Shanghai and beyond

Right, so it's been a week and a day (or two)...
Anyway, around the end of November/ the beginning of December I was lucky enough to venture a little out of Shanghai

So this is how it's going to go

Reasons to not go home

• Everything is cheap; 3-4 kuai to travel across shanghai on the metro, you can easily get a drink for 20 kuai, or 10, or for free (if you're female) and eating til your stuffed for 12 kuai is a perfectly feasable thing.

• A (small) part of me never wants to ever go back to the gym. But then again, when you wear 3 layers everyday against the cold there's nothing to scrutinise.

• The lazy me can temporarily avoid responsibility, like going to uni and working and eating healthy and exercising regularly.

• European boys. Shanghai is an expats paradise, and oh! the variety!

• I haven't personally experienced racism over the past three months. And I know it's China, but it's the same in Europe. It's sad but there is an overwhelming number of Australians around where I live who are just completely intolerant. 

After nearly five months overseas, within a mere couple of days of being home, a friend of some friends, who I didn't even know, made a snide comment while standing directly behind me to some other person I didn't know about how Gangnam style (that had just come on in the pub) was my song. Firstly, I am not Korean. Secondly, who are you? And thirdly, why do I even care? I turned around, laughed at his ignorance and left.

Don't get me wrong, I love my country, and it's always great to hear an Aussie accent while I'm travelling. In fact, every Australian I've stumbled upon while overseas has been awesome, does that just mean that all the ones that suck don't travel? Because it can't just be Sydney.

• FRUNDS. Yes, Shel actually has friends now, friends that she doesn't want to part with :'( Friends that I have to thank for the past month and a half, the reasons I have finally fallen for Shanghai!

Reasons to go home

• The weather. Warmth. The sun. Mild winters.
• Friends that I miss like HELL.
• Family.
• Drinkable tap water.
• Easily accesible healthy fresh food.
• A good gym.
• Uni - I'm actually really looking forward to learning again. I missed it while in Europe, and learning Mandarin for the past month has reminded me how much I actually enjoy learning about things I'm interested in.
• Shitty clubs = less drinking - Shanghai has been spoiling me, I've been overdoing it a bit here.

Happy New Year! (Again)

On Chinese New Year Eve Eve it snowed and resulted in me running around my complex like a little kid enthusastically stomping the ground and shaking every branch I could reach and losing all feeling in my hands. Oh and taking a million photos. That night people thought I was crazy because I was so over the moon about it, but the thing that all these Europeans don't understand is that in Australia it doesn't really snow, ever. And I was never a kid that got to go to the perisher or thredbo every year like everyone else and learn a snowsport, like I didn't grow up with nippers and surfing, bar one week at Let's Go Surfing in Bondi when I was like 12.

From the moment I woke up on New Years Eve, there was not one five minute period during which I did not hear fireworks. For dinner we had enough food to feed at least 50 people and then we set off our own fireworks like the rest of China while I squealed with uncontrollable joy.

At midnight I experienced a little deja vu while watching the fireworks on the bund because I'd been there a month and a half before for a different new years. Trippy as.

Chinese New Year is about 50 billion times more epic than western New Year because it lasts for 15 days and the whole country stops. For me, it has thus far involved a lot of eating and little red envelopes which, I mean, is fine by me.

So, Xin nian kuai le! Gong xi fa cai! Shen ti jian kang! Wan xi ru yi!

Note:

A friend has been lovely enough to let me use her VPN and I think I just sucked up a lot of her usage uploading these photos so these will probably be the last photos you'll see until I can put more up when I get home! Sorry Myrna!

Me and all my friends

I realised that in my last post I wrote a lot of stuff that you feel like you probably didn't need to be let in on. But the thing is, these weird crazy (scummy) things that exist amongst hyperspeed development, boutique shops, restaurants, cafes, clubs, modern art galleries and spaces, and an incredible public transport system make Shanghai what it is. Take Moganshan Lu below; a small bit of Shanghai tranformed into an art district. Along Moganshan Lu itself the walls are covered in graffiti, and then there are huge complexes like m50 and m97 completely devoted to housing galleries. It's a pretty incredible thing to see just tucked inside Shanghai's inner ring amongst the standard hustle and bustle of the city.

Here are some overdue photos on from when two wonderful boys came to visit me over Christmas and New Years. I lost most of my photos when my iPhone was stolen so these are just from New Years Eve. Thank you for making my first month of pain all the worthwhile!

1. On Yunnan Nan Lu/Ninghai Dong Lu. 2. A busy metro. 3. SNOW! 4. What a standard complex looks like. None of that 'house' rubbish. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Moganshan Lu Art District 10. 11. Inside M50 12. The Wuson River just inside the Inner Ring.

The two photos below were stolen off Facebook. I miss these guys!
Second one is the crew on New Years waiting for the midnight fireworks on the Bund.

I really miss my iPhone hah. Never thought I would say that.

The weird and wonderful.

Alright so I've been a little absent.
After New Years I finally started learning Chinese and went from working full-time to only the mornings so hence the limited time I had to really think and write about life. Though I don't think I ever really think about it, it always ends up coming out as word vomit regurgitated during my last 15 minutes at work.

Here are some stories that I thought I should share, mainly because I can't seem to erase the images from my mind.

• About a week ago I was walking home after class and came upon some used sanitary products strewn across my path. It was gross. I think a garbage collector's package thing must have exploded while riding past. It was gross and I felt a little sick. Actually this also reminds me of driving behind a garbage truck on the way to Zhujiajiao "The Venice of Shanghai", and when I say 'garbage truck' I mean a large truck, not a pick up, with huge netted sack of garbage just casually strapped to the back of the vehicle. It took about five minutes of open windows and heavy breathing to ventilate the car.

• A couple of days ago I passed some bird feathers scattered across the pavement and realised that the dark liquid around them was blood. I'm not sure where the bird went. But there was it's blood, and and some bits of it. Funnily enough, the first thing that came to mind was that maybe someone had killed the thing here in front of this garbage bin to cook and eat. 

• The other day I was waiting for my sandwich in a bakery on Wulumuqi Rd and got to witness a grown asian man throw a tantrum across the street. He was yelling and flailing his hands in the air, grabbed a street cleaner's hat and threw it across the road onto the windscreen of a car followed by a couple of empty cardboard boxes that bounced off other cars waiting for the traffic light to change.

• About a month ago, I got on the subway to go home. I noticed a dishevelled man staring weirdly at me but shrugged it off. Before I knew it he had moved over and put his arm around my shoulder, murmuring incoherently and reeking of alcohol and filth. I screamed and ran to the other end of the train.

• A while ago I was walking to the subway and spotted a huge white thing the size of an elephant drifting down the other side of the road. Turned out it was a man on a bike with bits of polystyrene tied down around him. There were five huge bundles and from a distance could have (I swear) been a huge white cloud floating down Xincun Rd.

Can I just say, the nightlife in Shanghai is incredible and shits on everything at home in Sydney. I mean I already knew that clubs back home weren't worth the cover charge, let alone free entry. And being a woman just puts the icing on the cake.

Ladies nights can involve free flowing champagne, free cosmos, free frozen margaritas, free sangria, free tequila, or just free EVERYTHING until the wee hours of the morn! How do these places make money? And this happens in incredibly nice places and not in dirty holes that people would not be caught dead in.

Seriously what is this place??

Shanghai photo diary pt. 2

HEY GUYS HAPPY NEW YEAR!! As you already know my phone was stolen a couple of days ago which means my whole photo diary thing has gone down the drain (damn the development of shameless photo documenting with the ease of the iPhone) and also that I've lost all my photos from before and over Christmas as well. Sad face :(

Hoping to get some photos off some friends though (aw shiet Shel has friends, dw it was only temporary) because I ended up having the best two weeks and it's given me hope that the next month and a half won't be so bad after all...

From a weekend trip to Chongming, an island in the north of Shanghai. Yeah I didn't know Shanghai had an island either. Nommy BBQ squid

Veggie market with the old man; and a teddy bear/dog with a rank beard.

The Shanghai Metro a.k.a. no less than a nightmare during rush hour. Also (left) I  really don't get the whole horn beanies I've been seeing everywhere; some weird homage to devil horns?

^^^^^^ GOD I LOVE HOT POT ^^^^^^

View of Xujiahui from a window at work.

Yeah you heard them, no Crocs on the escalators!

The most adorable restaurant drowning in old people memorabilia. Mismatched chairs, lamps, fresh flowers, candles, whosits and whatsits galore and thingamabobs aplenty. And an awesome cave a vin. I will update this when I find out the name/address of this place. Somewhere in the French concession (of course).

HUSKY PUPPPIIIIEEESSSSS. Seriously look their faces, tell me you're not dying inside. My badminton coach's (yes I'm taking classes to get in touch with my Asian athleticism, let you know how it goes) husky had puppies and brought them in one day, they're three months old and are named Honey, Lucky, and Doodoo (yeah I know poor thing got name after poop).

Left: amazingly cheap noodle/rice/dumpling place. Fattest bowl of handmade noodles for 12 kuai that I barely managed to make a dent in. Right: A Taiwanese dessert called baobing... made with beans and ice and milk and unidentifiable plant jelly stuff...

So, Christmas in Shanghai. I've seen some of the most extravagant Christmas displays, though always outside big shopping malls and it's because Christmas here is more of a consumerist ploy... it's not officially a public holiday and kids don't leave cookies and milk for Santa and carrots for the reindeer and people don't wake up ridiculously early to open presents and then have champagne breakfasts and gorge themselves on food and alcohol all day with the family/friends.

At midnight I was drinking Chianti in a wine bar on Julu Rd, amaretti cookie in hand and caressing a small celebratory shot glass of mulled wine and then made it to a pub and two clubs where I saw the largest number of foreigners in one place at one time since I got here.