ISpyShanghai

Friday night was balmy, I went to the garden of a bar called ‘Abbey Road’ where a website was holding an intimate soiree for about 200 people. The music was all cover versions of Beatles songs; a heavy metal “Eleanor Rigby”, a reggae “Drive My Car”, a Miami bass “Octopus’ Garden”, it was top notch, I’m surprised I’ve never heard of these ‘Beatle’ chaps before.

Craig told the waitress that we should get free drinks because we’d come dressed as John, Paul and George (no-one really fancies being Ringo do they? Probaly Ringo himself isn’t keen) and despite the fact we were just wearing jeans / polo shirts and my hair is somewhat shorter than a mop-top, she dutifully brought us some shots. It makes you wonder what else you can get away with - “Hi, I’m the one armed drummer from Def Leppard, can I have a 15% discount on this bacon please?” etc. They can only say no.

Anyway we supped up there and moved across the road to the Eager Beaver, Shanghai’s friendliest pub- they’ve got the type of Table Football table in there that Jesus himself probably uses when playing against Saint Peter. Unfortunately Liam and I were humiliated, 10-3 by a Canadian guy playing on his own.
“You guys are pretty good bar players” he says afterwards.
“However I am the coach of the Chinese national team. Now bow down and kiss the ring.”

And lo, it was true- there is apparently an international ‘foosball’ scene, with professional players and the whole deal, this guy is the president of the Shanghai Foosball association, he even had a little bottle of oil that he used to grease the poles of the table. I had no idea this other world existed, it was like that bit in “The Matrix” when the final credits come up and you go outside to realise there’s so much more to life than watching Keanu Reeves try to act.

Around the corner to The Hut where Craig noticed a guitar in the corner and goaded me into playing something. I picked it up and literally the next thing you know they’ve turned the music off, there’s a mic in front of my face, and I’m butchering “Just” by Radiohead to a crowd of maybe 5 people. Which again was fun until some guy turned up who could play the strings off the thing and I was left banging on the bongoes like a Chimpanzee.

You’d think I’d have pictures of all of this stuff wouldn’t you? No dice.
Here’s a photo of a dog instead

On the top floor of this office there’s a canteen where they dish up some kind of luke warm slop Mon-Fri, 11:30 - 12:30. I’m not a big fan.

However we’ve recently discovered that a 10 minute stroll away there is “Canteen number 1″- also provided by the airport, but with food that has a discernible flavour and a choice that covers more than just “Greasy Fish Dust” and “Chicken Bones A La Mode”.

I’ve been to Canteen Number 1 most days this week and have enjoyed fried dumplings, sweet and sour pork, chilli peanut chicken, a choice of three kinds of soup, two varieties of rice, fresh watermelon juice- oh the list goes on.

As you can see in this photo, everything is doused in oil and gleams like a waxed eel- but like I said, it’s a 10 minute walk each way to this place, which is like half an hour in total, which cancels that out a treat.

See? Smiling faces as far as the eye can see. Hurray for Canteen Number 1!

Style on a Budget by Craig

Feast your eyes, that’s a proper pair of shoes that is.

They only cost 20RMB (1.40 quid, plus 2 kuai for the snazzy socks) but I look a million dollars. And no, I don’t shave my legs- I use a special waxing agent which painlessly lifts even the stubborn, short hairs for up to 20 days.

Update 17 July: Apparently it was only 68RMB for the ticket to climb the bridge. I made Craig pay 85 though. Another victory for Yorkshire!

Like most cities, there’s a river running through Shanghai- it separates the East from the West, or less prosaically (check me out!) the old town from the new, the urbanite hipster from the nuclear families, the hot clubs from the good schools. Spanning this river are a few bridges including the longest arch bridge in the world, Lupu Bridge which I climbed up on Sunday.

On either side of the gleaming arch are steps leading up to a viewing platform at the top, 100 metres above the river. Anyone can visit once they fork over the 85RMB (about 7 quid) and go through the metal detector- which went off for every single one of us as they waved us through- you even get a tour guide to make sure you don’t throw any hammers over the edge.

Craig, Emma and Liam- check out those blue skies!

The climb isn’t exactly arduous and there are big railings on either side so you don’t even get vertigo - so the views from the top are definitely worth the trouble, especially on a crystal clear day like we had. The address for the visitors center is 909 Luban Lu, past the camera mall to the bus station on the Puxi side of the water (that little nugget of information would have saved us about an hour of messing around with taxi drivers who just didn’t believe it was possible to climb the thing).

Emma surveys her manor

We spent maybe an hour there in total, most of which time was spent gazing across both sides of the city- the beige expanse of Pudong the towers of Puxi that I’m starting to recognise now- Marriot Tomorrow’s Square ball-trapped-in-a-christmas-cracker, the Bank Of China’s golden daisy roof, the twin lipsticks of the XJH Grand Gateway and the two tallest skyscrapers- the Jin Mao and the new financial centre which seems to be just creeping past en route to being the pinnacle of the city.

A grand day out, up there in pure tourist terms with the gardens at Yu Yuan and taking the ferry from the Bund to Pudong and back again, although you can’t spit off the side into the water on the bridge.

I’m pretty conscientious (thankyou spellcheck) about using original photos on t’internet, but sometimes other people’s perspective is useful, sometimes they manage to capture a moment better, sometimes they didn’t spill grease all over the lens of their camera whilst eating dumplings.
So it’s time for a smash and grab raid on Liam and Craig’s haul from the last fortnight or so.

Thanks Liam!

Here’s Megumi (Liam’s lovely Japanese girlfriend) and I trapped in the tiny jail at the front door of my apartment. I forget whether I’m on the right or the left there. The recent shoe thievery occurred because the cupboard on the left of this picture are where you put your outdoor shoes if you’re in the Chinese, and a slender hand can read through those bars…

I’m not really a morning person. Or a 3pm person.

Thanks Craig!

Liam plays darts, me and the enigmatic Emma in the background

At the club “Absolute House“, or as Craig calls it “Absolute Shite. The devil horns were free, the goofy expression I’ll pay for later.

Eating Sichuan food in a tiny restaurant on Wujiang Lu with Weija and Craig. My stomach was in bits the next day.

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Flickr.com is the site I use to host all of my photos. You can upload anything you want on there, (although if it’s a woman’s boobies they’ll ask people whether they’re sure they want to be looking at that kind of thing) and if you’re a camera geek you can waste hours looking at snaps taken using virtually any camera ever made, or images from every far-flung corner of the globe, from Armthorpe to Zanzibar.

Because photographers are cool, well-rounded, sociable people (cough) it’s also a good way to meet people. Without flickr I wouldn’t have met Craig, Peter (and therefore Emma), or a whole load of sound people that I see from time to time in the big city. In fact without it I have no idea who I would be hanging out with, possibly child rapists and Opium smugglers who drive whilst using their mobile phone. In that respect it’s a bit like myspace or facebook except not a pointless waste of time, and I’d go so far as to put it up there with my other favourite sites of all time- http://www.airlinecodes.co.uk/, http://ratemypoo.com and http://hairlossspecialists.com.

Anyway, the Chinese government have blocked flickr (because there were some photos on there of some angry students or something), ruining my life with one fell swoop. The withdrawal symptoms have gotten so bad that I’ve resorted to going up to people on the subway to ask if I can have a look at the images on their phone, and going through the bins at the back of Kwik-E-Snap.

Living under the iron boot of the People’s Government is starting to take it’s toll- but on the other hand I had a smashing bowl of fried noodles last night for 6.5RMB (45p), so what you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts.

sitting on tea

Whilst we all know that babies are found behind cabbage patches in the UK, in China they are hatched from flasks of tea.

In this photo, taken by my esteemed colleague Mark Abson- (England’s Junior Angler Of The Year 1982), you can see nature’s miracle at work; the genesis of a new life.

(Either that or he’s got a hole cut in his trousers, and really needs to visit a doctor).

In the interests of burying bad news all at once, I would like to make the following announcements following last nights events:- Mr Liam Hegarty is better than me at table football and has beaten my numerous times over the last few days. Dr Craig Meakin is better than me at Wii Tennis and has beaten me many times despite the fact we play on my own machine. Mr Matthew Corcoran, err, is a nice fella.

That is all.

Today I received an email asking me to renew a website address that I reserved last year. A name that I considered using instead of the woeful ‘ISpyShanghai’. 
It made me wonder what would have happened had I actually gone for the magnificent name- www.ChinaInYourHand.com. I could be a millionaire by now, or maybe one of those guys who wears sunglasses in nightclubs and says to the barstaff “Give me a Seven-seven. Do it”. 

Anyway, we all have to live with this name now, no use crying about it.

There’s a belief here that if you go for a ‘hundred steps’ after your lunch, you’ll live to a hundred. My boss is a big believer in this and religiously completes his post-prandial stroll.

Which leads me to wonder what is going to happen to the guy above, who is foolishly walking backwards after his lunch. Maybe he’s got a death wish.