Category: Nebulous Items
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Casual Armband Security
At the bus stop just outside our apartment complex there are three elderly people clad in matching orange wind breakers and baseball caps emblazoned with Shanghai Ping’an Volunteer (and a lot more in Chinese). They have government-issued red armbands pinned to their sleeves. They can also be found further up Shanxi Nan Lu, near the…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Furthering the Mop Meme (Just Photos)
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(101 Things About Shanghai) New Wave Dogs
One of the interesting things about living in a country that has only recently shifted from a practical, survivalist mode of living (hello Great Leap Forward!) is that everything bourgeois is new and exciting. This includes keeping pets as pets and not as, say, nutrition or security guards. One big trend in Shanghai is to…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Street Detailing
This morning as I walked to work, a Shanghai municipal worker was crouched down on her haunches, polishing a garbage bin. She had already carefully washed it down and was now rubbing shine into the metal containers with a suede cloth. It sparkled. The garbage can sparkled. Near her, another municipal worker was meticulously…
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The Hordes of Yangshuo
The hills are so famous that they are on the 20rmb note. Looking closely at a 20rmb note, I failed to see the armies of uniformed tour groups and the clusters of hotels and the endless checkpoints of touts and vendors surrounding the hills. They are there. I know they are. We walked amongst…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Same, ‘cept different
It’s deceptively shiny and new and almost Western here (and by Western, I mean, it’s all about the shiny, the new, the casually bilingual, the commercial and the branded). We are waiting for our flight to Guilin at the Hongqiao airport and a few cracks in the veneer have revealed themselves, as they tend to…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Decidedly Seasonal Fruit
Although I previously raved about how I could get all sorts of imported loveliness in Shanghai and so had no need to go crazy with longing from eating only what was available locally, I would like to take this time to write a small tribute to local (or local-ish) seasonal fruit. Not apples, not oranges,…
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Best Little Whorehouse in Cairo
In Tahrir Midan, the Picadilly of central Cairo’s circuses, after a long, hot, dusty day spent being shadowed by touts and hissing men, we searched for dinner, for a beer, for a rest. But trouble in Arabic was brewing above a teahouse on the corner and robocops were filling the side alleys. We hadn’t…
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Berfumery and Hosbitality in Cairo
We will start with Mohammed Ali and the perfumists of Cairo. We wandered down the mad and busy streets between the meydans, searching for a cafe, a restaurant, anything for a hint of food. Do Caireans eat? There are bags and watches and travel agencies and tea houses but we could find no food…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Random Exercise
“Go to the Bund at 7am! Watch the people do exercises on the riverbanks! Or in the leafy parks! So lovely and tranquil!” Yeah, no. I work for a living and on my days off the last thing I want to do is get up and go out that early to gawp at people doing…
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(101 Things about Shanghai) Umbrellas
Shanghai has about three distinct rainy seasons: the freezing, bitterly sharp and spiky winter rains; the lackadaisical early spring rains which come and go and often leave you without an umbrella because the blue skies had misled you; the sweltering and humid summer rains, which are heavy and drenching, like a bucket poured over…
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(101 Things about Shanghai) Batting for Both Sides
I’ve been living abroad for most of my adult life, give or take a few semesters back home trying to finish my never-ending degree. Most of my time has been spent with very little money and/or very little access to outside comforts. In Ghana, I ate foufou and kenke and jollof rice until I…