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.

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.