ISpyShanghai

Once I get the sack from this job (for my embezzlement scheme where I steal 50-60 office pens per day and sell them down Nanjing Road at the weekend- shhh!), the plan is to go on the streets as a rag and bone man. My Father wasn’t in the rag trade, neither was his Father, nor his Father’s Father and so on stretching back for generations- so I should pick it up pretty quickly.

The way it seems to work over here is that you ride around the streets ringing a small bell- this bell attracts people how are snowed under with masses of cardboard, plastic bottles, and recyclable goods who are only too glad to give it to you. Then you ride down to the docks where there are people prepared to give you cold hard cash for the stuff, which I assume they then eat. I’ve done the figures, and it all stacks up pretty well:

Outgoings

• Fancy bicycle with three wheels and a trailer on the back: 200RMB
• Bell: 20RMB

Incomings

• Selling cardboard to dodgy characters down by the docks who FREAK OUT if you try to take their photo: 10RMB per day
• Selling plastic bottles to dodgy characters down by the docks who should really chillax, it’s a camera not some kind of laser stun ray: 20RMB per day
• Selling cardboard boxes to people who are moving house: 250RMB per day (I’m really going to sting those poor suckers hehe)
•  Money I find randomly on the street whilst riding around looking fly: 3,060RMB per day

I’ve often wondered about who it was in the Pringles ‘flavor’ (it’s an American brand, that’s how they think you spell that) department that tasted their new ‘chip’ (ditto) and decided that, rather than tasting of Cheese and Onion, this was really more of a Sour Cream and Chive (with a faint whiff of hickory smoke drifting over a meadow full of pampas grass). To me, that seems a little bit pretentious for a snack whose main flavouring is an oil extracted from human hair, but this is the world we live in.

Similarly when I saw the two snacks below sitting boldly side-by-side on the shelves of “Alldays” convenience store, I couldn’t help but admire the brass balls on the decision to sell one “Tomato” flavour snack, and then another based on its slightly effeminate sibling the “Cherry Tomato”.

With that kind of confidence you have to assume that the Glico corporation’s research department is based in a psychadelic wonderland full of green Midgets, riding candy-striped Toritilla boats across rivers of Salt & Vinegar filled with Prawn Cocktail. Obviously I had to dig in and try them for myself.

Tasting notes:

Cherry Tomato

An unimposing look to this wheat-based snack with a reddish tint much like Alex Ferguson’s nose, nevertheless the first taste reveals a burst of sweetness backed up with a strong vegetable bouillabaise and a definite impression of late-harvest Cherry Tomatoes.

Tomato

Tastes like salt. Brown.

You know how you sometimes hear about the fashion police? Well in Shanghai they’re actually a real and potent force of law and order.

In the last few months there have been some pretty serious crackdowns on tucking t-shirts into jeans, and having the waist band on your shorts pulled up 8+ inches past your belly button. Last week three brave officers lost their lives in a dawn raid on a pink nylon polo shirt factory that ended in a shoot out.

The latest campaign is against a vile act which I can’t believe still goes on in this day and age- clipping mobile phones to your belt buckle.

If it was up to me, people who do such a thing would have their first-born sons ritually butchered in front of their eyes. It’s the only language these people understand.

More sun this weekend, and I’ve got two great puns to go with a couple of photos that I took.

Hang onto your hats, because these puns are of a quality that you don’t often find on this site.

I call this one “Hot News“(!)

and this one “Sun Showers” (!!) (umm because of all the umbrellas).

Yeah that’s all I’ve got today.

When I lived in Seoul, I was always reading about how Korean culture was sweeping the world; a tsunami of weepy TV shows and genderless boybands crushing everything in its terrible path. I always found it hard to believe, and read on ex-pat message boards (the modern-day counsel of elders) that it was all hype, so took it with a pinch of salt.

Strangely though, it does seem to be true, at least in Chinaland. In my office there’s one guy who downloads gigabytes worth of Korean TV onto his laptop, and another who has Hangeul written on the back of his jeans. Walking through the airport yesterday I was surprised to see a gaggle (an ogle? A giggle?) of teenage girls waiting for TVXQ to float down from heaven and fill out their customs forms, and you don’t have to go far in the downtown area to see an advert for a concert by Rain which has been forecast for the last 8 months.

Excitement builds for Rain’s concert
Assuming a nightmarish Bird-Flu type scenario where this foolishness spreads to the english speaking world, I can save everyone months of ear pain. There are precisely two good Korean pop songs:

“Falling In Love Again” by Bobby Kim

“Chingu Yeu” by Cho PD

Korea is fantastic. K-pop, not so much.

Despite all Craig’s warnings to the contrary:

“Oh you won’t be able to cope with the summer here James it’s like Dante’s inferno with noodles”
“It’s so hot in August, when you open your mouth, steam comes out”
“Last year I ran out of water so had to cut open a dog and shower in its blood” etc. etc.

I actually find the summer in Shanghai to be pretty bearable, even pleasant.

Yes you have to change your shirt 8 times a day, but then one’s Ayi takes care of one’s laundry so that’s not a problem. And yes, I take 5 showers a day, but my hair is so short that I’m in and out of there like an Iraqi snatch-squad. Thus far at least, I’ve managed to avoid joining the throngs of men who walk the streets shirtless, and have resisted the Shanghainese urge to cool off by rolling my vest up to my nipples, and trousers up to my knees.

In fact I’m so immune to the heat that I’ve managed to keep on wearing normal socks instead of the horrendous, transparent, nylon ’summer socks’ that my workmates wear.

Ryan insists that these are definitely not just a trimmed down pair of his wife’s stockings, nor did he buy them from a specialist Transvestite shop. Not only that, he had the gall to suggest that in China, wearing normal socks all the year round would mark me out as a poor peasant who can’t afford two kinds of socks. The cheeky swine.

Did I ever mention I went to the circus?

Because I did, a few weeks ago. Not the expensive, pretentious Cirque De Soleil circus which is in town for a few weeks, but the slightly cheaper, pretentious “Era- An Intersection Of Time”.

Magnificently, the subway station you take to get to this place is called “Shanghai Circus World” (formerly “The Democratic Clown Republic Of Pratfallia”), so I was pretty much expecting that when the doors of the train opened, there would be an Elephant balancing on a ball would be tottering up the stairs, followed by a line of Seals with their noses aloft.
Unfortunately it was a pretty normal looking station, with no more bearded ladies than usual.

Since my tickets were in the VIP section- what can I say? That’s just how I roll- we were sat front and centre, and also had access to the super-secret-room at the interval for free Sprite and biscuits. The show was a cross between incomprehensible (20 different bikes riding around in a circle for 10 minutes) to absolutely mint (some crazy acrobat guys somersaulting through hoops like human Thundercats, a SIX MOTORCYCLE BALL OF DEATH, and some fella who could flip pots up from his feet to his head).

If you ever happen to find yourself strolling around the Shanghai Circus World district- perhaps on a shopping trip for a new top hat, or a leopardskin strongman costume- I would certainly recommend it (but don’t bother with the VIP section, the biscuits are crap).

If you ever read the blog I wrote when I was in Korea, you’ll have seen the sentence
“Then me and RachelLynn stayed out until 6am and got hammered on soju”
written somewhere between 15 and 1,000 times.

Well RachelLynn is calling in on me this week, on her trip over land and sea from Seoul, South Korea to Vancouver, Canadialand.

RachelLynn

So far she’s gone from Incheon to Qingdao and then taken a 19 hour, hard-seat train ride from Qingdao to Shanghai. Presumably it was on the crowded train that she caught the fever / flu that she’s still recovering from, which makes the journey pretty good value for money at 160 RMB.

In an effort to speed her recovery on Saturday night I got a blender at the weekend (thanks Craig!) and have been making fruit drinks packed with nutrition / Rum. Like Grandma always says, if a glass of Watermelon juice, crushed ice and enough Vodka to topple a Cow doesn’t fix what ails yer, you need a Priest not a Doctor.

She was well enough on Saturday to take a trip down to the Bund, the waterfront haven for tourists, pickpockets, hustlers and scallywags. If you like looking at tall buildings and being asked whether you want to buy a fake Rolex, you’ll LOVE the Bund.

This season’s collection

The weather was fantastic, clear blue skies, little fluffy clouds- everyone along the front was smiling in the sunshine. We took the ferry across to Pudong, sat on the terrace of Element Fresh and watched the last rays of dusk sink behind the old banks and insurance buildings of Puxi.

Sunshine brings out the umbrellas, downtown.

To get out of toytown and back to Puxi, we took the Tourist Tunnel; the world’s most pointless and brilliant tourist attraction. It’s basically a very slow subway ride of one stop, with an unexplained and inexplicable sound and light show along the way.

“Liquid Mag-ma” goes the voice, as red LEDs flash around your transparent monorail bubble
“Fossil Variants” it booms again, as green laser beams ping off my shiny scalp and take out a child’s eye. It’s disorienting, baffling and brilliant, if you can’t go in person, some kind soul has videoed it for you..