mei guo ren (pronounced may-gwo-ren)

This afternoon I visited the Shanghai Science & Technology Museum. It's a great place to take kids. It's a combination of the Bean Life Science Museum (in Provo) and the Seattle Science Center.

I then made my way through all the shopping areas downtown, including Fuzhou Rd and Nanjing Rd, and across the Huangpu River (via metro) to the Oriental Pearl Tower. In the basement of the Oriental Pearl Tower is the Shanghai History Museum. Friday evening it was pretty quiet in the museum so I quickly made my way through the exhibits, which were interesting. The signs were all in Mandarin, Japanese and English. Interestingly, World War II is known as the "War of Japanese Agression" and 1949 (when the Communists took over) was referred to as Liberation.

Finished in the main part of the museum I strolled through a small exhibit all in Chinese and a family of grandpa, grandma, mom, dad and a 5-yr old son were walking through. When the son saw me he jumped back like he had seen a ghost. So I said "boo!" Then I turned to look at the exhibits and I heard the kid say "mei guo ren" which means "American." I turned around and playfully teased him with "Bui shi, wo shi zhong guo ren," which means "no, I'm Chinese." The kid's parents thought that was funny and started talking to the son with something like "go ahead say hi." I told the kid my Chinese name and asked his and he told me. His parents must have thought this was a cool cultural exchange. I was just glad to be able to say something more in Chinese than "How much is it?" and "That's too expensive."

For dinner I had some amazing pastries from a bakery. I bought a salmon-filled flaky croissant-like pastry and a baguette stuffed with whipped cream and buttery sugar granules. These sound like French pastries, but the bakery had a Japanese name. I also ate a banana from a road-side vendor, who only had a few teeth, by the way.

I've decided to eat at either KFC or McDonalds once while I'm here. My personal rule is no eating American junk food when traveling abroad. If I want to poison myself, I might as well be close to home. In the case of China, fast food menus are probably different enough that it might be a cultural experience. KFC (1,600 stores in China) and McDonalds (760 stores) are on every major shopping corner. Other American retail brands I've seen in Shanghai are Cold Stone, Papa Murphy's, Burger King, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, and Best Buy. Toys R Us, Home Depot and Wal-Mart are here, but I haven't seen them.

Here's another interesting tidbit. According to the New York Times (12/12/08), when asked their personal philosophy, 68 percent of Chinese polled said it could be summed up by the phrase "work hard and get rich." Only 4 percent summarized their personal belief with a Maoist credo: "Never think of yourself. Give everything in service to society." Capitalism has met its match.