I often write about the Shanghai subway in the context of its many quirks and special features, but this week a different kind of underground story from the world of extreme sports caught my attention. The tale involved a man who created a sport out of literally outrunning a Shanghai subway train.
The man got off at one station, then ran out and onto the street, before re-entering at the next station in time to get on the same train he just exited. This kind of extreme sport is quite common in the west, where people often like to test their athletic ability by posing unusual challenges that pit them against nature, technology and other forces. Read Full Post…
A few food-related items, 2 in the news and one in my personal life, made me realize once more just how far China’s eating scene has advanced in the last 2 decades, especially in an increasingly international city like Shanghai. The 2 news items both involved coffee, which I wrote about a few weeks ago as I noted the recent explosion in new chains and coffee houses.
The latest twist has fast-food giant KFC joining the trend, with word that it’s rolling out a premium coffee product in a bid to boost its downscale image. If that wasn’t enough, Gubuli, a well-known local chain whose name is synonymous with baozi, or meat-filled steamed buns, is also entering the upscale coffee business through a new joint venture with Australian chain Gloria Jean’s. Read Full Post…
The annual Spring Festival travel rush has been hogging the headlines these last few weeks, but several news reports this week are casting a more human spotlight on the millions of people who have already started leaving Shanghai for annual reunions back home. Those reports focus on the annual headaches local employers feel when millions of their workers leave for weeks or even months, driving up salaries by 50 percent or more for the people who stay on the job.
The issue adds a more human face to the millions of people who now call Shanghai home, even though they have little or no official status as city residents. Many of us depend heavily on such people, from the waitresses at our favorite restaurants, to the ayis who clean apartments and trainers who staff the gyms where we work out. Read Full Post…
With the Lunar New Year fast approaching, local officials have begun their usual flood of announcements and new policy roll-outs designed to make travel just a little more pleasant for the millions of people who will hit the roads during that time. Many of the moves involve ticketing, but one that caught my attention this week centered on new restrictions for the size and type of items that people can bring on trains. Read Full Post…
A new program to encourage entrepreneurship at the city’s universities has been in the headlines these last few weeks, and on the surface at least looks like a good idea. But the new initiatives at several of our local schools have met with a lukewarm reception, probably because they look like yet another way to add stress to the lives of our city’s youth who already feel incredible pressure to succeed.
As a teacher in one of Shanghai’s major universities, I get to see the huge pressures that many of our students face on a daily basis as they try to satisfy the huge expectations heaped on them by both their parents and society. Encouraging students to take time off from school to start companies would simply add one more thing for them to stress out about. Read Full Post…
A new report on Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX) plans to accelerate its China expansion made me realize just how overheated Shanghai has become with a recent explosion in new coffee shops. In the last 6 months alone, at least a dozen trendy new shops have opened within easy walking distance of my home in an up-and-coming area of the Hongkou District, including 3 or 4 of those by Starbucks itself. Read Full Post…
Cantonese cuisine has become a local favorite in Shanghai these past few years, reflecting the city’s growing taste for both regional and international foods. An interesting twist on that trend has seen China’s financial capital snub higher-end Cantonese food for more down-market chacanting-style restaurants, which are Hong Kong’s equivalent of the local greasy spoon diners in the west. But these Canto diners that have rapidly colonized Shanghai hardly look like their Hong Kong cousins, and have taken on a decidedly mid- to even high-end approach to the dining experience. Read Full Post…
This week’s Street View took me to a leafy, residential area of Huashan Road where I went to check out a private museum dedicated to propaganda poster art after reading about it in the news. Housed in the basement of an ordinary apartment building, the collection of striking and boldly colored posters provided a fascinating look at China’s modern history dating all the way back to the 1950s.
Many foreigners like myself have a particular fascination with this kind of propaganda poster, which may partly explain why the popular TripAdvisor travel website ranks the Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Centre as one of the top attractions for foreigners visiting the city. The museum gets little or no mention in most Chinese tourism literature, and even most mainstream foreign travel books don’t mention it, partly because it’s small and relatively new after opening in 2012. Read Full Post…
With the Double Eleven shopping binge now in the past, many of Shanghai’s singles are moving their sights to the upcoming Chinese New Year when they’ll have to face the barrage of questions about their love lives from friends and relatives. Sensing an opportunity to play on the upcoming anxiety, our city is preparing to hold the latest edition of its semi-annual matchmaking event next month to give singles something to talk about in response to their grillings at home. Read Full Post…
It seems that old habits die hard when you’re among the thousands of sweepers clad in signature blue smocks who work tirelessly to keep Shanghai clean. That’s the lesson I learned when I took to our city’s streets this week to check out an innovative program to enhance the autumn atmosphere in the former French Concession area.
The new program was simple and quite creative, attempting to create a feeling of fall by allowing fallen leaves to accumulate throughout the day on several tree-lined streets. Such leaves are typically cleared away by sweepers within minutes of touching the ground, keeping our streets spotless but also deprived of much local color. Read Full Post…
A recent brouhaha in the US over the naming of an outsider as New York’s new celebrity “ambassador” got me thinking about who could fill the role of a similar city spokesman for Shanghai. After all, such a spokesman is a great promotional tool for big cities like New York or Shanghai to outsiders, representing many positive and distinctive aspects of local culture like language, mannerisms, and general attitude.
But what happened next was quite unexpected, as queries to several friends made me realize that Shanghai doesn’t have too many people who could fill such a role, despite its status as China’s biggest city. My friends explained that most aspiring actors and musicians now gravitate to Beijing, and a Shanghai pedigree is no longer worth very much despite the city’s past as the Hollywood of the east. Read Full Post…
