Most visitors make directly for the drive-through safari area to the left of the entrance. Tour groups can go in their own vehicles, but there are also park buses at no extra charge. These drive through at the (relatively swift) prescribed speed of 8-12 kph and hardly stop. So it is a challenge for visitors to try to see everything, let alone take pictures. The buses do slow down, however, when passing through the heavy metal gates separating four areas: tigers, bears and monkeys, cheetahs and lions. There’s quite a large number of animals of each species in these smallish areas, which are quite bare with a few young trees, a few bushes, dry grass, some water and the occasional wooden shelter. The safari takes about 15 minutes.

In November 1999 the Shanghai Wild Animal Park came to fame through a tragic accident: A man was attacked and mauled by several young tigers. It took park employees half an hour to rescue him and he then died on his way to the hospital. He was a bus driver who’d left his vehicle — full of schoolchildren on an outing — to check on a defective bus which was blocking his way. After the accident, park authorities decided to equip all vehicles entering the tiger area with modern communications devices and give them regular mechanical check-ups, and more warning signs were set up. In contrast to other Wild Animal Parks in China the Shanghai Park does no longer sell live animals to visitors to feed the tigers or allow tourists to pose for pictures with beasts of prey.

Two thirds of the entire Park area are home to a wide variety of other animals: Monkeys, rhinos, giraffes, birds, deer, pandas and many others. The elephants and giraffes live in small, bare, muddy pens. Young children will enjoy feeding the monkeys, rabbits and pigs. Visitors can walk or take a pony cart for a tour. There is an extra charge for the cart and the drivers might be reluctant to stop more than twice and will urge customers to speed up and get back on when they do.

One of the main attractions of Shanghai’s Wild Animal Park is the Animal Circus. There are several hour-long performances per day. They feature young men and women in colorful costumes dancing to loud music on a stage before a backdrop of artificial rocks and a huge tiger head. The dancers also sing carrying white fluffy dogs, parade animals around the arena (holding tiger and lion cubs in their arms and pushing cheetahs on trolleys). There’s also an elephant show and other performances of bears or monkeys riding bicycles.

After the circus visitors who hurry up can also catch the sea lion performance near the entrance — the standard fare of retrieving objects, catching balls and so on. In the park there are also a couple of restaurants, a Ferris wheel, go carts and bumper cars.

The Shanghai Wild Animal Park
Hours: daily 8am to 5pm
Address: Nanhui San Zao Zhen
Tel: 5803-6000
Tickets: 70 yuan for adults, 35 for children under 1.2 meters

How to get there:
You can get there by bus from various stops in Shanghai such as the stadium in Xujia Hui or from People’s Square. The bus ride will take up to an hour. By taxi the fee would be over 150 yuan one way from the city center.

“Shanghai is a cultured city with a lot of museums,” says Mr. Gao, “but this is another kind of culture.”

Since opening in September of last year, the Museum of Ancient Chinese Sex Culture has been bringing “another kind of culture” to downtown Shanghai visitors like Mr. Gao. The museum features more than 1,000 sex-related artifacts, ranging from a 5,000-year-old fertility jar to marriage certificates from the early Communist period. The exhibits reflect how Chinese attitudes toward sex have changed through the ages, and the museum itself, with its commercial banking and intellectual pedigree, shows how these attitudes are continuing to change in a more open China.

Nobody has done more to track these developments than Professor Li Dalin, the museum’s founder. A sociologist at Shanghai University, Professor Li started researching Chinese attitudes toward sex in 1985, and ten years later he published “Sexual Behavior in Modern China,” a book based on his nationwide survey of 20,000 respondents. Although he had been warned that such material was politically risky, Professor Liu was surprised to find that the book brought him instant fame, as well as applause from some government officials. Wu Jieping, the former president of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, praised Professor Liu for his breakthrough work.

“He wrote me a letter and said that my sex survey would be the foundation of modern Chinese sexology,” says the 67-year-old professor.

The survey was also the foundation for what has become a remarkably prolific academic career. Over the past seventeen years, Professor Liu has published more than sixty books, most of them about sex in China, and royalties allowed him to pursue his hobby of collecting ancient sex-related relics. In 1995 he set up his first exhibition.

“I bought an old villa for my home, and I displayed my objects there,” says Professor Liu. “But it wasn’t a public exhibition; it was just for my friends.”

Hoping to open his museum to the public, Professor Liu searched for private backers. A local Shanghai business, the New World Development Company, invested 600,000 yuan in the exhibit’s current facility, which is next door to the Sincere department store on Nanjing Road. As far as Professor Liu is concerned, the partnership is a perfect marriage of completely different goals.

“I want this museum to improve knowledge,” he shrugs. “Their goal is to make money.”

While it remains to be seen whether the museum will become profitable, there’s no question that it features artifacts seldom seen elsewhere in China. And these exhibits provide a remarkable portrait of shifting attitudes toward sex, ranging from the relative freedom of the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907)to the more straightlaced Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911). Although these later periods were known for their sexual repression, they nevertheless produced some of the museum’s more striking erotic portraits.

“Erotic paintings reached their apex during the later years of the Ming,” says Professor Liu. “It’s contradictory: on one hand, you have restrictions, while on the other hand you have development. But sex is human nature ?it can’t be repressed. The more repression, the more reaction.”

But this theory, at least as viewed in the museum’s exhibits, seems inapplicable to the Communist period. Perhaps the least erotic artifact is a marriage certificate from 1969, which features a portrait of Mao Zedong accompanied by the sterile inscription: “Walk with the Communist Party, Listen to Chairman Mao’s Words.”

“The situation after Liberation was very complicated,” says Professor Liu. “There were many efforts to make men and women equal, and in 1950 they banned arranged marriages. These changes all have some relationship with freer sexuality, which is a good aspect. But there was also a bad aspect, because many of the feudal ideas survived these reforms. In general, after Liberation the group got power and the individual often suffered. Personal affairs simply weren’t important; the revolution was what mattered.”

This legacy is part of why sex is still a touchy subject in China, although the museum’s existence shows how rapidly such attitudes are changing. And with 40 per cent of its tourists coming from overseas, the museum also reflects an entirely new side of Chinese sex attitudes, which for the first time are being influenced heavily by the outside world.

“After Reform and Opening, [attitudes toward sex in China] have been shaped more and more by the West,” says Professor Liu. “Of course, this opening has good effects — it’s not simply a matter of it being bad for China. And it’s certainly not a matter of the West being a bad influence on our society. It’s just that this change has happened very quickly.”

Meanwhile, the museum is leery of pushing the envelope of these changes. Prominent signs forbid visitors under the age of 18 — although it is true to the complex, uneven, and occasionally insular world of Chinese sex that there are exceptions to this rule.

“We don’t worry so much about foreign children,” says Professor Liu. “They can come with their parents. But Chinese children definitely can’t come.”

Museum of Ancient Chinese Sex Culture
Address: 479 Nanjing Dong Lu

Immaculate and service orientated, the palatial bathhouse caters to your every ablutional need—and then some. More than just an array of beautiful tubs in which to soak your troubles away, or the standard fare of pampering massage and body treatments, the Sea Cloud hosts floor after floor of dizzyingly eclectic entertainment activities. There’s a large family style restaurant with a built in runway stage for daily shows—fashion models, dancers, or cabaret-style singing. If this proves to be excessively stimulating, you can hang out in the teahouse, eat popcorn and relax on one of the giant, pillow-esque chairs. The flirtatiously inclined can find a stool by the dimly lit bar and nurse a cold one. Of course, that’s not all.

The excessive diversion of room after roamable room can become a bit comical. There are wildly comfortable rooms for viewing movies, watching TV, and napping: You can even spend the night if you like. There are more game rooms than you can count ?cards, mahjong, Chinese checkers, pool, snooker and more. All of this is not so out of the ordinary. The Sea Cloud starts to set itself apart with an archery room (which brought back my summer camp counselor fear of being pierced by stray arrows) and a room with a pitching machine. The finishing touch comes with a Get-in-touch-with-your-inner-Hemingway man-made pond. You can go after some big game fish, then bring your catch back to the restaurant to be served as your dinner. Fishing poles and bait are provided. After all these activities, it’s likely you’ll need another shower. How convenient!

The Sea Cloud is all Shanghai in its flavor. It’s the perfect bathhouse to match this city’s highly impersonal hyper-modernization and wanton desire for all things new. The first few visits are a fun novelty, but after that—well, it’s depends on your personality and disposition. Practical types will likely find it the perfect stop off. However the chronic buzz of pajama clad guests and the ear shattering music of mobile phones may leave those with a more romantic bent feeling a bit overwhelmed. Decide for yourself.

The Sea Cloud Garden Bathing House
888 Fanyu Lu
Tel: 64860011
Single visits 68 RMB. With prepaid cards the price can go as low as 38 RMB a shot. A 1080 RMB, six-month VIP card allows one trip per day with a discount for your guest.

The difficulty of mastering Chinese is often exaggerated: since antiquity, the bias of early traders created a perception, still widespread in the Western world, that the Chinese language is a bizarre gibberish unintelligible to the civilized ear. In fact, spoken Mandarin is no more or less challenging than any other foreign language. While tones and other pronunciation subtleties pose an early speed-bump, once they are mastered Chinese learning is relatively easy. Chinese verbs have no tenses or conjugations, and sentence structure is simple and straightforward, so students can focus on accumulation of vocabulary.

Writing Chinese, is quite another matter, although in this aspect, again, the difficulty level is overblown. Chinese characters evolved from their pictographic origins over a span of some four thousand years into their current appearance. China came close to abolishing characters in the 1950s in favor of a romanized script. Unfortunately for the lazy language student but fortunately for the country’s culture, these plans were not enforced. Instead, most characters were transmuted into simpler characters with fewer brush strokes, significantly lowering the difficulty of memorization and raising China’s literacy rate. These simplified characters, or jiantizi, are used today in Mainland China and Singapore, while the old traditional characters, or fantizi, continue to prevail in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Most Chinese characters are comprised of two components: a radical on the left often signifies category of general meaning (such as wood, water, metal, or humanity), and the right part gives some clue as to the sound the character makes. After learning about 2000 of the most commonly used characters, you’ll be able to read simple things and comprehend general if not detailed meaning, and unfamiliar characters can be deciphered through their components.

SHANGHAI UNIVERSITIES

Fudan University
Founded in 1905, Fudan figures among the best reputed and most respected universities in China. It’s Shanghai’s answer to Beijing University. Fudan offers courses in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, technological sciences, and management sciences. The first school in Shanghai to accept foreign students, Fudan remains the leader in Shanghai’s study abroad options, with the largest number of students and most active campus life. Along with language courses, students can select from a wide range of offerings in Chinese culture and literature.

Each class has fifteen students, who must hold a high school diploma and be under 50 years of age. Application fee is US$50, and each semester costs US$1250. Short-term classes in Mandarin and on cultural topics such as Chinese painting, Peking Opera, folk music, and Taiji are offered as well. A short-term program teaching the Shanghai dialect is also available. Short term courses cost US$300 for two weeks, US$350 for three weeks, US$400 for four weeks, and US$90 for each additional week.

Tongji University
Joining Fudan among Shanghai’s most prestigious universities, and also located in the northern University District, Tongji specializes in civil engineering and architecture, but also offers language courses.

East China Normal University
Another school with a huge foreign student population, East China Normal University (or Huashi Da, as it’s better known) offers programs in Chinese language and culture. A number of the foreign students here are enrolled in technical and humanities programs. Masters and PhD programs are also available. The school is a prestigious teachers’ college, with a large and lovely campus, and is located closer to the town than any of the other leading universities. The school’s Webpage includes a full introduction to their 42 undergraduate and 97 graduate programs open to foreign students.

Shanghai University
Shanghai University is actually a wide network of campuses offering a vast array of different disciplines, including sciences, foreign languages, and the arts.

Jiaotong University
Conveniently located near Xujiahui, with a beautiful and historic campus, Jiaotong University focuses on subjects of science and engineering. For language students, short-term and long-term programs are available. The former range from two weeks to six months and focus on oral skills. Long-term programs range from one to two years, costing US$2000 a year, and teach conversation and writing at the beginning and intermediate levels. Apart from language studies, Jiaotong offers Bachelors, Masters, and Doctorate programs in various technical subjects.

International Studies University
SISU’s College of International Cultural Exchange offers a four-year program in business Chinese and another English-Chinese program. Short-term courses are also available.

But one look into the average department store reveals that what lurks in (or on) the breasts of women is not modesty but rather frugality. For those not willing to fork over 300-600 RMB for a Wonderbra, the sales racks are filled with less expensive alternatives that look, at best, like light armor and at worst, like they could have a great social life even without me in them.

Okay, I’ll admit that I was pretty skeptical when a friend first presented this as a weekend option. Any park in China can be a bit dodgy, with sparse tufts of grass struggling to grow with only cigarette butts as fertilizer. But a water park?! Images of rusty, neglected equipment, dangerously creaky rides, and evil-looking painted clowns sprang to mind. There was no conceivable way that a day at the water park could be a good idea. After much prodding (“Don’t worry—it’s run by a group of Australian clean freaks!”), I found myself on the metro speeding towards Xin Zhuang (the last stop) for a day of either fun or tetanus.

Upon arriving at Xin Zhuang, we were besieged by a group of huangniu (hawkers) trying to sell us “half-price admission coupons”) for  $5. Since entrance costs rmb60, the final price would be only $5 with the coupons (if they turned out to be real). As it turns out, we not only bargained them down to ?0, but they are accepted at the park for (as advertised) half price admission. From the Xin Zhuang metro stop, it is a $1 cab ride or rmb 2.0 shuttle ride to Dino Beach—the buses wait right down the escalator, and it takes just about 10 minutes from the station.

Actually entering the park requires some patience: there are 2 bag checks (they clearly make all of their money from overpriced concessions), and then a mandatory “health check”, where an old woman in a lab coat listens to your heart for a moment, and then judges you fit to survive the trials of the park. My lawyer friends tried to explain to them that they are better off NOT checking guests and proclaiming them fit (thus assuming liability over their safety), but the park personnel wouldn’t listen. They are that concerned with our well-being. Kind of touching, really.

Finally, you’re in. Inside, guests can rent lockers to store clothes and valuables, and inner tubes for some of the rides. The park is very well designed, with 2 large areas of “adult rides” (high-speed slides and tubes), and a huge central area of pools and squirty things for kids. Around the whole complex is a “white water river”, where the waves get surprisingly aggressive—several rafters were capsized and slammed into the padded wall as they navigated the “straits”.

The crowning glory of Dino Beach is the beach. They have a football-field sized beach leading into a massive wave pool. Every hour, they crank up the wave machines, and then everybody crowds to the middle of the pool where the waves break, and crash into each other on inner tubes. Cooler and wetter than bumper cars, but the same basic concept.

For cool fun in the summer months, one could not do much better than Dino Beach. The rides are safe, fun, clean, and most importantly, wet. The staff are friendly (they’ve somehow located a whole tribe of “surfer dudes” that they’ve convinced to work at the park), and the lines are short (maximum of 5-10 minutes waiting for each ride; many rides with no wait).

Yes, Dino Park is vapid. It’s also cheesy, uninspired, unintellectual, unrefined, culturally worthless. But it’s damn fun, and it’s wet.

Getting There: Ride Metro Line #1 to Xin Zhuang (last stop); then take the shuttle bus  or cab (say “redai fengbao”).

Admission: they sell half-price coupons at Xin Zhuang metro station plus the “health check”. Health check certificate is good for 1 year.

Extras: many rides require the use of a large inflatable raft, (depending on whether you get a single or double)

Open from 9am to 9pm, June 28 through September 3. For more information, check www.dinobeach.com.cn

Shanghai’s French Concession was born out of French Consul M. Montigny’s agreement with the Chinese authorities on April 6, 1849, to establish a French settlement on the Huangpu River, nestling cozily between the walled Chinese city to the south and the British settlement to the north. Shanghai’s explosive growth over the subsequent years led to the settlement’s expansion westwards. Over the next century, the area south of Boulevard Edouard VII (today’s Yan’an Lu) was a district characterized by tastefully designed parks, handsome villas and Russian brothels. Unlike their Anglo-Saxon neighbors to the north, the French always knew how to enjoy the best of life.

Much of Frenchtown’s distinctive flavor remains today. At the core of Shanghai’s former French Concession lies today’s Huaihai Lu (once known as Avenue Joffre), now celebrating its centennial. Among Shanghainese, this, and not the touristy Nanjing Lu, is the street to be seen on: Day and night, the trend-setting youth of Shanghai throng the Huaihai strip, scouting out endless boutiques in search of the latest in urban living. More than just a glitzy manifestation of global consumer culture, Huaihai Lu crosses some of the most interesting neighborhoods of Old Shanghai. Those willing to venture a bit further from the main strip will be rewarded with glimpses of Shanghai life barely touched by the ravaging development of the late ’90s.

Huaihai Lu stretches seven kilometers across central Shanghai, from the former walled Chinese city in the East, to Hongqiao Lu in the West. Most of the key sights, however, are strung out along the middle portion (Huaihai Zhonglu) and are within easy walking distance from the three Metro stops that serve it. A few years ago, the eastern stretch of Huaihai Zhong Lu, near the Huangpi Lu Station, was a massive construction site. Now the scaffolding has come off to reveal a string of shiny new office-mall developments. Venture just a couple of blocks south from Huaihai Lu, however, and you’ll find yourself back in 1920s shikumen territory. These buildings, recognizable by the ornately carved stone arches that mark the entrances to their alleys or longtangs are unique to Shanghai, and were built by foreign developers around the turn of the century to accommodate the massive influx of Chinese migrants. Enjoy these neighborhoods while you can, as many are slated for destruction. A plan drawn up by Chicago architecture firm SOM calls for their replacement by yet more shiny office towers. Only the area around the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party will be partially conserved, in the form of an upscale shopping development.

Westward along Huaihai Lu, past the impressive new elevated highway, lies the shopping avenue’s more intimate side. Street front boutiques, restaurants, and bakeries harken back to when Avenue Joffre was the favourite haunt of Shanghai’s leisure class. Yandang Lu, leading into Fuxing Park, was fully pedestrianized a few years ago and quickly taken over by trendy Taiwan-style tea houses. Plenty of local color remains as, on warm nights, families emerge from the nearby longtangs to playing cards or mahjong on folding tables. Fuxing Park, formerly called the French Park, in the early morning becomes a riot of dancing couples, moonwalking men and strangely agitated retirees (don’t worry, they’re only practicing qigong). If you’re lucky, you might catch an impromptu jam session among neighborhood musicians or an old-school storyteller. Outside the west entrance of the park is a tranquil neighborhood of art-deco villas, now subdivided and shared among multiple families. Nearby are the former residences of revolutionary hero Dr. Sun Yat-Sen and the late Premier Zhou Enlai.

The area immediately around the Shanxi Nan Lu Station is a non-stop swirl of activity, where Shanghai’s consumer frenzy reaches its peak. The pace doesn’t slack even when you venture deeper into the surrounding neighborhoods. Dodge bicycles along Nanchang Lu on a weekday morning and head for the produce market between Shanxi Lu and Xiangyang Lu, where residents stock up daily groceries. Xiangyang Lu itself offers a great taste of the pre-mall shopping experience in Shanghai and is littered with a bizarre assortment of shops, including a two-story electronic-goods bazaar at Xiangyang and Fuxing Roads where you can get your very own pre-owned cell phone at a suspiciously low price. At night, head to Maoming Nan Lu, south of Fuxing Lu, currently the epicenter of Shanghai’s young club scene. Clutch a cheap bottle of beer from the Lawson’s round the corner and enjoy the people watching. Despite all this hustle and bustle, residents continue to live in the typically laid-back, if congested, Shanghai style. Wander down Lane 987 of Huaihai Lu for a view of this lifestyle.

Huaihai Lu becomes a little more relaxed around the Changshu Lu Station, except for the carnival of Huating Lu. This infamous street market is a great place for cheap clothes and brand-name knock-offs, but shopping here can be an uncomfortable exercise at the height of summer. Shanghai authorities have decided to move the stalls into a bland, air-conditioned concrete mall in the near future, so experience it while you can, and hold on to your wallet while you do. Nearby on Donghu Lu sits the Donghu Hotel, formerly an opium warehouse, a movie studio and the haunt of Du Yuesheng, Shanghai’s greatest gangster and philanthropist. Today, lesser pleasures can be obtained along Julu Lu, near Huashan Lu, where a cluster of bars of varying degrees of seediness have sprung up to serve the expat pub-going crowd. More local color can be found down maze of back alleys behind Huaihai Lu and Fuxing Lu.

Enter through Fuxing Lu Lane 10, across from the park, or Huaihai Lu Lane 1412. The area around the French consulate on Huaihai Lu used to be an exclusive, upscale neighborhood, and many of the old garden mansions are still standing, though they’ve seen better days. Along Dongping Lu, however, some of these grand houses have been beautifully restored and turned into restaurants and bars where you can rest your feet and treat yourself to some of Shanghai’s reemerging international flavor.

Established in 1974, the Botanical Gardens currently cover 81 hectares. The Gardens were created to showcase plants native to the middle subtropical region of China as well as to bring in noteworthy plants from abroad. The collection of flora includes ferns, conifers, magnolias, peonies, azaleas, roses, and bamboo, to name a few. There is also a Penjing (Bonsai) Garden, which includes a pavilion full of rock art, and an herb garden for a more traditional flavor.

The Gardens are well-marked, large, and easy to stroll, with plenty of benches in the shade and sun for when your feet start to give out. Mornings find scattered groups practicing tai chi, fan dances, and sword dances around the grounds. Although a map marks the entrance, and an abundance of signage will tell you where you are, where you can go, what kind of plants each garden features and when it was planted, the best way to see the Gardens is merely to follow your fancy and wander. Signs notwithstanding, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the various garden designations.

Among the primary disadvantages of the garden is that many of its featured flora are strictly seasonal. The bushes in the Rose Garden come into their full glory from June through August. Water lilies, the other specialty of the summer months, adorn nearly every pond in sight, and the Gardens boast no shortage of pondage. The Azalea and Magnolia Gardens are currently pre- and post-splendor, respectively, but are nevertheless tucked further back into the quieter sections and thus worth seeking for their peaceful solitude. Spacious paved paths flank both the Conifer and Medicinal Herb gardens.

No park in China seems complete without a few rickety rides for children and paddle-boats of dubious seaworthiness, and the Botanical Gardens prove no exception. Very small pens containing pairs of rather glum-looking deer and ostriches are also intended to entertain the kiddy crowd. More appealing are the dove cotes scattered about the park, housing a cooing white flock willing to eat out of your hand. Despite these uneven attempts to provide amusement, the Botanical Gardens aim at the rare goal of Zen quiet and relaxation, rather than the gaudy entertainment that is Shanghai’s norm.

Considering the size of the park and the winding maze of its countless paths, visitors do well to plan an entire day, or at least a half-day, to dedicate to the Gardens. While there is a small restaurant on the grounds and a few concession stands scattered around the park, visitors inclined towards more substantial fare than instant noodles should pack a picnic lunch. The Gardens do feature sporadic exhibitions, but given the limited times and scope, it is best to rely more on the weather outside to pick a time and date to visit.

Shanghai’s Botanical Gardens provide little to excite the hard-core horticultural devotee. Despite the garden’s claim to provide a “union for science and nature,” it ultimately is a garden in the homegrown sense, and appears more a well-planted backyard than a comprehensive collection of specimens. Visitors expecting the organization and artistry of a European botanical garden will leave disappointed. Nevertheless, their convenient location near to the city make the Gardens an ideal getaway destination.

Shanghai Botanical Gardens
1100 Longwu Lu
Tel: 6436-5523
Hours: 7:00-17:00

If you are a native English speaker (or can pass for one), you’re already amply qualified for one particular set of jobs in China. Teachers are in high demand in both rural areas and big cities. In Beijing, it’s said you can stand at the railway station with a sign reading, “I Speak English,” and you’ll have a job within a day. Teaching jobs for other foreign languages like French or Korean are also available, but English clearly rules. Whether or not you have teaching experience is largely irrelevant. If you can communicate with fluency in English, then you will be hired in most cases.

One exception may be if you look Chinese or Asian. Occasionally, there are perverse forms of discrimination: Some schools have a policy of not employing overseas Chinese because they supposedly don’t speak English as well as “real” foreigners, or don’t inspire the confidence of their students. Even blondes with heavy European accents have been known to have an edge over Chinese-looking Americans or Canadians. Fortunately, it’s not a major obstacle if you are determined to teach. There are many positions out there, and the schools that are sincerely concerned about the quality of teaching will not be so dismissive. Just be warned that it does happen.

In major cities, pay is typically 80-120 yuan per hour, and schedules are fairly flexible, running the gamut from one hour per week to full-time. You also have options for tutoring individuals or working with larger classes of kids or adults. In more out-of-the-way places, wages may be less (about 2000 per month) but schools frequently offer airfare, standard housing, free Chinese language classes and a more unique experience as an entire package. It is possible to arrange these positions from abroad, either through a middleman organization or directly with the Chinese school. On the web, there are a host of sites offering information on teaching English in China…

Appalachians Abroad: Teach in China
www.marshall.edu/esli/apa.htmlx
Marshall University (Huntington, West Virginia, US) runs this program through its Center for International Programs. One and two-year teaching positions throughout China usually begin from August or March, and applications from any college graduates are welcome.

Colorado China Council
www.asiacouncil.org
The CCC is an educational outreach organization aiming to expose Americans to Chinese culture and history. It is non-religious, non-political and non-profit group that sends college graduates to China for one-year teaching contracts.
Council Exchanges Teach in China Program
www.councilexchanges.org/18plus/programs/tic.html
Positions teaching English to Chinese college students are available through this group.

Council on International Educational Exchange
www.ciee.org/
CIEE runs several programs for studying, working, and volunteer work teaching abroad for periods of three to six months

English Language Institute/China
www.elic.org
ELIC provides training and placement for teaching English in China, but limited to those of the Christian faith.

ESL Web Guide
www.eslcafe.com/search/Jobs/Asia/China/
The general web site is maintained by an individual named Dave Sperling, who has compiled a long list of related links.

Peace Corps China
www.peacecorps.gov/countries/china
The Peace Corps’ program in China has been going for several years. The project is recruiting teachers for middle schools in the rural areas of Sichuan province of China.

Princeton In Asia
www.princeton.edu/~pia
PiA sets up internships for college graduates, including English teaching positions in mainland China. Open to applicants from other universities.

TEFL China Teahouse
www.teflchina.com
This web site is specifically designed for and maintained by English teachers in China. You can also join the email list, which is a very active forum useful for advice and conversation relevant to this topic. The site also has tips and ideas for ESL teaching methods in Chinese classrooms.

Teach in China Forum
www.teach-in-china.com
This web site and bulletin board has frequent question and answer opportunities for those is search of China information.

Volunteers in Asia
www.volasia.org
Affiliated with Stanford University, VIA offers seven week summer programs for teaching English, as well as one and two-year long teaching jobs in Asia.

Western Washington University’s China Teaching Program
www.ac.wwu.edu/~ctp/
CTP is based at Western Washington University and offers teaching placements in China.

World Teach
www.worldteach.org
Harvard University’s program is open to university graduates in all majors. Their one-year teaching commitments in secondary schools do not require prior teaching experience, and besides English as a foreign language, subjects taught include natural and social sciences, mathematics, art and home economics. Limited financial aid is available.

Besides teaching, there are still more English-based jobs to be found, but typically only in the larger cities. Publications such as The China Daily, written in English by Chinese writers, hire native English speakers as copy-editors. The East Oriental School (Dong Fang Xue Xiao) and other private companies employ foreigners to edit resumes, personal statements, and reference letters in English. Some writing skills, but not necessarily formal experience, are typically needed for these kinds of jobs. And if you are already in China, there are also opportunities to do English voice recordings, usually for radio advertisements or for English language tapes. Recording sessions are more sporadic, but the pay is usually higher than teaching jobs. Foreign students are a frequent recruiting target for such jobs, so bulletin board postings near foreign student dormitories are good places to check for more information.

However, as people with every kind of budget started inviting us over to their apartments and houses, we felt the envy start welling up in us, accompanied by self-loathing. Why were we living in a characterless box sheltered from the “real China?when our friends were living in every imaginable form of pre-liberation housing, ranging from the extravagant former dwellings of enemies of the people to garret apartments that we imagined must have been the meeting place for revolutionaries? How could we deprive ourselves of this aspect of the Shanghai experience?

This state of affairs dragged on for a while, with us ashamed to repay the kindness of our hosts by inviting them over to our nondescript, uninteresting excuse for a home. Then as fate would have it NATO bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Suddenly most of my projects, which depended on good will and cooperation between the United States and China, ground to a halt. At the same time my husband decide to leave his job to start his own company. And we thought we were poor before?So I launched into our second apartment search in Shanghai in six months. The first time I had a housing allowance, and just wanted to find something quickly. This time I had some time on my hands, but very little money. I was looking for “a find?

I started by diving into the world of local property agents. I would walk into offices with nothing but one dusty desk and a few pieces of paper pinned up, wake up whoever was sleeping on the desk, and demand to see any good old properties the agent had. We were open to leasing or buying and as a naturally curious individual, I refused to commit to a price. I wanted to see what was available out there, even if I probably couldn’t afford it.

I quickly discovered these real estate agents had no sense for what I thought was “good? I visited cavernous abandoned houses, or dark and dank houses inhabited by numerous families who hated one another and tried to block each other out with makeshift walls and locked doors. Although the houses were in wretched condition and the owners were unwilling to invest any money in them, they wanted to sell the houses for hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars. For a more reasonable price, there were apartments where the toilet was in the kitchen and apartments that consisted of unconnected rooms and the use of a common kitchen and bathroom. The real estate agents were particularly proud of old houses that had been completely rebuilt and were as bland as the villas in Hongqiao, or apartments that had been refurbished through the installation of hot pink carpeting, florescent lights and mirrored walls.

Once in a while, though, they would show me my vision of “good? hardwood floors, stylish original fixtures, big French windows. I would love it, and the property agents just couldn’t see why. For some reason all the apartments I loved were on the market to be sold, and only the “use rights?were for sale. Not a particularly good investment for a foreigner who expects to leave in a few years.

Finally I decided to try some more conventional property agents who specialize in leasing old places to expatriates. Shanghaimaison.com,  One eventually came through for us. For a reasonable price, we found a six-room longtang house (a lane house, or townhouse) that we thought only needed some paint and a bit of work on the kitchens and bathrooms. The only catch was we had to pay for the renovations ourselves. As the renovations proceeded we discovered more and more problems that had to be fixed with the electricity, plumbing, etc. Soon what we had thought was an attractive townhouse had turned into a rubble-filled construction site complete with a team of resident migrant laborers, hanging laundry and piles of fish bones.

Then there was the issue of the nightsoil trucks (choufen che). As the renovations neared completion it was explained to me that we couldn’t tile the common courtyard because massive trucks have to drive in occasionally to suck out all the sewage from our entire row of houses, which accumulates underground. The tiles would block access to the sewage and in any case would probably just crumble until the weight of the trucks. Taking this unwelcome informa tion about the plumbing in stride, I asked what the schedule was for the sewage truck, so I could be sure not to be grilling food in the courtyard when the truck arrives. “Well, it would not be wise for it to come on a set schedule, say, once a month. Because what if it’s a light month, the truck comes and the vat isn’t quite full? How wasteful. Instead, the truck only comes when someone in our row notices the fen rising out of the ground and into their apartment via the drainage pipes. But don’t worry, your apartment is slightly higher than the others, so someone else will notice it first.

Such challenges aside, we watched our workers like hawks and our reward was a house which has hopefully been restored to its 1920s glory, except with better electricity and plumbing. We’ve been living in our lane house for a couple of months now, still waiting for signs of the feces truck.

We’re a constant source of amusement for our neighbors, who are mostly retired cadres who spend the day in the lane gossiping, playing cards and now watching us. The day I moved in the old lady from neighborhood watch explained to me that sanitary napkins can not be flushed down the toilet. I guess I’m the only pre-menopausal woman in the lane and she didn’t want me screwing up the plumbing for everyone else. I no longer worry about experiencing the “real China?

Not sure that my experience would be of assistance to anyone who is pursuing his or her own “find? I spoke with a Shanghai architecture expert to put it all in perspective. She told me that all the long-time Shanghai residents she knows, by which she means people who’ve lived here for 15 years (!) or longer, all live in longtang houses. Back in the lanes there are a myriad of housing possibilities. There are some detached garden homes, but more common are rows of attached houses. She lives in an alley where at the front of the lane the houses are eight across, then further back six across, four across, and finally the luxurious ones at the back are only two across. It was designed as a social experiment to house people of different economic levels in one lane.

According to her, while some people do hear about places from word of mouth, most do end up finding places through a property agent. She pointed me towards some noteworthy lanes for living or exploring, and some stunningly successful renovation projects. At her suggestion, I saw a beautiful house on Tai’an Lu. Although I’d seen a number of renovated garden homes, I think this one was the best because the expatriate tenants were actively involved in the renovation project, and their taste is impeccable.

I extracted some extremely useful tips on the pitfalls of renting an old place in Shanghai. Always ask a lot of questions about how the renovations were done, and double check that the electricity and plumbing have been upgraded to an acceptable standard. Watch out for leaky ceilings and walls that are not sufficiently waterproofed. From a legal point of view, the landlord must have the appropriate rental permit in order to enter into a binding lease agreement. To verify the landlord has a rental permit that enables him/her to rent to foreigners, you should ask to the see the ownership certificate for the property. If the landlord has a green colored ownership certificate it means the property can be rented to anyone. If the landlord only has a red colored ownership certificate, watch out, the property cannot legally be rented to a foreigner. The lease agreement should then be registered with the local police office so that the tenant is officially registered to live in the neighborhood.

The hunt for an old place can be complicated, and there are ongoing hassles which you won’t find living in a service apartment. But the process of finding an old place was one of those experiences that gives me a new perspective on Shanghai and its possibilities.

Look out for these longtang:
Shanghai has an infinite number of longtang and each person is entitled to a favorite, but below are a few interesting ones I came across (with Tess?help) that are worth a look:

Xinhua Lu, Lane 211
Just a short walk from the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza, this U-shaped lane winds around and rejoins Xinhua Lu at No. 329. The lane is filled with quirky old garden homes, but what is truly special are the well-manicured hedges and lawns and the generous width of the lanes.

Jianguo Xi Lu, Lane 506
Ignore the sign at the front of the lane banning all non-residents from the lane, and walk into a clean, spacious lane lined with stucco walls on either side. The walls are decorated with hanging plants and Chinese calligraphy.

Tai’an Lu, Lane 120
Right in the middle of the squawking fowl at Tai’an Market (which can be approached from either Huashan Lu or Xingguo Lu) you can turn into this lane and all of a sudden you’ve entered into a quiet European neighborhood. At last count, four of the houses in this lane have been renovated by enterprising individuals for occupation by foreigners.

Huaihai Lu, Lane 987
Near the Parkson’s and the Shaanxi Lu intersection, this lane is a fine example of crowded, grungy, lane life. Hidden amidst all the craziness is a row of houses which was renovated in the early 90s in a Sino-French cultural cooperation project. These houses have been taken over by foreigners, but they are living only a few feet away from the “real?Shanghai in this lane.

There are many other interesting lanes along Huaihai Lu, particularly the stretch west of the consulate. Other streets worth exploring are Yongjia Lu, Taiyuan Lu and Anting Lu.