Shanghai Diary: Jive Turkey

I am now following several sites on WeChat for ExPats and live in an area that's very Western. That said, I've been getting a lot of messages lately about where to have turkey dinner on November 23rd (American Thanksgiving). I initially thought that this was something I'd like to do but, now, the more I think about it, the more sad the idea makes me. The clutching at American traditions while in a foreign country seems kind of pathetic. And, worse, the idea of eating alone on Thanksgiving would make the separation even worse.

Also, this "Turkey Dinner" promises to be a weird imitation of American food as well as prohibitively expensive. I'm seeing prices quoted for dinner starting at 800 RMB for "turkey and all the trimmings." That's ~$125 and that's nuts. Even at a quarter of the price, that's too much for dinner.

I'm going to say "fuck all that" and plan on going out for something as Chinese as I can get while I'm here in China. Why not? Plus, by the time I have dinner on Thanksgiving evening (I'll be working that day, it's not a holiday in China for whatever odd reason...), it'll be 'morning in America' and when it's dinner time back home, it'll be the morning of the following day. I'll be talking to the family back in the States that morning via WeChat video calling -- at least that's the plan. And I'll see them again for X-mas.

Speaking of... how odd is it to see all of the X-mas decorations starting to pop up over here? I mean... it's not even Thanksgiving(!). It seems that live revolves a lot around commerce over here -- which is an odd thing to say when discussing a communist country. But this is the land of little transactions happening all the time.

I was hearing about a service the other day where you can hire someone to come in and prepare a meal for you and clean your kitchen afterward. I could really use someone to give my scooter a good wash unless I can use the hose at my apartment complex. I think that's copacetic; I just have yet to try.

Of course just about anything that can be moved can be delivered. You see guys on scooters all day delivering packages and meals. And I know drones are used for a lot of deliveries as well. Jason and Laura saw a whole drone collection over at JD.com when they visited there.