ISpyShanghai

The last time I published a photo of one of these grass signs with the flowery english, my mailbox was full for weeks with cuddly toys, bouquets, and bottles of Champagne from well-wishers.

Not being a man to starve the public of what they want, I’m bringing you four HOT NEW signs where the english is slightly…odd.

(Musical Note: If you own “Celebration- The Best Of Kool & The Gang“, now would be a good time to hit track 8.)
((and if you don’t own it, this would be a good time to make that investment.))

Sign 1. Hit the button below for so very many more

Continue Reading »

Your thought for the day

and then eats their livers with some fava beans and a nice Chianti

I’d never been to Hooters before Saturday night, but had been told that the waitresses are very friendly and wear special outfits, so was imagining something a bit like Betty’s Tea Room in York.

Betty’s tea room

Continue Reading »

If you’ve never heard of it (and I hadn’t) Flat Stanley is a story for kids where a boy is hit by a giant billboard, and finds that he’s squashed completely flat.

You’d think that this would cause some pretty severe medical problems, and the rest of the story would be a graphic description of the surgical procedures needed to restore him to full health, but apparently not.

Instead, Stanley finds that he can live a normal life, and in fact one advantage of being flat is that he can put himself in an envelope and be mailed around the world.

So a friend of a friend is a teacher in a school somewhere in the US of Yankee-Doodle Land, and she sent it to Duncan in England, who sent it to me in China. I spent Saturday being stared at for taking photos of Flat Stanley, and being terrified that a gust of wind would blow him into the Huang Pu river.

Stanley by the river

Stanley on Nanjing Road

Now I think I just need photos of Stanley black-out drunk outside BonBon, being over-charged for a fake handbag and standing in a crowd of people, staring at a traffic accident before I can send him to my mate in New Zealand.

[http://FlatStanley.com has a terrifying number of photos that turned out a lot better than these two.]

Maybe your job sucks right now, the visa police are coming for you, you had no milk this morning so had to have Jaffa Cakes for breakfast and your neck feels like a bag of dry sticks.

But when the sun is shining outside, it’s Friday and you see middle aged Chinese guys feeding a stray cat, the world isn’t such a bad place is it?

Dingle just tipped me off about a declassified report from when Kissinger and President Ford came to China back in the 1970s. There are some good bits.

“…so I said to her ‘If you don’t, your father will be executed’”
“Haha! Good one Chairman!”

Here Mao and the Secretary of state talk about the international sex trade:

Chairman Mao: Do you want our Chinese women? We can give you ten million.
Dr. Kissinger: The Chairman is improving his offer.
Chairman Mao: By doing so we can let them flood your country with disaster and therefore impair your interests.
…
…
Chairman Mao: Girls, today I have been uttering some nonsense for which I will have to beg the pardon of the women of China.
Dr. Kissinger: It sounded very attractive to the Americans present.

I think Kissinger’s glasses then steamed up, he high-fived Mao, and they chased a busty secretary around the room to the Benny Hill theme music.

Obviously knowing he’d be dead by the time this document was made public, Kissinger feels free to have a pop at the Kiwis whilst talking to some guy named after a Muslim head dress:

Dr Kissinger: Can [the US envoy visit] Australia and not New Zealand?
Habib: It’s difficult. The New Zealanders wouldn’t understand.
Dr Kissinger: They are the worst bores in the world.
Habib: That’s because we never have any problems with them. All they ever talk about is cheese and butter.
Dr Kissinger: And mutton.

This, by the way, was before the term “Politically Correct” was widely used.

I’ll almost certainly never fly on Concorde, play on Top Of The Pops, or slide down a zipline from the top of the Eiffel Tower into a swimming pool full of marshmallows, but this week I fulfilled at least one of my personal ambitions:

New one on the left, old one with the cover faded off to nothing on the right

I had to get a new passport because the old one was full up!

The visa for China takes up a whole page, and I’ve been in and out of Korea more times than the Japanese army, so my stint in Asia has really helped out- but it’s still a decent spread of stamps to look back on.

I’m not showing the two different photos though- it looks like new James ate the old one, then polished his head with an orbital sander.

At the weekend I finally tracked down a Seagull camera!

Seagull is a photographic company that is still cranking out the kind of camera that has gone right out of fashion back West: manual focus, 35mm (that’s a kind of “film” kids, ask your Grandpa), it’s based on a Minolta camera from the 1970s with so few changes that the instruction book still features snapshots of kids wearing kipper ties and Deely Boppers, listening to the Bay City Rollers (seriously, ask your Grandpa).

Even though they’re kind of crap, I wanted to buy a Seagull for three reasons:

• I’ve got a small collection of Minolta lenses that I really like, and the original camera body I was using with them broke a couple of weeks ago
• The Seagull factory is about 2 miles from my house right there on Suzhou creek and I like the idea of using a Shanghainese camera to take photos of Shanghai
• Even on the internet, hardly anyone seems to use one-

See?

After trying to get into the factory shop several times (it’s only open on the eighth Wednesday in February, from 3pm until someone tries to get in), I found a camera shop right next to Nanjing Road East metro station.

They had a couple of models tucked away in the far reaches of the store, next to a Betamax tape of Billy Ray Cyrus and a few cans of Tab Clear.

It was just the camera I wanted, no accesories, but the only way I could buy it was as a complete package including a flash, terrible lens, huge camera bag, straps and caps that I’ll never use and a partridge in a pear tree.

This bumped up the price to 1,250RMB- not cheap, and probably a daft idea but I had my heart set on the stupid thing, and still haven’t worked out how to use TaoBao (the Chinese ebay).

I guess we’ll see what kind of pictures it takes in a week or so.

–UPDATE

Anyone who can help me buy one of these things can have my hand in marriage. I can use a Union Pay or Visa card to pay.