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January 2008 - Posts
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Worst. Wong Kar-wai movie. Ever.
Wong Kar-wai movies used to be mini-events in our lives, so we were probably more disappointed than the average viewer. It's hard to believe that My Blueberry Night (MBN) was made by the same guy who made a gem of a road movie about ten years ago, Happy Together (HT). Both are road movies about lonely souls and wayward lovers, so it's hard not compare the two, but unfortunately, while HT was "fucking poetry" (as one friend of ours said at the time), MBN was not only lackluster but at times downright difficult to stomach.
Remember the the faux-philosophical, quirky voice-overs that usually dominate Wong's films? Well no more (or very little) of that—what we get instead is Wong's attempts at actual dialogue, which has never been his forte, and although the script was written by an English speaker, we still ended up with some of the worst dialogue we've heard in a long, long time.
If there's one way that's sure to help you avoid bad dialogue, it would be to refrain from overly obvious, tendentious metaphors—like using "doors" and "keys" to talk about the human heart. “Some doors are not meant to be opened", and "some people stay behind those doors" are case in point. To make matters worse, the slow tracking shots, shot through windows and glass for the sake of getting refractions, reflections, and distortions—might have been cool if used sparingly, but alas, like everything else, we get beat over the head with it to the point where it gets distracting.
Things take a turn for the worse during the second act of the movie, when Elizabeth (Norah Jones) decides to "take the long way to the other side of the street" and embarks on a cross-country road trip. We catch up with her in Memphis, where we run into yet more aimless people in search of their existential compass. Elizabeth crosses paths with a dysfunctional couple: he’s an alkie cop called Arnie (David Strathairn), she’s a slatternly southern belle got married to young and lived to regret it called Sue-Lynn (Rachel Weisz).
Normally, we worship at the altar of Rachel Weisz, and we think she has fair bit of actorly range, but playing fallen southern woman might is still a bit of a stretch for her, and we know, there are difficult precedents to live up to, like Scarlet and Stella. Weisz's affected southern accent and white trash angst are awkward; but then again, maybe it's just us. It could be because we know she's British, and it could be because we just think her sexiness has something to do with her intelligence and good looks, not the low decolletage, feigned sexpot thing.
The scenes where she appears were shot in a really cheesy way as well—whenever she walks into the bar, everyone turns around to look at her, making the whole thing feel like some kind of WKW directed shampoo commercial.
As for David Strathairn—well, we don't know whether to admire or pity him. It can't really be all that fun for an actor to play a role where you're slouched over the bar looking bleary-eyed and comatose half the time, else emoting stupid lines like “you’re my goddamned wife and I’m your goddamned husband"—and then turning violent. Yet despite having next to nothing to work with, he somehow manages to inject some dignity and humanity into his character.
Next, Elizabeth's journey takes her to Nevada, where she meets Leslie, played by Natalie Portman. We hate Portman enough to warrant anger management therapy, but she's been taking a lot of small art film roles, which kinda allows us to forgive her. She plays Leslie, a roving, professional gambler and, like so many of Wong's other femme fatales, is on the run from an emotionally damaging relationship with a boyfriend/husband/father figure.
Our first impression upon seeing Portman on screen was "miscast", as in they shouldn't have gotten someone this young and fresh-faced as Portman for this role. The quaint southern accent, bleached bouffant hairdo, low decolletage, and skill for reading people (and men in particular) might have looked more natural coming from a middle-aged woman like Felicity Huffman, Joan Allen, Judy Davis or Joan Cusack. On the other hand, one of our friends pointed out that this was perhaps the point of her character—Leslie is pretending to be all grown-up and stocked up with all of life's answers. And although youthful anti-gravitas is the new gravitas, there was none to be found.
Nonetheless, Portman's performance was one of the few highlights of the movie. For one, her dialogue and her scenes were a bit more varied than that of the other characters. We see her in more than just once place, which is more than you can say for the other characters: Jeremy is always in his cafe, Sue-Lynn (Rachel Weisz) is usually seen at a bar and mostly at night. With Leslie, we get some more old-fashioned dramatic elements—we see her lose all her money at a poker game, ask Elizabeth to borrow all her saving in order to buy in again, offering her Jaguar as collateral. Now that's some good old-fashioned dramatic tension! Portman is the only actress in this film that's given any room to breathe inside her character.
Lastly, a few notes on style: overall, it seemed that MBN was far less cinematic a film than we would have expected from WKW. Largely absent are the wide-angle lenses that WKW used quite liberally in the films he made in Hong Kong in the 1990s. Not only did everything look cool and distorted with that lens, but its greater field of vision meant that it captured more information, more than just the actor’s body or her face—you could see their the kind of environment they lived in, the floors, the magazines, the bed, the chairs, the telephones—these inanimate objects that are, in their small way, also part of Wong's palette. In contrast, MBN's use of long lenses and close-ups verges on the monotonous and really doesn't bring any of the places to life. In fact, we'd go as far as to say that the cinematography of MBN ends up shutting us out rather than inviting us in. It seems to be composed of an endless montage of close-ups, shot with a longish lens, from a slightly lower than eye-level angle. You see a lot of faces and expressions, shot from an angle as to make them seem flat—the space of the characters' interaction becomes discombobulated and abstract.
On the other hand, other WKW films, such as Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Ashes of Time, In the Mood for Love brought Hong Kong (of different periods) to life a way that few films can. The lonely rides in buses and subways and the dizzying and improvised journeys on motorcycles and ice-cream truck take us through the neon-scapes of Hong Kong (or Taipei, or Buenos Aires) and are some of the most energetic and visually electrifying sequences in Wong's films. MBN seems kinda half-ass in comparison: time-lapse sequences with the moon, cityscapes and clouds are cliche, and speeding up the film stopped being creative several decades ago. Maybe we're being too fanboi here, but we caught ourselves thinking more than once that things would have been different had Christopher Doyle shot this movie.
Which brings us back to the comparison with HT. Yearning, separation, distance—these are all classic WKW themes, and in HT you see them all, crystallized in the nuanced performances of Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung. Love, sex, tenderness dependency, heartbreak, betrayal, forgiveness, apathy, the whole gamut is there, and that's really what made HT such a great film, and why MBN simply can't compare. See the film if you have to, or if you feel obliged to watch every film that Wong makes. But don't say that we didn't warn you.
Other links:
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By Rebekah Pothaar
Ladies, the final countdown has begun. It's your last chance to squeeze out that golden piglet. This Chinese New Year, the real party is in the maternity ward as hopeful parents-to-be race to drop a squealer before the year of the Golden Pig goes the way of the pork ball in your morning xiolongbao.
Photo from valentinesperformingpigs.com
Superstition isn't normally the cause of a baby boom, but in the world's most populated country, having a baby this year promises wealth and prosperity. Millions of Chinese (and Koreans) have jumped at the opportunity with many couples getting married last year in hopes of popping a one-child-policy piglet. But the plethora of pig babies have not come without sacrifices on the part of the mamas, who have dealt with inevitable shortages in maternity wards, line-ups for routine testing and harried doctors.
The usual doomsayers foresee major social problems for this generation of lucky bacon bits, who have been competing even from the womb -- it starts with hospital beds and escalates to competition for universities, jobs and spouses.
Photo from Cleveland.com
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 As mentioned before, US expatriates are, for the first time, able to vote in a global primary, meaning that they get their own set of delegates during the primaries, which decide each party's respective presidential candidate. This particular event, held on Tuesday at the ecologically sound and coolly designed URBN hotel, was well attended. Computers were set up to help people register, liquor and hors d'ouevres helped people mingle, and Barack Obama's victory speech from the South Carolina primary was played on a big screen. Melanie McGanney was there and wrote about it on the Huffington Post. Youtube has a video of the speech here, and you can see some more of our photos here.
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This chain noodle restaurant was established over ten years ago and though there used to be 12 restaurants in the chain, only 5 remain. The quality of the food has, in our experience lacked consistency in standard but, the restaurant IS consistently clean and pleasingly inexpensive.
 On some days we’ve eaten extremely good noodles. Fresh ingredients, good service (a chance to practice your Chinese), and clean surroundings is what keeps us coming back. Unfortunately sometimes the food is not so fresh. Like today - the Noodles with Rich Tasty Pork Rib (chún xiāng pǎi ròu miàn - 醇香排肉面 - 22 RMB) were obviously prepared prior to our arrival, the sauce on the ribs had begun to harden slightly as it was cooling in the kitchen.
Considering the ribs on the menu are given a ★ to denote high quality - we would expect just that, and are dissapointed when we don’t get it. However other items, not only the ★ items, can often be very good. Usually we order the Noodles with Deep Fried Beef (jiàng bào niú ròu miàn - 酱爆牛肉面 - 18 RMB). The beef comes on the side cooked with cucumber and comes in a thick dark sweet sauce. The noodles come in soup. Then you combine the beef into the soup or eat from both dishes as you wish. Similar to the dish pictured which is Husband's Roast Noodle Soup (Preserved Peanuts, Tofu and Vegetables) sì xiǎn kǎo fū miàn - 四鲜烤夫面 - 10 RMB.
Another option when you order most dishes is to have the noodles come without the soup. We like this because without the hot soup we can eat faster and spend more time building snowmen. You should order what you want by pointing at the menu, and ask qǐng gěi wǒ bàn miàn - 请给我版面. The noodles will come in soy sauce and sesame butter.
On some items the waiting time is indicated by stars. One star * for fast items, ** for slower, *** for slow. At meal times this place will certainly always be busy. So it’s good to know how long to wait.
Located at Huáihǎi Lù 淮海中路706号 near Sīnán lù 思南路. Shǎnxī Nán Lù 陕西南路141号 near Nánchāng Lù 南昌路. Tàikāng Lù 泰康路5号 near Sīnán Lù 思南路. Pǔdōng Nán Lù 浦东南路2060号. Wūlǔmùqí Běi Lù 乌鲁木齐路129号 near Yǒngjiā Lù 永嘉路. Open 10:30 to 21:30. (NB. The menu is not exactly the same in each restaurant, but is very similar).
Cross-posted on www.likealocal.cn
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 In our past life as a public relations executive, we were always surprised at how China's media world appears to be in sort of a pre-Cambrian age with as many publications going out of business as there are coming in. Call up all the journalists you've invited after a press conference and there always be bound to be one or two publications that have folded up. Well it appears we haven't quite come out of those pre-Cambrian times yet, and at least the expat magazine circle is beginning to feel the heat. Hot on the heels of the closure of News Views Reviews comes the demise of Hint Magazine. We just received this in our mail from the editors of the publication:
Dear Friends of Hint Magazine,
In the next few days, the February edition of Hint will be flooding the bars and restaurants of Shanghai. Unfortunately, this will be the very LAST edition of Hint Magazine.
Despite the fact that the readership was growing, the market was just was not ready for this kind of publication.
We tried to bring you, the discerning Shanghai reader, something different and we hope you enjoyed some of our articles and opinions.
We would like to take the time to thank everyone who has helped, contributed or assisted us in the course of our publication. We hope that we can keep in touch and can continue to work together in the future.
Regards,
Natalie Hill and Joseph Jones
We're not sure how Hint was meant to be "something different", or for the "discerning Shanghai reader", or what they meant by "the market was just not ready for this publication", but it is still a pity. We kind of liked the idea of a pocket-sized magazine, although with our poor eyesight, the small font made their stuff barely readable. The magazine also could have used better design.
Hint was published by the Shanghai Walker group which publishes《上海漫步》in both Chinese and Japanese. Their Japanese title is one of the most successful and popular Japanese expat rags in town. The company was presumably hoping to have as much of a success in the English language market as they had in the Japanese market, but too bad it didn't quite work out. They either came into the market a bit too late, or, maybe, just maybe, the expat magazine market has already reached saturation point.
More Shanghai media gossip on Shanghaiist
NVR says never again
Cameltoe alert at Shanghai Daily
SH Mag's revamp
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Photo by Peijin Chen
Spring Festival: The holiday is around the corner, and for the first time in years we'll be stuck in Shanghai, undoubtedly huddled under the covers and looking sorrowfully through our phone's address book for anyone who might also be here to help brush away the loneliness. Since our ayi who cooks our grease-ridden meals will also be leaving us for the holiday, we're going to have to trudge out into the snowy wilderness to eat. If any of you similarly cold and lonely souls are willing to join this Shanghaiist to pig out at places both old and new, here's where you'll find us:
- Kabb will be serving their popular weekend brunch every day from Feb 6-12 from 7am-4pm. For the first time, we can indulge in our favorite breakfast burritos for more than 2 consecutive days.
- We are praying that Il Panino is going to remain open so we can seriously indulge in their weekend brunch special, where 99 RMB between 12-4pm will get you all the panini you can eat. The special covers salads and other platters as well. Our favorite repeat order is the arancini, deep fried saffron rice balls with a cube of melted mozzarella in the middle. If you're like us you'll need to be carted out.
- WIth a long list of new venues that we have yet to try, we'll make an effort to check out Kakadu, the new Australian-themed restaurant at what used to be our favorite bargain steak place (seems like eons ago). We wrote about this a few months ago, and now are eager to try it, especially after our friends at Just Beer gave it their thumbs up.
In openings/closings news: - La Boite A Pizza has shuttered its doors for the moment. Sherpa's has them moving to a new location. We never ate there, but it seems Dagu Lu is where most restaurants go to die.
- We hear the good folks at Zentral are looking for an experienced managing director to help with their expansion plans as they expect to double (from 3 to 6) their locations within the next two years. We tried to apply but apparently they are looking for people who are actually competent. Let us know if you know anyone...
- Cityweekend sat with Vincent, the owner of Haiku, who will be expanding his enterprise to Pudong but won't be keeping the name. As long as they keep their rolls, we'll be looking at more of a reason to cross the river (but we'll probably just go to Haiku).
We love the readers who love us back: Loyal reader RW wrote to us, thanking us for recommending the churrasacaria place Samba a while back. At the time, we wrote that prices had dropped down to 78 RMB per person, but RW was dismayed to find that prices have returned to their 118 RMB level. He also had some slight problems with the ice cream ("it was the worst ice cream I have ever tasted anywhere!"), but was happy with the cheesecake. We are in turn happy with RW for sharing his thoughts with us; it gives this Shanghaiist joy in knowing his quest for meat made a difference in someone's life.
Eric Hu is Shanghaiist's Food Editor. Email tips, recommendations, and news and gossip about Shanghai's food scene to food at shanghaiist.com.
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Long story short, the place is a zoo, but what'd you expect. Of course, things are made worse by the weather. Here are some pics from the last few days. From what we've been hearing both in the news and in our apartment elevator, the dastardly weather gods have caused big time cancellations and problems. Despite the crowds of cold people and the massive B.O. from the people waiting inside the subway station, things seem more or less ok. Order has been maintained. Lots of places are already sold out, but order has been maintained, in part thanks to the police and PLA.
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By Rebekah Pothaar
Now that the People's Liberation Army has been called in to battle the snow and the terms "war", "disaster" and "national crisis" are being used in association with the present weather conditions, we're feeling guilty for making a snowman yesterday in the park and secretly loving every flake.
From (Xinhua): The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) has ordered its troops to go all out to combat the lingering heavy snow in the southern part of the country. The PLA's Department of General Staff and General Political Department issued a joint decree on Monday, ordering troops in the affected areas to join in the anti-snow battle in collaboration with local governments. The troops should give whatever assistance local governments require for fighting disaster and in rescuing people, the order said. So far, 158,000 PLA troops and the Chinese People's Armed Police (PAP) and 303,000 paramilitary members have joined the anti-snow campaign. The current heavy snowfall has caused unexpected difficulties to local life, production and transport in the affected areas and the country as a whole. So far, heavy snow and rain have left at least 24 dead and caused enormous financial and property loss.
Soldiers push a truck in the snow on the highway in east China's Jiangxi Province late Jan. 28, 2008.
 Soldiers clear the snow on the highway in east China's Jiangxi Province early Jan. 29, 2008. Local authorities took efforts in combating snow-inflicted woes and reducing the negative impact to the least extent as volatile weather continued to rage the region.
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China admits Olympic construction deaths:
Rising food prices across Asia:
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 Is the Blues Room going to change its entire concept because they've decided this live music stuff doesn't make enough money? Or maybe they have other ideas about how to go about it. We don't know what the place has in mind, but what is confirmed is that they are cutting off drummer and bandleader Al Gordon and organist Bill Heid's performance contract a few months earlier than they were originally signed up for, which means the duo's last day performing there will be tomorrow, Thursday, January 31 instead of the end of April as originally agreed.
If anyone else has word of what might be going to happen over there, please leave a comment here. If we find out anything new we'll be sure and let you all know. For now, though, we can say if you want to hear Al and Bill's dynamic duo playing everything from blues to bebop, then you better go check them out tonight or tomorrow night.
UPDATE: We've been told by the Blues Room folks that new musicians will start February 15, after a two-week holiday break.
Cross-posted at shanghaijazzscene.com.
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Photos by Alexandre J. Gruss (emailed to photos@shanghaiist.com)
More Shanghai Snow photos available from the following Flickr users:
Jake in Shanghai
Clivez
Slow Boat to China
larocat
Photos found via the Shanghaiist Contribute page. To see your photos on our Contribute page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site (and here).
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Photo from Why Democracy
If you think Chinese children can't get any more obnoxious, go watch Please Vote for Me, an award-winning indie documentary and pay special attention to Cheng Cheng, the pudgy kid who is one of the three students running for the position of class monitor. He then gets increasingly irksome as he sabotages fellow elects and manipulates his classmates for votes.
Through Please Vote for Me, director Weijun Chen has alluded to the dreaded D-word (not Depression) in China with a clever social experiment involving a class of eight-year olds in Wuhan by documenting their first contact with democracy — electing a class monitor. Witness the invisible hand of parents at work as they influence the children's campaigns and pass on their own perceptions of how elections should be run and how the guanxi game should be played.
The 58-minute production is part of Why Democracy?, a Cape Town-based documentary project's series of 10 films aimed at exploring the multifaceted aspects of democracy today. Good news is, three of the 10 documentaries can be viewed free online, along with a mind-boggling 14 more short films by independent filmmakers centered on the democracy theme. Now if you would excuse us, you know what this Shanghaiist may likely be up to the next few days with a mug of hot chocolate in hand than brave the slush and bitter chill.
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By James Creegan
 As part of the ongoing upgrade of Pudong airport, there is now a new branch of Motel 168 open in the transportation centre, right next to the entrance of the Maglev station.
Double or Twin rooms are available, both at 348RMB per night. A little more than the chain usually charges for couples rutting like beasts between filthy sheets, but not too shabby for a hotel bed within walking distance from an international airport (with a KFC just downstairs).
The hotel opened on Monday, just in time to take advantage of the delayed and cancelled flights due to the weather- when Shanghaiist called, all rooms were already fully booked.
Motel 168, Pudong Airport (tel: 10102020, English service available).
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Sufei hits the streets of Beijing and asks people what they think of the US presidential candidates, and who she should support. Apparently, most of them only recognise Hilary and either do not know/support Obama. One man says he looks too "aggressive" to be the president. Hmm...
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By Andy Best
American Shaolin by Matthew Polly (Gotham Books) can be found in Garden Books, on the corner of Changle Lu and Shanxi Nan Lu.
 Every now and again, time and space just seem to line up in an incredible display of fate/coincidence (delete as appropriate). For months now, we have been trying to get to grips with the strange brand of Uncle Tom-ism on display in the Shanghai ex-pativerse. It has so many unique facets that it appears to defy summary or clear explanation. Then along came Matthew Polly who wrote American Shaolin, a book that sets it all out with the purpose and prose of a Plato’s Republic. Albeit unintentionally.
The book details Polly’s trip to China in 1992. Told as a series of anecdotes, he flies in to Beijing without a plan, makes his way to the Shaolin Temple and stays there for 18 months to learn kung fu. At the time, Polly was a highly motivated and intelligent Princeton student who’d studied Mandarin to a decent level before leaving for China. The story covers his first year, which ended with him being entered into a tournament in Zhengzhou City.
Polly is intelligent and open minded. He can speak Chinese and knows what is happening around him. He uses words like orientalism and peppers the story with measured observations and jokes about uptight neo-cons back home. He is both a likeable and capable storyteller and the book is an easy and entertaining read. It is for all these reasons that, when read on a macro level, the book is a tragedy on an oedipal eye-gouging level.
Within the first two months he finds out that Shaolin as it was ended in 1912 and attempts to restart it were literally bombed through the warlords period, pacific war, civil war and revolutions. The ‘kung fu’ he is learning is stylized dance taken from Modern Wushu and the iron body skills are individually trained circus routines. Yet he decides to stay and join the town’s kick boxing club.
Thereafter he learns kickboxing in rural Henan for USD1400 per month. That’s right. One anecdote has him proudly negotiate it down to USD600 per month. Still twenty times over the average family income in that area at the time and at least double that again over what other students pay. Everyone calls him laowai to his face and constantly refer to his ‘tall nose’. He is used as a punch bag for most of his training. "Why are laowai so bad at kungfu?" He takes bullies out for banquets and kowtows in the old style to a master who will never teach him – because he ‘understands’ guanxi.
By the time other “laowai” start turning up in Shaolin, Polly laughs at their strangeness and prides himself on being more ‘in’ than them. Oh, those crazy laowai. The most brutal picture of this is when he helps fellow American John Lee get attention at the hospital by reprising his “crazy monkey foreigner kung fu” routine that amused his Chinese friends so much. As for the kung fu itself, Polly is painfully naïve. He spends a whole chapter befriending a mysterious caretaker who eventually relents and teaches him “Iron Arm” kung fu. This turns out to be bashing your forearms into a tree in a pattern, then using Chinese medicine to treat it. This is a common warm up/conditioning routine found openly in all traditional kung fu classes from Hong Kong to American Chinatowns.
Finally, when facing his first skilled opponent he is beaten to a pulp while the crowd chant ‘kill the foreigner’. If only he’d taken good advice to go to Taiwan or Hong Kong in the first place. Or better still, if he was going to do kick boxing, a Muay Thai camp in Thailand. Instead he decides to pay outrageous amounts of money to learn plain kick boxing in a third-rate school (he names the better schools in China) while being used as the butt of all around him’s ignorance – all because of the name Shaolin and the strange driving desire to prove that he ‘understands’ his oppressors. Polly himself often refers to better schools and a more open life in Beijing and Shanghai, even Wuhan, but instead is proud to represent Shaolin in the tourney – despite all but one of his teachers and classmates refusing to march with him and making him enter as the Princeton Team, USA.
Polly recalls all of this with cheerful nostalgia. We all get into situations in life, at home and abroad, where people with power over us abuse it. Sometimes we have to make do, but we don’t have to like it. We certainly don’t have to happily reproduce that behaviour. Despite his intelligence and open attitude towards China, Polly seems happy to give examples of “Chinese” behaviour while also stressing the individual personalities of the people he meets. His mind remains blissfully conflict free while talking about stereotypes and struggles while himself using generalizations and the word “laowai” on every second page.
And therein lies the book’s unintentional insight into the mind of the Uncle Tom Laowai. Read the book. It is one of the great philosophical novels of our time.
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 By Rebekah Pothaar
Everyone is complaining about the snow and how difficult it makes walking dogs, getting cabs, getting out of train stations and how ayi is on holiday for the next couple weeks. This Shanghaiist has been inspired by the words of Doctor Seuss: “When you think things are bad, when you feel sour and blue, when you start to get mad… You should do what I do! Just tell yourself, Duckie, you’re really quite lucky! Some people are much more…Oh, ever so much more…Oh, muchly much-much more unlucky than you!” For example, this guy is muchly much-much more unlucky.
Apparently wild Chinese elephants are not all that fond of certain American tourists:
CNN reports: A wild elephant in southern China picked up an American tourist with its trunk and threw him in the air, causing the man to suffer from fractured ribs and stomach injuries, an official said Monday.
Jeremy Allen McGill, who teaches English in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, was found unconscious around dusk on Thursday at the "Wild Elephant Valley" nature reserve in the Xishuangbanna region of Yunnan province.
"It wasn't clear why he was attacked," said an official with the Xishuangbanna foreign affairs office who would give only his surname, Chen.
McGill's abdomen and lungs were "seriously injured" and he had broken ribs, Chen said. He was hospitalized and had stitches up to 40 centimeters (15 inches) long on his stomach, said Chen, who had no details on McGill's hometown.
Photo from exfordy
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 Some members of the Shanghaiist team are about to embark on ambitious Chinese New Year's expeditions. We wish everyone planning similar journeys a happy and safe trip. So you know what to look for, we're starting a list of the three biggest threats to your life as the year of the rat begins.
1. The Cold: This year's a cold one and it doesn't seem to be letting up anytime soon. See posting below.
2. Fireworks: This year is already off to a bad start (we resisted the powerful urge to say 'bang') in terms of firework related death and injury. They're particularly dangerous in China.
3. Wild elephant attacks: A poor English teacher had to learn this one the hard way. We hope he'll pull through. This particularly applies to those traveling in southern Asian regions.
Runner up:
-Carrefour stampedes. Always a serious risk.
Are we forgetting anything? Let us know.
Photo by Graemetric
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 We're often asked what things we miss most from home. Five years ago, we may have been ready with a long list of items in response. But now, it's a toughie. In many ways, Shanghai is home now, and a lot more Western comforts are readily available here in 2008 than there were just a few years ago. So when people ask the "what do you miss" question, we generally draw a blank on specifics and answer with something vague like, "People and places mostly."
But when we do make it home, our memory is often jogged (usually in huge supermarkets) and we say to ourselves (or whoever might be near us), "I wish we had that in Shanghai." It's usually small, relatively unimportant items. And on our most recent trip it was fat free fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt. I think the brand we used to get back in the day was Dannon. Yogurt is plentiful in China, but it's packed with chemicals and sweeteners and colors and lately we've been trying to stay away. Some imported yogurts are available at the City Shops and Fei Dans, but if we recall correctly, they are rather expensive.
So, earlier this month we were talking about yogurt at a bar with a friend (prior to that topic, you better believe we were talking about manly things like sports, cars and power tools) and he directed us to a post on the uber-manly website shanghai-mama.com (his wife recently gave birth). And that's how we first learned about Bebemamie, which has been producing unsweetened, natural yogurt in Shanghai since 2004. Better yet, they deliver to your door every week. Problem solved.
Here are the details: You pay by the month, and you have to agree to buy at least eight 120g jars a week at RMB 10 per jar. There is also an initial RMB 150 deposit for the jars (don't lose them — it's RMB 25 per glass jar). Bebemamie will deliver each week, the day after the yogurt is made (if they come too early in the day for your liking, which happened to us, just put the empty jars in a container outside your door — they'll leave the new ones without waking you up). You can order by phone (6269 1701 / 6269 1702) or by email (order@bebemamie.com). The yogurt is as advertised: fresh and tasty. And it's definitely not something we ever thought we'd be able to get delivered to our door in China (or anywhere is we've ever lived, for that matter).
A few other things of note:
- Berries — we like to mix them into our yogurt. Berries aren't plentiful here. We have purchased frozen ones at City Shop, and they aren't cheap. The best deal we have found is called Berry Cocktail from a German brand Jutro. A 300g box is 20-something kuai. Frozen berries in bags are 50-60 RMB for about the same amount. Your best bet, really, is fresh strawberries from your neighborhood fruit stand. If any readers have a reliable and affordable berry hook-up in town, please share.
- Three weeks into our first month, we have discovered that we don't always feel like eating yogurt on a daily basis. So, if you are interested in getting yogurt delivered, it might be a good idea to split your weekly shipment with a friend, unless you really, really like yogurt.
- If the "unsweetened" part of this equation has you down, we have found that a packet of Splenda added to a jar of yogurt can do wonders.
Finally, if you're not into the delivery thing at all, you can still buy Bebemamie yogurt at various shops around the city. You can learn which ones (and more) in this brief version of Bebemamie's story, emailed to us by a company spokesman:
The company was founded in 2004 when French couple Hano and Philippe Jallet began producing unsweetened, natural yogurt at their home in Shanghai. The couple had just arrived from Japan and were disappointed with the standard of dairy produce available here. Soon friends from amongst Shanghai's Japanese community were ordering for home delivery and spreading word to interested family and friends.
Up until around this time last year, this was the bulk of our client base. But over the last twelve months we have developed to deliver to over 4000 households in Shanghai and Suzhou. We have also started to sell through a few outlets: Kommune, Slice Deli, Enoteca, House of Flour, House of Flour 'C'. Those who do not wish to receive a home delivery can collect at those places.
The most important aspect of our business is regular production/delivery model. Because we know how many units to produce regularly, we can produce daily with minimal waste. Because the product is fresh and delivered weekly, we don't need to add any chemicals, preservatives, emulsifiers, etc. Also, we don't add any flavourings or sugars. We only produce plain, natural yogurt. We use imported Australian Milk, natural bacteria from France and nothing else.
Bebemamie Yogurt, fresh, unsweetened yogurt delivery in Shanghai. Order by phone (6269 1701 / 6269 1702) or by email (order@bebemamie.com).
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By James Creegan
Shanghaiist is dreaming of a Spring Festival watching fireworks light up the sky over a Fragrant Harbour or Forbidden City, but watching the red rash of 售完 (sold out) notices spread across the board at Shanghai South Railway Station, and feeling the air of desperation and panic, we gave up and went home.
Until buying train tickets online become an option (when China? When?!) we’re hoping a travel agent will be able to save us the hassle of the crowds.
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By Mike Chen
When: 2007-2008
Where: Shanghai Metro
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 Nasty. Nasty. Nasty. If we didn't have to walk the dogs, we'd just stay inside our (semi) warm living room all day. We know the miserable sleet (or is it freezing rain?) and slippery conditions are forcing some offices to send workers home early today. But winter's icy grip on China is far more serious than some missed work or a slip on the sidewalk. Here's a rundown (and, please, feel free to add to this list in a comment):
- Shanghai Daily reports that the "brutal" weather will continue into the beginning of Spring Festival and that it's already "killed dozens of people and affected tens of millions of others." It's the worst winter weather in 50 years for some parts of China. Also, "Premier Wen Jiabao said the weather was threatening lives and disrupting supplies of food, coal, oil and electricity ahead of the Lunar New Year." They go on to document several of the blackouts, accidents and deaths.
- More locally, Shanghai Daily says, "Several highways linking Shanghai and neighboring provinces were closed yesterday morning due to heavy snow. Some re-opened by noon, but the Shanghai-Nanjing Highway remained closed." They say Qingpu District had 5 cm of snow, the most in the city. Xuhui had 2 cm, according to the report, but we didn't notice any accumulation until this morning, and what we have now we really wouldn't call "snow." The story also talks about some local travel delays.
- Weather has 150,000 people stranded at a train station in Guangzhou, and that number could reach 600,000, reports Reuters. Shanghaiist would like to echo Premier Wen Jiabao's call to local officials: "Urgently mobilize and work as one to wage this tough battle against disaster! Ensure that the people enjoy a joyful and auspicious Spring Festival!"
- Diesel trains are being dispatched to help move electric trains stalled due to power outages, says rednet.cn.
- The London Times reports on "China’s worst-ever power shortage."
- China has issued a "level 2" weather alert, reports Bloomberg.
And as we were compiling this, the stuff falling outside our window has changed from sleet to snow. Time to take the dogs out.
A few more photos here. Post your winter weather pics on our Contribute Page.
UPDATE: If you were wondering, looks like our weather might get a little better come February 3.
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By Andy Best
 Take a walk down Panyu (Fanyu) Lu from the Film Art Centre and you will soon pass by the SH502 restaurant. It occupies a slaughtered renovated colonial mansion adorned with a huge neon sign. Unknown to the proprietors, reviewers and most of the customers, this is actually the former family home of British writer J.G. Ballard.
Ballard is famous in the mainstream for two works. Crash laid out a disturbingly explicit ‘psychoscape’ in which the car crash was a sexual symbol of a death worshipping society. More famous was Empire of the Sun, an autobiographical novel detailing his upbringing in colonial Shanghai and his internment during World War Two. Both have been made into films, the latter to great success by Steven Spielberg.
Ballard’s father ran a sweatshop factory in Shanghai and enjoyed the highlife of villas, health clubs and horse racing. Born in 1930, Jim Ballard was left to the care of indifferent servants. He used his relative freedom to explore the city by bicycle, seeing local Chinese starving to death on the glitzy foreign streets. Once Japan invaded in full, his family was interned at the infamous Longhua Camp, now Shanghai Zhongxue.
Canadian Rick McGrath has the largest collection of Ballard first editions in the world. His brilliant online catalogue – The Terminal Collection – is one of the two best Ballard sites available, the other being Simon Sellars’ Ballardian.com. McGrath heard that the Shanghai house was still standing and obtained a letter from Ballard himself. The letter contained a map which allowed him to confirm the location using Google Earth. A pilgrimage was on the cards.
Shanghaiist met McGrath for a stroll around the lanes of old Amherst Road (Xinhua Lu) and finished with dinner at the house itself. McGrath’s stories are great, including the time he couldn’t pass up on visiting Ballard despite a general request for no visits at the time:
“They call it doorstepping. It’s probably stalking. My bad.”
Despite McGrath’s obvious elation at finally making it to the site, he admitted that the Chinese are under no obligation to preserve sites from bitter days of occupation and that all things pass. Ballard himself wrote in the letter that the places are gone in the old sense and commented of the house “a restaurant? Great, better make it a McDonald’s or a KFC.” He also sabotaged his own knighthood, calling it a ridiculous gesture to a non-existent empire.
Prior to heading back to his hotel, McGrath took a last look down Xinhua Lu and recalled the famous scene from the book: the Japanese tanks rolling past the lane on their way in from the Hongqiao airfield.
J.G. Ballard has since written three books on his Shanghai experience. They are “Empire of the Sun”, “The Kindness of Women” and his recently released memoirs “Miracles of Life”. The latter was accompanied with the sad announcement that Ballard, now 77, is losing a battle with cancer.
Photo shows Rick McGrath in front of the old Ballard house.
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A record power shortage hits China:
Snow brings China to a standstill
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By Mike Chen
By Mike Chen
Share with us how you see Shanghai, or China! Post your photos on Flickr, tag them with "shanghaiist", and we'll select one favorite image per day. Or you can simply email your photos to photos at shanghaiist.com.
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By Ryan Pollack  Bonbon, also known as Asia's arm of superclub Godskitchen, hosts a wide variety of electronic music every single week. Two weeks ago, local crew Phreaktion brought DJ Marky to the decks. Last week, we interviewed Arthur Baker, who was preparing to rock the place. This week, our intrepid reporter braved Bonbon's ear-piercing sound system to bring you Sven Vath.
 We arrived at Bonbon to find resident DJ Gas playing to a packed house. However, at Bonbon a "packed house" doesn't mean too much - the dancefloor is pretty small. Consequently, after about 11 PM, it feels like the People's Square metro during rush hour. If you don't get there early, forget getting anywhere near the center. You're relegated to hanging around the edges and getting shoulder-bumped every ten seconds by other people scrambling one way or the other.
At about 1 AM, Vath stepped to the decks amidst wild cheering. He is known in his native Germany, and all throughout the world, as a DJ who likes to play extended sets. Urban legend has it that he used to travel with a body guard. The guard's job was not to protect him from onlookers, but to physically grab Sven and rush him to his next gig. Otherwise, Sven would have stayed and played right where he was.
Vath plays music in the style of Josh Wink, Ricardo Villalobos, and many other acid/minimal techno pioneers. This night was no different - his music was sparse and stripped-down techno. These tracks provided a stark contrast from DJ Gas, who had been playing lush progressive house just moments earlier. However, the tempo of Vath's set hovered around 130 BPM, which is faster than a typical minimal set. This fact, combined with Bonbon's clear sound system and unlimited drinks policy, kept the night lively and ensured constant movement on the dancefloor.
Well -- as much movement as possible, anyway.
Find out more about Sven and his record label at http://www.cocoon.net.
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Time Magazine recently published a list (click here) of, what they consider, to be the top 5 Asian bands to watch in Asia for 2008. Representing China is PK-14, a band that Time is describing as postfolk. Shanghaiist isn't exactly sure what the hell postfolk is, or if it is an accurate description of the music...but we don't really care, no matter how you describe PK-14's music..it still rocks. The band is currently in Sweden recording their new album which is scheduled for release on Bing Ma Si later this spring.
(PK-14 music video)
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Have you got an opinion? Shanghaiist has started publishing opinion pieces from readers on selected weekends, so if you feel like you've got something to get off your chest, email it to us at info AT shanghaiist DOT com and if we like it, we will publish it under this column.
China Gets Beijing and Shanghai Ready for the 2008 Olympics and 2010 Expo
By Jeffrey Wasserstrom
China's economy is booming like never before and its social fabric is being ripped apart and knit together in novel ways. State-of-the-art sports stadiums, a renovated airport terminal, and a new financial district have been built or are under construction in pre-Olympic Beijing, where there's even been talk of seeding rain clouds to limit pollution.
And, not to be outdone by its rival to the north, Shanghai is preparing to host the 2010 World Expo, an event that will have decidedly twenty-first-century elements. Upon arrival, visitors will be rocketed from airport to WiFi-wired exhibition halls via magnetic-levitation trains that run through a city that now has more skyscrapers than Manhattan.
Yet amidst the cacophony of the new the historically minded can often hear curious--and sometimes disturbing--echoes of the past. Even the most seemingly futuristic phenomena turn out to have surprisingly old-fashioned aspects. This is certainly true of both the Beijing Games and the Shanghai Expo. Each will open a new chapter in Chinese history: one will be China's first Olympics, the other its first World's Fair. But some preparations underway for both are throwbacks to patterns dating to the 1900s—or even the 1800s.
To get Beijing ready for the Olympics, an old-style campaign to stop spitting is underway in which, as in the past, a top-down effort to reshape etiquette is presented as a crucial step toward improving the nation's image. A quick Web search for "anti-spitting campaigns in China" generates a YouTube posting (featured above) that illustrates the parallels between the current campaign and one carried out more than fifty years ago. The posting includes footage from a propaganda film shot in Maoist times (1949-1976). Back then, as now, spitting on the ground is targeted as not just unhygienic but symbolic of backwardness. (It is no accident that in the YouTube footage young people are shown telling people much older than them to expectorate into a handkerchief.)
And mass campaigns of this sort beg | |
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