"Everything is available in Carrefour. A large variety of cheeses on the shelf makes you forget where you are," said Paramore who lives in the Gubei New Area, the city's largest expatriate residential center. Sixty per cent of the more than 3,000 families who live here are foreigners.

Developed in the 1990s, it has become a favored residential quarter with complete facilities and a multi-national culture.

Cosmopolitan

Restaurants in the area offer foods from many cultures: from Japanese sushi to Italian pizza, American hamburger and French steak.

On the central street, Shuicheng Road, vendors sell the latest Japanese TV series and US magazines and newspapers at much lower prices than stores and bookshops, their goods come from God knows where.

International hospitals and clinics, post-offices flooded with airmail, and a number of international schools mark the cosmopolitan scene. Occasionally, a national flag is hung at the gate of the residence to mark a special occasion in the resident's motherland.

Every morning the area wakes up like every other corner of the world. Toast and coffee is served as breakfast. Men and women drive their cars out of the underground parking lot to start a day's work.

Paramore's daughter gives mum a good-bye kiss and gets on the school bus of SIS (Shanghai International School), which winds its way through the area to pick up the students.

Nearby, Japanese children take a mini-bus to their Japanese community school. There is also a Korean school, French school and American school for residents who have come from 35 different countries and regions.

"The schools offer better education than the public schools in the United States," said Paramore.

Her six-year-old son Steven, still too young to go to school with his sister, is sent to the Experimental Kindergarten of Changning District. Paramore calls a taxi and accompanies him there every morning.

Steven has learned some phrases of Shanghai dialect from his nurse and playmates in the kindergarten. Paramore has to miss some activities organized by the neighbourhood committee in order to spend more time with her children.

The Neighbourhood Committee is a residential organization common in local communities. This community with its multi-national background manages to have a committee that works like its local counterparts.

Paramore has been to one of the trips organized by the committee - to the new airport in Pudong. "It's better than Hong Kong's new airport," Paramore said, "I like the design. It's more striking."

The committee has organized a campaign for "model families," awarding an honourable copper board to each family that meets with such requirements as abiding by the community agreements and keeping a tidy environment around their houses.

"Foreign friends are very interested in this activity," said Shen Luping, secretary of the committee. "Several foreign families asked to take the copperboard with them when they left Shanghai."

The neighborhood committee once invited a lecturer who introduced the residents to some basic methods of distinguishing real antiques from fakes, which was very popular among residents.

They also organized a gathering of expatriate residents during the past Lunar New Year holidays to learn how to cook Chinese dishes.

They started from mapodoufu, or stir-fried bean curd in hot sauce, which proved quite a challenge for the new learners. The fragile bean curd would crumble with a careless turn-over.

Steven enjoyed making dumplings so much that he always asks the women at the committee every time he meets them "when shall we make dumplings again?"

Property management

Manson Fong strolls proudly around the Miramar garden which his property management company is serving. His company is one of the 14 property management companies in Gubei.

As a company that offers high-grade service to their customers, his company collects a higher fee compared with others.

Looking down from his spacious office on the second floor, the sight is very pleasant, with large greenspace, tidy apartments and very clean lanes and paths.

Many of residents have private cars but an underground parking lot was built to make space for the green area above ground.

Fang stops occasionally to pick up the paper scraps on the ground. "Basic work routine like security supervision and cleaning are plain and easy," he said. "It's the cultural differences that causes difficulty in our work."

Piles of regulations are made including some funny terms like "only a few gentle and tame pets are allowed" in the communities that residents agree to abide by. But in their actual enforcement, a lot have to be changed time after time.

The free swimming pool, for example, didn't allow non-resident guests to use it because the property management company wanted to keep it exclusively for the residents.

But what if the guests were invited by the resident? Or what if the resident wished to have their party at the swimming pool? "We have made a lot of changes in the regulations about the swimming pool," said Fong, "and our wish is to make residents feel this is their home, even if they just rent the house for a very short time."

Not all regulations can be changed at will, of course. A US resident crazy about parties once asked the property management company to give him special permission to party until 2:00 am every night, which was of course turned down.

Housemaids, eager to chat amongst themselves, often tell about the lives of their employers, which becomes a headache for their employers." Our company requires our staff to forget what they have heard about the residents," said Fong. "They are also specially trained to avoid private issues in their goodwill greetings to residents."

This is a little difficult to many locals who have long been used to greetings like "eaten already?"

Conflicts

No matter how civil and noble this community is, conflicts are still unavoidable either between residents or between residents and nearby locals.

For example, a Japanese hostess who lives upstairs above a French family often has her housemaid beating the quilts after airing them on the balcony. The French family is very annoyed at the dust falling onto its balcony. They will usually shout complaints to them.

"We taught the housemaid a new method of airing the quilts, which should qualify to apply for an international patent," said Fong. The patent method is: after giving them a nice sunbath that harms nobody, work a vacuum cleaner on them.

Housemaids and nurses

They are mainly local laid-off workers. The neighborhood committees collect their data and introduce them to families who need housemaids or nurses.

Many nurses have built firm relations with the family they work for. The children learn Shanghai dialect from them and they learn some of their languages. Some have built very close relations with their employers and work for years with a family.

But there are problems that occur sometimes. Some nurses are not used to doing such service work, or sometimes the employer requires too much that they can't accept.

A housemaid fired her employer family because she thought she couldn't tolerate their requirements. "They wanted me to kneel down when cleaning the floor," she complained to the neighborhood committee. "That hurt my dignity."

from Shanghai Star