Category: Nebulous Items
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(101 Things About Shanghai) I Know You Can See Me
I have no intention of singling out this city for its very thorough surveillance set up: In fact, I’d say London was worse in the privacy-violation category. However, this is definitely an aspect of Shanghai that is there, that isn’t always obvious, and that is kinda crucial. You are being watched. Up there in…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Zoned for Crappy Pastries
ETA 12 August 2010 ExtraOrdinary has disappeared from the infamous corner and in its place is Bakery #4 in 12 months: Elysee (insert French accent aigu on first and second Es) Boulangerie-Patisserie. Yes. En Francais. Bien sur. And OMFG- they have real pastries hidden away inside, beyond the view of the shrimp-fluff-oily-cheese-kelp-bread in the window.…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Getting from Here to There
After a bajillion years of searching real estate ads and a bazillion weekends and Wednesdays spent staring at worn, tired, spartan, absurd flats, we have finally found a new home. Unfortunately– as everyone has lamented to us– it is Expo year and housing prices have sky rocketed and, well, gosh, you sure don’t want to…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Everyone’s a Florist
We are easing into the lush and sweaty long summer season, when Shanghai overcompensates for its appalling climate by making everything all rich and verdant. The florists have all started displaying their wares outdoors, blocking the already blocked sidewalk with potted plants of all sorts- flowering, scented, waxy, leafy. Even places that aren’t florists are…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Trippy but Pointless Public Art
In the wilds of Pudong, deep down in Zhang Jiang Gaoke where I used to catch the bus to work in Lingang (don’t even ask how far away that was) there is a giant Delete button standing on one of it’s corners at the edge of a park. A Delete button, like the kind you…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Interdisciplinary Love
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Chinese Laundry
I’ll readily admit I was reluctant to post on this theme as it is high up there in my list of cliches to steer clear of. However, a cliche is generally based on some tired, overused aspect of reality and that is true of this topic. In Shanghai, laundry is everywhere. It’s hanging on bamboo…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) It’s not the Heat, it’s the…
Sometime around now, Shanghai shifts gears and rather abruptly begins to feel like the changing room of an indoor public pool. It’s not hot out yet; Summer’s freakish sweaty heat has yet to descend. It is humid though. Your skin feels clammy and ever so slightly damp– but it isn’t hot. That will come…
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On food and kitchens with three stoves
We had gone to Qiandao Lake, about three hours by car from Shanghai, for a weekend of diving: at the bottom of the the lake was a thousand year old village that had been flooded back in the 1950s for a dam project. When we arrived and suited up and threw ourselves overboard, we discovered…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Ludicrous Shopping Tactics
We went to the fakes market today in Nanjing Xi Lu, which is a 4-storey shopping mall that sells only bootlegged goods from hundreds of tiny shops the size of our kitchen. There are a lot of shirts and shoes and ties and small electronics and silk scarves and pashminas and, yes, yes, bags…
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How Not to Organize a Bike Tour in Rural China
The road ended at the edge of a crumbling cliff, after a series of abrupt structural adjustments: what had been smooth asphalt turned to dusty asphalt, then to pot-holed concrete, then to broken concrete then to gravel then to rutted, dried mud. It was when we hit the rutted dried mud that we found the…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Sudden Shops
In Canada, it is highly unlikely that you would ever come across a street vendor setting up an impromptu, unlicensed shop on the sidewalk. In fact, really, it’s unlikely you would ever come across a street vendor. When they exist, they have been vetted and licensed and are usually selling hot dogs from a cart…