I would like to apologise for not being regular lately, but I got a reason though! My family was visiting me in China. This is the first time my mom came to China and the contrast between foreigner and Chinese Mainland amazed my mom. Since young, we’ve head too much negative impressions regarding China (from friends and relatives who’ve been to China): Toilets with no doors, bad behaviour, bad hygine, when you buy souvenir and they will wrapped a broken one for you… etc. That’s probably the reasons we never choose China as our travelling destination in the past.

It was raining cats and dogs one afternoon, we were in a cab and was speeding to our destination. Approaching a cross junction, the cabbie slowed down slightly in anticipation of the changing traffic lights. The lights did turn green and the cabbie stepped on the gas. Unfortunately, as we were crossing the junction, a bicycle appeared out of nowhere. Given the wet, slippery road conditions and the cabbie’s speed, it was a miracle that the cabbie even managed to bring the vehicle to a complete stop! The cab only slightly bumped the bicycle and its rider, a middle age man. An argument broke out and soon enough, it become a shouting match and pointing here and there at each other. After a while, the bicycle rider got on his bike again an prepare to leave, still shouting and gesturing at our cab. He even kicked the cab just before he rode off. Our cabbie had no choice to continue driving and curse his own luck.

My mom could not comprehend some of the behaviour she saw while in China. Curious, she would always ask us “Why do people behave this way?” I guess it’s a default questions for newbies to China? In the begining, we tried to think of rational answers for her questions. Most of the time, we were lost for words and ended up laughing together. “Mom… This is China…” When speaking here to the locals, my mom will sometimes start in Mandarin and end up expressing the rest of her sentence in English. The locals, unable to comprehend what she was saying, would stare at her blankly. My mom, expecting some sort of reaction, stared back. A few seconds lapse before my mom realizes what is going on and she would repeat again in Mandarin. It is heartening though to see that there have been vast improvements in the infrastruture and behaviour of the Chinese mainland. Huge strides have been made in the past few years in preparation of the Beijing Olympics. There are still lots of room for improvement, especially the behaviour of the people in China!

Popularity: 51% [?]

4 days after the opening of Marks & Spencer in Shanghai, I was shocked and saddened by the bizarre news that an Indian man fall to his death from 4th floor in the new store. Apparently, he had craned his neck to look down when the unfortunate accident happened. He died before police arrive at the scene. Read them here and here.

Popularity: 22% [?]

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: 29% [?]

I’m attending the 2008 China International Food & Tourism Festival (CIFT) which started today in Wenshuyuan Street, Chengdu. CIFT is sponsored by China National Tourism Administration, China Council of International Trade and Chengdu Municiple People’s Goverment. The festival themed “Food of Sichuan”will last for a month and is the longest in history. Food from other 12 districts are joining the food testing activities too.

Chinese steam buns stuffed with hot soup and meat and/or vegetarian fillings

Chinese sausage and dried meat.

Bugs… insects… I beg you won’t eat this! You have probably seen this in Beijing or Thailand.

More photos…

People in Chengdu are more relax and enjoy life more than Shanghainese and Beijingers. I was surprised at how modern Chengdu was with its skyline. I love to sit at the balcony in the morning and watch those peoples on their bikes going to work.

Since the Sichuan earthquake 4 months ago, Chengdu came into attention once again, not because of the quake, but a series of exhibition, forums and festivals to showcase its new image to the world and to help recover its industries that were effected by the quake.

Popularity: unranked [?]

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: 59% [?]

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: 53% [?]

Shanghai Metro during rush hour. Drop your shoulder and push when the train comes!

When I was in Songjiang, I hate to get up early in the morning and play rugby with the Shanghainese at the metro station.

Everyone will wait patiently for the train to arrive. Upon hearing from a distance away a long screeching of the railway tracks, the crowd inevitably moved towards the ledge I almost thought they were going to jump down to the railway.

The carriages are literally like sardine cans. Passengers are standing so close to each other that there is no space to move at all. Even when the carriages seem to be full, passengers still manage to squeeze in when the train stops at every station. Squeezed in from the side, center, or even crawl in from the top and below to be the first to get into the train. Some of the passengers engage in a short 5 meter sprint just as the door opens and try to barge in. It gets warmer, crampier, and tighter inside the carriage.

Beside squeezing, pushing and hurling… passengers have to take note and be careful though. The rush hour period represents a good opportunity for thieves. There have been a few occasions where passengers find their valuables (mobile phones, wallets etc…) missing when they alight from the packed carriages. Ladies beware as there are bound to be some people who will take advantage.

It would be nice if the metro can introduce1 or 2 ladies-only carriages like in Japan.

The Shanghai metro can be the most crowded thing that I’ve ever seen in my entire life, with tremendous amounts of pushing and squeezing.

Popularity: 59% [?]

On Wednesday, I went to the Shanghai Visa Bureau in Pudong with Ron to extend his working Z-Visa & Resident Permit. In the past years, we never needed to go there in person to get an extension, but because of the new and tighter visa rules that you have probably read here, here, here and here, you now have to appear yourself for a computerized photo shooting.

We went there to apply for the visa extension by ourselves. Ron’s HR personnel was supposed to accompany him but she didn’t. Her reason: she did not want to spend the time waiting at the bureau and was afraid her superior would blame her for wasting company’s resources! But we thought that’s her job!?!?

In our car sleeping…

Ok, reached our destination!

Exit & Entry Administration Service center Public Security Bureau of Shanghai Municipality

It’s on the 3rd floor!

It’s queue number 302 when we reached, and ours is 337.

Camera in front of you.

Waited patiently at the waiting area, and everyone is looking at one direction…

YES! They are watching Olympic games…

Documents…

When it finally was our turn the procedure went “quite” fast. Ron’s HR had already filled out the forms and he had all required documents with him. The officer at the counter took a look at his documents and appeared surprised that he was applying for a 2 year visa. She also asked him to write an application form and acknowledge it.

We were a little surprised because Ron has been told by his HR that the documents he had should be the complete set. On top of that, he was supposed to draft the application form in chinese by himselves. We had no idea what to write and asked the officer.

She grumbled a bit and told us to copy the content in the application form the company had prepared. Now… here cames the most bizarre part. The only difference between the 2 application forms is that one is from the company (computer generated), and one is from us (handwritten). Both have the same content.

Ron drafted it, signed it and handed it to her together with his courier envelop. She took the forms, was satisfied… and folded it. Not just into half, but also diagonally and in all directions. She then insert the folded forms into the courier envelop, peel off the stickers, stick the receipt at the front…. and we can go now…

Photocopying, translating, faxing and courier service counter.

Name cards and advertisements distributing in a SHANGHAINESE WAY! You can find this scenario everywhere in Shanghai.

At the gate, there were quite a number of guys distributing small cards promoting air tickets. They are pretty active because lots of foreign expats come here to get their visa done. These guys can be very persistent and irritating. They shove the cards to you literally. They will place the cards in your bags, in your shopping carrier, throw it into cars with their windows winded down…. anywhere they can find. Before I knew it, they managed to slip 7 cards in my bag!

Popularity: 34% [?]

People’s Square | Kathleen’s 5 (2 Indoor plasma, 2 outdoor big screen)
Add: 5/F, Shanghai Art Museum, 325 Nanjing Xi Lu. Tel: 6327-2221

While not the first venue that comes to mind for a raucous Olympic viewing, with its unique locale atop the historic Shanghai Art Museum K5′s glass-encased dining area is the perfect grandstand from which to watch the Opening Ceremony on the big screen in People’s Square. Expect to be joined by an upscale crowd while you enjoy dinner and drink specials (10-15 percent off on all drinks) on top of K5′s normal two-for-one happy hour from 5:30-8pm. “We probably have the biggest screen within the whole of Shanghai!” says General Manager Franck Crouvezier. This larger than life experience is definitely gold medal worthy.

Creek Kitchen (60″ ultra-large type projection screen)
Add: 6/F, Creek Art, 423 Guangfu Lu, Suzhou Creek near Datong Lu.
Tel: 63809172 / 63804150*11 Email: cecilia.chen@creekart.org

Creek Kitchen offer the Special Olympic Set, go with your friends and enjoy their delicious food here, with 60 inch ultra-large type projection screen and lucky draw for olympic. Reservation only, one free glass of red wine.

Jing’an & Pudong | Malone’s (2 large screen projectors and 13 LCD flat screen TVs)
Jing’an – 255 Tongren Lu. Tel: 6247-2400
Lujiajui – 1/F Ascott, 3 Pudong Da Dao. Tel: 6886-1309
Pudong – 2/F Thumb Plaza, 17 Fangdian Lu, near Yanggao Zhong Lu. Tel: 5033-6717

Celebrate the Beijing 2008 OLYMPIC Opening Ceremony with MALONE’S. With two large screen projectors and 13 LCD flat screen TVs, you can CATCH ALL THE ACTION LIVE HERE starting with the Opening Ceremony of the grandest and greatest Olympic event of all time. This American café may be the favorite of a lot of Kobe and LeBron supporters, but we’re sure you’ll be able to find a little (or a lot of) Yao Ming love as the basketball tip-off begins.

LIVE Bar (6m wide TV)
Add: 721 Kunming Lu, Yangpu near Tongbei Lu.
Tel: 2833-6764 Email: livebar1@163.com

Get the best of all worlds as you watch the 2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony live on Live Bar’s (6m wide TV) and enjoy Huan’s tunes during breaks in the broadcast and the post-ceremony action. Those in Olympic gear receive a free drink. RMB25 for members, RMB30 for non-members.

New Heights (giant screens)
Add: 7/F, Three on the Bund, 3 Zhongshan Dong Yi Lu, Huangpu near Guangdong Lu, Metro Line 2 Nanjing Dong Lu Station.
Tel: 6321-0909 Email: newheights@on-the-bund.com

Feel the Olympic heat this Friday at New Heights’s Bar as the 2008 Opening Ceremony kicks off. Watch the action on giant screens as you enjoy free flow of Heineken, thirst quenching Vodka cocktails and a BBQ feast with friends. RMB 248, per person including BBQ and free flow Heineken and Vodka cocktails.

Elia restaurant (42′LCD TV)
Add: 479 Guyang Lu, Gubei/Hongqiao near Yaohong Lu.
Tel: 5175-3077 Email: eliarestaurant@gmail.com

Olympic fever happy hour all night long, late coverage of the opening ceremony on their 42′LCD TV. Buy one free one on all drinks. This Mediterranean restaurant draws from a number of sources for its menu but charms with its Greek-style hospitality. The great service and welcoming atmosphere, complemented some fine food, make for an unpretentious and enjoyable evening out. A real boon for the residents of Gubei.

Former French Concession | O’Malley’s Irish Pub
Add: 42 Taojiang Lu.
Tel: 6474-4533

If you didn’t score tickets to watch the games in Beijing, this Irish pub will immerse you in the action. Screens in the garden and throughout the pub create a “surround screen” experience. Grab a bucket of beer (Sun.-Wed., ¥120 for four different beers), take in “the atmosphere and camaraderie,” says Assistant Manager Jeya Ibrahim, “and get ready for a big crowd!” CW teams up with O’Malley’s on Aug. 8 (or the Opening Ceremony of course), 16 and 22 to host festivities and Olympic-worthy drinking games (read: more Olympics food and drink specials). See Nightlife events online details.

Multiple Locations | Blue Frog
Xujiahui- Lower Level, Unit 12, 131 Tian Yao Qiao Road Tel: 3368 6117
Maoming- 207-06 South Maoming Road Tel: 6445 6634
Jingann – 86 Tongren Road Tel: 6247 0320
Hongmei- #30 Hong Mei Leisure Pedestrian Street, Lane 3338 Hong Mei Road Tel: 5422 5119
Pudong – Ground Floor, 27 Super Brand Mall, 168 Lujiazui Xi Road Tel: 5047 3488

If you hate replays, this Shanghai favorite will be showing everything from the Opening Ceremony to the closing farewells live. Stop by with your family or the laptop for some burgers and beers and enjoy the Olympic event of the moment. The daily two-for-one happy hour from 4-8pm, Wi-Fi access and a menu of delicious favorites make this a great place to recharge during the Olympic frenzy.

Fiesta Latina ( big screen)
Add: 4/F, Kohler Building, 456 Nanjing Xi Lu, People’s Square near Huangpi Bei Lu
Tel: 6359-5367 Email: info@otto-restaurants.com

Celebrate the Opening Ceremonies Latin style with free-flow tapas (until 10pm) at one of Shanghai’s favorite wine bars. You don’t have to forgot the night’s big event, as Otto’s bringing in a big screen to make sure no one misses a minute of the action. RMB100 includes tapas and two glasses of wine.

De La Coast (120″ big screen)
Add: 6/F, 1 Yan’an Dong Lu, Huangpu near Zhongshan Dong Er Lu
Tel: 6330-2615 Email: dorce-gabbana@hotmail.co.jp

Beer garden with 120inchs big screen. Reservation only.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Popularity: 6% [?]