I’m back from Chengdu on the 2nd where Marks & Spencer opened their doors in Shanghai during the October golden week holidays. I can imagine most of the British Expats in Shanghai would jump with joy dreaming of the cloths and food that they miss back home! So do Ron! It’s his favourite store and he does not need to travel to HongKong anymore to find suitable clothes as M&S usually offers them with European size. Bigger size are hard to find in China.

Compared to the M&S Asia stores in HongKong, Singapore or Philippines, the Shanghai store is much bigger, with 4 floors. Ladies’s fashion occupy the first 2 floors with lots of designer clothing under “Autograph” label. Men’s fashion can be found on the 3rd floor with shirts up to 18 inch neck, while food/household sections are on the 4th floor. I’m eager to see what they offer on their food sections and found that lots of biscuits and cookies are cheap because its closing to the expiry dates!

While it is fairly easy to find bigger size clothes in HongKong M&S stores, it seems that the Shanghai store caters more to local market demands at the moment. The selection of men’s casual clothes was also not as comprehensive in our opinion. The imported cookies on the 4th floor were quite popular as they were in discounted priced.

This is the first M&S store in China Mainland and it probably will not be the last. For us expats, its another place to get decent basic items for reasonable prices.

Another new store, ME & CITY opened at Nanjing East road. Weeks ago, I have been noticing some fairly huge poster in Shanghai subway stations of heart throb Prison Break actor Wentworth Miller.

The flagship store of ME & CITY is along the busy Nanjing East Road. Their silver colour carrier bags were certainly well-designed. Our carrier bags caught the attention of many curious people. In a way, we had become walking advertisting boards for ME & CITY.

Popularity: 11% [?]

I’m back in Shanghai now after a week spent in Maldives.

You know you’ve been back to China when:

1. People starts to stand up and retrieve their hand luggage while the plan is on final approach
2. You are waiting for your luggage and the woman behind you talk louder than is necessary
3. People look over your shoulder to see what you are reading
4. Someone makes an eye contact with you and stares at you for 10 seconds
5. When you are queing, people behind you suddently jump to the head of the queue
6. You watch cabbies picking their noses whilst stuck in traffic.
7. Cars horn at you when you walk across zebra crossing
8. You met someone stops at the top or bottom of the escalator to plan their day
9. You heard someone making a loud hocking noise and split on the floor behind you
10. You saw people smoking inside an air-conditional room
11. You saw someone wearing their pyjamas to Carefour
12. You saw guys rolls the legs of their pants up to the knees, and roll thier shirt up to their nipples
13. Someone hands you a brochure and ask you whether you want to learn English, just because I have an Asian look
14. Ok, back home and taking my shower, I heard firework outside my window
15. You think the best part of TV are the commercials

Popularity: 13% [?]

Yesterday Ron and I went for Hong Kong Cuisine along Dingxi road as I need to go to my bank to get some stuff done. We have been to this place before and the grilled pork was not bad. The service was… well… no comments.

This time though, the very gruff waitress kinda got onto our nerves. Good service in Shanghai is really very very very rare.

We ordered some famous HongKong dishes and a bowl of fish congee. The picture in the menu was rather appetizing with slice fish, nuts and you-tiao (or Chinese cruller). The waitress taking our order immediately snapped “Oh…. There will be no you-tiao in the porridge”. Despite the small disappointment, we were prepared to let it go.

waitress: zhe ge mei you yiu-tiao de ah… (There is no chinese cruller in this congee)

me: wei shen me? (why?)

w: wo men yi kai shi jiu mei you de ya! (We never put chinese cruller in our congee when we started selling!)

me: na wei shen me zhao pian li mian you? (Why is it in the photo?)

w: <<<MEI YOU JIU MEI YOU!!!!!!!!>>> (DON’T HAVE MEANS DON’T HAVE!!!!!)

me: na jiu bu yao fang zhao pian ah!?!? (Don’t show it in the photo then!?!?)

w: …

Why bother to show the photos in the menu when you are not selling the actual stuff. It can be misleading and even if there are any misunderstandings, a polite explanation would have been enough. We find it ok if they have no more yiu-tiao, but they insisted that this ingredient was not included from when they started business!?!?!

Things in China are improving and some things here are way better than they are in other parts of the globe. Service line isn’t one of them! Lesson that we’ve learnt, never trust a photo in a menu and don’t have means DON’t HAVE!

Popularity: 31% [?]