Author, historian, documentary filmmaker, professor, family man and Shanghai's 2010 International Literary Festival speaker Andrew Field shows us how he juggles it all in one day

07:30

I wake up next to two gorgeous girls. One is my wife Mengxi. The other is daughter Sarah (5), who awakes me with a fit of coughing. It is FREEZING COLD in our apartment.

08:30
Sarah and I get in my Chevy Blazer. The sky is crystal blue, a rarity for Shanghai. My fingertips are frozen as I weave through the usual mess of buses, trucks, bikes, motorcycles and pedestrians toward Sarah’s kindy, chatting with her about the lives of stars and the age of the universe.

09:00
After dropping Sarah off, I stop in at my favorite carwash, where a team of lads soap, hose, scrub, wipe and vacuum my Blazer. Now that she’s washed, it’s time to head home.

10:00
Back in my study, I consult emails. One of the top students in my Modern Chinese History course for the NYU Shanghai program writes me asking for a recommendation. I dash off a fabulous letter on her behalf. Another message reminds me to send in my syllabus for next semester’s course on “Global Nightlife: From Moulin Rouge to Rave,” a course of my own devising that covers New York, Paris, Tokyo and, of course, Shanghai.

10:30
Mom gets ready to head to her office, second daughter Hannah (6 months) on my lap. A smile from her brightens my day like a thousand suns. Grandma drops in to take her downstairs to their apartment for the day. I hit my keyboard for an hour to work on my blues motor skills, modulating through different keys as instructed by my piano teacher, Steve Sweeting.

12:00
After a 15-minute cab ride I arrive at People’s Park for our biweekly practice session with Tongbei Master Wu. Wu laoshi is usually full of anecdotes, but today it’s all business as we run through a series of arm and leg drills, culminating in the Form that brings it all together. Struggling through the movements, I try my best to imitate the beautiful poetry of the Master and follow along with the more advanced students. By the end of the practice session, I’m exhausted and famished.

14:30
Branching out from commercial filmmaking, fellow Bostonian and longtime Shanghai resident Jud Willmont has partnered up with me to make Notes from the a Chinese Underground, a film that I shot in 2007 documenting China’s indie rock scene. Jud is also completing his own deeply personal film on taiji-quan. Over steaming bowls of noodle soup at guilin mifen (6 Dagu Lu), we discuss our film projects.

15:00
Jud and I head over to his office, where we get busy filling in online apps and burning copies of our films- in-progress to send to a documentary festival in Toronto. I consult his copy of the I Ching (am I a China nerd or what?), asking “how to navigate this documentary film biz?” The Oracle responds with number 62, xiao guo, or ‘little exceeding.’ “A flying bird leaves a message: not appropriate to ascend, appropriate to descend. Great good fortune!” Translation: When beginning a new venture, don’t aspire to great heights, but be content with modest achievements.

17:00
After mailing off our submissions, Jud and I part ways. I walk briskly to Otto for a meeting with sociologist James Farrer. We’re getting to- gether to strategize on our book project, A Century of Nightlife in Shanghai. This is a follow-up to my book, Shanghai’s Dancing World: Cabaret Culture and Urban Politics 1919-1954.

18:30
James and I move next door to Guyi. We’re joined by my wife and two colleagues (one happens to be my former Chinese language teacher at Dartmouth College) who just moved here from California. We fill them in about life in Shanghai.

22:30
I convince my colleagues to join me for a final drink at Cotton Club. Guitarists Greg Smith and Matt Cooper and trumpeter Toby Mak are up front on the stage, working their way through a series of hard-hitting 12- bar blues tunes. I watch in awe at Greg and Matt’s fast fingerwork on the frets. After the session, Greg stops by our table and we have a brief chat about the early days of the Cotton Club back in ’97 when I first lived here.

What We Think
We’re glad Andrew t ranslated t hat bit of t he I Ching for us, when asking for an answer for how to navigate the documentary film biz. We hadn’t a clue what the answer meant. But wasn’t the Oracle’s answer more positive, as it ended with “great, good fortune?” Surely it’s predicting more than modest success?