Shanghai Transport

Originally posted 7th February 2015

When I visited Mainland China from Hong Kong in the 1980s everyone was riding around on bicycles, except for those inside the odd large government car.

Here in Shanghai, 30 years later, there is still the odd bicycle.  In the Old French Concession, they tend to be modern fancy expensive ones.  Elsewhere they are of the old battered variety - but there are not many of them on the streets.  Shanghai has now grown too big for a simple bicycle to be your only mode of transport.  Some of the bicycles have become motorised, and motorised tricycles with trailers are used for moving recyclable rubbish about the city.

 

and for moving builders materials and tools for example.  The poor picture on the right shows an upside-down step ladder being carried on a scooter.

 

So now those who would have been riding bicycles are now riding scooters.  On the main roads they and the bicycles have their own lanes that keep them separate from the larger vehicles.  The scooters are electric and have a range of 50km.  Recharging happens both at home and work - walking along the pavements you have to watch out for the trip hazard of electric cables running from a building to a scooter.  This range just about gets them around the city for a daily commute, but it does mean that they rarely use their lights to save juice.  This makes them rather dangerous beasts for a pedestrian, as you can't see or hear them coming.  But they are also a rather dangerous beasts for car drivers, as a number of riders seem to flout all traffic laws, riding the wrong way down streets, crossing at pedestrian crossings, driving without lights etc.etc.

 

To keep warm on the scooters many have a quilt cover

 

In the Old French Concession, again, stylish models are a la Mode, but we saw this union jack version in the Old City.

 

 

Down on the underground the first metro line was built in 1993.  Since then it has grown like topsy and it is now the largest system in the world.  It's clean and efficient and at 40p a ride much cheaper than in London.  A Shanghai travel card with its touch technology makes things very quick and easy going through the barriers.  The only hold ups are the ubiquitous x-rays machines that scan every bag at every metro entrance.

 

As far as cars go, the wealthier Chinese tend to be driving around in saloon cars, but there are a significant number of Chealsea tractors - Range Rovers, BMWs etc. with the attitude to match.  The middle upper end of this society is very interested in bling and anodized car wheels seem to fit the bill:

 

and the American School in Shanghai transports its children around in the Chinese version of the US school bus:

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For the über rich I've so far seen three Rolls Royces, one Bentley, the odd Ferrari and Lamborghini, seemingly endless Maseratis and, yay, one solitary Aston Martin.

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Postscript:

Just had to add these pictures of what looks like a totally anodized car and a fire engine quad bike seen in Tianzifang that I saw last weekend.

 

Bling car

Fire engine Tianzifang

Some Flowers in Shanghai

Originally posted 6th February 2015

Rosa Galicia Flowers

When I was pottering around in The Old French Concession the other day on my way to and from the Propaganda Poster Museum I came across a couple of the flower shops listed in a Shanghai Guide as the best place to buy flowers in the city. (Which one I don't know, I'm gradually losing the plot).  As I’ve said before I’m a sucker for flowers and am always on the lookout for the best place that’s going to feed my addiction.

The list of 5 included Rosa Galicia Flowers and A Day in Blossom. Both were small

Flower Seller, The French Concession

boutiques in this chic part of town – Rosa Galicia had a good display of what they had to sell,   Blossom specialises in white Orchids, possibly exclusively. I didn’t ask any prices, my gut feel was that here one would have to ask a large amount just to cover your overheads, overheads that the man with his bike-cart further along the street didn’t have to pay. He had a nice selection of blossomed twigs for sale, ready for the Spring Festival in a couple of week’s time (aka Chinese New Year).

So I came away rather dissatisfied. Was that it? Were these some of the best of the best? There are a couple of flower shops around the apartment – one is in the same building as the local Carrefour, but their stock is small and rather uninspiring.

Traditional bird cages

I had heard of the Hongqiao flower and pet market, but hadn’t realized quite how close by it is to our flat. It's only two stops away on the metro after all and I looked on the map and measured it out and it seemed quite easy to do.  I walked there yesterday and regretted it, as it’s not THAT close. The small roads on my map were written in Chinese and what happened on the ground seemed to have little to do with what I had downloaded from the internet.  It took me an hour +  to get there.  And what I found were some animals – the odd goldfish, caged bird, rabbits and mice for sale, home furnishings and décor items, fish bowls, ethnic and art deco style furniture and plants.

Bonsai tree specialist

Outside the main market building were shops selling pot plants and bonsai trees. Inside there were a couple of ribbon sellers and shops selling red items for Chinese New Year.

But in the main there were flowers. Masses of flowers. I saw very little foliage, one box of oasis foam and then just buckets and buckets of flowers. As far as I'm concerned, so far this is the best place to buy flowers in Shanghai.

Hongqiao Flower Market

The main flower market building consists of around six lanes of shops - some specialists, some generalists.

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Blossoming Trees for Spring Festival

It is just coming up to that time of year called The Spring Festival aka Chinese New Year.   Tree blossom as a herald of Spring plays a significant part.  I saw Azaleas, Chaenomeles (Japanese Quince) and bonzaied cherry trees all in flower in readiness for the festival.

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Orchid Specialist

Generalist Flower Seller

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There were specialist sellers such as this orchid seller and then a large number of generalist sellers with a large mixed stock of flowers.

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I think these are for display at a banquet, but they may be funeral work.  I'm not sure.  But the mechanics were interesting.  A bamboo stand, but no apparent way of collecting the water dripping from the oasis.

Now all I have to do is to learn enough Mandarin to buy what I want and not get ripped off…………

Eating Out: The Liquid Laundry

Originally posted 5th February 2015

We’ve been having quite a lot of meals out since we got to China. It’s not like us at all and it takes some getting used to. We have had meals with Richard’s colleagues, meals with customers and the odd one or two because we wanted to go out and try a particular type of food. We are now living in an area popular with Japanese and Korean ex-pats, so there are a large number of their restaurants and shops around about for us to investigate.   Most of Richard’s western colleagues come into Shanghai on a three week in, three-week back home regime if they come from the UK or for a couple of days if they are travelling up from Hong Kong. They naturally get tired of eating hotel food, so we have been out on the

Chicken Dish with Head

town with them. They tend to head for western food restaurants on Hongmei Lu (a pedestrian street full of western food places) so we have been to a Spanish tapas bar (twice) and a Thai restaurant there, but also a Chinese restaurant in the hotel where we were staying. In the Chinese restaurant we ordered poultry  -both a duck and a chicken dish. The head of the bird came with the rest of the dish, so that one would be able to confirm what one was eating. That’s a little disconcerting. (The same is true if you buy a chicken or duck in the supermarket). One of the recent graduates working out of town in one of the factories as a management accountant is of Indian descent and often seeks out an Indian meal when she comes into Shanghai on a weekend trip.

At the Liquid Laundry

Richard’s been out on the town more often than I have, of course, and has been out to a fancy restaurant on The Bund over looking the Hangpu river. He has also been out with various customers during the week, and at the weekends we have both met up with some customers and their partners for meals out on a more social level. Last weekend we went to the Liquid Laundry, a microbrewery that makes some excellent beer and selling western-style pub food, with a couple who have come out to Shanghai two weeks ahead of us. It was rather dark (so the photos aren’t great), rather loud (so that I could only just hear the conversation) and has a good young vibe. Charlie would love it. This weekend we shall be off to a Beijing (Peking) Duck restaurant with another customer. So many people are taking a lot of trouble to make us feel that we are settling in well and are at the same time introducing us the wide variety of food available here.

Brewing Kettles at The Liquid Laundry

The Franck Restaurant

Last week the firm’s local lawyer (an American from Brooklyn of Italian descent who lives in Shanghai with his Cantonese wife whom he met in Hong Kong) took us out to a superb French restaurant in the Old French Concession. A little corner of France with excellent French bread, wine and food – I had Bourride for example, Richard had Confit de Porc with Chou (actually Brussels Sprouts, but it didn’t matter) - and waiters with French attitude to match.

Farine Boulangerie

It doesn’t feel appropriate for me to be whisking my camera out on many of these occasions, so little of the food we have eaten has been recorded, but I did go back to the French Concession yesterday to visit the Propaganda Poster Museum (the subject of another blog post) and managed to take some photos of the outside of the French Bistro, Franck's, and the inside and outside of his very expensive Café-cum-Boulangerie, Farine,

Franck's Bread

where I bought the most expensive bread I have ever bought, an espresso and a mini cake. Western-style living is possible in Shanghai and many live it. But it comes with a big city price tag. One can eat much, much more frugally if one eats as the locals do, which we enjoy doing when we are out on our own or back in the flat and cooking for ourselves.

Settling In

Originally posted 2nd February, 2015

We moved into our flat last Wednesday and since then we have been on a mission to equip it with essentials.  It is basically furnished, but had no pans, quilts, linen, and very little in the way of crockery and cutlery.  So we have been out spending money at both Carrefour and IKEA.  Whilst IKEA serves a useful purpose, the process of buying anything at the Shanghai branch is as deeply unedifying as at any other IKEA certainly in the UK, and I presume all over the world.  It's a blessed nuisance having a lymphoedemic arm as I can't carry anything heavy, so I have either had to go back a number of times during these past few days or have Richard help me, so we have been going to the shops together after he has finished work, as well.  Luckily both establishments are open until 10pm.

Our flat is on the 17th floor (of 18).  The view from our kitchen window and the balcony alongside is one that looks directly down the Gubei road:

The view from the front of the flat is less inspiring, although there are some nice palm trees in the gardens below.

As you can see there are a lot of tower blocks around us.  There are a lot of tower blocks in Shanghai, full stop.  This city is home to 24 million people.  That's just under 37% of the population of the whole of the UK.  In ONE city.  Londoners complain that their city is overcrowded.  Looking at things from out here, one thinks that the UK's capital dwellers just need to get a grip and go up.  Shanghai is however built on the soft alluvial soils of the Yangtze river delta and the city is sinking.  Shanghai is going down. It has sunk 6 feet since 1921.  And I presume with the accelerated growth, the rate of sinking is increasing.

Anyway back to moving in.  Fortunately we have a rice cooker and microwave as the sum total of our "oven" is a hob with two large gas burners ready for wok cooking and a steamer (duly bought).

We have plenty of storage - much more than we can fill with the stuff from our 7 suitcases and we have two extra rooms, as both balconies (one on each end of the flat) are enclosed and act as utility rooms with laundry maids hanging from both balcony ceilings and a washing machine and dryer on the balcony on the kitchen side.

I have not lived for anytime in another country before and it strikes me that there is an awful lot of paperwork processing going on.  We applied for visas for our stay in the UK.  But those are only temporary ones.  We needed local residency forms from staying in the Hotel and we then had to go to the local police station within 24 hours of moving in to each register for another  temporary residence registration form (TRRF), together with the lease agreement for the flat.  I've already talked about our medicals.  Work permits are being obtained for Richard by a UK firm that dealt with the process in the UK before we arrived and now doing more of the same over here. On Wednesday we have to go for a formal interview for our residence permit application and then in two or three weeks after that we should find out if we are permitted to stay for the full year. I've probably missed something out, or got something wrong in recounting all this.  You can see why.

We both carry pictures of the address of the flat on our phones and for added measure a photograph of the neon sign for "Golden Street" just across the road which all the taxi drivers have so far recognised and used to get us home.  The metro closes before 11pm, so we are bound to use them if we go out anywhere in the evenings.  A ride across town costs about £3.  Something else London could learn.

The Old Shanghai Teahouse

Originally posted 1st February 2015

The Old Shanghai Tea House

We had been wandering around the Old City in Shanghai for quite a few hours and felt in need of a pick me up, so we headed for The Old Shanghai Teahouse, which was described in the guidebook as much like barging into someone’s attic.

Antiques cover the walls

Antiques decorated the walls

We climbed the rickety stairs and indeed we were cast back in time, to a date around 1930, where the owner of the shop was dressed in traditional dress of the period, (barring his trainers) and various antiques and ancient maps decorated the alcoves and the walls. It was another welcome respite from the throng outside and we stayed for a long time over our Guanyin tea, which was served

Tea served in the gongfu manner

Xiaolongbao - Shanghai dumplings

in the traditional gongfu manner, together with Shanghai dumplings known as Xiaolongbao 小笼包

We had chosen them from a menu written on a rolled bamboo menu (Chinese vertically on the front, English horizontally on the back) and although it was pricey we thoroughly enjoyed the experience.   

A couple of youngish Chinese girls started looking at the antiques, intrigued at what they might be – a cylinder vacuum cleaner caused them some consternation and some giggles when they found out what it was and were even more surprised when Richard told them that his grandmother had owned one, and I, that my mother had.

Rolled bamboo menu

John Hix Strange As It Seems Map of Shanghai

Another of the antiques was a poster  - a John Hix Strange As It Seems Map of Shanghai, which was a very interesting read about Shanghai around the time of the Japanese invasion of China.  It is highly informative and worth expanding the image to take a closer look.  There is a propaganda poster museum in Shanghai - I don't know if it covers this period, but I'm going to go there to see if I can get a copy.

Brocade-jacketed musicians

One of the reasons we stayed so long was because just as were about to leave two men turned up, one with a stand and a big case. Both were dressed in brocaded jackets and our curiosity got the better of us. The stand was eventually set up between endless puffs on a cigarette, the case opened and out came a yangqin a Chinese hammered dulcimer (google is incredibly useful). The other man fetched out his Chinese bamboo flute (a Dizi) and after waiting some 15 minutes for their appointed time, with a little bit of tuning in the meantime, began to play.

Chenxiangge Nunnery

Originally Posted 1st February 2015

The Chenxiangge Nunnery is in the Old City area of Shanghai and is a pool of serenity and a haven away from the seemingly endless Chinese waving the same sheet of paper under your nose with pictures of fake handbags and fake watches for sale.

Richard says that he doesn’t get annoyed by the touters. I do. So paying 10Y (£1) to slip into the nunnery was lovely in itself, but even better, the nunnery was much less busy than the city’s monasteries I have visited so far, and far more like what I imagine a Buddhist place of religion should be.

Incense burners Chenxiangge Nunnery

The nunnery dates from the Ming Dynasty when the owner of a big house (of YuYan Garden fame) had had the river dredged and a statue of Avalokitesvara was dragged out of the Huai river in 1600. He had it gilded and installed it in a pavilion in his garden. The statue was moved to the monastery in 1801.

During the Cultural Revolution the statue was destroyed, so the one in this nunnery is a copy of the original eaglewood (a fragrant wood used for incense) made when the monastery was repaired in 1989.

Incense "cupboard"

In the main courtyard there were the same incense burners as else where, one a tower, one looking like a western manger and the third like a big cupboard. The statues and decoration here seem to be more subtle and delicate than I’ve seen elsewhere and certainly less red, even though we are getting even closer to Chinese New Year.

Chenxiangge Nunnery Decoration

I liked the orange fabric tubes hanging down from the ceiling. I don't know if these represent anything but this kind of hanging is in every Buddhist Temple.  The scattering of nuns in dark brown habits we saw were lively and friendly.

Maitreya

As you’d expect there are statues of Heavenly Kings and of Buddha, and I think this is a statue of a Maitreya (a future Buddha of this world), although as I’m no expert on Buddhism I have had to do quite a bit of googling to try and get this right.

We paid an extra 1Y or so to go up a storey to the first floor to view the remade statue of the dredged up goddess, which sat in a lotus position in a room with windows delicately complex window frames, which felt very old, but must be copies of the original.  It was all very serene and atmospheric.

roof tiles Chenxiangge Nunnery

The view over the rooftops from up there was somehow magical. The curved tiles were laid densely on the roof in interwoven rows one row facing up, the next facing down, in typical traditional Chinese fashion.  They must m

Tianzifang

Originally Posted 31st January 2015

There are parts of Shanghai that remind me of my childhood – travel on the metro costs 40p a journey, there is a respect for elders – the younger tube travellers always stand up for their elders and the urban planners much like those in Britain in the 1960s are sweeping away much of the old and replacing it with the brand-spanking new. However the odd patch of the old is being retained and is starting to be valued. One such place is the area known as Tianzifang. This consists of the original shikumen houses in longtangs, long meandering alleyways (the equivalent of Beijing’s hutongs). Although there are some local residents still in residence, boutique shops and western style bars have moved in, which fortunately probably means that the area will be preserved.