Category: Shanghai Detritus
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Hey, Shanghai, I missed you, y’know?
I wasn’t sure if China wanted me back. The fact that I managed to set the Contagious Disease Carrier detector off at immigration at Pudong Airport was a moment of concern. I had casually strolled through, feeling robust and healthy, albeit tired from having left the flat at 6am, and I set it pinging…
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We’re Not in the Middle Kingdom Anymore, Toto…
I have a feeling I may need to change the name of this blog, or at the very least acknowledge that its impracticality is about to soar to new heights of uselessness. I have, you see, buggered off. I’m actually in rainy, green rolling hilled rural Leicestershire right now, with my life in…
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Here Be Dragons: Laser Cat Goes to Pudong to Renew Her Visa (Comic Book Edition)
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I’ll Be Lucky to Escape With My Waistline Intact: My Last Month of Eating Everything in Shanghai
This is going to be a major food porn post. I just realized that after over four years in this city, I’ve really never delved into all things foodie on this blog. Mops, cats, pollution, water monsters, bad maps– sure. Food, not so much. Or if I did write about it, it was…
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I’ll See Myself Out: Notes on That Time I Square Danced to Chinese Punk Music in the Park
Back in the early 1990s, back when I was an untravelled granola crunchy uni student living on an island off the west coast of Canada, I wrote a rather long and rambling term paper on the history of Chinese rock music. At that time, it spanned the vast period between 1985 when Wham! played…
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I’ll See Myself Out: Notes on Stuff, Self, Place and Ridiculously Sudden Life Transitions
I moved most unexpectedly a few months ago, just after my life imploded in Bali. It’s taken me over two months to get all of my things from the old flat. Bit by bit, bag by bag, by taxi and by metro, I’ve hauled my life from the cozy, familiar inner sanctum of the…
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I’ll See Myself Out: Notes on Being a Tired Hermit With Possibly Unrealistic Expectations
I’ve got approximately two months left in Shanghai. After over four years in this city, most of which were spent trying to feel like it was home and trying to convince myself that I was in the right place, doing the right thing, I’m now suddenly feeling small and unexpected pangs of pre-emptive…
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I’ll See Myself Out: Attempting Shanghai Nightlife (for Burnt Out Recluses)
So I’m leaving Shanghai. Sometime in June, I’ll be handing in my Foreign Expert’s Certificate (actually a booklet, just to muddle matters) and sorting through my accumulated detritus to ship things home or to redistribute them amongst the neighbourhood rag-and-bone dudes. [Random note: Modern day tricycle-riding rag-n-bone pickers in Shanghai mainly seem to deal in…
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It’s Beginning to Look Not Even Remotely Like Christmas: Faking Festiveness in Shanghai
Actually I lie. I live in Shanghai (which, if you ask the Shanghairen, is barely even China but rather its own magnificent autonomous kingdom of wealth and awesomeness) and oh, the shiny accoutrements of the festive season are out in a big way. Have you seen the giant tree outside Prada on Nanjing Road West?…
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Notes on Not Running Away Again: Dealing Sensibly With a Shanghai Winter
It was some time midway through my London years that I found myself huddled in a phone box outside the Lords Cricket Grounds, surrounded on three sides by layers of postcards of hot, horny, available women who wanted to do dirty things to me. It was December, or maybe January. It was freezing outside my…
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You look very terrible, Miss Mary: Unsolicited Advice for the Laowai
I’m still sick. Not sick like last week when I was horizontal and feverish, with my nasal cavity draining like Victoria Falls. No, this week I’m exhausted from working all weekend, sleeping terribly, and breathing in the disconcertingly opaque and smokey air all morning. According to the US consulate’s air quality reading, this afternoon we…
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Managing Your Plague in China: Brief Notes on my Stupid Cold
So I finally made it in to work today, after two days spent under cover, barking my lungs out at home, destroying entire forests with my nasal detritus. I packed a little baggie with 2 boiled eggs and 2 small oranges (plus a massive coffee) to meet my most basic nutritional needs and dulled appetite.…