Pictures are Worth 1,000 Words

I know I haven't written recently much, but there are so many topics I still want to cover that I haven't gotten around to: the pains of changing my visa, the difference between being an "expat" and an "immigrant," the joys of being an American-born Chinese person and struggling with the language, starting work in a Chinese office...but I admittedly haven't gotten around to it.  I'll get to those in the future, I promise.

What I've actually been doing a lot of recently is taking photos in the subway.  I have a 45-minute commute one way, so I have a long enough ride that I can people-watch.  And people-watching in the Shanghai subway is...interesting.  For one, everyone is on their smartphone watching videos and they ignore people they're with or forget to actually get off at the correct stop.  I even learned the term for these people in Mandarin -- 低头族 (ditou zu), smartphone addicts, or I think the literal rough translation would be "those who keep their heads bowed."  (I learned this from listening to some podcast)

There's been some really funny/odd/disgusting things I've seen in the subway, and I've sent them to some people swearing I need to start a blog or hashtag, #shitiseeontheshanghaisubway.  So here are things that I've seen and observed.

There's the odd exception:

I took this photo today in the Lujiazui subway station at rush hour.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with Shanghai, Lujiazui is the financial district.  Normally at rush hour, this station is overflowing with people shoving and elbowing their way onto the escalator, and it's total chaos.  Today, it was like an apocalyptic movie with it being the first day of the Chinese New Year holidays.  There was hardly anyone in the station.  I basically just went around taking pictures of the empty city, but this is the empty station, which is very rare indeed.

5 Apps Making My Life Easier in China

One major difference between the first time I moved abroad and this time around is having a smartphone.  Admittedly, I was a bit slow to jump on the smartphone bandwagon and only got one at the beginning of 2014.  My main reason to finally cave was because working at a tech company, my colleagues would laugh mercilessly at my old school Sony Ericsson, but I also wanted a new compact digital camera.  I figured I'd just get a phone with a great camera, which is why I decided to get *gasp* the Nokia Lumia 1020, a Windows Phone.

Since getting here to Shanghai, I've really come to appreciate having a Windows Phone because the native apps aren't blocked here.  Frankly, I don't get how Android works in China since the majority of Google services are blocked; even Gmail has been blocked via protocol (supposedly it's working again, but I haven't gotten any emails from my Gmail account on my phone for days).  Some may argue that there aren't any good WP apps available out there and everything is being developed for iOS and Android.  This may be true, but by doing some research and following sites like Windows Central, I've found some great apps that have helped me greatly here in China.  Here are five apps that have made adjusting to life here much easier.  (Note that I'm not including photo apps here because although they're great to have, these apps are really about adjusting to life here in China.)