Figuring out the last year …

WordPress has just introduced a few new ways of tracking what’s happening with my blog.

The main “dashboard”, as they call it (I really tire of car-based metaphors, like cars are the only way to get anywhere …), shows a summary of recent activity – like my posts and other people’s comments.  I now have made 135 posts, which on average, have each received about 4 comments.It has also detected and deleted over 3000 spam messages, which is most kind.  I did find one real message lurking in my ‘spam’ folder, so hopefully that has been the only one it trashed accidentally.  I also have a lengthy list of draft posts … just waiting for some spare time.

WordPress tells me that my top commentators are luKe, bitbot, adina west, natalie, justin and katharine (at least some of those names are real!).  Thanks to all who have made comments.  I love comments!

The blog also has a page devoted to view-stats.  Over the last couple of years, the blog has had nearly 15,000 views (ie one page being opened), an average of about 20 per day.  Admittedly, for most regular bloggers, this would be considered a relatively low figure, but I guess I haven’t been making much effort to cross-promote via other social media … trying to keep a small shred of anonymity.

As WordPress loves to remind me, the more I blog, the more views I get.  But, I also have a life enough to not worry too much about getting a million hits and becoming an interwebs sensation.

This page also tells me how some people arrive at the blog – via search terms entered into Google and other search engines.  Yesterday, this is how 12 people found the blog. Some of the terms used are pretty amusing … “monkey pulls the turnip”, “people in pyjamas” or “functionalism as an oxymoron” are just a few of the important issues that I appear to have been writing about.

When I view the stats over the last 2 years, I can see which topics draw in the crowds.  Far and away, the most compelling topic is Wee Britain, invented by the TV show Arrested Development and referred to in my post on Thamestown.  Similarly, various searches for “Hollandtown“, “Holland Village“, “fake Holland in Shanghai” have led people to this post, as searches about Chinese ghost towns, especially Ordos City, have taken people to this post about Kangabashi.

25 people have found my blog by searching for “how to please your parents” – most likely disappointed to find that my best advice is to build them a ridiculously large garden. A similar number arrived via searches for “baby split pants” – presumedly to find this post.

WordPress doesn’t link the search term with the actual page viewed, so I am not always sure of how the connection gets made.  Some of the more interesting searches have been “stylish farmer look” (2 people, heading here), “babies neglected and tied to high chairs in China” (3 people, not sure what page they ended up at), “chocolates and a louis vuitton bag for valentines day” (2 people actually put these words into Google!), “crayzy sex” (woah!), “pyjama slap” (this means something to at least 2 people in world) and “seducing your mother” (I did ask for this … see here).

The third biggest group of random visitors must have enjoyed reading my post on the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall … containing what I described as a “huge-ass model” of the city.  Over 100 people have accessed this page via searches for a variety of terms, including “models with huge asses“, “huge ass” and “ass models“.

 

 

A new function is a map showing the geographic spread of blog viewers.  As you can see, over the last two months, I am reaching a pretty global audience.  Although, I admit, most of these are random single-view visitors – I am yet to befriend anyone currently based in Finland, Ethiopia or Honduras.  But, Australians!  Currently second place to the US … I see you can pick up your act a little.

All this stat-crunching inspired me to make a few little diagrams of my own, summarising some of the other things that I have been doing recently.

For example, over the last 12 months, I spend a lot of time on planes – over 150 hours in the air (about a full week … not to mention the time spent in airport, sometimes waiting several hours for a delayed plane).  I went to Lanzhou 5 times, Tianjin (see here and here and here) quite a lot, Sydney 4 times.  The year before was just the same.  It’s mostly for work.  Small carbon footprint, begone!

But, when I can, I will catch the train for work.  The last long-haul was to Rui’an – normally it is a 5.5 hour ride, but as they had had a fatal crash the week before, everything was slowed by several hours.  We now fly there instead.  Last year, they opened the Beijing-Shanghai express line, so we used that to get to the capital for our National Holiday last year (see here and here and here and here and here and here).  It’s an important part of the huge and quite amazing rail network that China is building.  It’s particularly good for accessing the big cities close to Shanghai (like Nanjing, which I’ve been to, like, a million times … see here and here and here)

 

And finally, here is a diagram of the vegetarian restaurants of Shanghai, matched with the frequency of our visits.  The big blobs (Kush, Annamaya and Godly) have the distinction of great food and/or close proximity to our apartment.

Surely eating all of that vegetarian food has got to go some way towards offsetting my carbon-hungry travel habits …

 

10 Things I Not-so-love About Shanghai

Following up my very positive (and positively received) run-down of things I love here in Shanghai, I best give an insight into the other side of the equation.  Call it a balanced commentary.

Now, I don’t want to come across too whiny.  And I don’t want to delve into some of the very serious and troubling social and economic issues that are occurring here currently.  So, this post is more about the simple, yet annoying, everyday things that make life that little bit less enjoyable.

My inability to speak the language

Firstly, I have to admit that one of the most annoying things is entirely my fault.  I cannot speak Chinese.  One of the first phrases I learnt was “wo ting bu dong” (I don’t understand), and unfortunately, it is still my most commonly used.  We have a great teacher, but we are terrible students.

I imagine my experience of living here would be measurably better if I could read newspapers and billboards, understand clients and order more complicated meals.

The agressive-passive escalator technique

Every morning, as I alight from the Metro, I get to experience this one.  I would guess that up to 100 people leave the train at my station, and each and every of them is always in a huge rush to get to the escalator.  This results in much pushing and shoving, elbow-jabbing and toe-stomping.  Similarly on planes, within seconds of landing (and sometimes seconds before landing), people are unbuckling their seats and trying to get to the exit.

I can understand the desire to get a head start on the crowd.  But then, as soon as people get on the actual escalator, they become incredibly polite and passive.  If someone is blocking the left side (ie the “walk” zone), people are always too polite to ask them to stand aside.  They just stand behind them. getting stressed and breathing heavily.

Seems that bad behaviour in crowds is perfectly OK – just don’t try a bit of one-on-one spatial negotiation.

Di gou you

Last year, the phenomenon of “di gou you” gobbled up countless columns of newspaper space and many hours of discussion time.  It was found that around 10% of the oil used in Shanghai’s restaurants could be classified as “gutter oil”.  This is sourced from stormwater and sewage channels, by skimming and filtering the top layer of water.  This is the kind of recycling that I don’t think is so good.

The thought of eating a food product made partially from someone else’s poo certainly removes some of the joy of eating.  Like most people, I am now highly suspicious of any restaurant or cafe that appears to be flexible with its hygiene practices.  This has curbed my enthusiasm for trying new (and possibly risky) things, and driven me into the arms of international food chains (Starbucks! KFC!).  It feels wrong.

Sneaky meat

For vegetarians anywhere, this can be an issue.  But, it seems that the concept of “no meat” is quite relaxed here.  Typical exchange follows.  (I must admit: Item One, my lack of language skills, can complicate things…)

“Can I please have the vegetarian noodles?” (me)
“OK” (waiter)
“I am vegetarian.  So, I want no meat”
“OK”
“So, that dish has no meat, is that right?”
“Yes, no meat”

(later, after delivery of food)

“This dish has meat in it”
“Yes, but only a little”
“But, I asked for no meat”
(silence)
“Please bring me another with  no meat”
“It’s OK, I will pick it out for you” (picks up chopsticks)
“No, please make me a new one, with no meat”
“OK”

(later, after re-delivery of food)

“Hmmmm… this is just the same dish, isn’t it?”
“No”
“But, it is.  When you picked out the meat, you missed some”
(silence)

Doggy do-do

Living the French Concession, I get to enjoy good coffee, cute furniture shops and bakeries.  But, I also get to enjoy seeing small dogs crapping all over the footpaths.  This is one part of French culture that didn’t need to be imported.

The terrible driving

It’s the lack of seatbelts and the stop-start accelerating and the nodding-off-behind-the-wheel and the not-gonna-let-you-in-attitude and hectic overtaking and the frequent unmarked roadworks and random scooters and unenforced speed limits and constant horn-blasting and the non-existence of baby capsules and the substandard roads and that’s all enough to make any road trip totally terrifying.  If you think about it, that is.  The best defence is to sit back and remember that when your time is up, it’s up.

The long winter, the long summer

Yeah, I know the picture above looks romantic.  But after 3-4 months of around-zero temperatures, it’s a bit wearing.  Same said for 3-4 months of unbearably humid summertime.  It doesn’t leave much space for autumn or spring.

The People Upstairs

Today’s Schedule
5:00am:   wake up
5:05am:   push heavy furniture around on timber floor
5:10am:   commence daily exercise routine (clomping on floor)
6:00am:   turn up radio and television, both at full volume
7:00am:   start piano practice (play same song over and over and over)
8:00am:   fry something stinky with front door open
2:00pm:  afternoon nap
2:10pm:  wake from afternoon nap to complain to downstairs neighbours about their incredibly loud ceiling fan
8:00pm:  play loud music and shout at each other
11:00pm:   become disturbed by noise of an air-conditioner somewhere
11:05pm:  use shoe to bang on floor
11:10pm:  storm downstairs, accuse neighbours on making noise (ignore their explanation that it is coming from the shop downstairs, not their apartment)
11:15pm:   argue with neighbours until they force you out of their apartment

Pollution

One time, I went jogging and it was very polluted.  I spent the whole of the next day with a splitting headache.  Supposedly, on that day, Shanghai had the highest pollution level of any city in China.

Lost Heaven

I didn’t really want to highlight individual bad experiences, but the timing of this one was just right.  Last week, Mr IE and I were on our way to dinner, discussing potential material for this post.  We were planning to try the local branch of Lost Heaven, a good Yunnan food place, having visited its city location lots of times with visitors and locals.  Our booked table wasn’t ready, so after politely waiting for 30 minutes, I asked what was happening.  The front desk girls (who I guess may be a little too proud of their incredibly prestigious jobs) then treated me, through fake smiles, to a barrage of condescending and pointless comments, telling me that I was “too impatient”, didn’t trust them and that I was being “unprofessional”.  For the first time ever in this situation, I totally lost my temper, told them we would never eat there again and I’d be sure to tell everyone I knew about how bad their restaurant is (OK, I may have been over-reacting, but I was quite hungry by this point!)

Anyway, my word is good.  I won’t ever go back.  And this is my best way to spread the word.

The World! Chocolate! Wonderland!!!

Finally, winter gave Shanghai a rainy weekend.  And, exhausted of shopping centres and annoyed by yet another badly-copied movie from my local DVD vendor, I needed to get a little creative about things to wile away the time (staying in bed with the internet could have been acceptable enough).

    

So, when I saw an advert for Shanghai’s World Chocolate Wonderland, the lure of sugary snacks and trash culture was irresistible.  We needed to catch Metro Line 7 all the way to its very end (a rare thing to do on ANY Metro line here) to arrive at the Himalaya Centre in outskirts Pudong, just beside the city’s main convention centre and not too far, in relative terms, from the main airport.

“World Chocolate Wonderland” tried very hard to live up to its name.  It had chocolate, plenty of it (I think the whole thing was sponsored by Lindt and Guylian, because their products featured heavily). It did touch on the “world” concept, by featuring displays about the traditions of chocolate eating throughout the world – including a few tenuous links to Valentines Day and Japanese manga and Louis Vuitton, but whatevs.   

      

The China section was pretty much as you’d expect – key national icons made out of chocolate.  There were life-size, as well as miniature, terracotta warriors.

    

Also, white chocolate Ming vases and a replica of the famous Chingming painting.  Really, the latter was just blocks of chocolate with a printed layer on top – a pretty standard cake-making technique, I’d say.  One of the guides made the effort to explain that the painting was made of 14 pieces of chocolate, which was quite apparent and somewhat lacking in “wow’ factor.

These are replicas of Buddhas carved into caves in Gansu province.

      

And a number of famous Shanghai buildings had been faithfully reproduced too.  The skyline was set against a dark chocolate river, which give the polluted nature of the real Huangpu, may have been a bit too honest.

      

And there was a dragon, which really was quite detailed and would have been quite a task to produce.

       

Brown, unless teamed with corduroy or used ironically, is not often a “fashion colour”.  Hold on!  What if it made of chocolate?   And forms a wacky headpiece, that is both stylistically and meteorologically inappropriate?

Or, as always, a Louis Vuitton bag?

There was even a spot where you poke fun at years of spiritual practice, by filling out a wish card to the God of Chocolate.  Just like the Mayans did, supposedly.  I’m calling obesity and squabbles over who ate the last piece of the block as the main reasons their civilisation mysteriously collapsed.  And hoping that this Mayan-calendar-apocalypse thing is just a misinterpretation of the prediction that towards the end of this year, the Chocolate God will return, showering us all with Lindt bunnies and Mars Bars.

    

Passing through the China Chocolate Hall and World Chocolate Hall, one enters the Chocolate Life Hall, which truth be told is really just a chocolate mini-mall.  And suddenly the world inverts – instead of looking at things made of chocolate, you can buy everyday things (pencil cases, notepads, stickers, t-shirts) that look like chocolate.  Oh, and chocolate.

Chocolate = yes.  World = I guess so.  Wonderland = I’d say overselling to the extreme.

Beijing / Eating up the hutongs

Many Chinese cities have a unique typology of housing. In Beijing, it is the hutong, which has been the mainstay of residential design for about 800 years.  The hutong is formed by a sequence of courtyard houses, where the central open space (or ‘siheyuan’) of each house links with that of the neighbouring residences.  As the buildings around the courtyard are arranged to maximise sunlight access, hutongs generally run east-west, and this pattern of development has defined the inner city of Beijing. 

Originally, hutongs were concentrated on both sides of the Forbidden City, which lies at the core of Beijing.  Their east-west orientation would have facilitated movement to the City, especially for aristrocrats and noblemen who lived closer to the centre (with merchants, other workers and general riffraff housed in more distant, as well as more informal, hutongs).  The term ‘hutong’ is a Mongolian word, meaning ‘water well’, and I guess this relates to the important community role of these spaces.

In modern-day Beijing, hutongs are well and truly under threat – either being demolished for development, or transformed to the extent that their original scale, usage and character are entirely lost.  The drivers for change are numerous and mostly understandable – from a general lack of infrastructure and hygeine in hutongs, to changes in societal structures and the relentless push to create a city of global influence and identity.  But, nonethless, it represents the loss of a significant cultural asset of the city.

At the northern edge of the inner city (as defined by the second of Beijing’s many concentric ring roads), Wudaoying Hutong is a hutong at least by name, and a little by nature.  Several hundred metres long, it houses a mix of retail spaces, cafes and bars, housing blocks and small offices.

    

While it has obviously undergone extensive rebuilding over time, change has been incremental, meaning that the hutong itself has retained its original scale (and not expanded to allow for a six-lane road or Metro station or something).

    

And within a relatively consistent scale and proportion, each building has adopted its own personality.

    

It was also home to a great collection of quirky vehicles.

    

And, the main reason for our visit … a vegetarian restaurant called Veggie Table (food trumps architectural history any day).  They opened earlier this year and seem to be going great guns, with a yumbo selection of burgers, salads, curries and ‘health’ shakes (I’m a little dubious about the health tag… mine was chocolate).  It was perfect fuel for an afternoon wandering about the city.   And it got me to thinking … if hutongs are being turned over for the sake of food like this (not just mega-malls and apartment towers), I can almost get behind the change.  Almost.

10 Things I Love About Shanghai

Just yesterday, as I was riding the very long up escalator at my local Metro station, I spotted one of my favourite Shanghai things – something from which my feeling of happiness is not derived from a sense of irony, bemusement or desperation.  So, it got me to thinking about things I like here.  Things that are 100% good.

The Baby Split-pant
Babies anywhere are cute.  Babies in China are super-cute.  Babies in China in split-pants might be the cutest thing ever.  The split-pant combines practicality (the ability to toilet in any gutter or planter-box you wish) with comic potential (accidentally exposing your bot-bot to the world).  This baby is wearing a double split-pant.

    

The Food of the Minorities
Some of the outer edges of China have amazing foods.  I particularly love the cuisine of Yunnan (in the same family as Vietnamese and Thai) and Xinjiang (the western, almost Middle-Eastern, autonomous region).  Both have amazing breads, fresh salads and great noodles … which means that they have now become a popular choice for the urbanites of Shanghai.

   

The Bottle Opener
As yet, I haven’t tired of Shanghai’s tallest tower, even though it continually pops in view all over the city.  Especially compared to some other buildings, it is a very elegant structure.  It has an observation deck at its highest level and a crayzy light display each evening.

The Time It Takes to End a Phonecall
There is a strange habit here of extending the process of saying goodbye on the telephone.  I take it as a sign of respect, that the other person doesn’t want to end things quickly.  A typical conversation may go something like this …

A: We’ll get the contract signed and sent to you right away.  [it’s a business call]
B: OK.  Thanks.
A: Great, talk to you later.
B: OK. Bye.
A: Bye.
B: Hm, thanks, bye.
A: Byebye, ah, bye.
B: Ok, bye.  Bye.
A: Bye.  Ah.  Bye.

Using the Footpath to Full Potential
Most cultures could learn a things or two about using, and sharing, the footpath as they do in Shanghai.  It’s business meets family meets pleasure meets cooking meets meets walking meets meeting meets washing up meets eating meets everything else.

    

Shanghai’s Amazing Art Deco Architecture
Shanghai reputedly has one of the world’s best collections of Art Deco architecture, due to the economic boom of the early 20th century and the influence of foreign designers.  It’s something I didn’t know about before I arrived, and continues to delight and surprise me.  That’s the front door to our apartment building on the bottom right.

The Long Sound of Intrigue and Confusion
Imagine, if you will, that you are in a taxi and you encounter a street that is blocked for no apparent reason, or another driver that is attempting something strange or dangerous (u-turn across a median strip, for example).  Without doubt, the driver will respond with a unique exclamation – a drawn-out “hmmmmmm” noise that starts low and rises, suggesting a question but also sounding like an observation; a cross between intrigue and confusion; with a tonal style inspired by Scooby Do.  If you’ve heard it, you’ll know exactly what I mean.  It never fails to make me smile when I hear it.

Cats that Own the Street
The cats of Shanghai would have to be the most confident felines in the world.  They just sit (or lie)on the street or footpath, they draw attention to themselves by miaowing loudly, they approach any person they wish.  Scaredy-cats they are not.

The Shanghai Pyjama
People are most happy to wear their pyjamas in public.  Lots of people … and not just when they are caught short of a dunny roll.  People will walk far from home and undertake a series of errands still wearing last night’s PJs.  There are abundant theories about why this is so prevalent and so specific to Shanghai.  Some say it is like the older Chinese habit of wearing silk clothing as a means of displaying your status as a person of leisure (not some dirty worker).  Or, that it is a washday thing – given most Chinese don’t have loads of clothes, there aren’t many wardrobe options while you are waiting for your clothes to dry.  Or that it is a way of expressing that you are a real local, not some visitor from a less desirable suburb.  Whatever it is, it’s one of my favourite Shanghai sights.

     

Annamaya
Of Shanghai’s many good vegetarian eateries, Annamaya is king.  Housed in a little yellow building quite close to our place, Annamaya serves up a range of healthy and yummy foods, including delicious vegan deserts.  Every time we go, we wonder why we don’t eat there more often.

Wuzhen / discovering special places

Although the whole town of Wuzhen is a great visit, some places there were really special.

One of the local industries is the dyeing of materials, especially blue calico (not pink boots, despite the stunners in the photo above).

    

Large courtyards are fitted out with timber frames for drying the material after dyeing.  The traditional process uses a range of natural ingredients, including blue grass and mulberries, and in some places, this practice still continues (although is now heavily marketed as an “eco-industry”).

And when you get enough similarly-dressed people into one of the courtyards, it can look something like a Ralph Lauren photoshoot.

The laneways of Wuzhen are home to hundreds of tiny little shops, mostly selling tourist trinkets and cold beverages.

It was a nice discovery to find this little barber shop.  I guess it is for the locals, although after our long walk, a bit of a sit down would have been nice; the haircut a bonus.

    

At the end of the day, the barber closed up shop by gathering together a bunch of slats that he then inserted, one by one, into a track across the shopfront.   It’s a daily ritual carried out by all the shopkeepers across the city, and has been for possibly hundreds of years.

     

Down another laneway, we found the Sanbai Wine Workshop.  This brewery was set up in the Ming Dynasty (meaning that it is at least 450 years old), still operating, and handing out free samples of its very pungent wine.

I am guessing that Sanbai means “three white”, as my research tells me that the wine (55% alcohol content) contains not only white rice, but also white flour and white water.  Don’t ask me what white water is, apart from something you go rafting in.

    

In a space a bit over 1000 square metres, they produce more than 200 litres of wine every day, using traditional methods no less.

I didn’t really dig the wine (maybe it reminded me too much of forced drinking sessions with clients) but the building was really charming.

Fun with Food! May Update

13 new images added to the Fun with Food! gallery, including this crayzy vegetable and jam combo …

Click here for more!

My first year in Shangers

I am just about to reach the end of my first year in Shanghai.  Time has flown … thus is the curse of being too busy and being too old …

Here is a highlights package of Year One.  I have themed it around the colour red.  Red is – most of the time – a colour of good fortune in China, so its often appears around the city.

Around this time of year, people sometimes wear red to bring good luck.  But, to be humble about it, it is often red underwear.  I have red longjohns that I have been wearing all winter (for warmth, not luck of course).  I was inspired by the man downstairs from our apartment, who would hang his very fetching LJs in the stairwell.  After weeks of looking, I finally found my own pair.  I am wearing them right now!

For my blog post about our stairwell (yeah, the one with dead chicken) … click here > Our new apartment (1) and Our new apartment (2)

For many Shanghainese, the last year has been all about Expo.  I got to Expo once for a couple of hours and never made it back.  My own lack of organisation reflects the importance of planning, just like the Expo theme (Better City, Better Life).

For more, click here > My first trip to Expo  or for the one about Expo’s wacky mascot Haibao > Give Praise Unto Almighty Haibao

For me, the city was the real event.  These red things spell out the name Cool Docks, a new and kinda unsuccessful development near the old city.  Cool Docks is an exemplar of the ongoing tension between economic development and historic preservation in Shanghai.  See more here > Goodbye Docks! Hello Cool! as well as this post on Xintiandi > The Fine Art of Fakery

I am always looking for special times where elements of the city compose themselves into an interesting photo.  I call them Jeffrey Smart moments and I have been compiling a gallery here > Now, that IS crayzy!

I also made other galleries devoted to funny buildings > Small Man, Big Hair and food > Fun with Food … as well, the most popular of all, Chinglish > Huh Wot?

While we haven’t done as much travelling as I would have liked, we did get to visit a few places closer to Shanghai.  We did a weekend trip to Nanjing and saw lots of amazing old buildings, including this Hall of Scarifice.  The Nanjing posts > The other great wall and > A nice place to spend eternity and > Avoiding the Tiger Summer

    

Suzhou is another nearby city, full of canals and old buildings.  The candles are from the main temple in the city centre.  Suzhou stuff > Canals, gardens and silkworms > It could hardly be called humble… > Suzhou Museum: it’s all-white

These hire bikes are found all over Hangzhou, which we just visited last week.  Stay tuned for future posts on this city, often referred to as “Heaven on Earth”.

    

And a few trips to Hong Kong … catching up with friends and family and renewing visas.  This is the pulling mechanism of the Peak Tram which gave us the amazing view included in this post > City, nature and nothing in between

And not to forget the ever-fascinating Macau which I had a bit of trouble working out … It’s like the Portugal of China! > No, no, the Disneyland of China! > No, actually, the fake Venice of Asia!

And speaking of trams and stuff, here is a shot from Line 10 of the Shanghai Metro.  The red seat is for the mobility-impaired.  I cannot talk enough about how amazing the rail system (Metro, heavy rail, fast rail) is here.  I did a few posts about transport > High Speed Rail? China Has It. > My Walk to Work (2) > Another Crayzy Motorway > The Rules of the Road > but must do more.

And to finish off, here is what some workfriends and I wore to our company’s annual (Chinese New Year) dinner.  I was concerned that our interpretation of the theme “Your Chinese Best” as the uniform of the Red Army may have been risky, but everyone loved it and there was much clapping and laughing when we arrived.  Here are some of the ways I celebrated the various festive seasons > Festive celebrations / let me count the ways and > Carpet-bombing in the new year

It’s been a great year and I have enjoyed remembering all the crayzy things I have seen since I arrived.  Hope you have enjoyed hearing about it all too …

Onto Year of the Rabbit.

Thanks to everyone for your readership and for your comments over the last year.

x The Doctor.

Festive celebrations / let me count the ways

In China, but especially in a large cosmopolitan city like Shanghai, there will always be many and varied ways to celebrate something.  Each year (the international year, that is…) culminates in a number of celebrations, taken from both Chinese and Western traditions, from the religious to the commercialised.

Dongzhi Festival
Dongzhi, literally meaning “arrival of winter”, occurs on the Winter Solstice and is one of China’s most important days.  It marks the point when days start to become longer, a shift that relates to the ideas of balance and harmony (yin/yang no doubt). Families get together to eat food – of course! In the north, it is usually dumplings, in the south Dongzhi – rice balls, often coloured brightly, in a sweet soup.  Must be hot to ward off the chills of winter.

Speaking of warding off … Dongzhi Festival is also the day that all the ghosts come out (it is the longest night of the year, afterall).  So, people take to the streets to burn fake money – the theory being that the burnt money will travel to one’s deceased ancestors, keeping them satisfied in the afterlife and away from real-life.

All over streets and footpaths (like outside our apartment) are the remnants of this activity…

To avoid any unsatisfied ghosts wandering the streets after dark, it is also tradition to also leave work as early as possible.  No comment…

Christmas Lead-up
China has certainly embraced the tinselly side of Christmas, with many parts of the city adorned with flashing lights and baubles, and electronic advertising screens given over the festive greetings.

In our office, we had a Christmas tree and did a Secret Santa.

On Christmas Eve, we all gathered around to watch – one-by-one – as people carefully unwrapped their gifts.  None of the frantic paper-ripping from home …  We also ate foods, a mix of Western (chips and beer) and Chinese (tofu and Pocky) snacks.

My Secret Santa gift was two figurines, a rabbit (looking a little Donny Darko-esque) and a dragon.  My anonymous gift giver explained, by way of a note, that they represent the coming lunar year and China itself.  They are now resident on my desk.

Ping An Ye
On 24 December, many people celebrate Ping An Ye.  This translation of “Christmas Eve” also sounds a bit like the word for apple (ping guo), so people get together to eat apples.  This is meant to bring good luck and good health for the coming year.

Christmas Day
While recognised by many, Christmas itself is not such a big deal.  Our company has a day off, but it is not an official holiday.

We met up with friends for lunch, at a classy hotel nearby.  The hotel gave us little gifts, a fruit pudding in a red bowl … it’s like a Christmas microcosm of east-meets-west.

It was close to freezing on the day, which was a weird sensation for Christmas.  But, we ate a lot of food, then retreated to the warmth of our house, wherein I enjoyed a long afternoon nap.    Just keeping some traditions alive …

 

Nanjing / The other great wall

 Nanjing is one of China’s most significant cities, having been the capital of China during six dynasties (Nanjing literally meaning “Southern Capital”) as well as the early part of the twentieth century, and as a modern economic and cultural centre (second only to Shanghai within China’s east).  Goodness, I feel like I am writing the introduction to one of my reports at work…

Perhaps the secret of Nanjing’s historic success is its ancient city wall.  Built about 600 years ago, the wall was created to consolidate the city’s position as the national seat of power, as well as the sovereignty of the sitting Emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang.  It took 21 years, 200,000 labourers and 7 million cubic metres of earth to build the wall, which at over 10 metres high and 30 kilometres long, is the longest urban wall in the world.  While this map does not really illustrate the location and scale of the structure, it is a nice old map and I like nice old maps.

 

Even today, most of the city is encompassed within what remains of the wall.  Its looms high over the city, a constant reminder of what people needed to do in the old days to keep their city safe. 

The 13 gates still act as beautiful entry points into the city (albeit via the motor car not the horse).

 

The longevity of the wall relies as much on its physical strength as its symbolic power.  The materials are a mixture of granite and limestone, packed with smaller rocks and gravel.  The joints were set with a lime mix that contains oil and cooked glutinous rice, supposedly an effective coagulant.  Oil and sticky rice … yum!  I guess the size and strength of the wall may have foiled more recent attempts to demolish it for the sake of “progress”.

 

Section of the top of the wall are publicly accessible.  Unfortunately, we chose a point where access is pretty limited … at other location, you can walk along large sections of the wall, with sweeping views across the city.  Always good to have something to go back for …

 

The older city is riddled with waterways and canals.  The area around the Qinhuai River houses many historic relics, as well as the contemporary retail heart of the city.

 

And with water, there are lots of boats … from the traditional punt … 

… to the faux old-style tourist craft …

… to the modern day junk (geddit?)

Animal, vegetable, unidentifiable…?

Qibao (literally translating as “Seven Treasures”) is an ancient canal-side town, once lying to the west of Shanghai city, but now absorbed into this ever-expanding megalopolis.  It is at least 1000 years old, dating back to the Northern Song Dynasty and becoming a bustling centre of activity during the Ming and Qing periods (several centuries mid-millennium).

It is packed full of traditional Chinese buildings, clustered around canals and tiny laneways, and connected by old arched bridges.

Surprisingly, Qibao doesn’t feature too heavily in tourist publications, but it does attract many local visitors.  And, I mean many … the little lanes and spaces take forever to navigate.

There is a newer commercial area, no less hectic than the older parts, but at least with a bit more room.  The whole area is closed to cars, which is somewhat unusual and a tiny bit pointless, given the large number of speeding delivery vans, scooters and bicycles.

I am loving this mural … for a minute there I thought I had been transported to a mountainside in the country (with air-conditioners and windows…)

Qibao is renowned for its old-style handicrafts and food, which make it a favourite for the locals and a surprising place for the internationals.   Besides the traditional brewery and carving museum, you can come to Qibao to pick up some amazing hand-crafted goods.  Wooden buckets – sized for a bath or just a foot-spa- seem to be popular.

    

But, the food is the really amazing stuff.  Huge stacks of freshly-steamed corn…

and these delicious-looking fruit skewers.  The kiwi fruit were massive, about 10 centimetres in diameter.

People were also strolling about munching chunks of meat off timber skewers about a metre long.  (Given the confined spaces, I imagine that skewer injuries are not uncommon here.)  Similarly, bamboo sticks were a popular snack-and-stroll item.  Although the hard outside layer was peeled off, I am surprised that bamboo could be soft enough for this kind of consumption.  But as Mr I.E. tells me, there are 800 types of bamboo, so I guess one has to be chew-friendly.

These appeared to be some kind of sesame desert.  At least, I think it was desert.

And these …?  I am putting my bet on lotus root, cooked and stuffed with some kind of gluggy white thing.  They do kinda look like some body part though.

Not so much as these though.  I think they were knuckles, delicately tied together with string and placed under a red light to give them a real glow.

Or these. These are just gross.  A whole small bird (perhaps a pigeon or half-grown chicken), cooked and skewered via the head, ready for instant consumption.  And, popular they were … with many people grabbing one to sustain them on their shopping journey.

I am told that in Qingdao (a city north of Shanghai), the local version consists of a whole rabbit head, ears included, deep-fried and mounted on a stick.   I’ll just stick to the bamboo, thanks.

Showing off a bit of flesh…

You can walk seemingly forever in Shanghai and not run out of things to look at.  Last weekend, we did loads of walking around the Suzhou Creek area, just to the north of the city.  While it’s easy to get lost in the crooked streets of these older neighbourhoods, the city’s skyscrapers pop into view even so often to remind you that you are indeed in the centre of a major metropolis.

Qipu Road is renowned for cheap clothes shopping, including massive department stores and shopping malls, and a very hectic street market.  They say that to find cheaper clothes in Shanghai, you would need to front up at a textiles factory (and then, you’d also have to bargain with the seamstresses).

It attracts a lot of people…

… not to mention the usual variety of transport vehicles …

… and all the stuff (delivery carts, motorcycle taxis, bins and brooms) required to keep the place functioning in a relatively civilised way.

One of the architectural “features” of Qipu Road is the White Horse Shopping Mall, obviously the place for ladies’ intimates.  It attracts a substantial number of men, just hanging around outside … perhaps just waiting for their wives, who are picking up a few pairs of cheap knickers …

… or maybe these his-n-hers patterned wool robes.  Am thinking with winter coming on …

A few blocks away, we discovered another market street – the more regular local food market, tucked into a row of old residential buildings.  The opposite side of the street had already been demolished to make way for a modern residential complex, complete with blank wall and widened footpath to the street.  It’s sad to think that soon, the older buildings will be torn down too, realising the vision of a bigger and blander street.  That’s progress!

The markets were particularly meaty, so we rushed through at a pretty fast pace (Mr I.E. was not happy).  The Master of the Map managed a few quick-draw photos on his more fancy camera, so much credit to him for these snaps…

It’s duck duck …

Goose!  Just after this photo, poor Goosie managed to lock eyes with me as if to say “Please just buy me and end this undignified life-in-a-cardboard-box”.  He really was out of place in this green vegetable display.

Mr Fish wasn’t too impressed with the camera work.  Less so was Mrs Chicken a few doors up, who stopped mid-beheading to give the Master a prolonged death-stare and a move-along-please expression.

No wonder … I think there are bad things going on here.  How much per kilo for the kid, do you reckon?

This Buddha ain’t jumping over no wall

Of all the wonderful and confusing names for food in China, my favourite has to be Buddha Jumps Over the Wall.  Originating in the southern part of the country, it is a soup that contains all sorts of meat products, a variety of seasonings (up to 30 if you are doing it properly) and shark fin (which, yes, is one of these aforementioned ‘meat products’, but is also so horribly produced, that it is worth mentioning specifically).  According to legend, BJOTW smells so wonderful that Buddhists monks have been known to escape the confines of their monastery (as well as the confines of their vegetarian diet) to sample the stuff – so good that Buddha himself would leap a wall to get it.  Just further proof that all vegetarians are carnivores in need of a good slap and a well-done steak.

Luckily for me, Shanghai is a city of options, including very good vegetarian versions of BLOTW – packed full of fake meats, including mushrooms that supposedly emulate shark fin.  I am glad that I need not succumb to the lure of the fish head and the pork chop.  Perhaps a better name would be Sam Neill Jumps Out of the Tree, though to suggest that he is in any way similar to Buddha would be a mistake.

SNJOOTT (left) with some fake-pork-gluten thing.  Sweet and deliiiicious!  And here is a roll call of some other amazing vegetarian foodstuffs I have sampled here.  It really is quite abundant and very yummy!

Generic green veg (L) and ‘sword beans’ with tapioca balls – yeah, like the stuff they put in bubble tea drinks.  This is from 9 Dragons, a Hong Kong restaurant.  These are a godsend – there are lots of them, they do good vegetarian and their menus are usually translated into English.

Similarly, Taiwanese restaurants do good veg and good English.  Just the other night, we went to an all-you-can-eat vegetarian buffet.  All corners of the planet were represented, from pasta to sushi, steamed buns to French fries … all converted to meat-free bliss.   The thing in the top picture with the paddle pop stick was a ‘purple blood cake’ and I guess it actually wasn’t that nice.

This is another plate stacked from the bain-marie of a veg eatery … part of the Loving Hut chain.  For the uninitiated, this chain is supported by the Supreme Master, otherwise known as Ching Hai, a Vietnamese entrepreneur who advocates animal rights and has her own cable television station.   Anyway, the food is great.

Here is some more crayzy fake meat – not really sure what it was made of or what it was trying to be, but the consumption of the noodle soup revealed a very special (and maybe offensive?) message to yours truly…

There are some local delicacies that I am really getting into, like these deep-fried corn cakes.  (Of course, I also am getting into the amazing little vegetable sculptures that sometimes appear in the food).

Here is another, lording over some steamed vegetables and an omelette.  Eggs are pretty popular here too.

And great food from stalls … steamed buns, tofu kebabs and shallot pancakes (above).

I was very excited to see some black sticky rice, topped with some gelatinous thing and served in a little cane basket.

Not to mention, my old favourite, roti canai.  To quote my good friend Mr I.E.: “The roti has gone global!”  And local … we have a very good Malaysian cafe near us, which is pioneering a new creation, the peanut butter roti.  I am in clogged-artery heaven!

Even in convenience stores, hungry vegetarians need not fear.  On every street corner, one can find neatly-chopped-and-packaged tofu blocks and sliced vegetarian sausages.  The sausages were packed full of spice and MSG, making them delicious upon consumption, but somewhat challenging on expulsion.  Sorry, too much information.

So, lots of reasons for this Buddha to stay on his chosen side of the wall (and to become a little Buddha-like in shape, unfortunately…)  With vegetarian delights like these, who needs to be eating stuff like this ….

Unidentifiable meat ball, served in greasy meat sauce.  With the deepest Buddhist willpower, I resisted.

Our new place – street to front door

I gotta say, our new place is pretty cute … It’s located on the northern edge of the French Concession of Shanghai, within 10 minutes walk of 3 Metro lines, 4 vegetarian restaurants, a wet market and loads of other great stuff.  More on the neighbourhood in future posts…

It’s on the second level of a small Art Deco building that overlooks the street.  I guess officially it’s a complex, as it has a gatehouse and security wall, but the former is manned by a very friendly couple and their baby (they actually live in the tiny gatehouse) and the latter shrouded by landscape and punctuated by a number of shops including a tailor and dry cleaner.  It’s also much smaller the typical modern complex and feels part of the neighbourhood, not trying desperately to shield itself from the outside world.

Through the gate and along the driveway, we turn right and enter our building from the rear.

I’d guess that the building is about 80 years old, and I think some of our neighbours are about the same.  The rest of the building is full of older locals, who live a pretty traditional existence – riding rattly bicycles, waking up at 5am, stinking up the whole building by cooking odd foodtsuffs with all their doors open.  We really are the freaky ones, with our funny shaped faces and newly refurbished apartment.

This is the door to the stairwell.  I like the window a lot.

These are electricity meters in the stairwell.  I must check these regularly, as I hear that sometimes, the locals meddle with the system and trick the Westerners into paying for the whole building’s power usage.

The stairwell is very much a public place – more an extension of one’s living space than somewhere to rush through on your way home.  Thus, it appears, that it is not unusual to find items there that one might usually consider ‘private’.  In our first week here, we encountered two items carefully hung in the stairwell by one of our downstairs neighbours.  Freshly washed underpants I can handle.  But a chicken, washed and gutted, splayed open and hung to dry, I am not so sure …

After running the gauntlet, we are home.  Our doorbell demonstrates that indeed it is a place for Westerners, or at least those with a Western “style”. 

I am really liking this new place (pickled chooks aside) – it’s in a great location and has heaps of character.

Forgive me, Gods of Caffeine

There is something I need to clear from my conscience.  But first, the context …

Shanghai (and China in general) has really terrible coffee.  For a country that invented pretty much everything – including the printing press and pasta (originally known as noodles, stolen back to Europe by Marco Polo and rebranded) – and that discovered practically the whole world including America (just read that highly reputable and totally undisputed book ‘1492’ for more details), the Chinese are yet to make a decent cupofchino.

In my short time here, I have experienced all sorts of mangled versions of what I call coffee (OK, it’s probably payback for my own mangling of the people’s language).  I have experienced a “cappuccino” that is nothing more than a bitter black coffee topped with whipped cream and sparkles.

A pitch black “latte”.  A sweetened sludge of coffee paste called a “mocha”.  Coffee burnt to every degree imaginable, from bushfire-grade to “Sir, would you like some milk with your charcoal?”

So now, each morning on my way to work, I take a slightly longer route than necessary and go to Starbucks … the very place that I would avoid like the plague in Sydney, but unfortunately the only place I can depend on to provide a coffee that would consistently rate as ‘drinkable’ or above.  My brain tells me it is all wrong, but my caffeine receptors are loving it.

In my defence:
_ at least Starbucks is owned by real capitalists, not those hiding behind Hillsong Church (ahem, Gloria Jeans)
_ they use organic soy milk
_ I avoid paper cups by drinking-in
_ I take the time to study some Chinese, thus addressing my own shortcoming and encouraging this wonderful country to do the same…

Yuyuan (Gardens and) Bazaar

Well, I didn’t make it into the Gardens.  Typically, this popular attraction is packed full of people and I was there on a typical day.  From what I hear, the gardens are quite amazing, full of lush landscape, glittering ponds and rockeries, and housing China’s oldest tea house.  The crowds really were too much (I will visit another day and provide a report then) so I spent time in the adjacent bazaar, also a popular tourist trap. 

Like the gardens, the bazaar was original built in the sixteenth century, but I imagine the current buildings are much newer.  They’ve done a good job of replicating the traditional style, but haven’t managed to totally conceal the concrete structure or mechanical plantrooms.  Originally the site of a large temple, the place is totally geared towards tourism now, with cheap trinkets, Starbucks and retailers harrassing you at every turn.

Somewhat overwhelmed by the crowds, my guidebook lead me to Songyuelou, Shaghai’s oldest vegetarian resturant (first established a century ago) located on the edge of the bazaar.  I was a bit early for the dinner rush, so arrived to find all of the staff playing checkers or napping  on the floor.  A few snapped to attention (despite my awkward attempts to communicate “It’s fine, you sleep, I’ll go somewhere else”) and I got to have one of my best meals here – a pepper ‘steak’. 

For me, the neighbourhood around the bazaar is much more engaging and colourful, having retained many of its small alleyways and older buildings. 

Middle Fangbang Street is the main shopping strip, and compared to the bazaar, is more spacious, has better quality souvenirs and antiques, and feels like a part of the city.  The street is buzzing with cars and bicycles, as well as people, with all the functions of the city on full display (not hidden away in service lanes and basement carparks). 

Across the historic rooftops, the two modern towers on the other side of the river are the perfect counterpoint to the colour and chaos of the street.

Seoul / Postscript (aka wtf)

Here are some things from Seoul that don’t fit neatly into categories – on this blog or generally.

A fine delicacy from the streets – a hot dog and potato chips are pressed together, battered and deepfried.  Hello heart attack!

Another type of hot dog.  People in Seoul love their dogs a lot.  Note the handy elasticised toileting hole.

And speaking of toileting, this is a most unfortunate name for a bar.  I didn’t go to toilet there, but I am sure it was pretty wacky.

What I learnt at the museum today …

At the base of the Pearl Tower, they have a fantastic museum celebrating the history of Shanghai.  It is arranged into 5 sections of the city’s history and contains hundreds of carefully constructed diaromas and scale models.  This one is Nanjing Road (the real Nanjing Road is just 5 minutes away on the Metro but whatever).

I was particularly excited to see this one – a replica of an old-style bean curd shop.  OMG, that tofu slab is (was?) as big as her head!

One section has an interesting theme…

According to the displays, those rascally foreigners brought all sorts of weird and wonderful things to Shanghai, like hair torture devices

(did you spot the Doctor?)
and the desire for crazy shoes.

Supermarkets and super markets

It seems right that my first proper post is about food.  My first expedition was to the local supermarket, where I spent at least an hour carefully turning everything over and looking for ingredients written in English.  Even the smiley cartoon characters plastered over everything didn’t really help – it was hard to discern what species they belong to, let alone whether they were actually part of the product.

This is what I ended up with … a weird mix of noodles and pasta, cheese and milk from New Zealand, “oil onion” biscuits (two of my fave ingredients in any food), coffee (thankfully) and the international standard Pocky.

I was disappointed to find that every piece of fruit and veg came wrapped, in small quantities, in plastic and styrofoam.  Even more disappointing was this…

The only tofu I could find (that I was certain was tofu), teamed with the twin promise of salt and chilli.  Within a second of getting home, I excitedly opened the jar and bogged in, only to discover the this … thing … was possibly what is (officially) called “stinky tofu” and (unofficially) one of the most reviled foods in Shanghai.

As luck would have it, my food fortunes changed the following day, when DragonBoy (work friend from Sydney and now Shanghai) took me to the wet market up the street from work.  Comparatively, a culinary Shangri-la … with bountiful fruit and veg (unpackaged and sold per kilo for a few coins), more varieties of egg than I can imagine different producers of said eggs, the most outrageous pickles, animals at all stages of existence (living, being killed, dead and filleted) but also … a whole section devoted to my one and only beancurd.

I will be back.