ISpyShanghai

OK now this is going to be old news for most people, but I was at a hotpot restaurant last night and we cooked the broth on little individual hotplates.

EXCEPT THEY WERE NOT HOT.

You could put your hand on the thing and it wouldn’t burn, but place a metal pot on there and the soup would bubble up real nice.

“Oh sure” you’re thinking, “He’s talking about a confloosion unit pad”.

Well yes, if that’s what they’re called then I’ll believe you.

But how did such a technological wonder go from being a show-stopping marvel that people would crowd around and stare at, to so commonplace that I just realised somebody in the next office is making Cappuccino with one?

“Hmm, no sugar- I’ll just pop out on my hoverboard and get some”

I know I didn’t get an iPod until August this year, but am I so far behind the times?
What else have I missed?

Spicy Joint is a chain of Sichuan (i.e. spicy- that’s how they got the name, a team of monkeys worked for a week on that) restaurants.

They’re huge, busy, tasty and cheap. Dinner for 5 last night cost about 630RMB including plenty of beer and lashings of food.

Because they’re so big and busy, the queuing system is well organised: you turn up, tap your phone number into a machine, add how many people you are, and get a ticket with a number on it.

Three separate queues (for small, medium and large tables) tick through these numbers and you can easily wait for an hour or more in the waiting room. To amuse yourself, you can look through the onscreen menus the restaurant provides for you, or drink the beer that they don’t .

Viewing the menu onscreen in the waiting room

Last night though we were through in ten minutes flat though, maybe it’s not as popular as it was.

When you sit down they give you a funny lifestyle magazine.

Reading material whilst you wait?

That turns out to be the menu:

No, it’s a menu!

although it does still have the odd “feature” in there about how to be the perfect bride, or what hat looks cute while you’re holding a plate

  
No! It’s a magazine! 

Not many foreigners go to Spicy Joint (yay!) and there’s no English menu. So either bring your best pointing finger, or someone who can read foreign.

We ended up having to ask about some of the dishes for clarification- the one below was described as

“Some part of a pig that’s just north of the tail”

I’m still none the wiser which bit that is, but damn it was good.

 
Better than the bit just south of the tail huh?

Spicy Joint
Many Locations- including
4F 500 Jinling Lu near Xizang Lu

#407 Walk out into the middle of the road during rush hour, set up a bamboo ladder, and start tinkering with the power cables.

Nike have made a few shekels from a minor baseball player called Michael Jordan.

They got him to jump up fancy, took a photo, stuck it on a few pairs of shoes and boom! Mazooma in the bank.

Air Jordan 

If my favourite Chinese trainer- FeiYue ever want to make the leap* from cheap canvas plimsoll to a major sporting brand, they’re going to need similar brand recognition.

Based on the kind of people who wear FeiYue right now, I’d say their main options for a Jordan-style tie-in logo are:

1) Manual labourers digging a ditch

Air Gong Ren

b) ironic indie-rocking hipsters

Air Studied Pose 

or… iii) awesome kung-fu kicking monks from the planet DoubleHard.

Air I’m lying on a bunch of spears and what are you going to do about it?

click to read on… »

I’m leaving Shanghai, and leaving China.

Me and Emma are going to live in Manchester, we leave on December 7th*.

It’s been a great three years, and just feels like the right time to leave for me.

*So that means you’ve got 3 more Shoe Tuesdays

I was in a meeting this morning, my only contribution was to stand up and nod my head slightly when somebody said my name. It was a productive 3 hours.

If you find yourself in a similar situation (common for foreign looking foreigners in China) you will need to know who to nod you head slightly at in order to get the most out of the meeting.

Spotting the top boss

When working out who the most important man (or woman!) ((just kidding, it’s a man)) looking at clothes isn’t much of a clue  in the room is. 

If you watch the recent broadcast of the 60th anniversary of the CCP you’ll see that drab and cheap looking is the order of the day for leaders.

Spotting a fancy watch is no good either; don’t tell anyone, but there are 1 or 2 fake Rolexes knocking around in China (shhh!)

 

 

No, the best way to tell who is important is to look at the…

Seating Plan

For example, imagine you’ve just walked through the door to a meeting room and seen this:

Who is the most important guy in the room? Probably the guy with the red robe and blue cloak right? Same in China. The most important guy sits facing the door in the middle.

Now let’s take a closer look at that table:

click to read on… »

 

Gillette are running these adverts in the back of taxis. As you can imagine I almost dropped my pad and paper trying to take notes.

I know the Asian chap tends towards more of a wisp than a beard, but surely the basic tecnhinque is common knowledge by now?

Here on I Spy we devote every Tuesday to shoes. Why? Because it sounds funny- say it with me:

Shoe Tuesday

Shoooooooee Tuuuuuueeeesdayy

See?

Anyway, best crack on.

click to read on… »