Dancing! Marriage! Food! Church!

Greetings from Shanghai, this time from me (Bruce).  Barbara has already posted twice about our adventures, but I have some additional thoughts and photos (especially ones of her, which of course she can't take--especially when she's dancing!) to share.  In the photo below we see her at People's Square (part of the heart of Shanghai), where she's been moving to the music and steps while watching people vigorously dancing dances from of one of China's "national minority" groups (our best guess) on a lovely spring day.  A woman noticed and began showing Barbara some of the steps, which led to one of the men asking her to dance!

This kind of thing tends to happen!  The further education and training Barbara got in her 50's as a Marriage and Family Therapist was an outgrowth of her earlier work as a Dance/Movement Therapist, which in turn grew out of her work as a professional dancer (we met when I was teaching at St Olaf College in the late 80's, where she was director and choreographer for the dance companies).

But, of course, in situations like the one shown, what's actually noticed, I think, is her movements, her energy, her big smile, her openness, and her desire to take part.

We've also realized that we are more approachable because we are not there as part of a tour group (as helpful as those can be for first-timers).  It's just us, and when we smile or laugh at what one of their toddlers are doing, or the beauty of a dance, things open up.

As Barbara noted, we also have wandered through the "marriage market" activities in People's Park.  In the photo at right, we see descriptions of the virtues of hundreds of young men (and some women too) put together not by the parties themselves but by their parents (or even grand-parents).  For male prospects, an advanced education from a top university, a good job and income, perhaps even home-ownership are a real "plus" as might also be a photo if the prospect is good-looking.

The need for some assistance in finding a marriage partner grows largely from China's "one-child policy" in effect from 1979 to 2015.  Each family (except for national minorities) would be limited to having just one child.  This sounds neutral, but in the context of the strong cultural preference for at least one son, and the modern technology to determine the sex of the fetus early in a woman's pregnancy, girls were aborted at high enough rates to have created a shortage of over 30 million women, most acute for the younger generation who are looking for someone to marry.  So, young men now find it much harder (or nearly impossible!) to find a bride.  And their parents get involved not only out of sympathy for their children, but also because the Chinese population is aging and there will soon be too few adult children to take care of aging parents.  (The implication of the policy is that two sets of grandparents may now share, and depend on, just one grand-child!)

New topic: how's the food?  We're happy with it, and enjoy many of the everyday, popular dishes most local people eat.  Here we see Barbara at a nearby and popular cafeteria, with a pile of rice noodles, a sesame covered bun with black bean paste inside, and a Chinese style pancake with a scrambled egg on top.  There are usually several score options, and of course it's handy to look at them when choosing rather than figuring out the Chinese word when there's a line behind us.

Here we see Barbara in a different venue, a good western-style bakery with great breads and coffee options.  She's wearing purple over white, rather than the white over purple in the photo above (we packed lightly but strategically), reading an English newspaper.  The cafeteria has a virtually all-local clientele, while the bakery has a smattering of Europeans. And costs differ as well: the latte was twice the cost of the entire breakfast above.  And time is different in the two places: at the cafeteria, people grab a tray and can move quickly through the line, pointing to what they'd like, paying quickly (often with payment apps more common in China), and are on their way to work or school in a short period of time.  At the bakery, people come and linger, visiting, chatting, with time to order at the counter and wait for the server (there are servers!) to bring the order, and may be there for an hour: the bakery is a place to "hang out," and most have enough leisure to do so.  The growing inequality in wealth and income shows up in sometimes subtle ways (though China has also made much progress in reducing deep poverty).

I'll finish with our visit to an "evangelical" church Sunday afternoon.  The photo at left shows the 10-person "praise team" (singers and musicians who will lead the singing) warming up, half of whom are Black from several countries, the others Asian or White Americans (U.S. by accent at least).  The congregation trickling in was similarly multi-racial, multi-cultural, and multi-lingual.  But none could legally be local Chinese (Chinese citizens); by Chinese law, as of 1994 I think, only people with foreign passports can attend English-language services), part of the complicated and difficult relationship between the Chinese government and faiths not Chinese in origin.

The 90-minute service was divided largely between songs led by the praise team (Barbara: they sing a lot of songs here), none of which were traditional hymns but rather composed recently with singable and repetitive melodies which many seemed to find meaningful (my interpretation of their body language).  The pastor spoke of the importance of the church for evangelizing others, but also for creating community among the members--which in the context of those allowed to attend (foreigners far from their origins in most cases) made sense.

Thanks for accompanying us so far on our travels.  More to come!