ISpyShanghai

I have a new love in my life, and her name is The Electric Chanting Buddha Box.

Buddhists, as we all know, are big fans of incense and chanting so with my apartment being close to Jing-An temple, there are about 5 or 6 Buddhist supply shops on my road which sell more incense than anyone could need. Until now though, I thought you had to go to the actual temple to get your fill of chanting, but oh how wrong I was.

All you actually need is a plastic box ranging in size from a box matches to a small radio. Turn them on and relax as the sweet, cheap sound of incantations and wood-block beating fills the air. Since the sounds are looped, you don’t have to worry about getting up to change the CD, it’s like having a singing monk as a house-mate, except you don’t have to put up with claptrap like:

“If I were the one who took the last of the milk, would not the last of the milk also have taken me?”

I think there’s something really appealing about these little gadgets and ended up buying six of them on Saturday afternoon- all of with look different and have different sounds. There seems to be a huge range of these little gadgets, every new shop I went into had a stack of them, all with their own sounds and designs. Some of them are small enough to hang around your neck- as modelled by the handsome chap below:

I call it my “Third-eye Pod”. This is a very clever and amusing Buddhist pun.

The most expensive one was I think 30 RMB (2 quid) and the cheapest was half of that- in the end I bought six of them, which might seem a little excessive but like the Buddhists say, you only live once!

[March 28, 2007]

A photo from the book “Assignment Shanghai: Photographs on the eve of revolution” or possibly the bar of Miss Julie’s Kitty-Kat Club on TongRen Lu at 9pm last night, I forget which:

The look on the bartender’s face is class

I don’t know whether it’s the diet of soya sauce and Chicken bones over here or what, but most of the foreign fellas my sort of age (and way, way above) seem to be absolutely choking for the local girls, to the point where half of the guys in nightclub have a sort of crazed look in their eye and froth bubbling at the corners of their mouth. Oh those lucky Chinese ladies.

Sometimes though, your needs are more specific than just a friendly girl for the night.
That’s where the classified ads come in:

and sometimes, it’s fun to get drunk and just see what newspapers will print.

[March 27, 2007]

Sunday I left the apartment at about 4pm and just rode my bike around and around until about 9:30. I had a vague plan to go along Huaihai Lu to buy the stuff I still don’t have for my apartment (plates, wine glasses, food that isn’t fun-sized Snickers), and also to stick it to the man since you’re not supposed to ride a bike down Huaihai Lu. I didn’t buy anything useful, but I did manage to bike along several miles of that main road, past several police cars, without being fined or shot.  

Just what I’m looking for! 

WoAiZhongGuo left a comment about Shanghai being crap to ride around, and I see his point now. If you stuck to the traffic restrictions it would be really hard to get around the city, and when I was having a quick butty break, I saw 3 or 4 suckers being fined for biking where they shouldn’t so they do enforce the law. The guys at work tell me that my beautiful white face will never get stopped by the cops, and the fine is only between 10 and 20RMB (just over 1 pound) anyway so for the time being I’ll continue being a rebel. 

Speaking of comments, here’s one from Andrew G:

‘Something about China from the pics is slightly off — perhaps it’s the color scheme . It is even slightly depressing. Or slightly suffocating. “Smells” like chemicals.’

Well Andrew G- I think this is the kind of photo you mean:

Under an overpass, South-East Puxi. There was  weird mist hanging over the city all Sunday. 

Taking increasingly random streets I headed East and South and soon bumped into a big Photography shopping centre where I bought a book of photos from China in the 1940s. There aren’t so many Red Guards administering random beatings on the streets as there was back then, but the laundry and fish hung out to dry over the streets is still here, and there’s a great photo of a drunken western guy grabbing a Chinese girl’s arse in a bar which could have been taken last Friday night [I’ll steal it and put it up here later on].

By the time the sun went down I was about as close to the river as you can get around that area and found myself at an outdoor market. There were woks blazing, live chickens having their breasts’ pinched, women (but never men) wandering around in their flannel teddy-bear pyjamas, and scores of very busy little hair-dressing and foot-massage places. Everyone likes a bit of a trim and a rub down on Sunday night apparently.

I bought a massive bag of popcorn (2RMB), put it in the front basket where I could reach in and eat it without crashing, then rolled through the streets watching the goings on like a film.

[March 20, 2007]

A bright sun-is-shining morning, I nipped into the local dry cleaners to pick up some things I left there and…

Oh.

Unbelievable, it seems the owners have hit the jackpot, moved to Rio De Janiero and left a gloating notice in the window, detailing their winning lottery numbers.

As usual, I’m the one who suffers.

[March 16, 2007]

Well, well- I took a half day off (tomorrow morning) to go and see “Bugz in the Attic” a band from London. I’ve got their Fabric live CD and thought they would be DJing but it turned out to be a full band.

They were class, no question- I was dancing like a gospel singer on Sunday- but as it turned out, the DJs they had on afterwards, blew them away.

Me and Carly, the fantastic singer from Bugs In The Attic

“The Nextmen”, so good I’ll say it thrice- “The Nextmen”, “The Nextmen” came on afterwards and were just the best DJs I’ve ever seen. It was like they’d spent a few months studying my music tastes, asking friends and family about my opinions on Drum’n’Bass versus Blackstreet, Lauryn Hill against the Jackson 5 etc. and decided to play the best tunes I could possibly wish for.

Not only that, but the drummer, the singer (Carly), the MC and a couple of the keyboard wizards from the Bugz kept getting up to play along with them, so it was like a once only, this is here, this is Shanghai, the crowd are tearing the roof off- kind of one-off show.

I went to the show with Craig and Weijia but they weren’t as keen as me and left after the Bugz- so left when they finished. I thought I’d maybe stay another half hour but ended up battling through the crowd to make a fool of myself in front of the DJs telling them how much I was loving what they played.

The club was big, full of white guys and girls who wear hats for a night out, or Chinese people who go to say they’ve been there- sort of pretentious really, but still well worth the trip there and back in the pouring rain to the club (’Absolute House’). I was sat at the bar at one point and this guy gave me a rum and orange juice saying
“This is my club, do you like it?”
I said
“Mate, I am coming back here again, and again and aga- where you going?”

Despite the rain, Shanghai is mint.

[March 14 2007]

Picked up the films I took at the weekend and there was one in particular I was chuffed with.

I had to practically stand on the engine of the ferry I was riding (from the East to the West bank of the Huang Pu river), but the sun was just spot on to make those fancy modern buildings shine. Look at it big if you don’t believe me.

Diesel poisoning wasn’t the only danger I faced that day though, oh no. The clear skies gave me a sunburnt bonce, and I was nearly chinned by this guy when I took a photo of his food stand:

He cursed like a drunken sailor and I genuinely thought he was going to chase after me, but I’ve got myself out of worse situations than that, let me tell you.

Momma didn’t raise no fool.

[March 12, 2007]

This weekend was the first time I’d ever been to the park at People’s Square- even though I suppose it is the very center of Shanghai. They’re pretty strict on what you can and can’t do there, no teasing shrimp, no taking your top off, no unaccompanied midgets, and…

What you are allowed to do however, is advertise your unmarried relatives- thus allowing other nosey Grandmas and Grandpas to do a bit of matchmaking and provide those Grandkids damnit!!

One careful owner, only took her to Church on Sunday

I’d say there were about 30-50 of these old-timers walking around with notepads, checking out the various adverts and swapping details. Some, but not many, of the sheets had photos- it seems that looks aren’t the most important factor in this kind of scenario. I’ve had a bit of help translating one of the adverts and here’s what we’ve got:

The characted on the top left means ‘female’- I didn’t need any help with that one

Basically the top half of the sheet is her details, bottom half is what a suitor should have:

Her:

Born October 1980,
Height 164cm
College degree, working as an accountant assistant
Living in Hongkou disctrict
A genuine Shanghai resident (none of your migrant peasants here please)
Salary 2500RMB a month (167 pounds. Blimey)

Him

A politician
Born between 1976-1979
173cm or taller (pretty precise isn’t it?)
College degree or better
Earning 3,000 RMB or more a month
Owns his apartment

Well it certainly cuts to the quick, there’s no:
“I enjoy the smell of freshly cut grass and ticklefighting to the sounds of Artie Shaw“.

What amuses me the most though is that apparently the girls (or guys, there were plenty of both) often don’t even know they’re being hawked around the park. I can imagine the conversation now:

Grandpa: “That Gong Li is a lovely actress, don’t you think Hong Ming?”
Grandson: “Oh certainly Gramps, I wouldn’t mind taking her for a cup of green tea!”
Grandpa: “I hear she’s 163cm tall, but I suppose 5 cm either way is OK for a girl eh?”
Grandson: “Umm sure…”
Grandpa: “You know, when I was your age, I was earning 100RMB a month and had a BMI of 18.6. Have you got all of your own teeth?”
Grandson: “I swear to Buddha, if you start advertising me to all your creepy friends in the park again, I will turn gay.”

[March 6, 2007]

I’ve got this mate, a workmate of Craig’s in fact, who very much enjoys his visits to Shanghai for the eyecandy which abounds. He is, not to put to fine a point on it, like a rat up a drainpipe every time he comes over.

See if you can spot him on this photo:

This guy, Jonathan, was out on Saturday night- as were Craig and Weijia, Cindy, and two Swedish guys from my work- Fredrick and Hendrik.

Cindy, Weijia and random guy, dancing on the bar in Zappata’s

I only met the Swedish guys on Monday but my boss volunteered me to take them out on the town, I wasn’t sure how professional they would think I was after a night on the sauce, but then again people are people and nobody wants a night out sitting round discussing XML transformations (a computer thingy).

Events got off on a good foot anyway with a few shots of snake liquor in Harley’s- it’s the second time I’ve drank that stuff and I’m getting a taste for it-Red Bull is for the weak, real men drink serpent’s embalming fluid.
[And they can put that on the advert].
After that we went to a Shanghainese restaurant (you’re not allowed to say a ‘Chinese’ restaurant here, because there are so many different kinds of Chinese food) where dinner for 6 including drinks was under 400RMB (about 4 pounds per person). After the meal, one of the Swedish guys quietly asked me “What does ‘bone’ mean? And why does that guy keep talking about doing it to ‘birds’?”.

Onwards to bars; Zappatta’s, Judy’s- both loud places with good/awful music which eventually wore down the resolve of Fredirik. He needed to sit down in the relative quiet of the Blue Frog for a whiskey or two before we went to a club. And then at the club he needed to leave because he hated it. Jonathan was last seen in the vicinity of a Phillipino girl whose memory I dedicate this entry to.