ISpyShanghai

I’ve been hitting all the tourist spots lately- they’re all very crowded.

Yu Yuan:

The ferry to Pudong

and Taikang Lu:

I’m thinking about having weekend in Hong Kong to get away from it all.

Toilet signs from the bit between Pudong airport T1 and the Maglev station.

Sit

Squat

Two things here-

1) Is it still OK to find this funny? I’m 31 for flip’s sake.

2) In the girls toilet, does the stick figure wear a skirt?

Here’s my round up of the year. 

jANUARY

I started off the year in in Letterkenny, Oirland where I was pitched up in a remote cottage following my brothers wedding.

It was great craic (fake irishmen: please note the spelling) although if you want to get a Chicken Tikka Masala at 3am on January the 1st, I’d recommend not being in a village of 250 toothless fishermen. 

On returning to Shanghai, Emma convinced me to take a trip to the freezing wastelands of Harbin where they brighten the place up once a year by holding an ice festival. 

“How cold was it James?” 

I hear you ask. So cold that there was frost on the end of my eyelashes. 

So cold that when I saw a man peeing in the street, I wanted to shake his (left) hand for bravery.

Very, very, cold.

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KAP- Kite Aerial Photography is where you attach a camera to a kite, hoist the thing up in the air, and then take photos of the lovely scenery down below.

Sounds cool doesn’t it? I’ve been determined to have a go for a while.

First of all I bought a kite from Decathlon- a double string stunt kite, because that’s all they had, but it seemed sturdy and fairly light weight.

Then I cut a hole (for the lens) in an old camera case and attached it to the bar of the kite. Secured the bottom of the case to the back bar with plastic ties, checked everything was OK, and waited for a sunny day.

Click for more detail, it's pretty securely attached

The whole kite

Complete with camera

Sunday was a beautifully clear day, I went down to the Science & Technology museum to try out my kit.

Click below to see stunning photos taken from a kite soaring high above Pudong!

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Funny weather in Pudong today- swirling clouds, strong winds, something’s up I tell you that much. Yesterday there was a massive thunderstorm just by the airport with rain coming down so fast that when I went out at the end of the day, the security guards had sandbags ready in case of flooding.

My workmate Ryan reckons it’s because China launched a rocket into space yesterday

“Now China is number 3 in the world!”

There are three people in the rocket and at some point today, one of them is going to go on a spacewalk. I’m not sure which one is supposed to leave the capsule first, but having been on the Shanghai subway at rush hour I’ll guess it’s a 45 year old woman with very pokey elbows.

Next week is Golden Week- the time when everyone in China has a week off work (except subway employees and astronauts) so I’m going to England to visit that baby that’s keeping my brother up at night.

Am still trying to decide what present to take for little Eve. Probably not milk powder.

Be warned, the camera falls off the windowsill halfway through.

Still, you get a decent run at it before then. Will try again tonight (and every night until I get it right damnitt!).

This is my nightly commute- Shanghai Pudong Airport to Longyang Station on the “first operational high-speed conventional maglev railway” (says wikipedia).

It’s been clocked at 501Km/h but nomally it tops out at 431Km/h in the daytime and just 301Km/h after 5pm when I take it. On the occasions that I get to ride it at the higher speed it really does feel like you’re flying along- and when it passes the other train going in the opposite direction- BAMN!- it’s a shock to the system.

Normally though it’s just a pretty smooth 8 minute journey to an obscure part of town where I can take the proper metro to get home.

Also on YouTube.
Video is at double-speed, song is “At Your Service” by Harold Fisher.

After a heavy Friday night (for which I blame Baijiu, B52s and The Beaver), and a more restrained Saturday (Comedy night@Racks, The Spot, The Shelter, home early) I had a good day of wandering around on Sunday.

If you ever feel like you’re insignificant in this world, that life passes you by and nobody pays attention to you, try setting up a tripod and camera on Nanjing Dong Lu. There’ll be a crowd of people watching you within a few minutes.

(If you’re white you can achieve the same trick by just sitting down next to an empty seat on Nanjing Dong Lu. A steady stream of Chinese bumpkins who want to have their photo taken with a genuine laowei will be along shortly.)

Here’s another timelapse video:

The land all around Pudong airport is either reclaimed from the sea, or was farmland.

In fact all (or most) of the security guards and cleaners who work in or around the airport once farmed the land- one minute you’re breaking your back in the sun, the next you’re sat in a control room, asleep in front of a bank of CCTV monitors. Life is sweet.

As with a lot of airports then, the surrounding area has loads of wildlife; there are frogs everywhere, Land Tigers, and now this thing:

It’s a Xiao Long Xia (little lobster) in Chinese, some people call them Crawdaddies in English. They live in freshwater, often rice paddies and are about the size of a baby’s foot.
They’re good eating, at this time of year there are glossy Salmon-pink stacks outside restaurants up and down town.

This is the first live Xiao Long Xia I’ve seen though, it was scuttling along the road at 4am this morning as I finished work. I don’t mind telling you that hey look ‘orrible on a shadowy road at that time at night, at first I thought it was some kind of Scorpion.

I did not, however, scream like a little girl. I screamed like a man.