ISpyShanghai

 

cleaning windows

At my office, near the airport.

This is how they cool down their XBox 360s in Shanghai.

Why they do this, I don’t know.

The shop I took this in is the place I buy my Nintendo Wii stuff from. It’s full of menboys in the early 20s, who smoke and play video games from morning until night, or I suppose until their Mum calls them home for tea. I’m a software engineer and even I think they’re geeks.

The only way to tell which of the trogolodytes is a customer and which work there is to try and open the glass cabinets (full of steering wheels, Wii Fit, and every colour of PSP known to humanity) and see which one of them starts smoking faster in a panic.  Cheap, pirated games though, so it’s worth a visit if you’re into that kind of thing.

Beijing Xi Lu, a few 100 metres West of the Changde Lu junction

Since I’ve started writing for a website called Shanghaiist, I’ve become a hugely, hugely important figure on the Shanghai nightlife scene.

Why, only last night I attended the opening of a new restaurant called Laurel And Hardy’s Prime Rib where the free wine flowed like water, and me and some other very impotent people eventually baffled the Chef fella into giving us some free beef.

an important friend of mine at a very important event for important people

And yet I still can’t manage to secure a coveted VIP card (40% off drinks, a free party hat on your birthday etc.) for my local bar- The Spot. My boss has this card and uses every opportunity to taunt me with it. They gave it to him just because he plays football with some Germans at the weekend, behaviour which should be punished rather than rewarded if you ask me.

The last time they invited my boss to one of their special VIP events (free booze, mechanical robots to do your every bidding) I wrote to The Spot to ask them if there was room for a loyal and true customer who lives just around the corner and promises not to eat all the nibbles. No dice.

So I now pronounce from my blogging tower that no-one should ever, ever go to The Spot on Tongren Lu. All of their beer has rats in it, and the kitchen is staffed by malnourished Bengali street children, snatched from their mother’s teat*. They will rue the day they refused to give free stuff to me!

*alledgedly

The singles scene in Shanghai is a very sad place indeed.

I thank Krishna every day that I managed to hook up with Emma on my first ever night out (even if it did take 3 months of begging, cajouling and mild hypnosis before she agreed to be my girlfriend), because if I’d fallen into the Chinese ex-pat dating pit, I’d bump into these kind of characters:

1. Bachelor without a clue



Oh mate, I can’t believe I’m the one to tell you this, but if a girl says she’s going to the bathroom and then climbs out of the window, she probably isn’t The One.

2. Bridget Jones starts to lose it



Hey crazy lady! There is no whiskey bar at Yu Garden, I’ve looked!

3. Sugar Daddy wanted, apply within.



There is a difference between a “Shanghai Princess” and a prostitute. It’s just that I can never remember what that difference is.

Ads taken from the print version of Enjoy Classifieds

After all last week’s talk about Buddhism, I decided I should give something back by buying a little incense from my local Buddhist supply shop (where I buy all of these things). I picked out some incense, a little dish to burn it in, and was admiring a horrible gold watch with a little swastika instead of a second hand, when a guy came in to buy one of these things:

It’s some kind of tool to use when divining fortune by the eight diagrams (ba gua) which, if you tuned in last week, you’ll know is one of the many things you can’t do in a temple.

The size of a CD, made out of wood, it has a compass in the middle and the two pill shaped holes have spirit levels inside, to make sure it’s on a flat surface. Most of the markings on it don’t mean a thing to me, but I do know that the innermost circle shows the “8 diagrams”, elements of nature, such as fire, heaven, thunder and earth. You can see 4 of these things written the same way on South Korea’s national flag (best flag ever btw).

More info here and here, but to be honest it’s all total bollocks, they just look cool. And for 25rmb a piece, I bought four of them to use as drinks coasters.

Did you know that in 1985, Wham! were the first western pop group to go to China?

Yes they bloody were, and they made a film about it too:

“Foreign Skies“

My sister used to watch this film a lot when I was a kid, and for Christmas she gave me a VHS copy of it which my girl just had put onto DVD for me. It’s fascinating, I’ve watched it about 4 times in the last two days, called in sick for work and have had a catheter installed so that I don’t have to go toilet between viewings.

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People try to tell you that Buddhism is a very cool and laid back religion. A bunch of guys in colourful robes sitting around thinking about whether toast can ever be truly bread again.

Not true.

I once spent a night in a temple, and those monks were on my back like the bad tempered Chief of Police in a Mel Gibson movie

• “You can’t sit there”
• “We wake up at 4am for prayers”
• “You must eat all of the food in your bowl”
• “Stop trying to melt that gold statue with a cigarette lighter”

That was in Korea but the same goes here, look at this list of rules posted outside XiaHai temple:

No peddling paper money for the nether world or divining fortune by the Eight Diagrams? Screw that.

Stick to Islam I reckon, those guys know how to party.

The World of specialist magazines is a scary one. Having a passing interest in Carp fishing, crochet or Women’s shoes is one thing, but when you go as far as subscribing to
“Angling & Crochet Whilst Wearing High Heels Monthly“, you have to wonder.

Personally I have a rule that if I meet a girl who owns more than half of the 150 issues of “Murder Casebook“, that person cannot be my girlfriend. And I’m sorry ladies, but that’s non-negotiable.

With that in mind, let’s have a glance at some Chinese specialist magazines that I browsed recently.

Sick of seeing images of Mao everywhere? Then “Creepy Dictator Illustrated” is not for you.

Please note the issue of “Pictorial History“, bottom, with Hitler’s birthday parade in 1939 on the front. Nice.

“Have you got the new issue of ‘Guns Digest’?”
“It’s not out yet- but we do have the latest ‘Brutal Looking Knife World‘ just in”
“Sold!“