This morning as I walked to work, a Shanghai municipal worker was crouched down on her haunches, polishing a garbage bin. She had already carefully washed it down and was now rubbing shine into the metal containers with a suede cloth. It sparkled. The …
It’s deceptively shiny and new and almost Western here (and by Western, I mean, it’s all about the shiny, the new, the casually bilingual, the commercial and the branded). We are waiting for our flight to Guilin at the Hongqiao airport and a few cracks …
Although I previously raved about how I could get all sorts of imported loveliness in Shanghai and so had no need to go crazy with longing from eating only what was available locally, I would like to take this time to write a small tribute …
“Go to the Bund at 7am! Watch the people do exercises on the riverbanks! Or in the leafy parks! So lovely and tranquil!” Yeah, no. I work for a living and on my days off the last thing I want to do is get up …
Shanghai has about three distinct rainy seasons: the freezing, bitterly sharp and spiky winter rains; the lackadaisical early spring rains which come and go and often leave you without an umbrella because the blue skies had misled you; the sweltering and humid summer rains, …
I’ve been living abroad for most of my adult life, give or take a few semesters back home trying to finish my never-ending degree. Most of my time has been spent with very little money and/or very little access to outside comforts. In Ghana, …
When I lived in Istanbul, I ate a lot of very good Turkish food. In Shanghai, I eat a lot of very good Mexican, Italian, Moroccan, Lebanese, Punjabi and American food, as well as the forty bazillion shades of Chinese food on every corner. Chinese …
I’ve got a fucked up clicky neck, leftover from a fun and debilitating 5-car pile-up I was in back in Istanbul in 2007 with an insane company driver. Even though I couldn’t walk without crying/screaming for a month, the Istanbul medical community declared me unhurt …
I love Chinese supermarkets. A lot of foreigners I know simply refuse to shop in Chinese supermarkets because some sections can be viscerally overwhelming. Like the meat and fish section. Our local supermarket reeks of fish and flesh, most of which is not neatly packaged …
In the Former French Concession (AKA bits of Luwan and Xuhui), there is a parallel universe operating, much like the ones full of street cats and their armies doing their own thing with their own agendas. This parallel universe is made up entirely of mops. …
Taxis in Shanghai aren’t actually particularly nifty but they are remarkably cheap and easy to get around in. A half hour trip from deepest, darkest Pudong to Puxi, with bags and bags of illicit espresso in tow and no desire to take the Metro? …
I suppose that Lanzhou Noodles here would be a more appropriate addition to a list of 101 Nifty Details About Gansu Province but I don’t care. There are Lanzhou noodle joints everywhere in Shanghai and I am pulled to the Arabic script of their cookie-cutter …
