Yu Yuan:

The ferry to Pudong

and Taikang Lu:

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

• Xiao Long Xia (24 comments)
• Working 9 to 5 (and the rest) (11 comments)
• Where to stay in Shanghai (7 comments)

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?

• Xiao Long Xia (24 comments)
• The Maglev, Shanghai (14 comments)
• Terminal 2 (17 comments)

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.

February

Spring Festival time again- out with the Pig, in with the Rat (or was it Mouse?) 

Spitting, flags, fireworks. They're all here!

I spent Chinese New Year in Hong Kong. Took the overnight sleeper train from Shanghai to Shenzen (and I’m still getting google hits for it) which was almost as much fun as the destination itself. 

"Hello is that Disney's copyright department?"

Hong Kong really does deserve its reputation as a great place to shop, it’s also a fantastic city to eat, and if you’re looking for a place to watch fireworks explode over Hong Kong Harbour- it’s absolutely world class.

Hong Kong Harbour

March

I came to Shanghai to work on the new Terminal 2 at Pudong airport, so you can imagine my relief when Terminal 2 actually opened and didn’t explode. 

Terminal 2 at Pudong

In the end it turned out to be kind of an anti-climax, I was on the second shift of engineers who clocked on at around 7am to clear up any problems that happened during switch over. But there weren’t any real problems.

Damn. If only I’d been working on Terminal 5 at Heathrow instead.

The other big news of the month is that I saw two middle-aged Chinese guys being nice to a cat and neither of them were WoAi. 

No, they weren't fattening up their dinner

April

The Smiths sang “November Spawned A Monster” but I say it was April15, 2008. 

That was the date when I decided to take two random photos I’d taken at the weekend, and pretend they were part of an ongoing feature called “Shoe Tuesday”. 

The first ever Shoe Tuesday image

Oh I thought it was a laugh at first, but yesterday I spent 10 minutes of my life chasing an 11 year old girl up three floors of a shopping mall because she was wearing a plastercast in the shape of a giant roller boot. 

I’m not sure who’s laughing every Tuesday, but it isn’t me I can tell you.

May

This was the month when Emma left her bag in a taxi on the way back from the airport. The driver fell asleep, I ended up in the back of a police car. 

You’ll really have to read the whole thing.

It was a strange incident that, in a way, shows the full spectrum of what life as a foreigner can be like in China.

Especially since the way I think about that night depends on whether I choose to remember how nice the police guy in the station was 

Please don’t think badly of China, we are trying to find your bag, I hope you have a great time here.

I like Lady Diana.

or to remember the attitude of the Emergency phoneline operator (i.e. the 999 / 911 woman)

Emma: Hello, I’d like to report a missing bag

Hatchet faced old Witch: Why are you in China? Do you have a visa?

It was also the month of my trip to a resort (called Xanadu!) near Hangzhou. Ahh, good times.

Xanadu in Hangzhou

June

During the merry old month of June I got heavily into timelapse and spent an entertaining (for everyone around me) hour or so stood on Nanjing Dong Lu taking a photo of the street every 20 seconds. 

Some results can be seen here, and another result was that I owed the long suffering Emma a trip to Beijing, my first time in the capital.

Three Bald Men

It’s lovely there- a lot more peaceful than Shanghai, and with cheaper sandwiches too.

July

Back home for the summer and a barrage of questions from friends and colleagues:

So do you have some kind of shoe fetish?

Seriously, what’s with all the shoes?

etc.

Once again, it’s a joke that somehow got out of hand- I’m as confused by the whole thing as you are.

July was also the first time I played the world’s greatest video game: Rock Band, got lost on my bike and nearly drowned in my own sweat, realised I could feed my turtles with a toothpick, and discovered how monkeys quit smoking. 

a t-shirt for evil hags

August

OK I’ll admit it- I was totally wrong about the Olympics. 

At the start of the year I thought the whole thing was nothing but hype and minority sports that no-one cares about. I was ordered to spend the opening ceremony from a secure location in the airport to defend from any cyber-attacks on the software (true story) and was blown away by the spectacle.

As the games wore on it felt like something historic was really happening, and that I’d be a fool not to take the short plane hop over to Beijing to see it for myself.

Three great sporting nations

In Beijing I had an amazing weekend, got tickets to go to the Birds Nest stadium, and saw something I’ll never forget: the first round of heats for the Women’s Pole Vault.

(Oh and Usain Bolt winning the 100m final)

September

I was in Nanjing enjoying a terrifying weekend of cable cars and taxi queues when I heard the news that my brother’s first baby, Eve Erin Creegan had arrived.

September was also the date of the first ever 150 club night out (a night out where the total cost of all of your clothes must be less than 150RMB), a free business trip to Kunming and the Stone Forest, and the month in which I bought a cool new lens for my camera.

Yi in wide-angle

On balance though, I’d still have to say that Eve’s arrival was the highlight.

October

Medical emergency! This is the month when I was rushed to hospital (well OK, I rushed myself to hospital) when my elbow suddenly turned infected and swollen. 

If I’m honest, part of me thought that the doctor was going to cut open the wound and millions of baby ants would crawl out of it. Instead though, they gave me some pills and it just sort of got better by itself.

Disappointing.

On the upside- I did get time to fly back to England and say hello to the new arrival. 

Eve Erin Creegan

Looking at this photo again, she looks so tiny! The beautiful smiling Eve I was playing with at Christmas must be twice as big as the newborn here.

Ah it won’t be long before she’s stealing cars and writing poems about how no-one understands her.

November

I started the month picking glass out of my feet following my disastrous halloween costume: (John McClane in Die Hard), but ended in triumphantly raising a good solid chunk of money for Prostate Cancer research by growing an awesome ginger moustache.

Me as John McClane

Me as Tachey McAwesome

 
 
Truly it was a wonderful Movember.

December

Shoe Tuesday turned ugly as a series of battles broke out: high-top sneakers versus shoe/trainer hybrids, boot warmers versus furry Crocs.

It’s a disturbing trend and no-one quite knows where it’s going, but we’ve opened Pandora’s box now, and it’s no use crying over spilt milk.

With a couple of friends away, we looked after Shanghai’s fanciest turtle- Dos, who spends his getting flipper manicures as he eats peeled Shrimp at Turtleham Palace.

How the other half swim

Let’s hope he enjoys it whilst it lasts- by the time this econmic crisis is over, he’ll have been boiled up for soup and served up at an Investment Banking soup kitchen.

• The first 3 months (13 comments)
• Shoe Tuesday: Apocalypse (11 comments)
• Shoe Tuesday – Olympics roundup (8 comments)

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!

Or not.

The damn thing wouldn’t get off the ground, even before I put the camera in the case. Humph.

Being unable to get a kite off the ground is a nightmare when you’re surronded by Chinese people 

Ah look!

they think

That foreigner is trying to fly a kite! I bet he’s bad at it

then me and Emma try to get this stupid kite off the ground with wind that wouldn’t ruffle the feathers on a Duck

Ah just as I suspected. Foreigners can’t fly kites, they don’t have the 5,000 years of history required to get a piece of nylon off the ground

Right now I’m looking out of my window at a beautifully clear Friday afternoon at the airport.

There is a strong Easterly breeze and a few miles away from where I sit, kites are soaring high, high, high up into the crisp air above Century Avenue.

How much do you want to bet that it pisses down with rain all day tomorrow?

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• Jose (3 comments)
• Xiao Long Xia (24 comments)

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.

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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.

• What (else) I did this weekend (15 comments)
• At home today (6 comments)
• 2008 (3 comments)

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:

• Timelapse photography (18 comments)
• Timelapse- drinking in the Beaver (33 comments)
• The Maglev, Shanghai (14 comments)

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.

• Toilet humour (7 comments)
• The Maglev, Shanghai (14 comments)
• Terminal 2 (17 comments)

The most common mistake people make in Shanghai is getting a hotel near the Pearl Tower because- hey, that’s the centre of town right?

WRONG.

You can take a compass and draw a circle half a mile around the Pearl Tower and find absolutely nothing worth seeing. Say it once with me: Pudong is not the centre of town.

If you have some kind of disease where you can’t cross rivers, and so HAVE to stay in Pudong, then forget the famous Grand Hyatt with it’s stupidly high rooms (giving you views of nothing but clouds 3/4 of the time) and go for the Shangri-La instead.

The view is much better (up close and personal with the Pearl Tower, all the way from the tip of the Bund to the flying roofs of Yu Yuan), the hotel restaurant Jade On 36 is incredible, and it’s close to the subway when you realise that everything good is over the water in Puxi.

Once you cross the river into the cool part of town, it is possible to stay right on the Bund so you can still see your precious Pearl Tower- try Astor House- a grand old hotel where Charlie Chaplin, Bertrand Russel and (dead President) Ulysses S. Grant all stayed.

It’s kind of old and maybe won’t have a pillow menu, but wouldn’t you trade that in to say you stayed in Einstein’s old room?
Good value too- $100 per night, or thereabouts.

For a cheap hotel in the Shanghai city center you could do a lot worse than the Bailemen. Right next door to a buddhist temple (Jing-An) directly on Nanjing Road (the main shopping street of Shanghai), it’s a 2 minute stroll to a major subway station, close to shopping, bars, restaurants etc. and is about 70$ per night.

Alternatively the Green Tree Inn is a 7 minute walk from the same subway station / temple. It’s on a quieter street, but still with plenty of stuff- for example a nice cafe called Waga’s opened up almost opposite the place. The Green Tree is right around the corner from a new trendy boutique hotel (URBN) but a fraction of the price at about $45 a night.

If you’ve got business around the Xu Jia Hui area then I stayed in the Jianguo Hotel for a month and it’s the best place in the area. Very convenient for the subway, a cake shop in reception, and mere steps away from the joy that is Harley’s bar.

If you want to imagine you’re not in a city at all but a peaceful country garden, then the Rui-Jin Hotel has all of that, and a couple of nice bars in the same complex too.

• Shanghai guide (35 comments)
• The Fabric Market- a how to guide (34 comments)
• Around Jing-An (33 comments)

To celebrate my anniversary with Emma (3 whole weeks- and they said we wouldn’t last), she picked me up from the airport, I got dressed in the toilets and we went to the Shangri-La hotel in Pudong.

The view from the top floor of the Shangri-La is incredible- you can watch boats slipping up and down the river, the full sweep of the Bund, fairy lights on the flying roofs of the old town, the lipstick towers of XJH , back to Plaza66, and the main ‘Pearl’ of the Pearl Tower up close and personal. Forget the Jin Mao, this is the view of the city.

If you’ve lived in Shanghai for a while you’re bound to have heard about the restaurant there too- it does the kind of “Molecular gastronomy” that all the cool chefs are trying these days; noodles made out of cuttle fish, chalk made out of cheese, Boxer Rebellion flavoured ice-cream, that kind of thing.

Here’s an example:

Duck a l’orange Sunny Side-Up

It’s duck a l’orange with the Orange juice in a little pouch on a bed of cocunut something or other, with the whole thing made to look like a full english breakfast.

Pretenious? Bien feckin’ Sûr- but it’s also kind of funny, and face-meltingly delicious.

The whole menu is like that, one course was a long strip of raw tuna with a 30cm french fry alongside it- “Aha!” you think “What a witty, po-mo take on fish’n'chips! He is playing with a sense of scale and, and, oh Christ that tastes good”

There were a million great points about the meal, (with 803,400 of them being the “Truffle Burnt Soup Bread” which was, just ahhh- oh I give up. Good.)

Apart from the bit where the waiter filled my wine glass with water (which when the water costs 150RMB and the wine 400RMB was a doubly pricey waste of both), it was pretty much perfect. By the end I had to lie down in the taxi because my taste buds were worn through.

Jade of Jade XL menu @ Jade on 36- 1034RMB (+ drinks. It’s only one a year eh?)

• Xiao Long Xia (24 comments)
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• The Maglev, Shanghai (14 comments)