There Goes the Neighbourhood! (part 2)

After checking out Baidu Lu (see this post), I thought I would extend my documentation of this community by venturing inside one of the old housing complexes.  Here I got a little nervous.  Given the half-demolished nature of the neighbourhood, it was like entering a construction site (one without any regard to public safety).  But, also, I assumed that there may be people still living inside, and me poking around with a camera might be a little confronting, if not condescending, in nature.

But, I was genuine fascinated about what lay behind the decaying walls of the neighbourhood.

So, I caught the eye of two women who were standing at the window of an apartment above one of the shopfronts.  I showed my camera, gestured towards the nearest gateway and asked “ke yi ma?” (“can I?”).  Whether it was the content or the dodgy linguistics of my question, they laughed and answered “ke yi”, beckoning me through.  It was typical Chinese openness and helpfulness.

Despite partial demolition, the general layout of the neighbourhood was in tact – pedestrian laneways running deep into the complex from the street, giving access to apartment buildings via rows of private and shared courtyard spaces.  Often, the buildings would extend over the laneway, creating a series of thresholds as I moved deeper inside.

At the end of one laneway, I discovered a shikumen house – the traditional Shanghai housing style that I discussed in this post.  “Shikumen” translates as “stone gate”, through which the residents entered their private courtyard, and then, their house.

These larger houses often sit at the rear of complexes, buffered from the street by apartment buildings, and housing the bigger families and wealthier residents of the community.  This one, it seemed, was still being occupied, as evidenced by laundry hang in and around the house.

Throughout the neighbourhood, I caught sight of small signs of life, both present and past.

From community notice boards …

… to advertisements stencilled onto the walls (usually selling hardware or other products) …

… and the contrast of formal and informal methods of orientation and identity.  The whole place had a sense of falling apart, rather than being torn down – the slow decay of the buildings, and the community itself.

Whenever I encountered people, they tended to give me a quick glance then happily ignored my presence, in favour of getting on with whatever they were doing.  If I was in the middle of a construction site, full of blind corners and unfamiliar people, anywhere else in the world, I would be feeling incredibly nervous about my personal safety. Here, I guess, there is more to fear from the random collapse of a wall or an unexpected hole in the ground.

The construction (or rather, reconstruction) workers are all housed on site, as is typical on Chinese work sites.  So, beside the old neighbourhood stands new dormitory accommodation, including cramped sleeping quarters, along areas for bathing and cooking.  Most of the workforce would be migrants, from smaller cities and rural areas, based temporarily in Shanghai during the off-season of the agricultural cycle.

From scale to material to detail, the contrast between old and new is clear and sudden.

That is, in construction process, as well as architectural product.

 

I See Red! aka The Amazing Hong Yi

So, lately one of my work buddies here in Shanghai has become a bit of an interwebs sensation.  Her name is Hong but she calls herself Red (‘hong’ being ‘red’ in Chinese).  She is an architect by day and an unconventional artist (her description) by night and weekend.  Being a wacky and creative type (needless to say, being an architect and such), she has taken to making portraits of famous people using odd materials.  It all started with a chili-paste-on-a-plate rendition of Justin Beiber.

But, after making this portrait of Yao Ming (with a basketball dipped in paint, quite obviously…) things went a little  ballistic – almost a million views of Youtube, along with a flood of TV interviews, magazine articles and job offers.

 

 

Hong is in her “famous Chinese people” phase, so followed up with this portrait of the actor Jay Chou.  I was in the office on the weekend that this was being made and it smelled wonderful!

 

 

For her next artwork – featuring the filmamker Zhang Yimou – Hong got a few of us from the office to help out.

Inspired by the colour and texture of his films, as well as Shanghai’s famous laneway laundry,the portrait is made of almost a thousand socks, pinned together like pixels from an image.  So we stayed late at work one Friday night and helped thread and arrange the socks into place.  I was on forehead-to-eye duty.

Here is the artist herself, in a blurred state of creative fervour.  I like to call her the Amazing Hong Yi, not only because it’s an accurate description, but because it contrasts with her very self-deprecating and good-humoured character (seemingly intact, despite all the attention she has been receiving lately).

Here is a video of the portrait being installed into one of Shanghai’s traditional lilongs.

 

 

Intended as a temporary installation, the portrait was then bought to our office where it hangs inside the entry space to the studio.

Mounted at the end of the central spine of the building and at about 4 metres high, Mr Zhang is quite a sight, looking out over our workplace like a benevolent Big Brother.

(Not that she needs any help with promotion, you can see more of Hong’s work at her website, www.ohiseered.com)

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.

Walkabout / Fangbang Dong Lu

First west, now east.  Middle is not so exciting … pretty touristy and lacking a real sense of authenticity.

Like the Xi Lu, Fangbang Dong Lu is packed full of shops and restaurants, with products and people spilling over the street (and very few in cars in sight).

But it is certainly a bit brighter.

The same traditional-style Chinese architecture is on display …

with newer apartment buildings a little better integrated into the older urban fabric (at least by colour, by also by scale)

There are homes in the sky …

as well as on the street.

And just loads and loads of shops selling all sorts of stuff.

Although sometimes the display techniques can be a bit dodgy.

Lanterns and hanging things.

Fans and butchered meats.

The equivalent of a “two dollar shop” (2 yuan = about 30 cents).

A tattoo shop.

And, off to one side, a chaotic and hygiene-averse “eat street”.

Like I said, it’s bright.

As Fangbang Lu reaches its eastern end, it becomes a little more European in its styling, with paved streets, awnings and neo-Classical architectural allusions.  And appropriately, a generous helping of dog turd, as the woman in this image could attest.

By then, we are almost to the Huangpu River.

And over the rooftops loom the soaring commercial towers of Pudong, located on the other side of the river and in another world entirely.

 

Walkabout / Fangbang Xi Lu

When asked what I “like to do”, I often say that I like to walk.  Usually, the questioner assumes that I didn’t understand the question or that I am being a smarty-pants.  But, it is true: I like to walk.  It’s the best way to see a city.  

So, I have been doing lots of walking here in Shanghai.  I’ve found that like many cities, it can be easiest to understand Shanghai as a collection of streets, rather than neighbourhoods or precincts or suburbs.   Streets hold their own character and history, distinct from those around it.   

This is the western (Xi) end of Fangbang Road (Lu).  It’s one of the first streets I walked through when I arrived two years ago, and it’s very typical of Shanghai’s old city area.

It mostly consists of laneway housing, with shopfronts along the street edge punctuated by perpendicular laneways that give access to walk-up apartment buildings behind.

The architecture is distinctly Shanghainese, especially these little dormer windows on most buildings.

And, like many streets in the old city, it’s a highly active and chaotic place, with all the sights and smells and noises you could possibly want. 

With shops and restaurants spilling onto the street, the footpaths have been given over to the activities of commerce.  This is an integrated food storage/waste management/vehicle parking structure for the restaurant behind.  I guess you have to know it’s there, having practically no street frontage. 

Similarly, it takes a keen eye to spot the hairdresser’s shop here … given away by the spinning (in theory, at least) barber’s pole.

Along Fangbang Xi Lu, pedestrians are forced onto the street, to do battle with with cars and scooters and stray cats.

These chairs and tables are stored for muchof the day, and unpacked for the afternoon/evening rush.

 Hygiene freaks need not eat here.  An assortment of bowls full of cold water are used to “wash” dirty dishes as well as green vegetables. 

Produce carefully stacked upon box and bucket, constructed and deconstructed at the start and end of each day.

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Within the randomness,you can usually find some sense of order or logic.

It could almost be called art.

Or not.  This is one of those kid’s rides, featuring a very popular cartoon character, Pleasant Goat.

Heading east, the street kinks, signalling the change from Xi (west) to Zhong (middle) Road.

It also marks the shift from ramshackle old-style buildings to overscaled apartment developments, and further along, the faked up tourist zone of Yuyuan Bazaar.  Those things I won’t bother showing … against the charm of the old street, they don’t impress me that much.

 

 

Ha’erbin / .. and snow sculptures …

On our second day in Ha’erbin, we visited Sun Island, which lies on the northern side of the river.

   

Said river was, of course, totally frozen.

And although it was daytime, and quite sunny, it was bitterly cold – still hovering about the -15 degree point.

Sun Island is where you go if you like sculptures made out of snow – which is pretty much everyone, right?

Anyway, it has loads of sculptures.  And, when we were there, the sky was blue and there weren’t many people around.  It was like a photographer’s (or a meteorologist’s or sociopath’s) dream.

The sculptures were inspired by anything – from fairy tales (I think that this may be a representation of a kid pulling out a massive turnip…)

to historic figures

to nature and industry

to … ummm … Donkey Kong.

      

And some of it was “art with a message”.  The one on the left shows that the world is being destroyed by over-consumption (represented by a burger).  The one on the right is about people blocking out inconvenient and uncomfortable realities (like the cold weather, perhaps).

At the park’s centre, atop a frozen lake, there is a humongous snow sculpture. You can also rent dune buggies or husky-powered sleighs to take a zoom around the lake.

  

At this point, you are also very pleased to find a little glass cafe, serving warm drinks and cup noodles.

That if you aren’t tempted by the snow-log cabin option.

Or by the petting area, where you can feed real deer.  You can also purchase deer-skin clothes and mounted deer heads – all on display, which would really diminish the workplace expereience for the deers.

On our way out, we took a little detour (I’m not sure why, as the real cold had set in and we were ready to go … quickly).

    

And we discovered the “workshop” of the site, with ice-cutting machines, fresh-cut blocks and some sculptures where people had been practising (or honing, ha!) their skills.  It reminded us that our our hour or two wandering around the park would be nothing compared to the many hours expended by the sculptors in producing these large, yet incredibly detailed, pieces of work.

Ha’erbin / The City of Ice …

Last week, China celebrated the lunar new year, which is also known as Chun Jie or Spring Festival.  The name is somewhat confusing, as the festival usually occurs at the coldest time of the year, right in the heart of Winter and seemingly far from the more pleasant weather of Spring.  Perhaps it is about celebrating that things can only get better from that point in time.

As if the breezy climate of Shanghai wasn’t difficult enough (maximum temperature generally 0-5 degrees), we decided that we’d use the national week-long holiday to take a trip to Ha’erbin.  Ha’erbin is so far north, it is almost Russia.  It’s one of the few places in China that isn’t overrun by tourists during the holidays.  You just have to put up with a daily maximum temperature of around -15 degrees (yes, that is MINUS).   We figured that a dose of colder weather might even give us a renewed appreciation for the more temperate winter of Shanghai.

The winter is Ha’erbin is long and cold, with temperatures staying sub-zero for several months.  So, the city has embraced this period of wintry weather by holding an annual Ice Festival.  It’s been happening for decades (with a few breaks here and there) and may (or may not) be the biggest in the world.

Throughout the city, key public spaces – like parks, plazas, roundabouts on expressways – are dotted with an array of ice sculptures, inspired by the culture and character of the city, and constructed each year by a workforce of thousands.  The scale and detail of the sculptures is amazing, especially considering the hand-numbing conditions they are produced under.

But, when the sun goes down (and the temperature drops further, to about -25 degrees), these sculptures really shine.  Like, literally.

In a few different locations in Ha’erbin, they have massive ice parks, like this one (the Ha’erbin Ice and Snow World).

It contains dozens of life-size buildings, from Russian temples to castles and pagodas, as well as a statues, ice carvings and sculptures.

And there’s a lot of larger-than-life-size stuff too, like beer (Harbin is local beer brand, of course) and Coke bottles.  Everything is lit by thousands of multi-coloured lights, carefully laid into the structures during construction.

    

You can walk up and through the buildings – bringing you in intimate contact with the icy architecture and the painfully cold breeze – as if the very-sub-zero temperatures aren’t freezing enough.  And, after thousands of other visitors, as the ice floor is smoothed down, it is quite a dangerous task too.  Saw plenty of slips and tumbles while we were there.

Another wind-chill option is to take a horse ride around the site.  No-one, especially the horse, seemed to be enjoying this particular activity.

    

As if to tempt fate (and potential lawsuits), the organisers had also installed an ice-slide on this European-style castle.  Within a few minutes, we saw a number of stacks, including an old man who tried to stand up, only to fall and slide down head-first, another guy who back-ended the woman in front of him, and third who was moving so fast, he knocked over three people who were gathered around the end of the slide.

I would have LOLed, except that at that point, my mouth was pretty much frozen into the closed position.  Despite wearing a couple of layers of thermals, snow boots, two jackets and two scarves (one wrapped around the nose and mouth), the cold would get unbearable in about 10 minutes.  The only places of retreat were a few cafes and a theatre, which were all unsurprisingly packed with people, trying to thaw out and get their cameras working again.

Or, the other option was to converge on the  big Russian building in the middle of the park.

Here they had an outdoor performance space with girls gyrating atop ice podiums and lip-synching to Lady Gaga.  Of course, in China, it’s always Lady Gaga, and usually the song is Poker Face.

It gave us all an excuse to jump up and down.  And then the girls made us join hands and skip around in a big circle.  My blood got pumping, my feet got off the cold ground for a few seconds, and my Frozen Poker Face had something to smile about.

And I was given another 10 minutes to cruise around looking at stuff.

My favourite sponge-cake neighbourhood

In keeping with my previous post (in content, as well as naming convention), I popped next door to document another typical Shanghainese housing complex.  This one is particularly important to me, as it provides a link between our street and a mid-block section of Anfu Road, which lies directly north and has a number of good cafes and grocers.  It took a few weeks for someone to tell me about this short-cut, which saves us from walking around the whole block, and thus takes several minutes away from my morning dash for coffee.  That discovery was probably one of my happiest moments in my time here, often reflected upon during the icy depths of winter days (like this morning’s very rude 2 degrees).

Like most housing complexes, this one is arranged around a driveway that runs into the site.  From our street, you’d never know it leads anywhere (apart from into the site itself).  And, given that there are dozens of such gateways long every street, you would spend a long time finding out which ones actually go anywhere.

This one just seems to end on a little house.

Besides, each complex has a gatehouse and guard (or in the case of our complex, a family of three who live in the tiny gatehouse) who will cast a suspicious eye over anyone who enters.  And while we foreigners usually get away with anything, it’s not uncommon to be followed and/or asked to put away the camera.

    

Buildings are arranged around the main driveways and smaller perpendicular lanes.

     

As apartments are often small and overcrowded (particularly those inhabited by locals), these spaces are used for lots of everyday activities, including the storage of stuff.

    

Deeper into the complex, these usually become smaller in scale, more randomly arranged and subject to more everyday usage.  These serve as accessway and meeting place and laundry and rubbish sorting zone and vegetable washing station.

And, within this particular complex, they eventually yield an example of the traditional Shanghainese resdiential style, the Shíkùmén.

Shíkùmén literally means “stone gate” and, as with much of Shanghai, combines elements of traditional Chinese and contemporary Western architectural styles.  In the past, up to 60% of Shanghai’s housing was built around this model, but now most people live in the apartment compounds that cover the city (and literally, the sites of countless shikumen, demolished to make way for this much-less-Chinese but much-more-profitable housing type  Shikumen are typically two-to-three terrace houses, arranged in straight rows, with a small walled courtyard.  The “stone gate” is the entry into the courtyard, and thus the house – the gateway between private and public spaces.  While traditional Chinese housing usually incorporates a courtyard, the shikumen protects this space behind a particularly high and solid wall – a necessity in a big city like Shanghai, where crime and chaos are the natural outcomes of social inequality and historic uprisings.

    

Deeper still, the central accessway narrows to met a turnstile, through which only pedestrians and up-ended bicycles can pass. At some point of the evening (possibly midnight, or whenever the guard does his final walk-around), the turnstile is locked shut, denying access to the short-cutters as well.

    

From here, you can get quite close the everyday lives of the people who live here – in what appear to be the most tiny living quarters, a single room possibly 2 by 2 metres, with outdoor sinks and shared bathrooms.

     

Said bathroom is shown on the right, just beside the central recycling area, the rubbish pile of the adjacent restaurant and a patch of concrete where someone is usually selling fresh veggies laid out on a tarpaulin.  Perhaps I am being sensitive, but I feel that one of those four activities just doesn’t belong with the others.

The end, at a gateway not too dissimilar to that I entered through. But, at this end, in a few minutes time, I have coffee.

 

A tale of two karaoke halls

This last week, I was fortunate enough to have two karaoke experiences.  Karaoke, or KTV as it is often called, is pretty popular here, a regular social activity to do with colleagues (which I did last Friday) and friends (yesterday).  It is also something you might do with a client or business contact … but this type of karaoke may involve very private rooms, low lighting and “hostesses” who will cater to your every whim.  Fortunately, I’ve never found myself in this kind of karaoke situation.

People tell me that “karaoke” and “KTV” are used to distinguish the two types, but as yet, I have not been able to determine which is which.  I actually think it’s more about whether you attend a “bar” as opposed to a “hall” or “rooms”, that latter being of the more savoury variety.

    

My two visits were to distinctly different parts of the city and to distinctly different karaoke venues.  Friday night, we were in Hongkou, north of the city, a place mostly frequented by locals.  We went to karaoke following a farewell dinner and beer in a Japanese BBQ restaurant.  And yesterday, we met some local friends at Nanjing Road, arguably the most tourist-infested part of the city.  We met at 1pm (yes, not 1am, as I needed to clarify when making the plan).  There were no beers involved.

    

Both times, we went to well known karaoke chain … in Hongkou, it was Partyworld (a more fancy outfit) and in the city, the more down-to-earth Haoledi (which may or may not be a literal translation of “holiday”).  Both extended over two levels of large buildings, with dozens of rooms, ranging in size from intimate couples-only rooms to larger group rooms.  Just a reminder at this point: these venues cater to the “friends having good clean fun” market, not the grubby stuff.

    

Partyworld comes across as a stylish hotel, with a generous lobby and soaring ceilings and soothing lighting.  Haoledi is a bit more blingy.  The rooms at Partyworld have vases of flowers.  The rooms at Haoledi have crayzy disco lights.

I think we were the only group at Partyworld.  At least, the only group making any noise, as I discovered on my walk through its silent halls.

On the other hand, Haoledi – despite the apparently odd timing – was pumping.  There was wailing and harmonising emanating from nearly every room and dozens of people lining up by the time we left.

    

At Partyworld, we were given free beer, jugs of tea and snacks, delivered to our room.  At Haoledi, they have a small supermarket where you can buy soft drink and Johnny Walker and chips and chicken’s feet.

Mini-kegs of Budweiser come standard at Partyworld if you book for 3 hours or more.

So, things can get a little raucous.  For me, beer and karaoke is a brilliant pairing.  At the end of a typically exhausting week, and with the trauma of having to farewell a well-liked colleague, drinking and yelling into a microphone is a great way to unwind.  And it’s how I’ve always conceptualised the role of karaoke.

    

So, the Haoledi experience was a little odd.  Sober in the mid-afternoon, I became painfully aware of how terrible my singing voice is.  And how quiet the room is when everybody is not jumping up and down and yelling out the words while you are singing.  And how slowly awkward moments can pass when you haven’t been drinking.  And this is how most people do it here.  Funnily enough, our friend who organised the afternoon said that she also likes karaoke as a way to “unwind” …

    

Both places had a huge selection of English songs, from ABBA to Robbie Williams to the Beatles.  Supposedly, the Carpenters song “Goodbye to Love” is taught in primary schools across the country, so it often features in karaoke nights.  In possibly ironic fashion, we sang the more melodic Hey Jude at Partyworld (although things amped up at the “na na na na” bits) and Revolution at  Haoledi (we kinda skimmed over the lyrics about Chairman Mao).

By the end of the night, Partyworld looked like partyworld …

… while the afternoon session ended on a more serene note.

Last year CNN published an article about life expectancy in Shanghai, linking the recent sharp increase in longevity to two things more regularly consumed by the Shanghainese: karaoke and cocaine (I think you can get both at those “karaoke bars” I referred to earlier).  I suppose the suggestion is that life is better when we interact with other people and have a little down-time every now and then … when the high wears off, obviously.

Karaoke as the gateway to a longer and happier life …?  I can get into that.

What happens on site stays on site …

Just the other day, I went to a client presentation, and on the way back to the office, we dropped by the project site to check on the progress of construction.

It’s a huge project – a waterway several kilometres long, fringed by new parkland and sporting areas, residential precincts, cultural and community buildings, and eventually, a new city centre.  The creek and landscape are being constructed first.

This is one small branch of the waterway, leading to an existing reservoir which will be the main source of water.  Like many construction projects, the site is being built by a variety of methods.  The channel itself is made up of huge concrete sections, created through the processes of heavy engineering and machinery … alongside this worker, who was slowly mixing his little pile of concrete using a shovel (when he wasn’t stopping to gawk at us, that is…)

    

A lot of the machinery is quite endearing.

    

The clay-topped site is vast.  It’s hard to imagine that in a very short time, it will house a lake, ringed by plazas and park, cafes and day spas.

But for now, it is just housing dozens of workers.  Many of these workers are seasonal labourers – farmers who spend the agricultural off-season working on construction sites for a bit of extra cash.  Being away from home, they are usually accommodated on the site itself, living in make-shift shelters, and sometimes with bathrooms and a food tent.  It would be pretty hard living … labouring all day, sleeping through wintry nights with very little in the way of bedding, being away from family and friends.

Although, if you can keep yourself looking at stylish as this guy … in grey polo, trousers with hem upturned to reveal a bright red lining, casual slippers and even more casual cigarillo hanging from his lips … life isn’t totally bad.

We had just been to present our latest design option for the site’s main entry pavilion, which the client finally approved.  So, we were a little surprised to find that it was already under construction.  It was explained that this part of the site had been fast-tracked after comments from someone important that work on the site appeared to be progressing a little slowly.  Fortunately, this part of the old design matches the new one, and we saved the workers the effort (and perhaps embarrassment) of having to undo their hard work.

    

We had to do a review of some pavers, or rather, a review of the pavers that the contractors were planning to substitute for the ones we had actually specified.  It was a long-winded and highly excited discussion, which I though ended in anger, but was supposedly resolved with everybody happy.  I really must get my Chinese skills up to scratch.

Further along the creek, work is almost completed, and the finishing touches, such as mature trees transplanted into place, are being applied.  This part will be flooded to form a wetland park.

Already, frogs and birds are starting to make their homes across the site.  And, as they arrive, the workers too will migrate, to homes remembered and people missed.

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.

Rui’an / A shop for everything

Here is a popular mode of transport in the city Rui’an.  I don’t whether to call them a covered rickshaw or tri-shaw or tricycle with lid … but for about a dollar, you can hire one to take you somewhere.  Or, like we did, you can negotiate a fee for a few hours sightseeing around the city.

    

Our ride took us through the older part of the city, which was packed full of crumble-down buildings, themselves jammed full of the most amazing variety of shopfronts.  There were all the typical convenience stores (if the excrutiatingly slow service could be called a “convenience”), fruit shops and vegetable shops (in China, the two are NEVER combined) and noodle cafes.

     

But, also squillions of shops selling all sorts of other stuff … hardware and pots and clothes and …

    

furniture (including chairs thoughtfully road-tested by the shopkeepers) and lanterns …

    

… and fabric rolls and mobile phones and anything else you might need.

Side by side, a small office and an internet cafe.

    

It was quite a task photographing the shopfronts, as we were moving at a pretty hectic pace and often swerving around obstacles (objects and people).  And, as the streets were filled with shoppers and retailers and other people just hanging around, I found it hard to get shots that weren’t messed up by people.

And speaking of mess, I have no idea what was going on here.  But, here they are, both shutters wide open, produce (literally) spilling onto the street, ready for business.

You call that 4 stars??!

I recently took a business trip to the city of Rui’an – a less-than-enthralling 5 hour train trip from Shanghai.  For a smallish city (1 million people), Rui’an is a booming economic centre, having been a centre for business for hundreds of years and one of the first Chinese cities to open up to international trade.

We stayed in what is supposedly Rui’an’s only 4-star hotel.  The room, while comfortable enough, hardly screamed “first class” (as the hotel ranking system defines it…)

And while the hotel itself can’t be blamed for the shortcomings of the surrounding cityscape, the view hardly inspired feelings of luxurious appointment.  In addition to making the view even less appealing, the satellite dishes were tuned only to Chinese language stations, leaving me plenty of time to explore the 4-star features of my room.

Firstly, the “mini-bar”. Two glasses.  No alcohol, no food.

    

The bathroom, in lieu of those cute little bottles of perfumed toiletries, had a two-button shower dispenser (one for body foam, one for shampoo – suspiciously similar in colour and fragrance) and a rubber ducky family.  Weird.  Check out the expert tiling work, by the way.

And this lovely artwork, likely mass-produced and on the verge of mouldy meltdown.

    

The guest manual outlined some of the other features of the hotel, from their peculiar food to their thorouge safety system (wow! straight outta the 1970s! with multiple monitors and a guy in a uniform!)

And an advanced communication system, also known as a telephone.  You can call locally and internationally, which is quite handy.

Especially if you are visiting town on business.  Rui’an’s speciality is the manufacture of car parts, which would explain why, instead of a phonebook, my room had a 2-part directory of local car and motorcycle parts manufacturers.

My favourite touch, however, were the very special hand-made padded clothes hangers (perhaps this is Rui’an’s other manufacturing speciality).  In black, no less.  I’d normally expect a lovely floral pattern.

It’s 4-star arts-n-crafts-chic at its very best.

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.

Wuzhen / putting on a show for the tourists

Wuzhen is a little town with quite a long history.  Settled about 1500 years ago, it’s location (within the ‘golden triangle’ formed by Shanghai, Hangzhou and Suzhou) pretty much guaranteed its success as a place of trade.  And now, its proximity to Shanghai guarantees that every weekend, it will play host to thousands of weekend tourists from the big smoke.

     

It is the quintessential water town, with a network of natural rivers and artificial canals, criss-crossed by a multitude of bridges and laneways.   It’s sometimes called “the Venice of the East”, but it seems that this moniker is attached to pretty much any water town in China.

Small in scale and free of cars, it makes a very pleasant change from Shanghai.  The central part of the town is its main attraction, and thus you need to pay an entry fee to get in.  As long as the main share of the money goes to retaining and upgrading the old building stock, rather than the overzealous gate guards, I don’t paying for the privilege.

It’s easy spend a few hours there, just wandering around the water edge and snacking and looking at stuff.

    

Amongst all the visitors, a whole bunch of people actually live here too.

The traditional houses open straight to the waterfront, which is also the focus of the public domain of the town.  The scattering of artefacts of everyday life – washbasins, pot plants, clothes drying in the sun – contribute to the character of the place.

 

And the architecture is defined (as it should be) by climate, local materials and function.  I am very fond of these operable timber awnings.

     

As we were gawking at people, people were gawking right back at us.  Wuzhen is definitely a destination for local tourists, so we were met with much interest.  All day, whispers of “waiguoren!” (foreigner) and pointed fingers were directed towards us.  Huge tour groups would stop in their tracks just to stare and take photos of us, usually not bothering to conceal their purpose.  Things would often descend into a mutual paparazzi situation, which seemed to make everyone amused.

Perhaps to distract the tourists from each other, there were lots of traditional performers throughout the town.  Wuzhen is most famous for shadow puppetry (the theatre was outside the gated area, so we couldn’t go there without surrendering all rights to re-entry) and a local version of opera (even less melodic than the Western version).  But there were also these guys doing some martial arts with swords and sticks, on a boat of course.

    

And this guy, who climbed out onto a long stick of bamboo to do some acrobatics.  It was most skilful and quite scary to watch, but he didn’t really draw a crowd.  Perhaps he was the one doing all the watching … spotting waiguoren from on high.

 

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!

5,164 steps into unbearable pain

The glossy brochure actually says “5,164 steps into history”.

Last weekend, I joined a bunch of my colleagues running the Great Wall Marathon.  We didn’t actually do the marathon … thankfully.  Our 10 kilometre run was challenge enough.

It was a beautiful day … not too hot, not too cold …a Goldilocks level of ‘just right’.  The sky was actually blue!  There were green mountains!  And finally, after over a year here, I got to see the Great Wall.

In fact, lots of the Wall.  The 10 kilometre course (like the other race distances) weaved through a small village for a few kilometres before taking to the wall itself.  I wanted to travel light (I was actually trying to make a good time, seeing I had bothered to start training a couple of months ago) so I didn’t carry my camera.  Fortunately though, we were joined by our very own company photographer (it’s a full time gig but he does find plenty to do …) so the whole event was captured well.

The views were pretty spectacular, into the valley that the village nestled into, as well as across the mountain tops and ridge lines that the wall run along.

But yes, getting to the top of those mountains was quite a task.  I had wondered whether the 5,164 steps were just an estimate of the number of strides you take completing the race … but soon realised that it was in fact a very accurate count of the number of stairs you needed to scale along the length of the wall.   Stairs that varied in height and material, went up then down then up again, sometimes became ramps, often only 1 metre wide with a sheer drop to the edge.

“Run” became “walk” very quickly.

    

There was plenty of huffing and puffing and cursing.  Some people were literally crawling up the stairs.  I noticed a few stretchers stashed away at key points of the course and I wasn’t at all surprised.

After a few kilometres, we left the wall and from there, it was a gentle slope (albeit 5 more kilometres of running) back to the village and the finish line.  I did OK, finishing in top 20% with all the fit-freaks.

I don’t think I have ever pushed myself so hard before (a head cold lingering from earlier in the week certainly didn’t help).  But I didn’t really get to enjoy the view.   Next year, I might just walk.

 

“Antique” being a relative concept, of course.

If ever there was a place where “buyer beware” was a useful phrase to keep in mind, it’d be the Dongtai Road Antique Market.

    

This market is located in the old town of Shanghai, with possibly hundreds of stalls stretched along two streets, selling all sorts of stuff.  Antiques, though, they are not.

    

Nonetheless, it’s a pretty interesting place to visit, just to see the crayzy amounts of stuff on sale.

    

While the stallholders were mostly happy for me to photograph the goods, they weren’t so keen to be in the photos themselves.  I don’t whether this is Chinese humility or paranoia, but the transition from in-yer-face salesperson to shy photo-model was stunningly swift.

    

Having been around for many years (and in that time, gaining a reputation for its dubious claims about the antiquity of its products), it is also surprising the market is still peddling the whole “you might be the lucky one who discovers a priceless Ming vase under a pile of junk” line.  It seems the product-suppliers are experts in making things look old … smearing everything with a bit of dirt and ensuring that they are displayed as randomly as possible.

    

This stall was particularly random, piled high with old cameras, mannequins, maps and paintings.

    

After a bit of wandering around, you just start to see the same stuff.  There are lots of old-style cigarette adverts and picture calendars, which (if they actually existed in the old days), would have been quite raunchy for their time.

    

Lots of old watches and clocks and figurines and bangles.

    

Paintbrushes and chopsticks and boxes and (at the centre of the lower image) little folding things emblazoned with drawings of people doing naughty physical things.  When I took one of my Aunties BS (and others) here for a visit, she purchased one of the little red boxes, only to discover later that the inside of the box contained some of the same naughty drawings.  Hadn’t noticed that before, she claimed …

    

Old coins and bottles and statues and multi-lingual copies of “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung” aka the little red book.

    

It’s a place where Communist imagery meets blatant commercialism … possibly best expressed in this fetching Obama T-shirt.

The market is famous for hard bargaining … itself a fakery of a sort.  Buyers come here expecting dramatic cuts to the asking price, and sellers jack the prices up accordingly.  Negotiations occur through rapid-fire price offers, sighing and guffawing, hand-wringing and money-flashing, even fake tears (it’s true: I have seen it).

But, in the end, both emerge winners.  One has extracted a good sum of money for a mass-produced “antique”.  And the other, knowing full well that this was the case, has a cheap souvenir and a good story to tell.

Tianjin / I do like to be beside the riverside

Tianjin is found on the Hai River (literally “Sea River”), a major river of northern China, or rather, a confluence of many waterways, both natural and artificially constructed.  The Hai River – called the ‘mother river’ of Tianjin – is of course, the reason for the city’s being.  Tianjin is the nearest port to Beijing and thus has always been a key centre for trade, within China and internationally.  It is China’s fifth largest city and one of four self-governing city-states.

In most Chinese cities, the river forms the basis for the urban skyline – Shanghai is a great example of this, with the Bund comprising a line of historic stone buildings on one side of the Huangpu, while the crayzy-modern skyscrapers of Pudong stretch along the riverbank on the opposite side.  But, the river itself is mostly functional space, a well-sailed path for the movement of people and goods alike.  Chinese cities just haven’t reach that stage of development where waterside restaurants are more valuable to the economy than barges transporting cement and construction scrap.

Even the buildings sometimes have a strange relationship to the water.  To ensure access to sunlight, there are very strict orientation regulations for residential buildings – meaning that in some cases, buildings present their skinny edge to the best view (a principle that would confound, if not infuriate, even the most open-minded of Australian property developers).

In Tianjin, there has been a huge effort by government to create an accessible and attractive waterfront for the city.  A generous pedestrian and cycle (and occasional motor vehicle, of course) path runs along the water edge, providing a transition from street to water through ramps, stairs and terraces, and jammed full of trees and landscape.  For the sake of comparison, here is what a lot of the Shanghai waterfront looks like.

And jammed full of people too.   You can actually get very close to the water, so that means people end up engaging in all sorts of activity – even if the signs suggest that you shouldn’t.

There is plenty of fishing, as well as the subsequent selling of the catch.

I am sure that in some landscape architect’s mind, these large stone terraces were wondrous places that would accommodate civilised contemplation and conversation … not bright tubs full of undersized fish and distressed turtles.

Nor, taxi drivers washing their hub caps.  Still, as a place of community activity and interaction, it functioned perfectly.

It was heartening to see loads of older people using the spaces along the river.  This guy – 70 years old at least – passed me so quickly on his rollerblades that I didn’t get a chance to take a decent photo.  He had just shouted a few ‘zaos!’ (‘mornings!’) to bunch of people practising their waltzing.

These guys were braving the slightly chilly conditions to go for a dip in the water.  The skinny one was taking his time psyching up to jump in, attracting a crowd (along the river bank and up at street level) who seemed to hand out both encouragement and ridicule.

And there were all the usual tai-chi-ers, sword dancers, head-tappers, backwards-walkers, top-of-the-lungs vocal-exercisers and aimless strollers.  Oh, and guys fixing wooden boats.

At one point, I crossed a bridge to find that the other side of the river was vastly different – a narrow footpath, minimal landscape, buildings pushed back behind a four lane road.  It was a good reminder of what most cities are like along their waterfront and to be thankful that in Tinajin, at least they got it half right.

Life at 350 kilometres per hour

Yowsers!  It’s been a long time between posts!  The Doctor has been busy … getting some projects finished off, making a trip home and then hosting some of the Bullshit Clan for a while.  While the family were here, we took a trip to Hangzhou, the preferred weekend destination of the Shanghainese (and a good percentage of the 20 million were there when we went, it seems).  The quickest way to get there is on the newish express train – covering the 180 kilometre journey in about 40 minutes.

Such a fast speed – 350 km/h for most of the journey – does not lend itself to photography (not with my soon-to-be-replaced low-end camera at least).  Nonetheless, I sat lens-to-window, documenting the landscape as it rapidly changed before me.

Don’t be misled by the use of the word ‘landscape’ though.  The two cities are basically joined, with vast stretches of housing, industry and intensive farming between them.  The transition from one to the next can be quite abrupt, with multi-storey residential buildings overlooking vege crops or nestled against coal-fired power plants.  The housing towers are pretty monotonous, with row after row of identical structures.

Similarly, lines of greenhouses and cultivated land have an almost hypnotic affect, flicking past at great speed.  Big cities have big appetites I guess.

All types of human activity were on display.

And as you’d expect, roads as well as rail lines – multi-stacked interchanges and highways, complete (some strangely empty) and under construction.   Through much of the journey, we were shadowed by a major highway, marked by massive billboards, and carrying traffic that moved at a relative snail’s pace.

And, on the edges of Hangzhou, typical Chinese suburbia.  These buildings – some single dwellings – seem to be inspired by both Chinese and European architectural traditions.  We used to call this post-Modernism, right?

And in no time we arrive. And in no time, this will all change.  In a year or two, the same journey will be completely different.

 

2 wheels, good. 3 wheels, crayzy.

China and bikes go together.  Well, at least, they used to … Just like most places undergoing hectic development, in China the joys of cycling are being eschewed for the supposed joys of motorised movement.  Where once the streets teemed with bikes, cyclists now jostle for space beside trucks and cars and electric scooters.  No wonder, then, that congestion and air pollution are sharply on the rise.   That said, there are still heaps of bikes here, used by the young and old, for commuting or just getting around.

Coming out of winter, I can understand the lack of interest in cycling sometimes. Imagine how cold one’s botbot would be on these bikes.

These hand warmers are pretty a pretty common sight, especially on scooters.  Many people fashion their own version, usually from sticky tape and cardboard scraps.

Here is a typical Chinese bicycle, sitting outside the front door to our apartment building.  This style is still being made, despite its heavy frame and slightly dodgy braking mechanism.  Where once it was safe to just leave bikes sitting around, people are now very conscious of locking their bikes to something.  Supposedly there is a lot of targeted theft – mostly from foreigners – especially as the socio-economic inequality of Shanghai widens.

    

Bikes are still used a lot for deliveries.  The one on the left has a refrigerated section for cold stuff.  The one on the right is actually from Seoul (and it is a scooter, of course) but I’m pretty sure it is the biggest pizza storage thingy I’ve ever seen.

They are also used for waste collection.  Every morning you can hear them doing the rounds, using a loud-speaker to blast out a recorded list of collectibles … computer parts, electronics, Styrofoam …

The Styrofoam guys are kinda famous here and you see loads of tourists running along the street to take their photo.  Their stacks can grow to ludicrously large volumes, at least double the amount in this photo.

Folding bikes are pretty popular too.  And some of them are tiny.

    

And, hire bikes are increasingly popular too.  I guess that as general bike usage drops, people require less committal access to bicycles.

    

There are some pretty amazing cycle contraptions here.  This guy had a modified wheelchair/cycle, with hand pedals and steering wheel.  He spent a good amount of time circling around so he could gawk at the group of people I was with, so I didn’t feel bad peeling off a few shots of him in return.  (Please note the Shanghai Pyjamas on display in the first photo as well).

And this one is something else … That’d be an office chair strapped to an electric bike.  Built for comfort, not speed.  While I am not fond of the aesthetic outcome, I am loving the ingenuity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Unfinished City

A city never gets finished.  It keeps getting built and rebuilt, piece by piece, changing to reflect the people who live in it.  For me, it’s a really exciting (not to mention humbling) thought.

As you’d expect (given my residency in China as well as my field of work), I get to see loads of construction sites.  To seems that almost every street in Shanghai has a massive construction effort going on, and if it doesn’t, it’ll have in the next month or so.  Buildings are knocked down and constructed at an amazing pace.

Here’s a good example – a hotel that got built last year in Changsha – 15 storeys shot up in 6 days.  An amazing video (click on the image above for the link).

Mostly though, it seems that things are getting knocked down quickly.  Just on the end of our street, most of a block has been demolished but as yet, there is no sign that anything will be built there.

Interestingly, a number of the small apartment buildings across the site have been retained and appear to be inhabited still.  I am hoping that the plan is to keep these older buildings and integrate them into the new development, but I am probably being naive.   They are in pretty bad shape and I can’t see developers seeing much potential in keeping them, especially when they can easily be replaced with a few high-rise apartments, an income-generating Starbucks and a windswept plaza or two.

It is a shame though, as in this area at least, historic buildings are valued by many.  That is, ex-pats looking to live in “authentic” Shanghainese digs for a while …

It’s pretty common to see people living in the midst of construction sites.   As the government commonly moves people out of their homes to make way for redevelopment, I guess many residents aren’t quite ready to relocate.  Rather than be dislocated from their established social networks or favourite wet market or place of work, they stay living amongst the stacks of reinforcement rods and demolition refuse for as long as possible.  A fervent disregard for common-sense safety is not uncommon here either.  I like to call it NoH+S.

Sometimes, you get quick a good peek into sites, like this one in Hangzhou.  I am wondering what was going on with the structural engineer.  That is some crayzy beamwork, my friend.

The good news is that some of the historic facade is being retained, reinforced so it doesn’t collapse (by accident or otherwise) during construction and will be integrated into the finished product.  Even though this is pretty rare, there is very little waste generally, with all materials carefully divided into type, reused on site or picked up by recyclers.  At least the third R is being embraced!

Not so for this building … Seeing it carefully shrouded in (bamboo) scaffolding, I wondered whether the plan was to keep and refurbish it.  It was quite tall (8-10 storeys) and in good condition, and by my use of past tense, it obviously was demolished soon after I took this photo.  Proof, at least, that I can be a little naive at times.

Oh yeah, in case anyone is in doubt, they do use steel scaffolding here too.

A few times I have been fortunate (?) enough to got onto some construction sites.  They are pretty captivating places … swarming with hundreds of workers (except the exact moment that I took this photo…) and speeding vehicles and huge piles of construction materials and demolition waste.  I visited this site by accident, looking for my client’s office which was on the other side of the site – a short 15 minute walk away.   I would have loved to hang around and take lots of photos, but we were running late for our presentation at that point and there was a family of angry-looking dogs blocking our path.

The same client took us to another one of their sites.  Set on the edge of town as well as the edge of a mountain, it was tagged for residential development.  All the existing buildings (farmers’ cottages) had been torn down, except for the home of a family who remained on site as pseudo-caretakers/security guards.  Along with another angry-dog family.

They were actually very welcoming to the clipboard-carrying foreigners, even though we were part of the redevelopment process that was taking them from their land.  They had just finished their annual peach harvest, and after picking and offloading 300 tonnes of stone fruit, were happy for us to grab whatever we wanted from their orchard.

I asked our client whether they planned to keep the little house in the photo above.  His slight smile made me realise that once again, my naivety was getting the better of me.

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.

Carpet-bombing in the new year

Let it be said (and I am sure I am not the first to do so) that lunar new year in Shanghai is crayzy.

Deceptively so … a few days before the year ends, the city becomes almost empty, as people make the trek back to their hometown to celebrate the holiday with their family.  Shops close.  Work pressures give way to long lunch breaks.  Streets and footpaths become pleasantly roomy.

But then, as the new year is just about to tick over, things go totally bananas.  Every street in the city looks kinda like this …

The custom is to get out in the street and let off fireworks – another good occasion to scare away those bad spirits.

Generally, it’s low fuss.  People just pop out (often wearing their bedclothes) to light some eardrum-bursting crackers and to throw some sparklers around.  Streets are given over to the activity with cars and buses having to carefully navigate around the fireworks as they explode.

We were at a pub in the evening and a few of the staff (and some very drunk patrons) did the honours on the footpath outside.   No lost fingers, no spilt drinks, thankfully.

When you account for millions of people doing this, the cumulative effect is pretty huge.   People often liken it to a bombing campaign – deafening blasts and flashing lights all over the place, followed by a toxic haze that descends over the city.  I couldn’t get the taste of firecracker out of my lungs for hours …

And the streets are filled with the debris of all this fun-making.  Boxes (containing up to 100 ‘shots’ that hopefully have all exploded) and shreds of red paper lie scattered everywhere.

I got up earlyish in the morning to take some photos of all this mess but was amazed to find that thousands of people had been out in the street cleaning while I slept.  The streets were spotless.

I did however find that my neighbours had been burning money again.  Fake money, obviously…

And we made a trip to the local fruit shop (one of the few businesses that stayed open for the night) to buy a new year gift for our gateman and his family.   A box of oranges (certainly not chocolates) is the done thing here.

 

Welcome to the year of the rabbit!
It’s one of the better years, apparently.

Snowing me, snowing you

My journey to work was slow today.  We got another big dump of snow last night so I have to tread carefully (for fear of slipping) and stop to take lots of photos. 

This is the view from our living room. 

And just outside the front door.  At this point, I was considering a sickie.

And the street outside.

On my stop-off for coffee on Anfu Road.  I was hoping for better framing but my fingers were snap frozen and I was balancing camera, coffee cup and umbrella.

And another yellow vehicle.  I say: if you come equipped with a scoop and it’s snowing, get on the road and do something useful…

Julu Road, just near the Metro station.

And proof (via the crayzy Nanpu Big Bridge) that I am actually in Shanghai.

We even have a snowman welcoming people to our office.  He seems to be smoking one of those pen-cigarettes.

One way to please your parents …

Yuyuan (Yu Gardens) is one Shanghai’s most visited places.  It was built over a period of 18 years during the 16th century by Pan Yunduan, a wealthy government officer of the Ming Dynasty.  It was specially built for his parents, so that that they could enjoy a quiet and relaxed old age (“yu” meaning peace and health).

The Chinese word for landscape is “shuishan” which literally translates as “water-mountain”.  And just as much of China’s natural landscape is defined by these two elements, so are the constructed landscapes of the country.  The traditional garden replicates the randomness and irregularity of nature, with a central lake ringed by rocky formations, and a scattering of small buildings and pavilions that each house a particular function or activity.

And unlike Western landscapes, Chinese gardens were very much lived in, with daily rituals and gatherings, art and performance, late-night drinking sessions, and discussions about philosophy and politics.

After centuries of private ownership, ransacking by the British and the French, destruction and rebuilding, Yuyuan became open to the public in the mid-twentieth century.  It attracts thousand of visitors daily, but I think the cold weather kept most of them away when I visited.  Which made the exploration of its multitude of spaces, passageways and quirky doorways all the more enjoyable.

Discovering Shanghai’s Jewish history

It was John Safran who first alerted me to Shanghai’s Jewish population – in his TV show Race Relations, within which he sought to reconcile his desire for Asian women with his mother’s insistence that he marry within the Jewish faith. Landing himself one of these “Jewrasians” was apparently the perfect solution. Nonetheless, the Jewish history of Shanghai, although relatively short in Chinese terms, is another fascinating layer of the city. We recently did a tour of Jewish Shanghai, along with some visiting friends, guided by a guy with endless knowledge and enthusiasm for the subject.

The first significant wave of Jewish arrival in Shanghai was during the mid 19th century, from Persia and Russia (mostly traders and businessmen, but later many fleeing the Russian Revolution of the early 20th century). The Baghdadi Jews were particularly successful, especially the cotton-trading Sassoon family, who arrived in Shanghai via India. By the turn of the twentieth century, the family had moved into real estate, owning almost 2000 properties, including much of Nanjing Road. The grandson of the original settlers, Victor Sassoon, was renowned as one of Shanghai’s bon vivants (read: pants-man) and as the developer of the famous Cathay (now Peace) Hotel at the intersection of the Bund and Nanjing Road. It’s the one with the pointy dark roof, from this photo in the 1940s.

Many of the family’s employees also became successful in business. The Kadoorie brothers set themselves up in real estate, banking and rubber, later relocating to Hong Kong where the family still owns the electricity system and the Peak Tram. Another, Silas Hardoon, also in real estate, owned one of the largest personal estates in China, where he and his Eurasian wife (Luo Jialang) raised a multi-cultural family of 11 adopted children. This house has been turned into the “Children Palace” where under-privileged kids can hang out and have fun.

Many Jews arrived in Shanghai in the late 1930s as “stateless refugees”. Having established an International Settlement area in the city and acting under mostly autonomous rule, the city allowed the relatively free (no passport required) arrival of people from anywhere in the world. As the rest of the world closed their borders to Jews fleeing Nazi persecution in Germany, Shanghai became a safe haven.

World War Two lead to more restricted movement of people out of Europe. The Chinese Consul General in Vienna, Ho Feng Shan, secretly issued exit visas to thousands of Austrian Jews up until 1940 – perhaps as he was willfully acting outside his role, his status as the “Chinese Schindler” is not widely recognized here. Better known is the Japanese Consul in Poland, Chiune Sugihara, who approved thousands of visas to Japan to Jews, knowing that they would stop their overland journey short in Shanghai. Shanghai’s Jewish population grew to about 30,000.

With the Japanese occupation of Shanghai in 1943, the Restricted Sector for Stateless Refugees (aka the “Shanghai Ghetto”) was established in the northern part of the city. Initially, people were free to move in and out of the sector, but were subject to a curfew, and suffered through poverty, food shortages, crowded housing and disease. 

   

As the war continued, the Japanese rule of the ghetto became more oppressive and violent. Although Germany started to apply pressure on the Japanese to hand over the Shanghai Jews (to allow their execution), the Japanese resisted. After the war, most Jews left the city. Businessmen sought the greener pastures of Hong Kong and other cities, and others relocated to places such as Australia, Canada, the US and South America.

On the tour, we visited the house where our friend’s grandparents lived before they moved to Sydney.

We also visited the Ohel Moshe Synagogue. Built in 1907, it became unused only about 30 years later, and has now been converted into a Jewish museum. Last year, it held its first bar mitzvah in 60 years.

Huoshan Park is the only public memorial to the Ghetto. 

It was a fascinating tour …. it lead me into parts of Shanghai I had never seen and into histories I never knew existed.  And it was great to share it with a friend whose personal history is part of the story.

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 …

 

Tripping the Light Cheesetastic

Lonely Planet’s website lists it as the 4th worst “thing to do” in Shanghai (just ahead of a restaurant that apparently forgets to bring your meals). It is derided by locals and visitors alike.  It has come to symbolise the worst of Chinese “creativity” and “innovation”.  But I reckon it’s OK!  Yeah, I am sure you are all surprised to hear that….

The Bund Sightseeing Tunnel is a 500 metre long tunnel below the Huangpu River, linking the two halves of the city. It is in fact the only way for people to get between Puxi and Pudong without the aid of a motor car or Metro carriage.  There are two bridges further south of the city, but pedestrians are banned from one and are required to buy a ticket to cross the other (via its structural arch, like BridgeClimb in Sydney).  The Tunnel links the Bund with the Pearl Tower … approximately at least.

When Mao Xiao was visiting, she was keen to experience the Tunnel, so we planned an evening (dinner near the Bund and cocktails in the Jin Mao Tower) around using this handy form of transport.  And it was an experience like no other.

The journey is made in little capsules that trundle along a fixed rail at a steady pace, but not so steady angle.  The show begins as soon as the capsule doors glide closed, with an intense strobing of lights that I am sure is aimed at filtering out anyone prone to seizures or second thoughts.

And then onward, through 7 minutes of flashing light effects and projected images, accompanied by kooky music and voice-overs, announcing random ideas – “meteor shower!” “lava flow!” – in soothing tones.

The overall effect is simultaneously amusing and disorienting, finished in very little time, yet somehow tedious.  Totally cheesy, but not quite cheesy enough.

In some ways, I feel bad revealing what it is like, because the best part of the experience for us was not knowing what to expect (and kinda having low expectations…)   Luckily we didn’t buy return tickets.   But then, after a few cocktails (or something a little stronger), the ride might be a whole lot better.

Suzhou / canals, gardens, silkworms

We’ve just had a visit from my big sister and brother-in-law and were keen to show them something outside Shanghai.  People go on a bit about the canal towns, so we jumped on the fast train to Suzhou (in case anyone is wondering, it’s pronounced like “su-jo”).  I mentioned our deluxe train ride in an earlier post.

Suzhou is one of China’s best known ancient cities, the capital of the Wu Kingdom for 8 centuries and a key part of the historic development of the modern Yangtze River economic zone.  It is famed for it’s network of canals, historic gardens and as a centre for silk production.  Limiting ourselves to a day trip (and starting late due to a little sleep-in and issues getting train tickets) didn’t give us a lot of time to explore and understand the city.

But, what we saw was great.  We spent most of the time walking around the old part of the city, through historic streets and along the canals, over old stone bridges and past delightful little buildings.  We walked for ages, but I feel like we barely scratched the surface – we only got to see one garden and no silk worms (there is a whole bunch in one of the museums).

But we got to see lots of tiny streets …

… and canals …

… and bridges …

… and people just doing their thing …

… and buildings, old and new(ish), falling apart and spruced up …

… and just not enough time …

I am already planning a return visit!

I Heart Bobo

So, some workfriends and I went to see a play the other day – an adaptation of Hans Christian’s Andersen’s Snow Queen.  I had forgotten that HCA wrote kids’ stories, but I guess that explains why at least half the audience was under five and loudly saying all sorts of things like “That’s his nipple!” and “Are they real cherries?  Are they … REAL … CHERRIES?!!”

One of our group arrived just as the show was about to start, and after she had found a spot for herself and her oversized handbag, another of our workfriends leant over to me to whisper three magic words: “Bobo is here”.  That phrase helped me through the next two and half hours of amateur theatre.

Meet Bobo.  Bobo is quite possibly the smallest and cutest dog I have ever met (with apologies to Herman and Merlin and Teddy and all the others…)  Bobo could almost fit in a teacup.

I think that Bobo has more changes of clothes than I do.  This is a widespread phenomenon in Shanghai, where dogs are treated better than children.  I’ve seen all sort of doggy sweaters and pants, hats and scraves, even mini-Converse shoes.

This is what Bobo wore for Halloween this year.  It’s a pumpkin suit, in case you didn’t realise.

    

This is Bobo’s preferred means of transport.

And here is Bobo deeply contemplating the meaning of something, perhaps life, perhaps the next costume change.  Bobo’s sense of focus got her through the whole of the Snow Queen without a yelp or attempted escape from her carrybag.

And the name, you wonder?  ‘Bo’ means wave, ‘bobo’ is like a sine wave, which apparently is like the shape of a lady’s chest, especially an ample one.   Which for a small fluffy dog makes sense, doesn’t it…?

I guess some things just don’t need to make sense, hey Bobo?

Notes:
Thanks to Bobo’s Mama for the photos!
I will remove any comments that poke fun at my little friend and/or question the value of making this post, OK!

A daytrip to Wee Britain

There seemed to be many reasons for me to visit Thames Town.  I really enjoyed my trip to Holland Village (despite the emptiness and facadism).  I had another urban designer friend – let’s call her Mao Xiao –visiting and I thought she would appreciate seeing another side of the city. It reminded me of Wee Britain from the brilliant Arrested Development (appearing in Season Three, but for those who haven’t seen it, I totally recommend watching all two-and-a-half seasons).  Plus, I just like weird things.

Like the other nine new city centres of Shanghai, Thames Town is located on the outskirts of the city, not too close to public transport and themed around an international style.  Thames Town of course is modelled on a kinda-Victorian-era English township.

As a replica, it’s pretty good.  As with Holland Village, the streets are smaller and more friendly than the typical Shanghai street.

There are cute pitched roof houses.

There are little courtyards and plazas.

There is a Main Square with little shop fronts (albeit empty, again similar to Holland Village) with vaguely English names.

There are red phone boxes.

There are rendered bricks and chimneys (not sure if they work or if they need chimney-sweeps, which would be TOTALLY British).

There are even a scattering of statues of famous English people.  I saw Winston Churchill lurking outside a shop in the main square, Mary Poppins down at the waterfront, and in the most prominent position of all, Harry Potter.  I imagine that in China, he probably is the most recognised English person.

The whole place would be Prince Charles’ fantasy.  Google “Poundbury” if you don’t get what I am saying.  Alas, like Poundbury, like Holland Village, Thames Town is a great example of failed planning.  Disconnected from transport, overly sterile and stylistically forced, the whole place is lacking in persons as well as personality.  It seemed that no-one lived there, with only a few shops (convenience stores and real estate agents) operating and relatively few people in the streets.

As if to reinforce the whole ‘theme park’ vibe, Thames Town has become a popular backdrop for wedding photos.  In China, wedding photography is huge.  Before the actual ceremony, couples spend days getting photos taken, using many elaborate costumes and different locations, then Photoshopping the results to within an inch of unreality.  Sometimes thousands of dollars and hours of anxiety are spent completing the task.

So, the streets of Thames Town were littered with dozens of young couples, photographers, video crews and costumers in tow.

They pose against the buildings and spaces of the city.

They smile and pout and smoulder.

They saunter past each other without acknowledgement, except perhaps for a sideways glance to compare costumes or future partners.

They fill the church yard (the ‘church’ I think may actually conceal a huge exhaust stack for the public car park below – the upper ‘windows’ are metal louvres).

     

They like bright pink apparently.

I had decided that I would make it my mission to visit every one of the nine new cities, only to recently discover that the government has canned the whole exercise (apparently after the failure of Thames Town and Holland Village).  Sad for lovers of theme parks, but good for the city I guess.

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.

Exploring Shanghai’s Nether regions

Sorry, I just can’t avoid the fake stuff.  After Xintiandi, Cool Docks and Macau, you would think that I’d had enough.  But, The Master of the Map came to Shanghai for a visit and he likes to see weird urban places, like motorway interchanges and fake Dutch villages.  Shanghai has loads of the former, and thankfully, just one of the latter.

The Shanghai government is the process of creating nine new town centres at the periphery of the city, to house a growing population while responding to the lifestyle aspirations of a burgeoning middle class.   As Shanghai is an international city, it was deemed a good idea to style these new centres around other parts of the world … Thames Town (aka Wee Britain) is complete and quite successful, German Town is underway, soon to followed by Spanish, Italian, Scandinavian and North American equivalents.

So, we took a day trip to Holland Village.  It’s quite a journey – an hour on the motorway, or a 45 minute Metro journey plus a half-hour walk.  Already, it was feeling suspiciously unEuropean.  Europeans have dense cities with good public transport, right?

The Village is half complete, with a main street, apartments, parkland and lakes already built, and semi-attached big houses (they call them villas here) under construction.  The original master plan was done by a Dutch firm and, according to the marketing material, modeled on Kattenbroek, a suburb of Amersfoort in the (real) Netherlands.

Master of the Map was kind enough to provide me with this aerial comparison:

This is the original Kattenbroek.  Note large circular road.

And, crayzytimes, here is Holland Village.  I guess I can see the similarity … from a plane at least.  The main street runs kinda north-south between the circle and the lake, with apartments to its east, with expensive villas contained entirely within the circle (well, almost-circle).  Just to heighten the sense of exclusivity (nay, separation), there is also a 3 metre high fence, topped by an electric wire, and a canal running along the inside edge of the circle road.  No such barriers in Kattenbroek, I’d reckon.

We managed to catch a glimpse into the villa enclave.  Note vaguely Dutch stylings.  Note security fence.  Note marketing billboard showing stereotypical Dutch countryside scene.

The villas are selling for RMB35,000/sqm, which would equate to about USD1.5mn and is top of the range for Shanghai.  Interestingly, very few have garages.  Parking is on the streetside.  I guess, with the bland monotony of all the houses, one’s car may become the only way to express one’s financial health (or perhaps I meant individuality…)

The main street is probably as close to Dutch as you are going to get in Shanghai, and it’s actually not a bad place.  The building height:separation ratio is good, the footpaths are wide and it’s stacked full of shopfronts.  It’s just very empty.  Retail spaces were mostly unoccupied, with the few businesses closed on the day we visited.  Granted, it was a holiday weekend and a gloomy afternoon weather-wise, but according to the sales guy we spoke to, this part of the development is fully sold-out.

Although each building is identical in plan, they have managed to create a typically wacky Dutch style, with stepped gables, mansard roofs and silly cornices.

Sometimes it gets a bit too wacky, with one building starting to overlap onto the next one.  Now, THAT is kinda European!

It is all a bit skin-deep though.  This building seems to be missing its roof.

I was pleased to see, despite the centralised approach to planning and the consistency of the building design (all very European), that the Chinese spirit remains indomitable.  Bricked-in windows and external air-conditioning units would never be allowed in the real Holland!  At least they revealed that indeed, someone was living here.

At the end of the main street sits this grand structure.  Government building? I asked the sales rep.  No, no, shopping centre, of course.

And next door, a church, but I forgot to ask whether it is used for churchy uses or something else.

And of course, a windmill.  Holland Village has become a popular backdrop for wedding photos and the windmill is now used as the office of a specialist photographic business.

Apart from that, Holland Village really seems to be struggling.  Perhaps the European sensibilities of social diversity, public interaction and transport integration don’t match the aspirations of the target market (ie the upper middle class).  Or perhaps, people are wary of the blatant superficiality, wondering what lurks behind the slapped-on building facades and the promise of a better (European) lifestyle.

As we trudged back to the station, we passed through Gao Qiao, a vibrant (Chinese-style) suburban centre, full of restaurants and bars, markets, cars and motor scooters, people and the odd lap dog.  By distinct contrast, Holland Village sits (literally and otherwise) empty.

 

Crayzy bright things in the park

The other day, I popped on my new Feiyues (an old-school Chinese sneaker brand that translates as ‘flying forward’, once standard issue for school kids but enjoying a second life as a slightly ironic fashion piece) and went to look at some sculptures.  For 2 months, a park in Jing’an (just near our place) has become an outdoor art space, perhaps coinciding with Expo, but certainly showcasing a bunch of sculptors from around the world.

The park contains a Japanese-style pavilion … all precast concrete and timber beams, its quite a lovely building and a great space for some of the more contemplative scultpures.

These massive metal pieces slowly turn in the breeze (above head height, of course…)

And speaking of heads …

As I have observed before, the local artists seem to tackle a variety of ‘izzues’ with their work.  This was a little person blowing up a foot with a few too many toes.

And – OMG! – a few too many Doctors!

This one was pretty spectacular, like a huge blob of metal hovering above, and oozing onto, the footpath.  It also had a little shiny bear perched on top.  It spoke to me, but  I am not sure what it was saying…

Naughty Boy, however, was giving some clear messages.  This 8-foot infant was balanced upon a row of metal Pepsi bottles and brandished an equally shiny machine gun.  I have cropped these from the image, lest I glamourise two very bad habits.

The centrepiece of the park was a bright and brilliant piece, aptly named Red Beacon. 

After all this walking, I discovered that my Feiyues had been hard at work, creating a humungous festering blister on my heel that is forcing me into thong-wearing for the next few days.   Red, oozing, disturbing … it may just qualify as modern art.

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 – front door to jamban

Inside, our new apartment is pretty styley but also a bit odd.  Some good points: timber floorboards, old metal windows and doors, great natural light and cross ventilation (not that we have tested it during these crayzy summer days).  The furnishings, I have to admit, are not really to our taste (the apartment came fully furnished).  A strange hybrid of French provincial and Chinese historic.  The landlord is probably having an each way bet on potential tenants – either a wealthy local or a romantic expat.  The sofa is way too big and quite ugly.

One feature is the fancy drinks cabinet (perhaps it has a proper name, but I don’t know it …)  From its closed position… 

one simply pushes the front panel …

to (ta da!) reveal a very generous amount of alcohol storage.  More than we would ever need anyway…

We also have a Grandfather clock.

And this mushroom sculpure thingy.  While we are going to ask the landlord to take anyway the sofa, the ashtray stand and a few other items, we are definitely going to keep this one. 

The main bedroom has a good view over trees.

And the kitchen looks over the adjacent gardens and neighbouring building.  The buildings are much closer than in a modern complex, but the landscape and thoughtful placement of windows allow for a sense of privacy.  The other day, however, I did spy one of our across-the-courtyard neighbours watering his balcony plants – in the “old style”, if you know what I mean…

The bathroom is kinda Parisien.

All the way down to the toilet, which has been fitted with a crayzy water-spurting lid.  Like a poor man’s bidet – a poor man who doesn’t mind bum grime getting trapped in all the gaps created by the badly fitted seat.  Way too European for my liking …

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.

Our old place (bland but clean)

So we have found a new place to live.  But first, a short memorial to the old apartment.  For all my complaints about Pudong (roads too big, everything too far apart, not many fun places to hang out), the apartment was pretty good.

It was in a typical modern Chinese apartment building, about 35 storeys tall and in a complex of about 8 similar buildings.  Like all complexes here (or as I prefer to say “compounds” – it just sounds meaner), the buildings are set back from the street and bounded by a high security fence.  An active streetscape it does not make.

Our apartment (17th floor, 2 bed, 2 bath) was simple and clean.  Probably it’s best feature, though, was its view over the adjacent gardens and between buildings to the river and city beyond.

Targeting the Western (as well as the Westernised local) market, the layout was typical pattern book stuff and the furnishings all IKEA stock standard.

The only quirk was that the kitchen had no oven – something that is typically missing in Chinese homes.  Benchtop cookers are pretty popular.  I used this to cook toast (oh yeah, toasters are pretty rare too).

Anyway, not much to say.  These pics attest to the neutrality of the place (and my neutrality of feeling towards it…)

My Walk to Work (Version 2)

While the office has moved, my home (the company apartment) has not.  This means that my journey to work has changed somewhat – from a mostly pleasant stroll through Pudong to a multi-modal cross-river journey.

This means I now catch a ferry each morning.  Ferries are a critical part of linking the two halves of Shanghai – while the Metro and major roadways run under the river, there are no bridges in the main part of  the city.  Bicycles are banned from the Metro, as well as the road tunnels (along with motorcycles and scooters, and apparently, most public buses).  Generally, where major streets dive below the river, a ferry service is also provided to carry people from one side to the other.

It’s a nice way to see the city each morning and evening.  Shanghai is very much a skyline city – with the buildings of the Bund and Pudong stretching along the two sides of the river.  The ferries are pretty low-key, flat-bottomed and open-sided, with huge steel gates that are slid open manually by one of the many shiphands.

The majority of passengers arrive by motor scooter, some by bicycle and a few like me on foot.  There is always much jostling for the best position by the scooters, so that as soon as the gate opens at the end of the journey, they can be first out of the ferry.  As the ferry starts to dock, scooters are switched on and revved, horns blasted and complaints muttered – it really is quite deafening in such a (semi-)enclosed space.

From the wharf on the Puxi side, it’s a 20 minute walk to the office – fine most of the year, but in this week’s 35+ degrees weather, it’s a little rude!  Running parallel to the river, Waimu Lu is an old industrial street – presumedly it once buzzed with dockside activity throughout the day, but is no somewhat desolate (the peace only broken by a stream of scooters disgorging from the ferry wharves every 10 minutes).

Unfortunately, the river side of Waimu Lu is fronted by buildings and/or massive concrete walls – for water retention (as explained in the previous post) or to protect more sensitive uses along the water (ranging from yacht clubs to waste treatment plants).  There are plans to redevelop the waterfront, to make it publicly accessible and more attractive, so it is likely that the street will change dramatically and rapidly.

But, hopefully, some of the older building stock will be retained and reused.  I think their scale and materiality is really appealing.

I fear though, that in the rush toward progress, Shanghai is not quite ready to place a value in this kind of ‘heritage’.  Just like every other place in the world, I guess…

Sydney / It changes too!

I’ve come back to Sydney for a few weeks to see people, collect my possessions (including you-know-who) and make a more permanent move to Shanghai.  I also needed, it seems, to catch a nasty cold – after all of my climate leaping and overworking, I’m surprised I have avoided sickness so far.

I expected that in a few short months, Sydney wouldn’t have changed much – especially now that I am used to the break-neck speed of development in Shanghai – and generally that was true.

I was happy to rediscover some of Sydney’s great food, including the massive plates of Thai food I can get around the corner from my house.  I have been missing Thai food a little…

And one thing I won’t tire of is the amazing view when you step from a train at Circular Quay Station.  OK, this image is a bit cheaty … it was cold and wintry when I visited last week, so I grabbed this summertime pic from the internet.

But, not all things have stayed static.  For as long as I have lived in the neighbourhood (and presumedly for many years longer), there has been a butcher located at the end of my street.  It was officially called M and A Quality Meats, but also had the more poetic name of Meatbusters.  Some mornings, I would be greeted by the sight (and smell) of whole animal carcasses being carried from the back of a truck into the shop.

And now, it is gone, replaced by a second hand clothing store.  A sign of gentrification and the growing predominance of supermarkets over local shops, for sure.  But to this vegetarian, it is also a sweet sign of progress!

Our Smoking New Studio

My work is relocating very shortly, from our current place in Pudong to the other side of the river.  We have found a fantastic building (a former factory for Happiness Motorcycles, a famous Chinese brand) in a location that real estate agents might refer to as “up and coming”.  It’s located close to the Nanpu Bridge, near the Expo site, on the edge of the old city.  In Shanghai, whole neighbourhoods can change almost overnight, so we may not need to wait too long for the cafes and mini-galleries to arrive.

From the outside, the industrial character of the site (now named Dream Wharf) is intact.   Hopefully, that will loosen up a bit too…

But inside, it’s super.  A big space, lots of natural light and a soaring timber lined roof.  Our clever interiors people have done a very smart and sensitive fitout, based around collaboration and interaction (we have more chairs in meeting rooms than at desks…) and with a strong focus on suatainability.

I particularly like the meeting spaces that are located sneakily above two storage rooms – a great vantage point of the whole space.  Am tempted to buy a megaphone and position myself in one of these spaces as an office overlord, giving instructions from on high (just like the olden days…)

This morning, we had eight monks from the Jade Buddha Temple come to bless the new office, do some chanting and officiate over the suckling pig.  It was a good luck date, so the opening had to occur today, even though we haven’t actually moved in (and the chairs are still covered in plastic…)  I think it will be a fun place to work.

How to sell 1.4 billion movie tickets

Today I saw a poster for the remake of The Karate Kid, the famous movie from the 1980s which I never really counted as one of my favourites.  The only sports film I have really enjoyed is Bring It On  (it’s about cheerleaders and that was a joke).

The Karate Kid reboot combines elements of the original film (naughty kid learns martial arts from wise old master) and its sequel (naughty kid visits the homeland of the master to further hone skills).  An interesting change, however, is that the master is now Chinese and that much of the action takes place in China – as opposed to Japan in the original.

Perhaps Hollywood could not find a suitable Japanese actor for the role – although this didn’t stop anyone casting a Chinese actor (Gong Li) in the role of the Geisha with the memoirs.  Perhaps Jackie Chan was looking to expand his acting portfolio beyond kooky sidekick.  Perhaps there is something else going on here …

China played a pivotal role in one of last year’s blockbuster films, 2012.  With the flooding of the entire planet imminent, the governments of the world turn to China to build 8 massive ships that will save a select group of people. Well, China makes everything else in the world, right?

As the tsunamis hit (wiping out all the Tibetan monks in the Himalayas, who must have missed out on tickets for the ships), world leaders have a change of heart and allow all of the Chinese workers to be saved as well.  2012 was wildly popular here in China, especially as it portrayed the rewards of hard work and the triumph of Chinese ingenuity.  In fact, some of my colleagues think that it is pretty much a documentary, and have discussed the option of moving to somewhere above the projected floodline.

The Transformers sequel from last year (also a huge blockbuster) also featured Shanghai, with Optimus swooping in to blow up some elevated motorways and crazy buildings.

And a few years ago, the third Mission Impossible film centred on Shanghai.  Unfortunately, it was banned here (I think because there were some Chinese bad guys).

Even the latest Iron Man was mostly set in a high-tech Expo.  I mean, which country has gone Expo-crayzy this year?

There is a definite trend to feature China in big films.  Maybe its just that right now, China is interesting and a bit mysterious.  It could also be that it is potentially the world’s biggest movie-going market.

So, throw in a few China references.  Portray the Chinese as they wish to be seen – clever and honest and hard-working.  But remember, they do Karate in Japan.  In China, it’s called Kung Fu.

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…

The Rules of the Road (etc)

I am quickly learning the rules of the road (which also extend to the footpath and parks and anywhere else you can squeeze a vehicle). It’s literally a matter of life and death.

Trucks beat buses, buses beat cars, cars beat scooters, scooters beat bicycles, bicycles beat pedestrians. That is the pecking order that needs to be obeyed at all times, with lesser combatants always willing to give way.

The other key rule is the constant use of your horn (or bell for cyclists). This is supposedly for safety, but I see (hear?) a lot of horning that translates as “I’m sick of waiting”, “I’m bored” or “I wonder how long I can blast my horn continuously”, rather than “Holy crap” I’m about to run into you!” I have heard that it is against the law to not warn others of your presence while driving. But, while it is OK in a rural village to give someone a small toot as you are approaching them, in car-lovin’ Shanghai, it just becomes a pointless mess of noise.

According to the hierarchy, if you are driving a large vehicle, you can do whatever you want. If you are sick of waiting for the traffic to move, it is perfectly OK to move onto the wrong side of the road and try your luck there. If there is no road space, try the footpath. If you encounter traffic moving in the opposite direction, best to just sit there (blasting your horn) until someone gives in. By then, you have backed up so much traffic in both directions, any attempts to get back in your lane will set off a chorus of car horns that, frankly, aren’t helping matters. If you are a taxi driver, you have permission to drive as fast as you want, regardless of the traffic, weather or terrified expression of your seatbelt-less passengers.

So, scooter riders, with the roads so crazy, please use the footpaths (it’s OK, you have feet as well). Please leave as little space as possible between you and pedestrians, approach them at maximum speed, and if you see one just about to enter a small gate or opening, you must attempt to beat them through it. Cyclists, all the same behavior applies to you, but as your vehicle is potentially less damaging to other people, overload it with as much rubbish as possible and periodically let it all spill off onto the road or footpath.

Pedestrians, everyone hates you and wants to damage you. It is the law (like really, truly the law) that all vehicles are allowed to turn right at any time, regardless of zebra crossings and/or lights with green men and/or people walking across the street. The only safe way to cross the road is to wait until a critical mass of people builds up (at least 6, preferably 10) then to surge onto the road. This is scary at first, but you’ll get used to it. At this point, you can take revenge on your enemies by cutting off the last car in the pack and making them wait, all alone, for the people to cross. Expect much horning.

The Hummer, by the way, lives next door to my office. Being a hospital, I imagine it belongs to one of the senior doctors. It’s probably a good business strategy – create the problem, treat the problem.

Little Gifts at Work

My colleagues sometimes leave little gifts on my desk at work … some are sweet, some are quite sour!

This was a thankyou present (for me doing the tiniest of favours for someone).  In parts of the city during summer, old women sit in the street threading wire through flowers, creating a small token of luck for the day.  Women often attach them to a button or pin.  They had a very strong and sweet smell!  My workfriend also gave me this blog, which has some beautiful pictures of the flower threaders, and Shanghai streetlife in general.
http://hi.baidu.com/eleanorleaf/blog/item/e0bb083833be182db9998f28.html

Whenever someone in the office gets married, we get candy.  The boxes are shaped like traditional wedding headwear. 

And whenever there is a baby born to someone in the office, we get a little gift too.  If it’s a girl, we get chocolate.  If it’s a boy however, we get shrink-wrapped black eggs.  Everyone hopes for a girl (except the parents probably…)

I have received another gift … a nickname from one of the marketing team.  Mr Bean (yeah, yeah, all white guys look the same…)  Upon being told, my annoyance was shortlived … in the next breath, she also told me she likes to read on the toilet.  I’d rather be a bit goofy than have smelly books!

My daily walk …

As mundane life can sometimes be interesting, I have documented my daily walk to work.  Here’s a map so you don’t get lost.

This is Shangcheng Road, just outside my building (behind the shrubbery to the right).  The only people I ever see using this green space are the gardeners, who work at all hours – often after dark.

Here are my local shops, though I don’t shop here often.  There is a breadshop (Paris Baguette), florist, hairdresser and two massage parlours.  One is staffed by blind people – it’s a charity thing that happens here – and the other is open 24 hours (ahem).

When I turn left into Pucheng Road, I get quite a good view of the two big towers of the city – Jinmao and WFC, which I think is now called Shanghai Hills.  They are planning to build a third, even taller, building just beside these.  I call one the Bottle Opener and one the Ugly One.

From Pucheng Road (after passing my regular supermarket), I duck through a shortcut via a large residential complex.  It becomes much finer grained and grittier, and I think a lot more local in terms of residents.  I have many expats living in my building, particularly French and German.

Along here, I get a good shot of Chinese laundry.  Every one in my building has a clothes dryer, of course.

Through this gate …

I enter a small pedestrian street full of food stalls.  In the mornings, it is really lively, with people stopping to buy breakfast on the way to work – steamed buns, pancakes, dumplings, soup … When I eat here, I get liang ge cai bao (ie two steamed vege buns) for the huge sum of RMB1.50 – about 25 cents.

This is where I re-enter Pudong proper (this view is looking back to the street stalls).   The hairdresser on the left is incredibly narrow and periodically update the big banner above the door with some wacky hair-themed photo. 

Once I get across this road (which can take forever – one day, I will do a whole post on crossing the road), I take a shortcut to the office via the Metro Station.  Ready for work!  Or not.  🙂

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.