The Amazing Race (aka Shanghai errands)

When I landed in Shanghai on Wednesday I had been up for nearly 24 hours and couldn't wait to get through customs, find the driver sent by my apartment, and into my apartment for the first time.  Thursday morning, I was up before 5a due to the time difference and eager to pick out some clean clothes to wear to a visa appointment that morning.  Because I had so much time, I ended up unpacking almost all of my suitcases and was pleasantly surprised to find that there is enough room in the apartment for everything to have it's own place.

What almost brought me to tears (in my emotionally delicate, jet-lagged state) was that the glass and frames were broken on two pieces of art near and dear to my heart.  One was a picture Simon took of us in 2009 for a photo class project to take photos that you might take "on your wedding day", and one was a drawing/painting Parissa made us as a wedding present.

Determined to keep busy and to fix the problem right away, I decided that I would find myself a frame shop where I could buy a new picture frame and restore these two pieces to their former glory.  That was when I encountered the first problem: there is no Yelp in China.  Or at least, there is no English language version.  You can't just Google "frame shop Shanghai" and come up with anything, because a) Google is not available for most Chinese citizens and b) the parts of the internet that know where the frame shops are are all in Chinese, not in English.  Undaunted, I continued searching, tried expat-oriented Shanghai websites, and was almost out of luck until I found a Google places result for "王斌相框."  I translated that back into English and it said "Wang Bin photo frame", so I figured I'd give it a shot.  

Thursday afternoon, I loaded up the walking directions on my phone and started towards the frame shop.  I got lost in a few back alleys in Shanghai and got more than a few quizzical looks from locals wondering what I was doing poking around their houses but eventually I found a large office building, with a large art store on the main floor.  I walked in and encountered problem #2: I don't speak Chinese, and the store owner didn’t speak English.  I was pretty sure I could get through this one with some creativity though, so I pulled out the broken frames from my backpack and pointed at them.  He quickly realized what I was looking for and shook his head, indicating he doesn’t make or fix frames there. 

Through some form of Google Translate and a lot of hand gestures, I managed to ask him if he knew where I could get a new frame.  He thought for a while and then remembered one, but he couldn’t tell me the name of it.  He did draw me a map, with a few roads and some Chinese characters.  It took more hand gestures to confirm which way was north on the map, and which was the start and which was the end.  Google had stopped working even for me at that point, but I figured I might as well try to follow the map and see what happened.

The treasure map... bottom right is where I drew a frame to confirm that's where I was going.  I still don't know what the characters on the left mean.

So I set off from the store and almost got lost right away due to a big wall I took for a street.  Eventually, I reached an intersection and was able to match the Chinese characters he drew to the characters on the map, so I knew I was going the right way.  A few more LONG minutes later, I reached a store smaller than my bedroom that had many frame options on the wall and three employees watching South Korean soap operas.  I said hello in Chinese (one of two words I know) and started all over again with the pointing and gesturing.  I think they thought I was a little crazy trying to do this without speaking any Chinese, and they aren’t wrong about that.  But with a little luck and patience, I was able to pick out two custom frames for ~$30.

When I left the store on Thursday, they said the frames would be ready Friday but I didn’t get a call from them to confirm.  I thought it might be because they thought I was crazy, or maybe because they couldn’t dial an international number.  I asked Stan (a Chinese colleague) to call them for me and he confirmed the frames were ready.  Today, I returned to my apartment triumphantly with two new picture frames for the artwork I brought with me.  On the way home, I stumbled into a beautiful, historic market with all types of stalls and much more traditional/authentic than the souvenir markets I’m used to in Ecuador/Colombia/Tanzania.  I picked up some sunflowers for the apartment to treat myself for a job well done.

Mission accomplished!

I'm still very new at living in Shanghai, and this small task made me feel like I was competing on the Amazing Race rather than running an everyday errand.  Still, little wins like a new picture frame or a vase of flowers are very worth celebrating I think.

Now if I could only learn the language...

-Katy