I couldn’t help but feel a bit nostalgic on reading reports this week that one of Shanghai’s Cultural Palaces in Putuo district would be shutting its doors for much-needed renovations. The story was really just a newspaper photo with a caption, underscoring just how irrelevant these Soviet-era buildings with grandiose and idealistic names have become in modern China.
Many of these buildings have long ago fallen off the map for both locals and out-of-town visitors, despite their Disney-esque quality that makes many seem like theme park attractions in today’s Shanghai. As a history lover and also someone who actually visited and used many of these establishments when they were still relevant, I would propose that local officials take advantage of this need for repairs to do something different with these sites as they undergo renovations. Read Full Post…
As Shanghai returns to work from the week-long holiday, we’re getting bombarded by the usual crush of statistics that show just how many people visited our city, how many traveled outside, and which tourist sites were the most popular during the fall Golden Week. But this year really seems like a case where pictures are worth a thousand words, as many of my personal images seemed to capture an intensifying mobility and anxiousness that were new and just slightly unsettling during this year’s holiday.
I spent most of the latest Golden Week here in Shanghai, though I did make a day trip to the nearby water town of Xitang where the third installment of the “Mission: Impossible” movie series was filmed. That trip, along with my single venture to the East Nanjing Road pedestrian street, gave me more than enough reminder of the huge holiday crowds that typically flood into tourist attractions in both the city as well as in nearby towns. Read Full Post…
This week’s Street View gets us into the festive holiday mood with a look at food, including the latest take-out dining craze sweeping our city and a much smaller but still significant development in the main campus cafeteria at the university where I teach.
The bigger trend has seen a sudden explosion of take-out dining services in our city, resulting in a new flood of bicycles and other deliver vehicles zipping through the streets of Shanghai. The smaller item saw the main dining hall at Fudan University officially launch a western-style restaurant over the past week, bringing tasty but greasy items like pizza, pasta, steaks and upscale coffee to some of our city’s best and brightest young minds.
One of my favorite things about writing this column is getting to chronicle the many booms and subsequent busts that continually sweep through a major city like Shanghai. I’ve previously written about local explosions in convenience stores, beauty salons, coffee shops and most recently asset management companies, as entrepreneurs and big chains flocked to these latest business trends. Read Full Post…
Three headlines involving pets in and around Shanghai are shining a spotlight on just how fast dogs and cats have multiplied on our city streets, and the many conflicts arising as a result. As someone who grew up with both dogs and cats in my home, I can certainly understand the attraction of having pets as part of a household environment with children.
But that said, some Shanghai residents seem to be taking the pet phenomenon to levels unseen in the west, putting themselves in growing conflict with people who would prefer to return to a pet-less past that was the norm in China until recently. Read Full Post…
This week’s Street View takes us to the Shanghai tourism circuit, where several recent headlines are spotlighting the high ticket prices we pay for many of the city’s most famous attractions. This particular story seems to surface every time a major holiday approaches. In this case an unusual triple-header of holidays is coming, starting with a 3-day vacation for the 70th anniversary of the end of World War 2 next week, followed closely by the Mid-Autumn Festival and the October 1 National Day.
I’ve written previously about this phenomenon, though every time it seems like ticket prices are higher than the last time. But this time I also have some added perspective of how Shanghai compares to other cities, following my own summer travels to Yunnan, Inner Mongolia, Sweden and Britain. Read Full Post…
With the 70th anniversary of the end of World War 2 in Asia fast approaching, I’ve been looking for interesting but overlooked war stories involving my adopted home of Shanghai, which was one of China’s first cities to get dragged into the conflict. Most such stories involve a mix of perseverance, resilience and defiance, as both Chinese and foreigners in Shanghai tried to maintain their daily routines as much as possible, while also resisting the enemy and awaiting the return of peace.
That’s when I realized that one of the most fascinating stories, which includes a healthy dose of all these elements, was right under my nose at Fudan University where I’ve been teaching in the Journalism School for the last 4 years. I’d heard in the past that Fudan fled Shanghai during the war and set up temporary shop in Jiangxi province or the interior city of Chongqing, but never pursued the real story to find out what actually happened and why. Read Full Post…
As a nearly continuous China resident for much of the last quarter century, one of the biggest annoyances I find with daily life here is the constant need to register your presence in a wide range of situations. The need by authorities to know who I am, and prove it with a valid ID, dogs me on a regular basis in Shanghai, forcing me to declare myself each time I want to buy a plane ticket or stay in a hotel, and even for such minor things as visiting some offices buildings.
That obsession with registrations has been in the headlines these last two weeks in a relatively minor but quite typical story that saw a foreign tourist refused permission to stay at a public campground on Chongming Island. The reasons for the denial were something that could only happen in China, related to the campground’s uncertainty over whether it could properly accept such foreign guests without proper registration. Read Full Post…
Call me jaded, but I’m getting just a bit tired of all the recent attention given to the Shanghai Jewish refugee story in the run-up to the 70th anniversary of the end of World War 2 in Asia. I got my latest dose of the story just this past week, when I read about a new local musical based on a story that saw more than 20,000 European Jews take refuge in Shanghai during the war.
I read about that just days after another international media friend asked me for a contact at the official Jewish Refugees Museum in the Hongkong District, seeking some wartime photos for their own story on the topic. I contacted a friend at the museum, who told me they were getting flooded with similar requests due to the war anniversary. Read Full Post…
My relationship with medical care in Shanghai has undergone a major transformation since I first arrived in the city to live more than 4 years ago. What began as feelings of fear at the mere thought of a doctor visit, mostly due to the crowds and long waits, has evolved into a much more sanguine relationship where I no longer dread such trips.
The turning point for me is quite clear, and came about 2 years ago when I discovered the mini-hospital at the university where I teach, which would probably be called a large clinic in the United States. Such clinics are quite common in the US, usually staffed with anywhere from a single physician to small groups of doctors, and are at the center of new Shanghai initiative to make getting medical care easier and more affordable for everyone in the city. Read Full Post…
My first hint that change was in the air for foreigners working in Shanghai came a couple of weeks ago on a visit to the foreign affairs office at the university where I teach. That was when the young man who handles my visas told me new rules coming out would allow me to apply for work visas good for 2 years or more – a radical change from the current policies that make getting anything longer than 1 year nearly impossible.
I didn’t share his enthusiasm, mostly because I’m quite skeptical of a Chinese system that makes many things possible in theory but quite difficult to achieve in reality. That small signal 2 weeks ago has rapidly evolved into a flood of new reports over the past week, all saying that Shanghai is becoming friendlier to foreigners who want to live and work here over the longer term. Read Full Post…
As a high-tech writer, I’ve been chronicling the story of Internet-based car services like Uber and Didi Kuaidi in China for the last 2 years and how they’re shaking up a market that was dominated for decades by stodgy taxi companies. But an experience this past week here in Shanghai made me realize just how revolutionary these services have become, and more broadly how the Internet is shaking up and democratizing many traditional industries.
My moment of insight came during a field trip with some students to the Lujiazui financial district, which has become a standard part of the financial journalism course I teach at a local university. I made the trip as usual trip by subway, and met my students at one of the many high-rise office towers for our tour of a local news agency. Read Full Post…
