Bits and pieces

A couple of months ago I did a blog post about little subjects that didn’t warrant a full post by themselves. The list on my desk is getting long again so here’s part 2.

IKEA

Oh, IKEA. Your mecca of reasonably-priced glassware and colourful shag rugs transcends the globe. So why oh why does your smaller store in Shanghai NOT HAVE MEATBALLS!! A complete travesty. But I digress. Apparently IKEA is aspirational here. I needed to get a few things for my apartment, and was warned not to go on the weekends unless you go really early or really late, as it is a free for all. So I went at 7pm on a Sunday night and it was completely fine. If anything, there were less screaming kids than at the one in Milton Keynes. What was different to the MK store was people in the beds. Yes. IN the beds. That’s some serious road testing going on there. I swear some people were actually asleep.

Someone at work told me that because IKEA is aspirational, it’s also a destination. People actually meet there for coffee or lunch. Slightly different to what we do which is hold your breath, run through as quickly as possible in a style very similar to Supermarket Sweep, and get the hell out of there.

And then when you leave, there’s a row of van taxis outside to take you home. Awesome.

Nanjing Road

Every city I think has their version of Leicester Square. A pedestrianised, overly neon-lit haven for tourists and touts. Shanghai definitely has one of those and it’s called Nanjing Road. When I visited a few weeks ago it was dark and as I stepped out of the subway, I was dazzled by a giant neon ‘Samsung’ sign. Then I noticed the noise. And by that I mean crowd noise. The best way I can describe it is like coming out of the toilets at a gig and hearing the buzz of anticipation as the crowd waits for the band. Lots of people, lots of street sellers pelting you with weird whirly helicopters, lots of kids on those wheely trainer things. Adding to the surrealism is an M&M world (exactly like Leicester Square), which of course is the busiest place on the street. And there’s also these little tourist trains that take you from one end of the street to the other (the one I saw was M&M branded, of course) and they don’t stop they just drive right through the pedestrian street – so you’re expected to jump out of the way or get flattened and the last thing you’ll see is a red circular sweet with a scarily grinning face and an ‘M’ on his chest looking over you..

Xiami

Xiami is like Spotify but all in Chinese of course. However, I tend to listen to it on my computer at work as the streaming time is really quick and I can figure it out. There’s a search box, you type the artist in (in English) and voila! Their name comes up in English, there’s an orange button underneath it, you press it and job done.

Jing’An Sculpture Park

As Shanghai has got bigger and bigger, there has been a fair bit of space put aside for parks and greenery (plus it helps with the air). Near me there is a place (called the Jing’An Scuplture Park as you may have figured out from the title). And it is exactly that. Nice green space, Natural History Museum smack bang in the middle and a load of random sculptures with no rhyme of reason that are replaced every few months or so. When I went the theme seemed to be ‘giant sculptures of glittery fat baseball playersand musicians'. Pictures below so you can see what I mean!

Youku

Youku is another online find. It’s kind of like YouTube, but better (I know, it’s a bold claim). You can find anything on there. Again, all in Chinese but the search box recognises English characters so it’s relatively easy. What’s brilliant is there’s also a subscription option, so if you want to watch a particular movie or show, you can pay – kind of like a pay as you go Netflix. Also, they have all the US shows before the UK so I will actually be ahead of everyone when I get back!

#expatlife

Being an expat is weird. I was adamant when I came here that I didn’t want to be an ‘expat’ – I wanted to experience local things for local people. But that’s not really how it’s worked/is working out and I don’t know if that is because of the place I’m in or if it’s the same everywhere.

There are days when I really feel like an expat.  I don’t mean that as in ‘I feel really at home here’, I mean ‘living it up in Western places and paying ridiculously inflated prices for food and alcohol.’

I think there are a few reasons why. First of all, from what I can tell the entire bar culture here is fuelled by expats. I’ve seen no such thing as a ‘Chinese bar’ which means that most of the places we go in are full of expats.

Secondly I think this place is so much of a culture shock that you end up craving the familiar. Hence why I got so excited when I found Heinz tomato ketchup.

Thirdly, your body simply can’t take eating Chinese food all the time. And supplementary to that, it’s sometimes difficult to ascertain what’s safe and what’s not, so ‘going local’ isn’t always an option. Also, a lot of the people I’ve been hanging out with have been here a while so they’ve already done the ‘local thing’.

I work in a very Westernised, very sanitised part of town. Yes, I’ll go over to the mall and have a spicy soup and dumplings for lunch, but it costs £2.50 (which is expensive by Chinese standards) and above your head there’s about 15 floors of designer clothes, expensive handbags and overpriced electricals. Oh, and a Toys R Us. My building is connected to the other tower by another shopping mall, which is populated with Gucci, Prada, D&G etc etc. So when you pop out for lunch every day, you’re not really seeing the ‘real’ Shanghai.

Where I live is also quite like this. The first thing I see when I walk out of the subway is Burberry. I’m round the corner from an Aussie bar (which incidentally is awesome, has the cheapest beer here I’ve seen and has a killer pool competition on a Sunday afternoon). This week I have eaten Chinese, Japanese, French, American and Italian and every single one of those has been expensive. Add in drinks and it becomes extortionate.

And the expats tend to stick together – I’ve got to the point now where I will go to a bar and meet someone I’ve met previously – despite having 25 million people in this city, sometimes it still feels very small!

Singapore!

As I mentioned previously, bank holidays here are grouped so you get a week or so off at a time. Early October had one such holiday, the so-called ‘Golden Week’, which starts on National Day (anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China). Most expats use the week off (which doesn’t come out of your holiday allowance) to jet off to somewhere and do a little bit of travelling. Of the people I work with we had Vietnam, Bali, Borneo, Thailand, Japan. I decided to go to Singapore to see a friend as I had never been. The flight was only 5 hours which was fantastic and was relatively cheap. I managed to do most of the touristy things – museums, Sentosa - which is an island off the coast of Singapore and you can get a cable car over. Very man made but there was a beach which was nice – Little India, Fort Canning Park, and of course one of the famous champagne brunches! My favourite thing though was the Singapore Museum – it was so interesting to see the origins from part of Malaysia to English colony to now.

So here are my observations on Singapore from an expat perspective:

1.       It’s Diet Asia.  Which isn’t a bad thing at all – it’s like Asia with all the tough bits taken out. By that I mean people drive on the ‘right’ side of the road, English is spoken everywhere, everywhere is super neat and organised and you can go on the subway without coming out feeling a bit violated.

2.       There is a lot of money. Everything seems quite extravagant, and as cost of living is so high there seems to be a lot of money around. The epitome of this is Marina Bay Sands – essentially a giant ship-like creation hoisted into the air by 3 pillars which comprise of expensive shopping malls and have a canal a la Venice running through the middle of them. You can go up there to take a look at the view but it’ll cost you.

3.       A lot of the tourist places are man-made. By that I mean somewhere like Sentosa which is like an amusement park, Gardens by the Bay which is completely man-made. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of places that have historical significance

4.       I think if I’d have gone there first, then to Shanghai, I would have hated Shanghai. It’s such a nice place, and Shanghai is such a culture shock in comparison I think I would have really struggled.

5.       Someone once told me (and I’m guessing a lot of you will figure out who this is) that Milton Keynes is like Nicole Kidman – everything’s in the right place but you still don’t fancy it. I guess that’s kind of how I feel about Singapore. Gorgeous place, really enjoyed it but don’t think I’d want to live there.

 Some pictures:

A long overdue update..

EDIT: this was written a few weeks ago just hadn't got around to posting it.

What I like about life here (and it’s true of every big city I suppose) is the variety. On a weekend recently, I did a huge mix of stuff which kind of sums it up:

Friday night: Drinks at the Boxing Cat Brewery (possibly the best name for a pub ever). There tends to be a few different types of drinking/bar locations in Shanghai that I’ve seen:

-          The crazy streets full of bars that cater for expats. The main one here is called Yongkang Lu (Lu means road), and it’s like being in Benidorm. Or Liverpool. Not my scene at all.

-          The ‘local’ streets – like Danshui Lu. Lots of bars that cater for expats, but are street bars and very small. Generally, the alcohol is also fake which means you will end up with a skull-splitting headache the next day (as I have learned the hard way)

-          The ‘designated areas’ –like Xintiandi. The ‘designated areas’ isn’t the official name for them of course, but what they tend to be is areas of the city that are re-developed, sometimes keeping some of the original architecture, sometimes not. Xintiandi is one of the biggest – it’s old Shikumen style buildings (Japanese) but has been turned into a trendy bar and restaurant area. Caters mainly for people with way too much money and tourists. Unless it’s Happy Hour in which case it’s carnage (mainly Brits and Aussies, I have to say. Maybe our reputation is justified).

Anyway, so the Boxing Cat is located in a Xintiandi-style area called Sinan Mansions which is beautiful, but dead. Apparently, it opened about 5 years ago and was really popular, but lots of turnover of bars and restaurants opening and closing means it’s now not as much of a destination. The bar we were in was busy, but next door a place called ‘Rendezvous’ was completely empty apart from a Chinese woman murdering ‘Against All Odds’ by Phil Collins. And there’s always a new neighbourhood/place to go, again the same as in New York/London I guess.  I also witnessed the worst of expat behaviour – haughty rudeness from a British girl who kicked up such a fuss about a slight smell of bleach that I wanted to smack her.

Saturday day-time:  Brunch with a work colleague and her friend in Tianzifang. Tianzifang (you can read more about it here) is a maze of little side streets off Taikang Lu in the French Concession. Architecture-wise, it’s similar to Xintiandi but it’s not been cleaned and tidied up so it has so much more character. There’s all sorts in there –little markets, bars, restaurants, souvenir shops etc. Hugely busy so not much chance to look around, definitely one to go to early or late (like most tourist places here), but a fantastic atmosphere regardless – it gives you a real sense of place.

Saturday night: the Kung Fu Comedy Club (really). I wrote about a dive bar that was giving out free underpants with beer not long after I got here – well this is its comedy club. Really popular, they do open mic nights and have house and visiting comedians too. There was even a piece about it on CNN this week! This one was a Taiwanese/American who’s been on loads of US shows and was really funny. Then we went to a place called Arcade, which from the outside looked like a prison, not a bar, but once you were inside it was lovely. Also, it’s called Arcade because it has an old Arcade game machine which you can play and it’s projected on the big screen – everything from Mortal Kombat to Pac Man – very cool.

Sunday:  Latin American food festival at a downtown restaurant. Gorgeous day for it, sun was shining, live Latina music in the garden, everybody dancing and loads of great food and wine. I went with a colleague and her Italian friends and it was so much fun – everyone was in such a good mood – couple of pictures below.

EDIT: I wrote this a few weeks ago so before my trip to Singapore – I’ll talk about that next time.