Tag: Shanghai
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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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(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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(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…
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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…