These pictures are fantastic. Can’t wait to get there! Kudos to Daniel for sending along this link.
Lonely Planet Shanghai Updates (March 2010)
New
Lost Heaven 花马天堂外滩店 (p162) The stylish Yunnan restaurant has a new branch near the Bund!
Address: 17 East Yan’an Rd, cross street South Sichuan Rd 延安东路17号， 近四川南路
Phone: 6330 0967； Map
Continue reading “Lonely Planet Shanghai Updates (March 2010)”
Lonely Planet Shanghai Updates (February 2010)
The new Shanghai city guide is due out in a few days, which makes it a good time to initiate a “Shanghai Updates” category – if ever there was a guidebook that needed an online updates page somewhere, this would be the one. Feel free to post your own discoveries (good or bad) here. To kick things off, I’ll start with the closures – yes, some listings have already closed before the book was even published, but hey, that’s what this page is for.
Continue reading “Lonely Planet Shanghai Updates (February 2010)”
Just Another Shanghai Street Corner
Ever wondered about those constructions sites you see everywhere in China? Construction foreman Mr. Shen (age 55) filled me in on what goes on at a typical Shanghai site. The salary figure he gave for average workers – Y2000 per month plus healthcare – is interesting when compared with a 2007 study by Fudan University, which found that migrant workers across China only averaged about Y1200 per month.
Shanghai Faces: Elfa Huang
Elfa Huang
Hometown: Shanghai
Occupation: Owner of a Clothing Boutique
Age: 27
How long have you had your store?
Four years. I opened it right after I graduated from university.
Wow, that took some courage!
When you’re young you don’t think about the risks involved. You’re more naïve.
Shanghai Faces: Tao Wansheng
Name: Tao Wansheng
Age: 60
Hometown: Pudong District, Shanghai
What do you do for a living?
I’m a carpenter and traditional woodcarver. I often work on temple restorations. I began doing this kind of work at age 14.
Continue reading “Shanghai Faces: Tao Wansheng”Soundscapes: A Taoist Ceremony in Shanghai
Shanghai, and in particular, Pudong, was the last place I expected to chance upon a traditional Taoist ceremony. But there you go, even China’s financial center is sitting on top of some leftover animist beliefs.
This recording is of a birthday party for the god Dongyue, who presides over Mount Tai (Tai Shan), China’s supreme sacred mountain. So how do Shanghainese Taoists celebrate birthdays? With plenty of liquor, pumpkin seeds, and peanuts, plus over twenty-five large bags of specially folded paper money, which was burned for Dong Yue after the ceremony. Pudong is an expensive place to live, after all, even for a god.
[audio:Taoist1.mp3]
Long-Lost Cousin Bi
I don’t know if it’s because people in China tend to be so openly curious, but I find myself engaged in at least one unusual conversation per day here. Today, while buying mini-chopsticks for the kids, the shop owner decided to examine my notes and then declared to the cashier, “That’s not English. Probably Russian.” And it’s true, my handwriting doesn’t really resemble English. In fact, it doesn’t resemble any language at all. So I could see how she had come to the conclusion.
Continue reading “Long-Lost Cousin Bi”Currently on in Shanghai
The Potala Palace as a house of cards, by Xu Zhen. On display at the James Cohan Gallery, Bldg 1, Lane 170, Yueyang Rd.