wants to come into the place. We did however manage to squeeze in the smallest mosh pit you can imagine just in front of the stage - i'm not sure everyone (ie. people holding drinks near by) was quite so impressed with it as we were.

Apparently we managed to see: The Routes, The Beat Bandits and Jehosaphat Blow & The Blah Blah Blahs. It was all good.

Ceramic Workshops in Shanghai

I've been attempting to track down a list of pottery/ceramics workshops in Shanghai. First of all because I was looking for a place to do ceramics and/or buy materials. So here is a list of what I have found:

As U Wish
1039 Changle Lu, Jing An (near the center of Wulumuqi Lu)
徐汇区长乐路1039号(乌鲁木齐中路口)
Tel[电话]: 021-62489697
Website: www.asuwishart.com
Email: asuwishart@gmail.com

The Pottery Workshop [乐天陶社]
2F, 220 Taikang Lu, Luwan (near Sinan Lu)
上海市卢湾区泰康路220号2楼
Tel[电话]: 021 64450902
Website: www.potteryworkshop.org
Email: infosh@potteryworkshop.com.cn

I managed to finally pop into The Pottery Workshop (which is just off Taikang lu) and buy a 10kg bag of clay for 50RMB. They also sell a variety of tools as well as kilns and glazes, but you do need to contact them directly to ask about prices (their imported kilns are close to double the price in US or Europe). If however you just want to take your pieces to be fired there, they charge 40RMB per kg of cermaics you want fired. Personally, I have mainly been looking at Taobao for tools, as I don't know anywhere which really stocks this kind of stuff. Have just ordered a few little things and will see how it works out.

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Studios that seem to be shut but came up in searches...

Yiduini Clay Modelling Studio [一堆泥陶艺教室]
Room 1202, Building 4, 191 Tianyaoqiao Road, (near Nandandong Road, Metro Line 1 Xujiahui Station)
徐汇区天钥桥路191号4号楼1202室(近辛耕路) 近南丹路

HanGuang Pottery workshop [汉光陶艺教室] 汉光陶艺工坊
No. 15, Lane 188,Changshu Road, Jing'an District (near Julu Road)
静安区常熟路188弄15号(近巨鹿路)
Tel[电话]: 021-54039440*109
Website: http://www.sh360.net/biz/biz45/16701.html
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