Hack

That thing I said about not noticing the smog here? Well, a week after I arrived it set in proper, then everybody I knew at the hostel began coughing constantly. I've had a cough and runny nose for a fortnight, and this morning I've lost my voice from coughing my throat raw.

I don't know why it's so smoggy here - there are factories but not for at least an hour out of town, and we're on the sea so there should be breezes but the smog is ever-present. There have been three or four blue-sky days in the three weeks I've been here.

The sky's never black at night, no stars, just smog.

Grey skies at night, shepherd's...lung cancer?

iDon't get it

This Angry Birds theme park story made me laugh while rolling my eyes - I don't have an iPhone but I do have a vague concept of what Angry Birds is, and so I should as you can't avoid it in China - they're obsessed. Angry Birds merchandise is everywhere. I heard from an American kindergarden teacher that her kids have made it into an real-life game - they hurl Angry Birds stuffed toys at a group of kids, who duck down if they get hit.

Side note - what did the Chinese do before smartphones? I can count on one hand the number of people I've seen reading a real book in the metro. Ipads seem to be used solely to play solitaire and maze games.

 That's one angry giant disembodied bird head...

Zen and the art of Chinese journalism

I haven't written much yet about the whole reason I'm here, working for the Shanghai Daily newspaper. Partly that's because I had an unexpected week of holidays immediately after I arrived, but also because I'm still trying to figure out how to do my job here and what the paper expects of me.

I haven't at all fallen on my feet here work-wise, yet I haven't had much culture shock in general, which is the opposite of what I had expected. I thought reporting here would be easy, so I didn't arrange any interviews in Shanghai from New Zealand, which I now regret. The paper has a very hands-off approach to its interns, the only direction I've been given is "connect with the expat community". I've had quite a few meetings with some interesting and influential New Zealanders here, but nothing leading to interviews or stories yet.

The Shanghai Daily features section. Just like a New Zealand newsroom - or is it?

A rare un-smoggy view from the 38th floor, usually a land of eternal grey weather even if it's sunny on the ground.

So up until the last couple days, I'd had to learn about Chinese journalism from the outside, from clues. For example, the staff on the paper is absolutely massive - I'd estimate 40 reporters plus 20 editors - but the actual paper is about the size of the Wellingtonian but without many ads (30 pages?) and I'd say about half the content is from news agencies. I had read a lot before I arrived about journalists here not meeting people for interviews face-to-face, surfing the web a lot, conducting interviews on MSN and turning around press releases. It's hard to judge whether the journalists in my section are busy or not, or whether they're going out for jobs a lot - everyone seems to have a different work timetable.

But an observation about workers in general here - despite its 1.4 billion-strong population, I've heard China has almost full employment. Which explains why there are so many people doing the most ridiculous jobs here. I've seen countless security guards asleep in chairs on the footpath. In fact, I've seen a lot of receptionists, and even journalists at my paper, asleep at their desks. I've seen people employed to make sure you're standing on the footpath before crossing the road. The boredom is immense, which must be really hard for people to take after spending their childhood intensely striving for good marks at school.

Anyway, over the last two days I was sent to a nearby city, Hangzhou, for a reporting job, so I've got a bit more insight into how journalism works here, but I wouldn't say I'm less baffled. Seven international writers have been invited to Shanghai for a two-month residency programme, and this week they were sent on a short trip to the lake city of Hangzhou, to experience a more calm and picturesque version of China.

Hangzhou is very beautiful, sitting on the edge of the legendary West Lake and with lots of European-style architecture.

Naturally, it's a top spot for wedding photoshoots (more insight into Chinese weddings here).

The Shanghai Daily was a major sponsor of the trip, but I'm not sure that justified sending about 15 staff to Hangzhou and putting them up at a really nice hotel. There were about six of us journalists there, and at least as many marketing staff. At the main event of the trip, a short seminar between the residency writers and some Hangzhou writers, there were no less than 35 media staff covering what would be an extremely minor news event in New Zealand.

However, none of the journalists was taking notes, and only the TV crews were recording what was said onstage. In fact, a lot of the journalists were chatting or darting in and out during the seminar. The Shanghai Daily's report mostly relied on written translations of the writers' speeches, supplied at the event. This is not to disparage my colleague Minji's work - she's one of the most intelligent Chinese people I've met, she was educated at Wellesley in Boston (where Mona Lisa Smile was set!), but it's obviously the way they report news here.

The rest of the trip was just as interesting. As well as being assigned to get some quotes from the writers (yay for doing some real work), we were treated alongside the writers to banquets (I ate eel and duck tongue!) and a pretty spectacular night-time song and dance show on the lake.

We also went on a two-hour boat tour of West Lake, supposed to be the most beautiful in China:

Shanghai magazine journalist Estelle, my colleague Sophy, and French novelist Alma

 Aussie writer Linda

 

 

It was really interesting being in the Chinese media contingent, but being a Westerner - the writers were unsure what they were supposed to be doing in Hangzhou, and just waited for orders about where to go next, which coach bus to board for a 150 metre trip down the road - and I could report that the journalists were just as baffled.

So basically, Hangzhou was a crash-course in the art of going with the flow and doing as you're told as a Chinese journalist. Today I'm being sent as a VIP to the Shanghai tennis masters quarterfinals - no reporting necessarily required, I've been told, just attend the banquets, sit in the corporate box and enjoy myself. Zen. Zen.

Babies grow up, luckily

Yesterday I explored a part of Shanghai I hadn't seen before - Hongkou, the old American settlement. It's just north of the ritzy Bund but feels a world away - run down, not many tourists, lots of poverty here. The area has an interesting history - it was originally the American concession, then it became "Little Tokyo", then in World War II lots of Jews settled here and it became "Little Vienna". Today it's home to lots of Shanghai's poor migrants. The Lonely Planet suggested we check out a local "lilong", or alleyway off a main street, but I wasn't expecting how slummy and depressing it was going to be:

It was a smelly warren of alleyways with rubbish, standing water and poo on the ground. Some alleyways were nicer, had small restaurants and plants, but a lot were like this.

Maybe the upstairs rooms were nicer but most downstairs rooms looked like this. Although, on the nicer alleyway we saw into a lounge/bedroom with maybe 10 cats and two dogs, both dressed in hello kitty t-shirts and tutus. Oy.

You'd never even know this lilong was here from the street - in fact across the road was a brand new huge office tower.

Anyway, just one street over was a great foodie street, full of street stands and restaurants.

This was our lunch - you get a basket and fill it with a range of the above - each item is one yuan (20 cents). Then they cook it with some noodles and make it spicy to your taste.

I'd never come across this but apparently it's normal - they put the meal in a plastic bag then into a bowl. Regarding the meal, I can advise that both lotus root and winter melon are fairly tasteless and dull. The seaweed ribbons were nice though, tasted of a New Zealand summer.

This was the restaurant manager Lucy, who extremely unusually spoke good English. She studied it at uni. She insisted on taking a photo of us in front of the restaurant as we were the first Westerners to eat there (it's a fairly new place). I get the feeling we'll be on the restaurant's advertising soon..

Dessert was Portuguese-style egg custard tarts. YUM!

Chinese KFC ripoff

 I hadn't seen this before - I think they're feeding sugar cane through a juicer thing, to make a drink.

We then went to a fairly horrific indoor clothes market, where everyone was loud and pushy, and we're pretty sure a Chinese woman called Rosemary a bitch for trying to bargain down an outrageously overpriced crappy singlet. We were also hounded by this awful tout, who shouted "fuck you" when we weren't interested, ugh.

But then was quite chuffed when I took his photo.

I saw these bum-sculpting knickers

And this great Chinglish t-shirt: the periodic table spells out "Calvin Klein fashion younger popular ince [nice?]"

Oh yes and later I saw the best Chinglish shop name:

Babies grow up, thank Christ!

Oh yes it was also my birthday, we had quite a feast for dinner:

Soup dumplings, spicy tofu, beef noodles, pork schnitzel and potato fritters. Come to think of it, I'm hardly eating any vegetables here, or fruit. Hm. Off to buy grapes.

Little Britain

There is a corner of Shanghai that is forever England...

It's called Thames Town.

"Welcome to Thames Town. Taste original British style of small town. Enjoy sunlight, enjoy nature, enjoy your life & holiday. Dreaming of Britain, Live in."

This is Thames Town, a commuter suburb built in 2006 in Songjiang, 30 kilometres south of central Shanghai. It cost a billion dollars to build and was intended to house 10,000. However, London is clearly not a destination of choice for Shanghainese, as the place is as empty as a ghost town, most of the shops boarded up and a few British pub-a-likes doing poor trade.

Ye Olde Pubbe

Phone box

 Churchill

Lady Di

There was also Oxford Street, Austen Park... and it turned into Little Paris for a bit which was confusing.

The only thing stopping Thames Town being completely over-the-top creepy was the bustle of about 20 brides getting their photos taken in Love Square, in front of the fake chocolate-box church complete with utterly hideous stained glass windows. But that was pretty weird itself.

 

My eyes!!

Spot the brides - I count seven.

Update: I've found some really funny articles about the other fake towns in Shanghai here.

Apart from the wonders of Thames Town, Songjiang also boasts a wee temple park with a tall pagoda, where families flew kites in the sunshine:

Pagoda and straw dragon

Incense burning at a temple.

We also visited Qibao, a old town/tourist market suburb similar to the City God Temple, only this time built on canals:

It was a beautiful blue sky day.

To market

I had planned a trip yesterday to Suzhou, a garden city half an hour from Shanghai, but arrived to a packed railway station and every train booked until 4pm. Golden Week - almost everybody (except shopkeepers) are on holiday all week to mark national day, and to spend lots of money and boost the economy. So Lydia helped Rosemary and I book train tickets for Wednesday, and we headed off to Pudong, the financial district west of the river. It was intensely crowded there too, with tens of thousands of Chinese milling about seemingly aimlessly, so we made our trip a short one.

The Bund as viewed from Pudong - basically the opposite view from this.

Rosemary and I got asked to have our picture taken with a Chinese man, and lots of people were taking our picture surreptitiously - Lydia was really embarrassed and said they were rural folk who don't see many Westerners, but we both thought it was quite funny.

McDonalds comes in so many more exciting forms here - I've seen it delivered by moto, and here's a soft-serve ice cream kiosk.

That night Rosemary invited me out to dinner with her uni classmate Sophie and Sophie's diplomat boyfriend Ali. We went to a pretty posh Taiwanese restaurant (side note - it seems Taiwanese cuisine is a mix of all the best parts of Chinese cuisine, as so many Chinese have fled/emigrated there over the years. Yummo!) and ordered an epic banquet - Sichuan tofu with cashew nuts, Beijing-style pork wraps, mountainous mango and chocolate mudslide sorbets, pineapple bubble (black tapioca) milkshakes, and the bill came to $17 each. Choice! Must eat like a king more often, it's so easy to think spending even $5 on food here is an extravagance, as you can eat for $1 quite easily at semi-grotty family restaurants.

Sorry I don't have any photos of the meal - rest assured, food and company were both excellent. Sophie and Rosemary have both travelled through all the "Stans" - Kazakh, Tajik, Uzbek, Kyrgyz. In fact, Sophie's just spent three months travelling to China from Europe, overland. Makes a girl feel quite unadventurous in comparison.

We went for a drink afterwards at the Xintiandi neighbourhood in French Concession (restored old Chinese neighbourhood now filled with boutique shops and fancy bars) but it was too expensive so we ended up at one of said semi-grotty restaurants drinking $2 beer and watching a ballroom dancing reality show on CCTV (Actual unfortunate name of Chinese state TV).

 An incredible pair of buildings near Xintiandi -covered in blue lights making wavy patterns

 Also saw some pretty tea at a small shop in the area.

Today I'm not feeling well - a combination of too much rushing around this week and maybe a cold coming on. I've mostly stayed in the hostel listening to BBC Radio 4 online, not wanting to deal with China's crowds and smells for a day. I did have a stroll in the surrounding streets after lunch, however, and discovered an indoor/outdoor produce where Chinese ladies were buying their fresh vegetables and meat for dinner.

Not the best photo - I told you, I'm feeling rotten. But the market's set up in a sort of run-down alleyway with tarps hung over the stalls.

Beautiful brown chicken eggs and blue duck eggs for sale

Rosebuds, I'm assuming to put into a tea mixture

Purple corn and beans

Different types of noodle

(Peking?) duck. Full disclosure: I also saw a live duck sitting on the footpath at a stall, ready to be sold for a meal. Also lots of live fish and crabs in paddling pools. But after the pigeon incident I'm kind of nervous about offending people by taking photos of animals for slaughter. Must learn to ask to take a photo politely in Chinese.

 A man spreading sauce on a big pancake or omelette at the market

A man gets his jacket tailored on the footpath. I might do a lengthier post about this in the future, but I've had to redefine my notion of "a shop" in China - there's millions of fancy shops here in malls that we'd recognise in New Zealand, but a shop is often just a tiny alcove room off the footpath jammed with electrical cables or rice, for example, or a mobile stall like this tailor lady has set up.

Keycutters playing cards at the exit to the market.

This is for dad: Zespri kiwifruit at my local supermarket:

Pricey - $13 for a small box. In comparison, a kilo of grapes is about $2.

Individually cosseted Zespri kiwifruit in a gift box. Urg.