More often than not, the loud music you’re hearing each evening on Shanghai’s streets comes form a hair salon. Beyond the music
fashionable bouffant-ed staff, style, manicure and trim local and expatriate alike. Of course, this flurry of hair, shampoo, peroxide and moisturizer is not the only source of beautification. Expat magazines, subway car walls, ShanghaiExpat itself, are littered with advertisements for the latest non-surgical and surgical cosmetic surgeries offered by a variety of clinics and hospitals throughout the city. Despite personal judgments or opinions this is a very real way an increasing number of men and women seek to maintain or enhance their perceived beauty. So what does the world of cosmetic surgery in Shanghai look like?
A single violin opens a symphony with one long, uninterrupted note on an open string. Before the violinist can finish her inaugural sound, all of the stringed instruments rally behind the first chair and strike an identical chord. After the stringed instruments open the concert in unison, the focus transitions to a group of clarinets and trumpets, all are prepared and eager to take the ball. As the stringed and wind instruments become in rhythm, one final teammate joins the play: “Bum, Bum, Bum,” which is the powerful, deep sounds of a Bass drum. As the first movement gets underway, the entire team is now in harmony, and just a few notes away from a climax that will bring the crowd to their feet. 
Every year, 30-50,000 people die of the flu in the U.S., and the numbers in China (while not being totally reliable) are expected to be proportionally the same. One misconception about the flu season is that it is short, maybe lasting two or three months. In fact, the flu season is much longer than that, sometimes last from September to March (7-8 months)! Peak of cases happens in February.
Expats encounter certain challenges when living abroad, particularly when faced with an emergency. The following is a set of suggestions to help you prepare:
At the beginning of last year as part of a company relocation scheme, I left my home town of Toronto to live for a time in Shanghai. The transition was quite smooth, largely thanks to my wonderful and supportive local Chinese colleagues. With their help, I have come to realize that Shanghai is a wonderful city to both live in and to further one’s career. To date, the only problem I had encountered concerned drinking water. When I first arrived in the city, I frankly thought the water here carried a peculiar taste. This was certainly a big change from Toronto, where I lived for just under thirty years; there, tap water drunk at home or school tasted clean and fresh. On the other hand, Shanghainese tap water was slightly pungent and acrid, with an equally sharp odor. Thankfully, my landlord helped me install a water dispenser. With this arrangement I thought I had resolved my problem with drinking water.
The term “Oriental Medicine” has often been used to mean Traditional Chinese Medicine. Not only is such usage a mistake but also an exclusion of other forms of medical practices that have originated in Asia. As a matter of fact, Traditional Chinese Medicine, more widely known among its proponents as TCM falls under the general term “Oriental Medicine” along with Korean, Japanese, Tibetan and Mongolian traditional systems of Medicine. 