Dim Sum and Tintin’s Friend in Qibao ‘Ancient’ Town
As mentioned in my previous post, I went on a couple of excursions during my week in Shanghai.
Unlike the city itself, the canal towns are renowned for being tranquil, old fashioned and quaint, so after a few days of bright lights and almost constant scooter-dodging it seemed like a nice idea.
Qibao ‘Ancient’ Town entrance
‘Qibao Ancient Town’ turned out to be a bit of a cheat canal town. It’s not *quite* a Chinese version of a Renaissance Fair, as settlements there do date back to Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period (old, for those not bothered to click the link), but it’s overshadowed by a couple of huge malls and was rammed with Chinese tourists when I visited. Pretty remarkable given the sub-zero temperatures out. It’s on the Metro too, so it’s really more of an inner suburb than a canal town proper – the Highgate Village of Shanghai, if you will.
Once you pay a small fee at the entrance to ‘the old bit’ you’re allowed access to a load of average-to-meh museums that are dotted around the place. Some, such as the ‘Cricket Fighting Hall’ sound amazing but are in fact beyond dull (once you’ve seen one sparse Chinese room, you’ve seen ’em all) whereas others, such as the House of Zhang Chongren, turned out to be great.
A winner for that jaunty hat angle alone
Zhang was a Chinese artist and sculptor who was born in Qibao. He created many great Russian-inspired Communist statues, as well as portraits of political leaders such as Deng Xiopeng and Francois Mitterrand. He was also a friend of Herge, the creator of Tintin, such a good friend in fact that Herge based a character in one of the comic books on him. This fact is apparently so significant that not only is 3/4 of Zhang’s Wikipedia entry about his friendship with the cartoonist, the photo is of him and Herge having a chat. Judging by photos and the testimony of his Belgian chum, Zhang seemed to be a lovely friendly man who created some fantastic sculptures and paintings, so it seems a bit sad that online he is mainly remembered as the inspiration for the orphan boy in ‘The Blue Lotus’.
It would appear that the main reason people flock to Qibao is not to gaze at Chinese descriptions of insects, art, or rows of tiny teapots, however. The main reason Qibao is so popular is its food market.
The ‘Ancient Town’ consists of about three narrow roads that cross over a couple of canals, and the central one is entirely made up of food stalls, selling pretty much the entire gamut of edible Chinese street fare, from chicks-on-sticks to dumplings to erm, dumplings in soup. I actually made quite a good stab at ordering food for once and was awarded with the best meal of the week. Unfortunately in my hunger I took the ‘stab’ idea a bit too literally and didn’t realise the long cocktail stick I had been given to eat with was in fact meant to be part of a pair of chopsticks, a fact that caused a group of Chinese school children EATING WHOLE BABY CHICKENS IMPALED ON SPIKES to laugh at me as I sat on a bench and attempted to harpoon my errant dim sum.
Woman ponders what ‘thatone’ could possibly mean in Chinese
Odd elements of fakery aside, Qibao was a nice morning away from the city and to be honest, when the Metro costs about 40p a ride, it’s worth making the trip for lunchtime alone. That said, considering how rammed it was in January, it might be hell-on-earth by the time actual tourist season arrives.
You can hardly see the large shards of ice in the canal in this one
This is the Oriental Pearl Tower, one of Pudong’s stand-out buildings. Huge, phallic and lit up at night like a child’s toy wand, it’s a boombastic, proud symbol of New China. It also costs about £10 to ascend, which is ridiculously extortionate in proportion with everything else in Shanghai, so I didn’t bother. BUT. For a far lower fee (maybe about £1?) you are grudgingly allowed to visit the basement, where there is the Shanghai Municipal History Museum, a cracking little exhibition that seems completely at odds with its modern swanky home.
Maybe there is something reassuring about cosy little rooms full of historical artefacts after a lonesome day spent wandering around windswept concrete. Maybe it’s because the fabulous little models of old Shanghai reminded me of Arthur Windley, whose miniature fairground was displayed at The Museum of Everything , an occasional gallery of Outsider Art that is The Best Thing in London for a couple of months every year. In any case, I was calmed and charmed by the place, and spend a disproportionate amount dawdling between rooms, taking photos of every exhibit, wishing I had someone to joke about the understandably pro-Chinese descriptions of Colonial history with.
I think this is the old Shanghai Stock Exchange, although it does look curiously like a formal cattle fair without cows. Brilliant use of cardboard cut outs, whatever it is.
This display was my favourite: a large diorama of a Colonial-style ballroom party, filled with model Europeans dancing the night away in a stiff, dust-covered fashion. It was huge, this photo is a zoomed-in focus on the band at the back and as every doll appeared to be modelled individually, it must have taken hours. What was hilarious, however, was that all the men looked exactly the same – blonde hair, long thin noses and tiny eyes. Truly, it appeared that in the Roaring Twenties Shanghai was populated entirely by clones of Owen Wilson. Or possibly Brian Jones from the Rolling Stones.
Stylish Bitches – Global Dog Fashions for 2011
I am not a dog person. I’ve had to sit through that bloody Youtube video about the guilty dog that ate the cat treats twice so far, and each time I can feel precious minutes of my life slipping away, minutes that could be spent on something productive, or at least watching videos of trippy 7Up adverts from the 1970’s. That said, I realised I took quite a lot of dog photos on my travels. I think this is mainly because there is nothing more hilarious than dressing a little moronic creature up in funny clothes (Child of Biche will be dressed as either this or this from birth until they get old enough to learn the meaning of the word ’emancipation’), but also because, as a girl, there is no better way to ask to take a photograph of a stranger than by letting out a supersonic shriek of ‘oooooooomigaaaaaawdit’ssooooocuuuuuuuute!’ followed by a couple of quick snaps masked by baby noises gabbled in the direction of unfortunate beast.
Hells Angel Dog hates it when chlorine gets in his eyes (Fort Worth)
Mobility Scooter Dog is stoic in the face of your cruel fingers (Forth Worth)
LOBSTERDOG TICKLE HOOO!!!!!1!1!! (New Orleans)
Converse Dog spies some bitch in Adidas (Shanghai)
Duffel Coat Dog sees your soul (Hong Kong)
And of course, who can forget Frida Kalho Dog?
Adventures in Solitude in Shanghai
Pudong. In 1990 it was marshy farmland
Okay, yes, this post is very overdue, months in fact. I am now back in the UK and very much unemployed to the extent that I spend the bits of my day when I’m not pinging off CV’s pondering questions as deep as ‘what does an olive pitting machine look like?’ (observe) and ‘what time does the postman actually come?’ (midday at the earliest).
A security guard in the French Concession, an area Lonely Planet raved about. A bit dull, unless pedestrian European architecture on the other side of the world is your thing.
But anyway, Shanghai. I was there for a week in January, after I’d visited Sydney and Brisbane but before I travelled to Hong Kong, all of which will be written in due course in the wonderful non-linear narrative that is this blog. It was cold, about -5 degrees Celsius on average, but the excitement I felt upon landing in China was so overpowering that I practically floated on a cloud of glee from the airport to the city. Well, okay, I took the bullet train, a superfast vehicle that displays no information other than the ridiculous speed you are being shot through the air at, but inside that harsh fluro-lit box I was gently pulsing with joy. It was only when I emerged from the Metro onto Nanjing Road East, clad only in a hoodie, that I realised my hands were completely numb, I was shaking slightly and simple cerebral tasks like reading a map were proving extremely difficult.
The hostel was okay, well, teeny rooms, ferocious heating and mattresses designed by someone who loathes the land of nod, but pretty clean and well staffed. They even tried their hardest to accommodate a pathetic request for an ‘English tea’ and although I ended up with a sort of teabag cappuccino in a pint glass, it did temporarily stop my teeth from chattering. Unfortunately, mainly due to the cause of my dental vibrations, January is not peak tourist time in Shanghai. Most of the guests in the hostel were Chinese students from other cities and a few hardcore ‘Travellers’, something that limited 75% of any potential conversation to ‘Nihao!’ and lots of polite head bobbing. I hadn’t really considered that there was a distinction between travelling and Travelling before, but saying I had ‘travelled’ around America and Australia to the few English speakers seemed to elicit the kind of response you would expect if I had said I had ‘travelled’ around brothels of Southend-on-Sea. Suffice to say I spent the week almost entirely in my own company.
Visual metaphor in the Bird and Insect Market
I didn’t mind too much at first, after all, I’ve got pretty much used to me after twenty-six years, but what I wasn’t used to was just how much ‘only me’ it was. When my brother and I were younger we went to Bejing and it was an experience akin to being maybe a C-list celebrity: people stared, took photos and generally seemed a bit excited by our presence. In the twelve years hence it would appear that Chinese people have got used to the spectacle of pale eyed foreigners wandering about, or maybe it’s just the Shanghaiese who are not fans of huge blonde loners taking up space on their pavements and in their Metro cars. I wouldn’t have even minded staring, as that would have at least suggested that I existed, but it was a week of being pushed past and blanked by everyone from the very young to the very old, only occasionally mixed in with the odd glare of contempt when I attempted to do something radical like buy food or exchange money for goods. Admittedly, I was smoking in public quite a bit at first (£1.50 for a pack of twenty!) an apparent faux pas for women I only found out about afterwards (cheers for omitting that one, Lonely Planet) and one that unfortunately then made me so ill I denigrated myself further by blowing my streaming nose with a tissue every five minutes. Correct form is a violent and drawn-out hock followed by a gob in the street not doing something vile like discreetly snotting into Kleenex. It was like being a Z-list celebrity. I was going to say ‘I couldn’t even have got myself arrested’, but given China’s track record on such things perhaps that is not the best turn of phrase. I definitely could, however, have immolated myself in my new 100% synthetic winter coat (size XXL!), flung myself into the Huangpu River and I doubt the any of the photography stall workers who line the banks would have bothered to so much as take a lens cap off.
But enough of the gripes of China’s very own Jodie-Marsh-for-the-week. Shanghai is a place of contrasts. It’s very Eastern in that no-one speaks a word of English (and why should they?) but this is at odds with the city itself, where not only are most of the signs in boring un-Chinglish English, 75% of the shops could be found in any mall from Westfield to Del Amo. There are malls that look like temples, malls that look like huge globes, malls that look like old fashioned Chinese villages, but they are all so boring and well, mall-like inside. Fun thing to note though: the most white people I saw all week was in the Fenshine Fashion and Accessories Mall, THE place to go for knock-off goods of all descriptions, from Converse trainers to Mulberry bags. China’s Jodie Marsh liked it because the traders necessarily know enough English to hold a vague conversation, even if it did result in the purchase of two rubbish Cath Kidson suitcases.
If you’re looking for culture rather couture then it can be found in the Old City area of town, which just about still exists, although it relentlessly touristy, with Starbucks and McDonald’s peeking out from under ornate traditional roofs, next to stalls of traditional Chinese fare like fake Jade and plastic lanterns. Still, it’s mildly more fun to haggle for goods you wouldn’t find in Tottenham in a shop that is older than your haircut, even if it does mean getting bumped and trying to find a way to fit two hand-muffs into your already heaving backpack.
- The Yuyuan Garden is in the Old Town and is one of the prettiest places to visit in the city centre. So long as you get there before 9am when the hordes of tourists arrive. Thanks to jet-lag I was here ridiculously early and was able to watch this man take a photo of his wife peeping around a tree.
As I was in Shanghai for a week, and as shopping, the Old Town and Pudong only took about two days of hardcore wandering to experience, I went on a couple of excursions to towns outside the main city. Stay tuned for the next thrilling instalment of ‘I travelled to the other side of the world grumble grumble grumble’ coming up shortly, and click on, to see some more photos of Shanghai.
Australian Television – An Arid Landscape of Meh
I previously had a rant about the state of American television, but I have to say, for all its lard-eatin’, pervert-trappin’, suicide-inducin’ bonkersness, it’s a thousand times more interesting than the wasteland of interest that is Australian television.
I suppose it could just be seen as a question of numbers – American homes recieve an average of 118 television channels and Australians can only get fifteen on digital freeview (source: my drunk uncle counting on his fingers); but then again, in England we can get about seventeen (source: me looking with longing at tvguide.co.uk) and it’s a rich wonderful tapestry of insight and wonderment compared to what the poor Antipodeans goggle at on a daily basis. Even ITV2.
After an empirical study of two weeks of Australia’s finest, I have concluded it can be broken down into the below categories:
VERY Old English Sitcoms: I was faintly amused to see the ‘One Foot in the Grave’ Christmas special on channel 7Two. ‘Keeping Up Appearances’ was on too, but having experienced a few references to it while travelling in America, I assumed it is still enjoying some sort of bizarre global cult status, despite being so hideous that it nearly incites someone as lazy as me to class war. And ‘Porridge’. And ‘Some Mothers do ‘Av ‘Em’. And ‘Pie in the Sky’. And ‘The Good Life’. I could go on, but the real icing on the cake has to be Love Thy Neighbour, a sitcom I’m not sure they are even allowed to show back home anymore. Bill Bryson summed it up best when he recalled his time in 1970’s England spent watching a programme that appeared to be called ‘My Neighbour is a Darkie’. There was a really good spoof on ‘The Day Today’ called ‘Them Next Door’, but YouTube is not being helpful.
Slightly Old English Sitcoms: It admittedly might be a Christmas thing, but last night I sat and watched the 2009 ‘Royle Family’ Christmas special followed by the 2007 ‘Office’ Christmas special followed by the 1999 ‘Gimme Gimme Gimme’ New Years special. The other day they had a Jonathan Creek special on that I was particularly proud of being able to date to 2001 by the fact that Julia Sawalha was wearing the same Next shirt that was part of my uniform when I worked in Russell & Bromley when I was 17. Today I sat through the 1996 ‘Father Ted’ Christmas special and the Extras Christmas special, which again, could be dated to 2007 purely on the strength of the unfortunate Jade Goody jokes and a shot of the shiny new Heathrow Terminal 5. I don’t mind these programmes so much as they are funny with a hint of nostalgia that I can relate to, and they don’t involve conflicted feelings such as you might get while crushing on Kate Beckinsale’s long-dead father.
Lifecycle of a Christmas Present
Las Vegas – Very Bad Things
The Dream of the 90’s is Alive in Portland
A perfect little video sent to me by my smug friend Lex who lives in the fair ‘Rose City’ itself.
Incidentally, if there are any business owners or faintly attractive men under the age of 35 who live in PDX and want to help me get a visa to move back for good, I promise you I am very good at working a coffee machine and folding vintage clothes and even have my own teeth and everything.
Going Ga Ga in La La Land
I had a bit of a disparate time in Los Angeles; I spent four days in grimy-yet-iconic Hollywood, then, after a brief interlude in THE VEGAS I returned to shoppingville Santa Monica for a few days of wrangling with travel insurers, the ‘successful’ result of which was that I flew home for a week because my Grandmother died. I came back for two days only and randomly stayed in Hermosa Beach, a surfing resort that was largely empty, probably because it was the beginning of December and not very warm.
Los Angeles is actually about a third smaller than Greater London, but while London peters out into mock Tudor mansions, mini roundabouts and park benches full of bored teenagers after about zone 3, in L.A you are never more than a hop skip and a jump away from a massive bleak freeway that runs straight off into the grey distance for miles; I got the bus from Santa Monica to Hollywood and it took an hour and a half and we didn’t turn off Santa Monica Blvd once.
L.A’s population also stands at a whopping 14.8 million compared to London’s 7.5 million, but you would never guess it from wandering the streets, because aside from the super-healthy moneyed powerwalkers of the beach areas, the gormless tourists of Hollywood and the many, many deranged tramps of all over the bloody place, they are largely empty. This may be because of the tramps (special shout-out to the one on Vine who did a from-standing backflip, violently slapped his own face and yelled at us to fuck off), but also because it is so, well, boring, for the most part.
Moronic tourists of Hollywood Blvd. In this instance, a girl with a dead cat on her head and a Mexican child wedding party.
I am a bit of a keeno walker, partially because I am an utter failure at mastering anything with wheels bigger than a rollerskate, but also because of the guilt of my deep-seated love for stuffing my face with large amounts of food several times a day. I therefore walk about a lot. Okay, so even in London, this might not involve a particularly arresting journey, but even schlepping down Holloway Road or through East Finchley you’ll find something of interest. It might just be some nice run-down mansions or a bit of amusing graffiti, but at least there will be a little off-license where you can buy a can of Coke with Turkish writing all over it and a park where you can sit on a swing and have a cigarette. Not so in LA. On one day I decided to walk from the hostel, which was just east of crazy crazy central Hollywood (it was in the seedy bit, best described as Julia Roberts’ turf in Pretty Woman) to the Sunset Strip, a distance of about three centimeters on the map I was given, and, as both central Hollywood and the Strip are often mentioned as being almost the same place, I figured it would be a stroll. Three hours and seven miles of trudging along a freeway lined with shut shops later, I decided to never trust a map drawn in felt tip ever again.
Banana Bungalow, Hollywood. Yes, there may be psycotic tramps and prostitutes outside, but there are tellys in the rooms and you can see the Hollywood sign in the distance.
The Wisdom of Wandering IV
If there is one piece of advice I can give to any traveller of a similar demographic to my good self, it is not to stay in a H.I Hostel if at all humany possible. For a start, they are all dry, so you will not be able to just chill out with a beer in the hostel and y’know, meet people. This actually doesn’t end up mattering too much, as H.I hostels are full of the most random group of bods from all over the world, aged somewhere between about 5 and 80. Sounds like a beautiful Michael Jackson rainbow dream? You try sharing a room with a sixty year old lesbian who snores like a chainsaw. Or spending your dry, dry Saturday night watching an old man pick his nose in front of Family Guy. I’m currently in a room full of Japanese girls who ignore me, but I guess that’s better than the Aussie girl in the non-H.I hostel who pissed on the floor at 6am and then tried to get into my bed on top of me, but that is another story for another day…
The Wandering Biche 
