ISpyShanghai

It costs 1,500RMB (150 quid) to fly return from Shanghai to Seoul right now.

Good eh? I went on Friday.

Seoul is a lovely place, nestled in the mountains, on a Sunday afternoon it feels like a sleepy little village compared to Shanghai.

The nightlife is good though- all little independent bars tucked away down alleys where if they don’t have the tune you ask for, they’ll download it.

I used to live in Korea for 3 or 4 years- I forget how long exactly, this is back when I used to drink too much.

Now I’m a little older and more sensible I try not to go too crazy- in fact I have a strict rule: once the sun comes up, no more shots.

Originally I’d planned to go to the wedding of an old workmate. But it turned out to be far away, and I had a hangover that could fell a tree so I just stayed in the city and stared at the increasingly bizarre outfits of the Korean metrosexual.

The guy in the his’n’hers pink sweatshirt is the butchest looking man in the photo

It’s terrifying how camp the Korean guys look these days, terrifying. Don’t get me wrong, they pull it off and the street fashions are, well, streets ahead of Shanghai. But the levels of camp are off the scale- two examples, the guy below, Bae Yong Joon is one of the biggest stars in the country.

This image is taken from his role as spokesman (honestly, it is a man) for a cosmetics company.

and this (here on youtube) is an advert for a cellphone featuring another two popular stars. Aside from wearing outfits made entirely out of tinfoil, they come within about one Banana Daquiri away from making out at the end of the ad.

Oh and did I mention that the phone they’re advertising is called “Magic Hole“?

If you’ve never been, I really recommend a trip to Seoul- if only for the fact that walking around the place makes you feel like a manlier version of Wesley Snipes.

Every tuesday here on ISpy we take a look into the fascinating world of footwear.

It’s a wild ride my friend, so come with me now, step into my weekly world of shoes….

This week I received a letter through the electronic mail.

Dear Dr Swiss

as we all know, the hot look that’s wowing the fashion world right now is the Shanghainese Street Sweeper.

I’ve got my faded blue coveralls, the hair full of cigarette ash and have grown my little fingernail to the required 3 inches. When it comes to the shoes though, I have hit a major snafu.

Me and Kate Moss were shopping down at Carrefour when we bought what we thought were genuine FeiYue shoes, and yet something doesn’t feel right with them. Have I bought fakes?

Help me Dr Swiss, you’re my only hope.

Mackers.

xx

Well Mackers- firstly, you’ve come to the right place (so that’s good news), however you have bought fakes (so that’s bad news). Do you know what though, when it comes to that funky oppressed Chinese peasant look- what could be more authentic than fakes? They’re probably rarer than the real thing too.

For the best selection of the real thing (including some one-off custom jobs) head down to Culture Matters on Dongping Lu (near Henghsan Lu- opposite Vargas Grill). For the fakes- head down to the docks and look for a guy with a wheelbarrow full of nail clippers, pan scrubbers, and shoes that say “FeiYin”.

Real uns down at Culture Matters

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.

Welcome back to the regular feature we both love, and are a little creeped out by- Shoe Tuesday. 

I didn’t really realise there was such a thing as boot season before T pointed it out last week, but a boot season there is, and in it we are.

So many boots have I seen, that I can draw up a Comprehensive list of the

Top Three Boots Trends In Shanghai This Boot Season

Trend 1: Boots with tassles

Personally, I don’t like them. Tassled boots look like an Old English Sheepdog is humping your leg.

Still though, every now and then girls weirdly decide that something looks good and no amount of looking in the mirror will convince them otherwise. Expect to spend most of Summer 2010 laughing at photos of yourself wearing these horrors.

Continue Reading »

There’s a great new shop opened up near Dingle’s house- it’s called Meat Puppets and it sells all kinds of utterly useless tat.

The woman who owns the place speaks good english, which will be very useful when she’s back working in Starbucks after the business fails.

Here’s what I wrote about it for Shanghaiist:

Gadgets! Gadgets! Gadgets for all!

If there’s one business model that’s sure to ride the current economic storm, it’s a shop which sells nothing but useless gadgets.

Recently opened “Meat Puppets” on Shaanxi Lu (near JianGuo Lu) is a shop that sells gadgets such as “High School Musical” themed magic 8-balls, old-fashioned telephone receivers on a curly cord (to plug into your cell phone, obviously) and one of two awesome infra-red powered air guitars!.

Take that Credit Crunch!

Takara Tomy Air Guitar Pro – 275RMB

Takara Tomy Air Guitar Pro Acoustic (pictured) – 475RMB. 

 

One thing I didn’t mention in that post is that I bought the guitar in the picture, and then tried to make a video of myself playing the thing.

With limited success.

I hear strong rumours that there is a clip of Professor Dingle playing “Walk This Way” on his, whilst wearing superman pyjamas. Let’s wait and see if it turns up eh?

Movember Moustache

Quick recap for anyone who only checks in here once a week:

• All November (AKA “Movember”) I’m growing a moustache
• It’s for charity – with the money going to Prostate Cancer research
• f you donate to me you get a password to view a special post where you’ll see how the moustache looks today

Now admittedly, growing a moustache isn’t hard- no harder than growing nose hair in fact- but it is very very annoying.

When I eat soup I have to wipe the thing down after every spoonful, it tickles my nose when I’m asleep, and more than anything I have to really watch what kind of clothes I wear with the damn thing.

There doesn’t seem to be any reason to it, but when I wear certain shirts or jeans I look either like a Spartak Moscow fan, or Mr Gay UK 1985.

[N.B I'm not talking about new, cool, "Queer Eye For The Straight Guy" / Tom Ford / Toby Maguire kind of gay, but oldschool  Freddie Mercury / "The Blue Oyster" bar kind of gay. Not a good look.]
It’s a minefield, and I’m struggling to get through it to the end of the month.

Luckily though a young man called Nige has come to the rescue.

Nige writes:

Dear James,
I was recently strolling through the backstreets of Shinjuku when I saw a familiar Italian Plumber: (Super) Mario.

Knowing that his bushy moustache is very close to your own personal style, I decided to follow him and pick up some fashion tips.

After a few streets or running and bouncing his head off bricks, Mario dived into a traditional Japanese Onsen to jump on some mushrooms and have a quick soak.

Here is a photo of the shoes he left at the door.

All the hairy chest,
Nige

Super Mario Golf Shoes

Thanks Nige.

So now I know which shoes go with the ol’ soup strainer, it’s just a matter of tracking them down in Shanghai.

I’ve bought some horrible stuff at Shanghai’s various fabric markets. Shiny blue jackets that I’ll never wear, an ice-white linen suit that saw a brief outing at one of Dingle’s fashionable BBQs, and numerous pairs of trousers that developed holes at just the wrong place and time.

Still though, winter is coming up and I can’t be seen wearing last year’s coat- what would the neighbours say?

Here then is my timely guide to getting a good price at the Fabric market:

Act like you’re not bothered
Only suckers act like they really want to have a suit made, suckers who get ripped off. You really haven’t decided whether you’re going to buy today, maybe you’ll buy a hamburger instead.

This is a hard act to pull off when you’re specifying fabrics, number of buttons, extra-crotch reinforcing etc. so pretend to treat all decisions hypothetically;

“Assuming I was looking for a jacket, then maybe I’d like you to copy this one that I’ve brought all the way across town in a plastic bag.

Perhaps I would want you to make the waist slightly bigger, because it’s possible that I eat a lot of mashed potato and gravy at KFC“

Subtly imply that you don’t have much money

“You don’t need to make the pockets very big, usually all I carry is a bus pass and some stale rice“

Speak Chinese
The more the better, but at the very least you need to manage a passable ”Aiyo!” when the first tentative prices are being floated around. Extra bonus points are added for a

“Tai gui le!” (too expensive!)
or a
“Wo bu shi ri ben ren!!!” (”I’m not Japanese!”)

If you’re white / otherly foreign, then speaking Chinese is basically a way of saying that you’re not a tourist, and it also gives the stall holders something fun to laugh about when your back is turned.

and a free health check too

Speak Shanghainese
Slightly more tricky to pull off, but expat wisdom suggests that whilst stupid old whitey always pays more than the Chinese, out of towners also pay less more than anyone who can speak Taxi-driver talk.
(fixed 30th Oct, ta Liam)

Don’t blink first
Market stall holders can spot a sucker at 30 paces, but if you’re following the steps above it’s going to take them a bit longer to work out what kind of sucker you are.

Prolong their realisation by point-blank refusing to name a price that you want to pay. Let them name a price (which you should find both hilarious and horrifying) and have them come down a couple of notches first.

Ideally you should have the clothes hanging up in your wardrobe at home, with patches of wear beginning to show from a few seasons of regular rotation before you call up the tailor and make your first low ball offer.

Remember: stay vigilant at all times

Do the walk off. (But not that walk off)
Everyone knows the old walk-away-in-disgust technique- where the stall holder is supposed to chase after you in tears begging you to come back and pay whatever small coins you have in your pocket.

Maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t- but there are few things more embarassing than doing the walk off and then having to come back shamefaced because you can’t find another stall that’s willing to make a lace girdle for a 30 year old man.

If you do decide to go this direction, then pretend that you’re breaking up with someone. It’s not them, it’s you, you want to think things over, you can’t help thinking that somewhere out there is a piece with better quality, a cheaper price, or sleeve buttons that actually fasten (hmm, this metaphor needs some work).

Finally

Always remember that the following phrases have no meaning whatsoever and should be ignored:

• “Friend price”
• Final offer
• Ohh handsome!
• Where are you from? Oh I like England/USA/Botswana very much!
• Please put underwear back on! Do not touch fabric like that!

There are two main fabric markets in Shanghai:

South Bund Soft Spinning Materials Market
399 Lujiabang Lu (near Nanpu Bridge)

Shiliupu Material Shopping Market
Dongmen Lu near Zhonghua Lu

<cue Shoe Tuesday music>

You might know this and then again you might not, but either way-I used to live in Korea. I was there for three years and had a splendid time. 

High Heel Scooter

When I first arrived I thought the place was kind of backwards in the fashion stakes- the middle aged men there wear their belts higher than I thought humanly possible, and most of the guys my age had pointy shoes that extended 9 inches past the end of their toes for that Rumpelstiltskin vibe.

Strawberry Slipons

Now though, Korea is something of a fashion leader in asia and it’s very common to see hangeul writing on jeans / handbags and t-shirts for dogs here in Shanghai.

I haven’t been back for a while but I keep abreast of all the latest trends by looking at the flickr stream of close personal e-friend / flickr contact / guy I’ve never actually met Superlocal.

Superlocal’s job seems to involve doing what I do for a hobby: finding weird stuff in asian cities. Presumably in his spare time, he sits in 3 hour meetings about airport information systems.

Shoe Slippers

The photos below are some of his captures from the whacky world of Korean footwear- if you want more, I highly recommend having a gander at his stuff on flickr http://flickr.com/photos/superlocal.

Shoe Tongs