ISpyShanghai

Don’t tell the peeps at the airport, but I’m having a day off!

My buddy Jose. Looking as straight as a die.

The occasion is a visit from my chum Jose, all the way from Manchester, England- he arrived on Wednesday and is here for a week.

We’ve had plenty of visitors in the last few months- Emma’s Mum Helen, Emma’s sister Frances, Emma’s friends Lisa and Neil, the turtles, and now Jose and my auntie Anne who arrives on Saturday.

We’ve worked out a pretty well-trodden path for visitors; walk from the apartment down Nanjing road to the Bund (about 3 hours and 815 people trying to sell you fake shoes), take the ferry across to Pudong (0.5RMB and worth every farthing for the best views of the skyline), the Tourist Tunnel back (you either love it or hate it, but you can’t not do it), and then dinner in one of about 6 tried and true restaurants.

Yesterday though we took a bit of a detour though. There’s a memorial at the north end of the bund that’s either dedicated to revolutionary heroes or the Ghostbusters (I forget which)- whilst we were there, some guy came up and persuaded us to go into his photography exhibition.

I knew it was a bit of a scam, but what the hell. He had literally three photos of the Bund from various years and then he took us to see his art. It was the kind of “Scene of an old man, working the land using his Ox on a mountainside” stuff you see all over the place, but this guys sales patter was pretty special:

You have a very equine nose, I think you appreciate art very much

If you buy this for your girlfriend she will love you very much, cook your clothes, wash your food, shave your beard and moustache

Jose, outside just now I heard a voice on the wind- it was from your girlfriend- she said that if you buy this for her, she will fall very deeply in love with you

Obviously me and J are too wise to fall for that kind of nonsense.
But on an unrelated note, if anyone wants to buy a scroll painting of a tiger, I have 18 spares.

Not much time today, busy busy at work, you know how it goes. Mustn’t grumble.

Here’s a photo of a gentleman- the explanantion of what he’s up to is left to the reader as homework.

I’ll start you off:

“On a breezy Spring day, whilst strolling around the Xintiandi area, I was lucky enough to spot…“

Well it’s shoe Tuesday here again on ISpyShanghai! your weekly round-up of shoes what I done saw whilst walking around.

First up we have a pair of lovely young country girls. Fresh off the bus, they’re styling out with their brand new matching pink pumps.

Bless! I wonder how they’ll fair in the big city (although I have a fair idea).

Next up is a middle aged gent who was impressing all and sundry outside Plaza 66 with a handsome pair of cowboy boots.

I have to be honest here, when I first saw them, I thought they looked ridiculous
(note to other internet users, that word is never spelt “rediculous” and never has been)-
but the more I look at this picture, the more respect I have for the guy.

It takes a lot of chutzpah for a Chinese man to pull of thigh high cowboy boots, but with that nonchalant stance and the respectable side burns, I think we’ve found the man for the job.

Well done sir. Well done.

When I was just a curly haired young chap I had to wear glasses.

I hated wearing the cursed things, thought they made me look geeky and suspect that they were one of two things that held me back from being a professional football player (the second is that I’m crap at football). As soon as was humanly possible, I started wearing early prototype steam-powered contact lenses and have never looked back.

Nevertheless, if you’re as blind as me- there will come a point where you still need a backup pair of specs- perhaps because you have conjunctivitis, or need to give your eyes time to rest after a hard day.

Or because your girlfriend makes you get up in the middle of the night because she thinks she can hear your pet turtles trying to tip their bowl over.

So, following a tip from Shanghaiist I spent Saturday at the Shanghai Railway station where they have an enormous market selling nothing but piles and piles of glasses.

Some bird or other, at the glasses market.

The area around the train station is bizarre- if you wanted to hire an unemployed farmer from Hubei Province, who is down on his luck, nothing left to lose, and will carry out a contract killing for the price of a McDonalds Happy Meal, this is where you’d come.
(What? I said “If“)

Once you’re in the relative safety of the market, stall after stall will shout out to you and it’s just a case of walking around until you see something that catches your eye (haha!) or if you prefer, until someone shouts to you in English.

In comparison to the UK where it’s easier to buy Ketamine than a pair of spectacles, these people will help you chose a frame, test your eyes, and grind the lenses within an hour of you first saying “Ni Hao”.

When buying the complete set of glasses, I didn’t bargain on the price because I’m a sucker- nevertheless it was only 280RMB. Someone with a bit of brass neck who is prepared to play the whole
“Oh look at me, I’m walking away because that price is too high, even though it’s a fraction of what I pay back home”
game could probably get them down to 150.

In my opinion all of the western world leaders should boycott the Olympics opening ceremony.

Not because some monks want to print their own stamps - I couldn’t give a toss about that- they should skip it because watching athletes walk around holding flags is incredibly boring and there’ll be no booze.

Lhasa looks a bit like Walford don’t you think? Gets bigger if you click it too.

My advice to GB, GWB and all of that lot: tell Beijing you’re definitely coming, get the free flights over, then at the last minute call up from your hotel to say you picked up a nasty case of scurvy on the flight over and won’t be able to make it after all.

Sell your tickets outside for a handsome profit, and spend the cash on a big slap-up roast duck supper.

— >Seamless link

A big slap up roast duck supper is, by enormous co-incidence, what I had at the newish Hyatt hotel on the Bund hotel Wednesday night. Man alive it was good, way better than the dried up bird I had on HuaiHai Lu a few months back. I’m still picking that one out of my teeth.

The skin was glistening and crispy, the meat tender and moist, basically the only problem was that I had to divided up the spoils between three other greedy maws instead of eating the whole duck to myself.

I’m going out with the same three hungry friends tonight so no doubt will have to share my food again. Maybe I’ll call up XinDaLu and book a table for 1 instead- I can feel a nasty case of scurvy coming on.

Whole Roast Duck 228RMB- XinDaLu@Hyatt On The Bund, 199 HuangPu Lu.
Takes 50 minutes to prepare so call them on 6393 1234 first.

This morning I was enjoying a healthy balanced breakfast of bottom-of-the-bag Coco Pops dust, when Emma asked me to hold Lambert & Miss Julie whilst she changed their water.

“No chance”

says I

“It’s unhygienic. And besides, if I try to hold them both at the same time, I’ll end up with a handful of green mush”

Instead she put them in a high sided bowl and rinsed off their little pied a flipper while I supervised.

Lambert, with those “Come to bowl” eyes

Their home thoroughly free of turtle crap and tapwater (Flora told us that tapwater is Turtle kryponite), she put them back to bed and I sat down to put my shoes on.

“Nooooo!”

I hear from the kitchen- it’s Emma, she’s put her Weetabix in the dirty bowl where the turtles were just sitting.

It’s the last two in the packet, we’ve no other food in the house. She has to eat them.

No harm done. They were, apparently, turtlicious and if I may say- Emma’s shell is looking shinier than ever.

Photo taken with that Seagull camera I bought a few weeks ago, so the flash works too

I’ve been to see a load of stuff in the last few days; Hamlet at the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre (I don’t want to ruin the plot, but he choses “to be”, and then ends up “not to be”), a great acrobatics show at the Portman Centre (the French lady sat next to me literally said “Ooh la la!“), but the pick of the bunch was definitely The Subs on Saturday night.

The Subs are a rock band from Beijing- and when I say rock, I mean rock.
One girl from the audience passed out and was carried off on someone’s shoulders from all the hardcore rockery that was involved. Beer and sweat rained down on the crowd and I got elbowed in the eye about 8 times, it was fantastic.

They played at a club called Windows Tembo which used to be renowned for having a 30RMB (2 quid!) open bar on Tuesdays and is now, on the strength of last Saturday, the best place in Shanghai to see live music. 10RMB for a bottle of Harbin too, it sure beats The Spot.

95% of the time on here I use my own photos- but every now and then I see something that I decide to save for a rainy day.

Well today it’s raining like Meatloaf sings, so click on below.

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