ISpyShanghai

Ceiling at Vargas’ Grill on Dongping Lu (near Hengshan Lu)

I had brunch here with Emma- it’s 100RMB for all the juice and coffee you need to fight a hangover, then they have fresh scones, lots of salad and sundried tomato- deli type stuff, a really delicious cold rice pudding, fruit. There’s some kind of all you can drink option- but what kind of monster goes on a 2pm Sunday drinking binge?

New Century World department store lifts, looking down.

Can you imagine what this must look like to a rural farmworker on their first trip to the big city? There must be a puddle of drool at the bottom of this drop from all of the slack-jawed gaping.

Up to the roof of the Hongkou Football stadium.

Home of Shanghai Shenhua who recently threw away their chance of winning the Chinese football league. Just like they did last year.

It’s that time again- put on your Shoe Tuesday hat, close the curtains, dance that special dance and lets enjoy another magic moment together.

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I’ve moved to a new office today and one of my workmates tried to buy tickets to eat at the canteen. Apparently the earliest this can be done is next month, and we need to have a special letter signed and stamped.

Now if that’s the kind of red tape you need to go through just to  eat lunch, can you imagine how hard it would be to set up a music festival in a park for thousands of people?

Me neither.

On Sunday I went to Century Park for the JZ Music Festival- and it was fantastic.

Getting to and finding the venue was easy, buying tickets took 30 seconds, the staff were friendly, the food (Kebabs on the Grille, Wagas, Maya Bakery etc.) was great, drinks were a reasonable price (20RMB for beer, 10 for water), the sound on all three stages was crystal clear, there were plenty of toilets that didn’t make you sick up in your mouth, there was space to sit down, fly a kite, dance, and I heard some great music.

Congratulations to whoever organised it- I had a great day, so did a ton of other people, I hope you made fist-fulls of cash and put on plenty more events like this one.

One question: what was with the giant inflatable hammer & sickle during Cui Jian’s set?

view from the top of the Buddha- click for larger version.

The Big Buddha at Lingshan is big. Seated on a mountain surronded by lush countryside, he casts his bronzen smile for miles around.

The closest town is Wuxi- I guess the Wuxians built this thing to attract the tourists, and boy does it work. One tour guide we spoke to reckoned there would be 30-40,000 people visiting on the day we were there.

The entrance fee is 150. No wonder he’s smiling. 

For their money, the assembled throng get a nice walk up to the statue, with various prayer wheels and minor attractions to keep them busy.

At several times during the day, music starts and a large column in the middle of the park starts rotating.

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The flower slowly opens, a baby emerges and water sprays over his head. The Sistine Chapel looks pretty shoddy in comparison.

And as for the guy who commented he’d like to see Buddha versus the Statue of Liberty- well here’s a scale reproduction;

Scale model- Lady Liberty with base = 93m, the Buddha tops out at 88m. Place your bets…

Now when you first looked at this image, what did you see? I can’t tell if it’s an odd piece of political commentary, or just a bad stencil job.

Sadly I didn’t spot this one, my friend Charlie did, so I can’t confirm whether the other shoe looks like a cross between Nelson Mandela and Attila the Hun.

1. Whenever possible, ensure that your hair matches the signs

2. Designer labels are of the utmost importance. Spelling them correctly izn’t.

3. Remember to keep your phone on a leash at all times.

Not to make the whole site into a series of Part 1, Part 2 etc. type features- but here’s Part 1 of the trip I took over the October holidays.

From: Shanghai –> Songjiang
By: Taxi & Subway
Saw: Thames Town

It’s not easy to say how many people live in Shanghai, because at the outlying areas of the city are places like Songjiang. A town in it’s own right (and long before Shanghai was anything to write home about too) but connected to the hub on subway line 9. From the price of the big villas and fancy apartment buildings, you’d have to assume that a lot of the residents of Songjiang are making their money in the city and come out here to get a bit of peace and quiet in the suburbs. 

We only stopped for one night to get our bearings before we headed off west into Jiangsu province, but since our hotel was right next to Thames Town- we thought we’d have a look.

Thames Town (or the “British Featured Precinct” according to one street sign) is a housing development made to look like an English town. It’s all a bit bizarre for English folk like me and Emma; you can walk along Harry Street past Kensington Gardens and end up at a village green. The attention to detail is superb in places, the designers probably mapped out entire streets in Bath or Stratford and dropped them in here.

It’s tempting to think of the place as a film set, but I know actual towns in England (I’m looking at you, Retford) that are smaller than this place- and the houses and shops are real places that are available to buy.

The problem with Thames Town is that the business plan seems to have been

If you build it, they will come

Well they did, and umm nobody has.

Almost everyone on the cobbled streets is just in town for a few hours to take wedding photos, most of the shops either rent out fancy dresses or try to sell the acres of empty property.

The cobbled streets of Thames Town are lovely in daylight, but it must get pretty lonely when the tourists go home and you’re left with a life-sized replica of a village Church.

Maybe in a few years time they’ll move all of the residents out and let a gang of robotic Beefeaters roam the grounds.

I for one would pay big money to hunt those Beefeaters down with a machine gun.

Last but probably not least (I’m still embarrassed about that Tarantino slip up from yesterday) is the great Nick Hornby book, turned mediocre film “High Fidelity”.

Or as I like to call it….

(It makes a lot more sense if you’ve seen the original poster)

That’s the last of these things now- normal service will be resumed in 5…4…3