Some Surprising Things

Originally Posted 27th January 2015 Today I went off to Shanghai’s IKEA. We move into our apartment tomorrow and we haven’t bought anything like bedding with us, so we’ll be buying quilts, sheets towels etc from IKEA, 7 metro stops away, or a huge Carrefour just round the corner from the flat. There was nothing unusual about the IKEA – the same meandering long distance walk, the Swedish meatballs for sale in the café, the blue and yellow bags. I didn’t even see anyone asleep on the beds, as Rozy had seen in Beijing’s IKEA. But over the last few days I have noticed a number of surprising things. Some Chinese buy fur-lined slippers and wear them as outdoor shoes.

There is Wifi on the metro trains as well as in the stations. If you are under 40 you have to look at your phone constantly, on the train, getting on the train, getting off the train, on the escalator, as you change metro lines, as you walk in the street. If you are over 50 you don’t. The Chinese look 10 years younger than they actually are. Until they reach 50, then they look their age.

It wasn’t typical, but there was a couple shopping in their pyjamas in Carrefour. I thought this was only a US Walmart phenomenon. If you are a tired at work, it’s OK to put your head down on your desk for some zzzzzzzz’s even if your job is customer facing. I did see a tall shop assistant having a snooze, legs apart for stability and leaning on a large display of biscuits, head resting on his arms, arms resting on top of the biscuit display. As soon as a toddler is able to stand, it’s OK to take them on your scooter with them standing on the platform of the scooter, encased between your arms and legs. If you ride a scooter or a bicycle you can go in either direction on the side roads that run parallel to the main roads, which the cars and trucks use. In fact the scooters and the bicycles are pretty much a law unto themselves. A pedestrian crossing and a green man does not mean that the cars will stop. But if you maintain your trajectory, with no change in speed and direction they will weave their way around you. Most Shanghaiese wear quilted coats even when the temperature is 10C.

One lady I saw wore a coat over the top of her quilted coat. I suppose its going to get hot here in the summer up to 40C, so it is cold by comparison, but it has seemed a little extreme, until it started snowing (very unusual) here tonight. China is clamping down on personal VPNs, targeting the three major ones, so it may difficult to use facebook over the next few weeks. They employ millions of people to maintain their firewall – if they knew how little of importance appears on my fb wall, they would probably consider it a huge waste of resources.

The Shanghai Museum of Arts and Crafts

Originally posted 27th January 2015 A trip back to the French Concession today – this part of the city was run by the French – the buildings are only three or four stories high, the roads are lined with plane trees, which will be lovely once the leaves come out and there is some interesting colonial architecture. I inadvertently found the home of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and in the environs counted at least 10 violin shops – some were makers and repairers as well as sellers.

But I was on my way to the Shanghai version of the V&A, which although significantly smaller, is interesting nonetheless as there are craftsmen and women in situ recreating past crafts and developing their art in pastures new at the Shanghai Arts and Crafts Museum.

Carvings predominated – of jade, wood and I’m afraid to say ivory. And some of it was exquisite and highly skilled and mainly copies of traditional work. Of these, I liked some of the simple modern teapots best, as well as the complex wooden work. I remember paper-cuts from my trips to China some 30 years ago, when I picked up some paper-cuts of traditional Chinese opera heroes and heroines, but some of the craftsmen have moved things forward a bit to create striking modern designs and have also made 3-D sculptures from paper or fabric stuck on wire

frames, a technique I have used with leaves in floral design in the past, but nowhere near as complex as these models of dragons and birds, which might also be a traditional craft. There were some interesting pieces of jewellery I liked in a side exhibition, but which unfortunately had a hefty price tag, and some

tapestries – one or two were interesting in the complexity of the work. The painters were producing both traditional and modern work, some of it quite striking. Not all the crafts were being demonstrated and I would have loved to

have found out a bit more about these wooden vessels. I got the impression that the demonstrating craftsmen did’t know whether to copy what had been created in the past, much of which was destroyed in the Cultural Revolution, or to relearn the old skills and use them to take their art forward into new areas. Should they be reproducing the old work exactly as the embroiderers and most of the carvers were doing seemingly hidebound, or should they be trying to use the traditional skills to express themselves in new ways, as the painters were doing? The overall effect was one of coughing and spluttering between the old and the new.

Medical Examination

Originally posted 26th January, 2015 In order to convert our temporary visa into a year’s long work visa for Richard and hangers-on one for me, we had to go to the hospital for a medical examination, armed with passports, and ten passport photos each. The hospital is not actually very far away, but we were due there at 9am and we thought that we could get a taxi to take us. The only problem with this idea was that at this time in the morning there are no taxis – they are all being used by commuters – so after standing for a while on the roadside looking like lemons, we turned to walk to the local metro station. The tube trip involved 2 stops into the inner ring, three stops round the ring and 5 stops back out of the ring making sure that we got the right hand branch of this line to get to the stop for Shanghai zoo which was where we were headed. Needless to say the metro was packed. The trains are not frequent enough, only coming at 5 minutes intervals, even in the rush hour. No-one “moves down inside the cars please”. And no-one “lets the passengers off the train first please”. I don’t know how they would manage if they had to “mind the gap”. The Shanghai metro is growing so quickly that you must make sure that you keep up with lines that grow seemingly overnight. It’s all pristine and clean, but it doesn’t seem to have enough trains to move its 24 million population about quickly enough during the rush hour. Needless to say we were late at the hospital, having legged it fairly rapidly from the metro stop to the hospital gates. All foreigners wanting to stay longer than a month have to have these medicals and it is quite a production line: Desk one with passport and paperwork; Desk two for paperwork processing; Desk three to pay, then into room to collect gown with instructions to strip to the waist. Belongings into a locker, go to sit in a corridor outside one of 11 numbered rooms – if modesty is required in one of these rooms there are screens alongside a bed, but those waiting in the corridor could hear my responses to questions and my arm being slapped to try and raise the blood in my damaged veins for a blood sample. X-ray, abdomen ultrasound, eyesight, blood pressure, blood sample, e.c.g., and we were both out

Standing by the signpost calling to passersby that he has a turtle for sale. within 2 hours and about 20 others were as well. I have no idea how many they would process that morning, but my various hospital visits over the years in the UK paled in comparison. It was very efficient, even if it did feel sausage machine-like. After all this we were both very hungry as we’d been asked not to eat for at least 5 hours beforehand i.e. the night before, but neither of us liked the idea of buying the turtle, about ½ metre in diameter that was being touted on the crossroads by a man in a hard hat and what seemed to be builder’s clothes as we waited for a taxi for the journey back to the hotel. He must have found it whilst working on a building site nearby. But it was no doubt destined to be someone else’s lunch.

The Jade Buddha Temple

Originally posted 25th January 2015 I set off this morning with the intention of visiting the Jade Buddha Temple, but I got side-tracked by seeing the words Flower Market, two stops in the other direction on line 7. Anyone who knows me well knows my love of flowers and how six years ago, if I had not been ill, I might well have become a florist. So I’m a sucker for flowers and I was interested in seeing what the local flower market would have to offer. It took some finding, hidden away underground, to the northeast of the metro station, in amongst a housing estate and what turned out not to be a flower market after all but a wet market. It might be a flower market at the weekend, or in the early morning, but who knows. Anyway I had a wander round because as a family we always seem to end up at the local market. It’s a way of understanding what’s actually being eaten locally. The fruit and vegetable stalls were in the middle aisles of this underground market, the meat along the south side, the fish stalls along the north. The main meat was pork and chicken with the odd duck stall. In the centre there were piles and piles of green leaved

vegetables that I couldn’t identify, although I could see large cylindrical Chinese cabbages and pak choi. I’ll have to get that cookery book out once we get to the flat and do some serious identification later. The local aubergines are pale purpled long curly sticks. Sticks of taro and galangal and long oriental chives were amongst the most unusual veg. The fish stalls had the greatest exotic flavour, with bullfrogs held together in nets, just as mussels are sold in the UK, but in larger bags. There were buckets of eels, and fish held in plastic bowls in shallow water – some had turned turtle due to lack of oxygen I hoped, rather than disease. And talking of turtle, there were those too. Small crabs were abundant – I know

that there is a particular crab that is a Shanghai delicacy, but I don’t know whether these crabs were they. There were very long very thin fish and very fat, very large carp. Some fish sold dead, some sold in tanks alive. Everywhere there was a cavalier attitude to detritus, the stallholders evidently just flung their sacks of rubbish into the main aisle when they were full, or even just the plain waste if they hadn’t got a sack. It wouldn’t have happened anywhere in the UK, the combination of water and leaf would have been a slippery litigator’s paradise. A dirty small truck was being filled by a couple of cleaners who scooped up what they could of the mess. I headed back towards my original destination the Jade Buddha Temple, four stops back on the metro towards the centre of town. The temple lies in a street surrounded by shops

selling incense, beads, statues of the Buddha in jade, porcelain or wood. Flowers were being sold from bicycles on the street, so I saw some after all and Chinese guardian lions protected the outside of the temple. Red was the dominant colour here and indeed in the temple. Entry costs 10Yuan (£1) and the entrance was guarded by a couple of men in smart overcoats with an air of American secret service men about them. There were others elsewhere inside – they all seem very incongruous and in marked contrast to the relaxed monks in brown habits.

The incense burners were ablaise this January day and added to the wafts of incense that hung heavy in the air from

burning sticks. Red Chinese lanterns dripped from the ceilings of the corridors, red cloth kneelers softened the praying of the faithful, red candles and red banners hung from the ceiling and red ribbons tied were onto plants and the incense burners outside. There are two jade buddhas here – one standing and one reclining, reported to have been carved from the same lump of jade brought in from Myanmar. But there are others too made of other materials and huge statues of various temple kings stand guard.

In a small courtyard a row of bonsaied trees of palms, pines and other trees in a small courtyard generated an area of serenity in marked contrast to the rest of this busy temple where many had come to pray even on a weekday early afternoon.

The North Bund

Originally posted 23rd January, 2015 Today’s task was relatively simple – go and get the classic picture of Shanghai to head up my blog. But before that we were supposed to go and open a Chinese bank account, but we failed at the first hurdle and anyway the time that Richard had set aside for the task was way too ambitious according to those in his office, who reckoned that at least half a day will be needed to overcome all the bureaucratic hurdles, more of that later, no doubt.

So I took the metro to the north shore of the Suzhou Creek a small river that wends it way eastwards through northern central Shanghai and found a very pleasant elevated walkway that took me all the way along the river bank to the Waibaidu Bridge, the oldest steel bridge in the country, constructed in the American style in 1856. Overlooking the bridge are two landmark buildings the Art Deco edifice of the Broadway Mansions and the Astor House Hotel built nearly a century earlier. The pleasant Suszhou Creek feeds into the Huangpu River. This is much wider than the

Thames in London, but is itself only a small tributary of the mighty Yangtze River that reaches the Sea just north-east of here. Shanghai is essentially built on a river delta – the rivers have been redirected so that Shanghai does in fact have access to the Yangtze – and it is all on a huge scale. I got some so-so pictures of the classic Pudong scene – the air had cleared since the morning when I had been very pessimistic about succeeding in my task as the air quality had been too poor. The haze had lifted somewhat and the pictures would do for now. This small area marks the beginning of what Shanghai has grown into today. Here was the start of Shanghai’s development from a small fishing village into a foreign (initially British) territory in the British concession on the Bund. Around this spot various foreign powers owned land and we foreigners threw our weight around – we could cross the Waibaidu Bridge on credit, the Chinese could not.

The Old British Consulate Building was rebuilt in 1873 after a fire The local park, now known as Huangpu's Park, had a sign up in colonial days saying “No dogs or Chinese allowed”. The old British Consulate building (1852) is just across the road, as is the Union Church and the Shanghai Rowing Club.

Many of the old Warehouses are still standing and now house very upmarket shops and antique houses such as Christie’s and the area is used as the backdrop for many a fashion shoot. On the south side of the Suzhou creek there is a stark monument to the People’s Heroes who liberated Shanghai during the communist revolution. It sits atop a very small interesting museum about the history of the area. The museum covers the role of the west in the development of Shanghai from the small fishing village it once was, in both its glory and its shame. Old photographs show for example Chinese workers with their Manchurian queues (pigtails) imposed on the Han Chinese by their Manchurian Qing Dynasty masters and an opium ship sitting at the dock side belonging to Jardine Matheson, the firm that did much to force open trade with China.

Central Shanghai Parks

Originally posted on 23rd January 2015 Fuxing Park is a good place to visit on a Sunday morning, as in Richard’s insensitive words “all the fruitloops are out in force”. The park is in the French Concession and designed by them in 1909 and laid out in the French style with many pollarded plane trees, flower beds and water fountains.

It is a place where mainly elderly Chinese gather on a Sunday morning and they bring with them traditional Chinese activities such as solo tai chi to keep them supple, card foursomes, kite flying, calligraphy (done with a big brush, a pot of water and the paving stones). Singers were competing for an audience, some had many admirers, others none. Puccini songs filled the air around the lake as they competed for attention. Huddles of men listened to what one of them had to say, a little like speakers corner, although we had no idea what about. Younger Chinese who frequent the park are mostly out walking their children in pushchairs, or

jogging, even if one of them was running backwards. The Chinese are not the slightest bit self-conscious about their exercise – one elderly woman was seen to stretch a piece of elastic at waist height across a path between a tree and a garden bench and was using it for grand rond du jamb en l’air. But the most surprising thing we saw was a man lying down meditating. He was holding bands of large beads in both hands and was working his way through each set, bead by bead, his ankles crossed, eyes closed, but he was lying on a hammock made of the single chain of garden fence - the kind where a thick chain is slung between a series of upright posts. We have definitely arrived in the Orient. Lunch - Sunday 18th Jan 2015

We had lunch at Yang’s Dumplings inside a spectacular Art Deco building with chrome bay windows rising above the shop front for 4 stories. The dumplings are made by a team of chefs in a small kitchen just inside the entrance along one wall of the restaurant and behind a glass wall so

Yangs Dumplings Kitchen that you can see the mini production line of them being filled, steamed and then fried. At the front desk you pay for your meal, turn round and get your dumplings from a hatch at the kitchen and then head inside to find a table. The dumplings are filled with a delicious combination of meat and tasty stock, and the pasta casing is both soft and crunchy because the dumplings are not only boiled, but they are also fried.

Yangs Dumplings Technique - pierce first, drink, then eat There is a definite technique to eating them. Our first attempts left the delicious stock being sprayed everywhere, but after observing the locals in action we fathomed out what we should be doing. Lift up the noodles with the chopsticks onto your Chinese spoon. Pierce the dumpling and with the chopsticks and drink the soup out of the holes, then and only then is it the time to lift the dumpling to your mouth. Delicate upright back vertical Western style eating just doesn’t hack it out here in China. You have got to get your head down and reduce the distance from bowl or plate to mouth as much as possible to avoid dropping or spreading your food all over the place. That’s one of the reasons why we westerners are not very good with chopsticks. We are just too delicate about it. Pm – Sunday 18th Jan 2015 Shanghai Peoples Park

After lunch we headed for The People’s Park, built just after the Revolution on the site of the Shanghai Racecourse. It is a charming park surround by sky-scrapers, but not over-powered by them. This park has a more tropical feel to it than Fuxing Park, and it too, had its surprising elements. As we entered the northern entrance we were welcomed by rows of opened umbrellas laid out neatly along the edges of many of the garden’s paths. Each umbrella had an A4 sheet attached to it, but as we couldn’t read the Chinese we had no idea why. As we walked past faded umbrella after umbrella I noticed that behind each one was sitting or standing a woman (although not exclusively) of late middle age. Visitors to the park would be reading the pieces of paper with interest and occasionally chatting to the umbrella owner seemingly about the notice they displayed. As we walked I noticed that sometimes there was a photograph of a young adult – sometimes a man, sometimes a girl. Often I could see a date, 1992, 1983 and so on.

A row of Umbrellas at Shanghai's People's Park It took a while for it to dawn on us what was going on, but we finally got there. The match-maker has traditionally had a very significant role in Chinese society. Although the match-making agencies have been cleared from the park in the recent past, parents with a child of marriageable age are still allowed to come. Here on Sunday afternoons in The People’s Park in Shanghai on their umbrellas the parents were displaying their wares.

Arrival In Shanghai

Originally posted 22nd January 2015

Neither of us had slept on the 11 hour flight from London, so we arrived at Shanghai Pudong airport at 9.30 am somewhat bleary-eyed, but fortunately we were met at the airport by a driver who took our 7 suitcases (5 large and 2 carry-on) and us to our hotel. I had tried to get a year’s worth of stuff into 2 large suitcases, but I had failed. There hadn’t been any room for any of my cycling kit, or my camera for that matter if I hadn’t started on a third case, so three it had to be. I had already managed to get in my arm pump for my lymphoedema and a year’s worth of medicines into the others, so I wasn’t feeling too ashamed with myself with the extra excess baggage charge we inevitably had. When my parents went out to Hong Kong in 1986 they shipped some stuff out ahead of themselves, so I wasn’t going to hang back on one extra case. Despite no sleep for 13 hours we were determined to keep going for as long as possible once we had reached our hotel, as Richard had to hit the ground running on Monday morning. So shortly after we arrived we went out and walked to Richard’s office, which is 5 minutes of so from the hotel where we are staying for our first week, so that I knew where it was. For someone as car/bike mad as Richard it’s in quite a good place – a Ducati motorbike shop at the entrance and Maserati and Ferrari garage round the back. Anyone who knows the Millers well knows that like Napoleon, whose army marched on its stomach, food comes first. So inevitably our first thing to do was to visit the local supermarket. This is like an underground IKEA in the basement of our hotel. There are so many twists and turns that it is easy to get lost, but we wound our merry way through the endless aisles of sweets and biscuits, and air conditioners and bicycles to the more interesting sections at the back of the shop.

Interesting beans and frilly mushrooms I’d never seen before. Green leaved vegetables and fish that all need identifying. Fish stored live in fish tanks, which would have been some animal welfare issues back home, are held in much better conditions than they were in the China of 1987. Pig’s cheeks and snouts, smoked eels, sea cucumbers, 100 years old eggs (they are not actually that old), chickens claws – all made me start to worry about how I’m going to cook an evening meal when we move into our flat in a week’s time, but I reminded myself that I’ve got my favourite Chinese cookery book with me The Chinese Kitchen which will not only help me work out what’s what and its Chinese name, but more importantly what on earth to do with it. We ate lunch at the supermarket café, by pointing at the pictures on the menu outside the shop to a rather bemused waiter and hoping for the best, which was fine, but I don’t think I’d have those pickled vegetables again. We then moved onto the centre of town, working out how to ride the metro, but failing in our attempt to purchase a Shanghai travel card, which works on the metro, the buses and in taxis. (We succeeded the next day, by taking the advice of handing over 100 yuan at the desk and holding our ground until we got what we wanted.) I noticed this in Beijing and it is the same here, that locals don’t wait for you to get off the train or out of the lift first before they pile in, whether there is room for them or not. And they have no compunction of pushing in in front of a couple of foreigners who are trying to make themselves understood. Two sets of people did this to us as we tried to buy our Shanghai cards. We miss having Rozy with us, who in such circumstances would have turned round and given them a piece of her mind – I think she had a personal mission of trying to teach the whole Chinese population some British manners. I must admit it was truly satisfying to see them behave sheepishly once they realized that a big nose could speak their language and had stood up for themselves. We didn’t achieve much on our expedition on the metro – we essentially ended up in a Macdonald’s in the centre of Shanghai for some much needed caffeine as we were both falling asleep and so we turned tail and headed back to the hotel.

For our supper we had a snack that Rozy had introduced us to in Taiwan essentially sushi on steroids – a rice cake with a fish or meat filling, encased in a seaweed wrap - delicious and as perfect as a sandwich in such circumstances.