All posts filed under: Shanghai

Shanghai part III

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  I met the talented artist Xi one day and she took me to her recent installation, Check-in on Nanchang Road. Up one floor on creaky wooden stairs to a small apartment in an old Shanghai building she has created a totally white room filled with white objects and foam balls. It was a quite extraordinary feeling being there. Her intention is for people to rent it for 24 hours, to disconnect from the outside world and just experience being in this space, filled with whiteness. There is a bed to sleep in and odd pieces of old furniture standing topsy-turvy around the room, half buried in the foam balls. All white or painted white. She is very interested in how environments affect people. “This is art-rental, you rent a space with unlimited possibilities. It will not exist for long, so that no one can possess it permanently”, she explained. Xi is currently designing her next project that is going to be about furniture that doesn’t have a function. Sounds intriguing! Another great experience was …

Shanghai part II

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The famous Yonkang road or Yonkang Lu in Chinese with it’s many watering holes, has a informal and rowdy spirit. This is were you go to have a beer or two or after-work drinks with your buddys. Tianzifang market is a whole area of very old houses between Taking road and Jianguo Road. It’s a permanent market with products like leather goods, clothes and trinkets. Found a cafe called Bohemia so of course I had to pay a tribute by stopping and having afternoon tea there. I loved walking around the wet markets with its live fish in tanks and vegetables in abundance. Finding vegetables and fish that I have never seen before. And I also liked that one can buy vegetables and fruit almost everywhere on the streets, very fresh and available. Displayed very neat and orderly inside in the wet market, more haphazardly and creative outside the shops, spilling out into the street. This is taken just around the corner from where I stayed. However I would find soon enough that’s not always the case elsewhere in Asia. The bullfrog though is an exotic food ingredient I …

Shanghai part I

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At last my travels have started. And what an amazing beginning it has been. But due to poor access to Internet in China and a very busy time in Asia, I have been unable to blog about my experiences. So here is a short recap of my time in Shanghai. My home for the first week was a ground floor studio in a cute little lane house, nestled away down an alleyway in Jingan. A slice of genuine Shanghai, a place where I perceived folks were going about their daily lives pretty much the same way as they have done for decades. Hanging their washing in the lanes, drying their chillies outside their kitchen doors. I didn’t see many other westerners around there. My little lane house was inherited to my landlady Annie, who was very sweet and immensely helpful, from her parents. She has redecorated it into a really comfy and snug little place. I loved staying here. It consists of only one room, that used to be two smaller rooms, a shower room and toilet and at the back a kitchen …