ISpyShanghai

Next weekend, Emma wants to take part in a Dragon boat Race.

A Dragon boat is a kind of ancient torture device where 20 or so people are forced to kneel in an unstable narrow canoe, sweat in the midday sun and paddle down a dirty river as blisters form on their hot damp hands.
Wikipedia

I’m not keen.

It’s not (entirely) a laziness thing. The race is organised by iMandarin, a company which, for some reason, believes that I went back to England 3 weeks ago, never to return to Shanghai.

Let me explain.

Until recently I was taking Chinese lessons twice a week. They were fun at first and I learnt a lot, iMandarin is a good company and I recommend them to anyone who wants to take lessons. However there came a time when I just seemed to spend at least an hour of every lesson saying the word “Juede” (”believe”) over and over again to get the pronunciation just so.
I was also frustrated that 12 months after starting to study, I was still using pinyin all of the time instead of the cool Chinese characters (studying Chinese characters is vital if I ever want to go back to England and make fun of people’s tattoos).

I decided it would make sense to quit and spend the study time in the gym (or drinking, whichever) and decide later on about whether to take more lessons.

Instead of hurting my teacher’s feelings, I did the brave thing and made up an elaborate story about going back to England to avenge the death of my Grandfather.
He seemed to accept the story and even gave me a rather nice ceremonial sword to slay my enemies with. Obviously this tissue of lies will be somewhat compromised if I turn up on Sunday in my ice-white Speedos carrying a Ploughman’s lunch and a 6 pack of Zima.

Sorry Emma, I’m sure you’ll have a lovely time on your own.

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Recently- following either the recent bus explosion, the Tibet protests, or just general Olympic related paranoia, the transport cops have been getting really antsy.

At a lot of subway stations there are guys checking anyone with a heavy looking bag to see if it’s full of plastic explosive or popping candy. At the Maglev station, they recently started X-Raying my laptop case，(although not KFC bags I notice).

There’s also a cool set of posters up around the place- the ones where the letters S-E-C-U-R-I-T-Y spell out the Chinese equivalent “平安” are my favourite. Ironically，I’ve stolen about 8 copies of that one.

<cue Shoe Tuesday music>

Well I have received no photos of readers shoes for this week’s Shoe Tuesday. I think the reason is that some of you are confused about the correct way to dress as summer grips us in it’s fiery claw.

Luckily, Shopboy AKA WoAiZhongGuo is here to show us the correct way to beat the heat:

Crisp cotton Chino’s, immaculate loafers, 2,000RMB in a solid gold Gucci money clip in the back pocket, a cigar cutter made out of endangered Tiger teeth. Good job WoAi

This on the other hand, well, words fail me:

This guy was wearing a short sleeved shirt with a tie, and bright canary yellow canvas trainers with white socks. In an ideal world he’d be explaining these kinds of choices in front of a jury of 12 Angry Men.

Here are some tips to beat the heat:

• During hours of business it is acceptable to dress down a little. Remove your waistcoat (assuming no ladies are present obviously) switch to a lighter cotton pocket square
• Heavy woolen socks are a pain in the warmer months.
  But cotton is for gypsies so you really have no choice.
• Put your sock garters in the fridge for a few minutes whilst your chauffeur brings the car around

Above all, remember that the minute one starts rolling up sleeves or undoing the top button of a shirt like some kind of animal, it’s a slippery slope to the guy I saw wandering around Tesco’s on Sunday.
He was wearing a white “wife-beater” vest and pyjama bottoms, both semi-transparent. I bet sales of Chicken legs hit an all-time low.

This weekend I broke a mirror and interviewed a prostitute.

In The Beaver, a classy bar for gentlemen, I’d just won a game of table football that was pretty much a play-by-play re-enactment of the 1966 World Cup Final. When the ball hit the tin for the final goal I went bananas with joy, banged my head against the mirror, knocking it to the ground.

If Kit from The Beaver reads this, I’m sorry. Oh and whilst we’re chatting, can I have a VIP card?

It was time to make a quick exit after that, and via a couple of bars on Tongren Lu I ended up with my boss’s nephew in one of the lower class bars on Julu Lu.

It was the kind of bar that is filled with very friendly, very thirsty girls. In fact the girls are borderline prostitutes, and I’m being pretty generous with the borderline.

At some point during the evening, one of the girls saw my name card for a website called Shanghaiist

Oh you’re a journalist!

She says

Hmmm. Yes!

Said I, (not 100% truthfully).
Well after that there was no more flirting and asking me to buy her a drink, and lots more of her telling me all about the lifestyle of Shanghai (borderline) prostitutes and me asking what seemed like insightful questions at the time.

Here are the facts that I remember:

• If you pay 45RMB for a girl’s drink, she gets 15
• Most of the girls come from the provinces and work to send their money home
• The girl I spoke to sends home between 500-2000RMB per month.
• Her momma don’t ask where the money comes from (and baby don’t tell)
• Rum makes you drunk

me in the mirror

A photo for your weekend

[N.B I'm planning to stick a couple of photos up from my archives every weekend- pretty the place up a bit.]

Peep this.

Emma came back from Singapore last night (visa issues, don’t ask)- it was late and she took a taxi back from the airport. Now Emma’s been here for a good long while so she’s not easily scared by taxi driving, but this guy was a menace.

After he’d fallen asleep at the wheel (swerving blindly through 2 lanes of traffic) for the third time she decided enough was enough. Emma complained and told him to stop- whilst gesticulating wildly that his driving was 100% safe, the taxi guy hit another couple of pedestrians, 18 traffic cones and a steam train.

Emma got out at the Maglev station and took a different taxi.

Five minutes into the journey, her leg stopped twitching, knuckles relaxed on the door handles and she realised that her suitcase was still in the boot of the first taxi. Hot Damn!

OK OK, call the taxi company- give them the name of the driver- they call the driver- driver says…

There was no luggage

There was no what pal?!
OK Let’s jog your memory- you picked up a passenger from the airport (people often have luggage there), you helped her put something large in the boot, it’s a huge red and yellow monstrosity that the Telletubbies might take on holiday, it’s got my present from Singapore in it, THERE IS LUGGAGE!

When she got home Emma was less than delighted about the situation, I suggested we call the police. The first phone call wasn’t encouraging

Why are you in China? What kind of visa do you have?

All excellent questions, but let’s concentrate on the luggage theft for now eh? A cop on a motorbike turned up quickly and upon seeing a tearful foreigner distraught about her luggage tactfully asked

Do you have some kind of psychosis?

We didn’t get a full diagnosis, but were told to go to the police station down the road where the taxi driver would turn up shortly to tell us what happened to the suitcase.

Turn up he did, 90 minutes later, with a representative from his union, some big bossman from the taxi firm, a round guy who I think was just there in case it turned nasty, and no suitcase.

The driver’s story was that when Emma got out of the car, he retrieved her case and placed it carefully on the ground next to her. Emma then just walked away from the dayglo pink suitcase, probably due to the mental illness.

Well we ummed and ahhed, argued and placated, scratched heads and shrugged shoulders, and smoked and smoked and smoked. Me and her had talked about it before getting to the station and our tactic was that we wouldn’t get involved in a shouting match (4 taxi fellas screaming Shanghainese > 2 foreigners at that game) and generally keep everything very pleasant.

After a while it became obvious that we were supposed to name a price that would make up for the lost bag:

“7,000 RMB”

says Emma.

“We’ll go and have another look for it”

say the taxi guys, choking on their cigarettes.

At around 3am, having exhausted both the search for the suitcase, and us, we settled on 5,000RMB compensation

“Some clothes in Shanghai may be cheap, but look at my shape! I have to buy foreigner shaped clothes!”

said Emma.

Handshakes all round, apologies from the taxi guys,

“Don’t let this spoil China for you!”

from the policeman and we all went home satisfied.

4:13am the phone rings- it’s the police. Someone’s handed the bag in at a police station way way north of Hongqiao thinking it might be a bomb to blow up the Maglev.

They sent a car round for us to go and pick it up. A police car. With proper flashing police lights.

It was almost worth it.

More details later. (But it’s not what you think).