Surprises in Shanghai

Written by Natalie Chen (Washington University in St. Louis), Student Correspondent for CET Shanghai, Spring 2024

As my semester draws to a close, I thought I would share a couple of things that have surprised me about my time in Shanghai. Although there are valuable, more “serious” surprises I could discuss—like realizations about cultural differences and emotional epiphanies—that is not what I am going to share in this blog post. Instead, here are some of the weirdest, light-hearted, and silly surprises from my experience. Ultimately, I have been fortunate enough to have had my experience in Shanghai be silly and filled almost entirely with fun memories. 

People love SpongeBob

Also known as Hǎi mián bǎo bǎo (海绵宝宝), almost every local in my generation grew up watching SpongeBob. It is easy to find adorable SpongeBob-themed merchandise at popular stores here like Miniso.

There are many cute animals—everywhere

The dogs here are beautiful and definitely pampered! Although outside of Shanghai, when we went on a trip to Yunnan province, we especially saw majestic dogs everywhere. There are also many stray animals (mostly cats) roaming around campus and the city. They are also adorable and seem to be fending well for themselves generally.

There’s really cool music scenes close to our campus, Donghua University

Yuyintang is a live music venue that has two locations, both of which are very accessible. They host local, student, and even international groups. Every night has a different theme (pop, emo, etc). We have also gone to Chair Club, which holds RNB night every Saturday with a fantastic band. The night we went, star Sugar Blue was there and came up for a quick guest performance.

Tianducheng is Shanghai’s Paris

About an hour outside of Shanghai, in the city Hangzhou, there is an abandoned city called Tianducheng (广厦天都城) that looks like a replica of Paris. YouTube celebrities Yes Theory filmed a video where they visited the city, so we decided to follow their lead and check it out. Although it was pretty cool to see, I wouldn’t recommend staying for more than a couple of hours. It is, indeed, quite abandoned!

Great food both local and international

In addition to the awesome local food, it is easy to find a lot of different international foods, especially in cities like Shanghai and Beijing. If you are craving Indian food, a healthy salad, or whatever you are missing from the States, it’s one click away on 饿了么 or 美团 to order for delivery.