May 2006 Archives

The Hangzhou Grass Police
See more images by timbeckenham at flickr.

No, not that grass. One behaviour that struck me as bizarre when I first came to China was the respect/avoidance the average citizen had to obviously empty grassed open spaces. I had thoughts of a large population of people afflicted by agoraphobia. But I soon realised after my first attempts to enjoy the well-lawned areas I infrequently came across came at a cost. Destroyed eardrums. Shrilled whistle blows eminating from 'Garden Police' (for want of a better term). Places like Jing'an Temple Park in Shanghai have a diligent and superbly-lunged series of guards that keep people off China's few lawns.

I'm unsure to why this is the case. I lean towards the fact that gardens are revered in China as there are quite few of them in urban areas, and also by the fact as soon as there is an open shaded space, there is a bustle of human activity until every square millimeter of it is filled by members of the general public. I also suspect in some cases this policy is enforced from a public health perspective (witnessing several separate events of public ablutions in the past has made a deep impression me and persuaded avoidance of particular gardens around Shanghai).

So while this area might be begging for a game of cricket, ultimate disc, or just a picnic, fret not citizens of China, your lawns will be kept safe from your own activities. You can enjoy the view from the footpath.

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Technorati Tags: Shanghai, China, expat, flickr

Mother & Child along Xi Hu, Hangzhou
See more images by timbeckenham at flickr.

As I'm devoid of any writing inspiration at the mo', I thought I'd just bump up my stats over at Flickr by posting some of my own favourite images as entries.

I took this shot while walking along the shore of The West Lake in Hangzhou.

I just like the scene. Mother & son together out enjoying the beautiful weather in a great location.

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Technorati Tags: Shanghai, China, expat, flickr

Jing'an Clothes Market on YuYuan Lu
See more images by timbeckenham at flickr.

Don't fret fellow Shanghai residents, there will be plenty of places left to shop after Xiangyang Market closes. The only problem is finding out exactly where they are if you thought Xiangyang was the only place to shop for you.

Here's one that Linda came across in our neighbourhood quite a while ago now.

The Jing'an Clothes Market is an indoor market camoflagued by a line of shop-fronts. Just enter one of the 3 laneways and this is what you'll come across. The market has quite a range of clothes, and it all appears to be better quality than what I've found in Xiangyang Market. The bartering style is different - there's a reluctance to barter down to the super-low prices you find elsewhere. This is supposedly due to the quality of the items. Maybe I just have expensive tastes (or an expensive style that screams 'take my money'). The range isn't as broad, but it is definitely worth a look. The market definitely aims itself as a casual to smart-casual clothing emporium.

There's also a lot of street food and snack shops located Yu Yuan Lu in front of the market, and most importantly friendly tailors and seamstresses that can fix or alter almost any garment.

The Jing'an Clothes Market can be found on Yu Yuan Lu between Jiaozhou Lu & Changde Lu. The market is just north of Jiuguang Shopping Centre (CityMart) at Jing'an Temple complex.

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Technorati Tags: Shanghai, China, expat, flickr

My parents have left Shanghai now. I can now bring myself to write about a painful period we went through during their visit. Being a dutiful son, I had arranged a get-away from Shanghai in the form of an overnight stay in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. I arranged the aforesaid trip smack-bang in the middle of the May 1st Golden Week Holiday period. I'm such an idiot.

The photos I took during our 2 day stay in Hangzhou don't really explain the full story.

It all started soon after we left our apartment. I was running late, and made my parents actually run to catch the train. Bad start. Our train travel to and from Hangzhou was slow. To get to Hangzhou, there were seats were only available on the slow, all-stops train to Hangzhou on Wednesday. Couple the slow ride with intermittent stopping to let other express trains pass, well, it was frustrating.

Leaving Hangzhou Train Station wasn't as bad as I thought it may have been. Hangzhou is renowned for its shortage of taxis, and I soon learnt, a major shortage of taxis during peak tourist periods. In fact, in our attempts to hail taxis during our stay in Hangzhou, we usually snared one in less than 10 minutes (which is pathetic in relation to Shanghai, but ok nonetheless).

By the way, it was my first trip to Hangzhou (I can hear your gasps dear readers). I was impressed. By engaging my now well-developed sense of 'imagine that the thronging masses aren't there and interrupting your view or enjoyment of INSERT ITEM HERE', I enjoyed the nature that Hangzhou offered. You can definitely see how Hangzhou is renowned as one of China's best tourist destinations.

Like most visitors, I found Hangzhou to be really really pretty, really really green, and at that time of year - really really crowded. We spent our first afternoon in Hangzhou enjoying the beautiful landscaped parks and walking trails around the eastern and southern banks of the West Lake (Xi Hu). This wandering was interrupted by stops at perhaps the most well-located Dairy Queen and Starbucks franchises I could have ever thought to encounter.

We saw the easily accessible sights of Hangzhou. The West Lake is the most prominent, but we also managed to see quite a lot of the Hangzhou Botanical Gardens, and a quick visit to a Lingyin, a small village with the famous Lingyin Buddhist Temple. So famous that we thought the thronging masses was too much to bear so we pretty much turned around and went back. Well we tried. Our bus broke down. A replacement arrived. Throngs of tourists weren't happy, there were heated exchanges all-around, and also armpits heated by the humid conditions.

We had a few hours to kill. We went looking for some of the 'famed' warehouse shops to purchase clothes and such items. No luck there. We finished our explorations inside a massive shopping centre to find that rain had arrived and had promptly melted 95% of Hangzhou's taxis. We had 4 hours to get back to our hotel and then to the train-station. No problem. No. Big problem. Taxis were thin on the ground to start with, then add moisture to a large group of people who'd all rather catch a taxi in the rain, and then throw in some strange administrivia were Hangzhou's taxi's can only work in certain areas and have to refuse fares to far-away locations like our hotel (10 minutes from The West Lake). It was chaos. I chucked a wobbly at the situation. Dragging your parents around a foreign city isn't pleasant. Fighting to hail cabs in the rain is tough. Getting 3 out of 3 taxi drivers that you manage to hail to refuse your fare because they can't go to a certain place is tougher, but talking to bus drivers to ask if their bus goes anywhere near our hotel (near Wulin Square) and not getting a response was ok, but the last straw. I got pissed off. Not happy Jan. I was in a foul mood, and I'm told I wasn't pleasant company.

We gave up hailing a taxi with less than 1 hour before our train was due to depart. We started walking to the hotel. We made it half way when a miracle happened. We got a taxi, the taxi driver initially said he couldn't take us, but I told him about our predicament. He said he'd help. He rocked. We gave him a massive tip for getting us to the hotel, fighting off the other hotel guests while I collected our belongings from reception, raced through Hangzhou's rain-affected traffic to the Train station about 10 minutes before it was due to leave. An absolute miracle.

Our home-ward train was delayed by almost 2 hours. Argh! So unlike our train ride to Hangzhou, the only delay we faced was the train actually turning up in the station. At least on both occasions we used a train, we'd remembered to hang onto our train tickets for collection as we left the train stations. So unlike our first lesson on China's train system, we didn't encounter any problems such as those described (at length) by Banterist.

Overall, it wasn't the smoothest of trips - but that's ok. You expect that when travelling in general, when your guide doesn't speak the local lingo well, you're trying to impress upon your paternals your decision to move to China was well-thought out, and in particular when you encounter the masses of tourists (ourselves included) intent on maximising their enjoyment in one of China's most well-known tourist destinations. I could go on, but I really must stop. You get the picture. Everything improved after this point. Well, no it didn't. The lowest point was after we returned from Hangzhou when my Mum cried because of my anger. Hangzhou was the catalyst for me expressing all the shit I had been through and subjected to in the last few months at work, outside of work, things I have been doing, things I haven't been doing, and on top of that getting the big 'disappointment' talk from my Dad. I was so angry days after returning. Angry at a lot of things. Angry enough that just being angry made my Mum cry. Shit. I felt bad. I still feel bad and pissed off. Bloody Hangzhou.

Tags: accommodation, China, Hangzhou, travel, Xi Hu

Sage Advice #2
See more images by timbeckenham at flickr.

Ahh. A new camera in combination with tricks and mirrors.

The EHS guys at work would love to see that this is on my mind even on weekends.

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Technorati Tags: Shanghai, China, expat, flickr

Basketball: Celebrations #4
See more images by timbeckenham at flickr.

Saturday turned out to be a good day - RD ending up SIBL Saturday League Champions!

For most of that day I was really focused on my parent's departure from Shanghai rather than whether my team was to win any matches.

We played 2 games. Firstly, a tight match against Santa Fe - probably the favourites for the title. Our team played really well, and we controlled the match throughout after establishing our game-winning lead early in the match. Everyone on our team really clicked during that semi-final and we executed our strategies really well (i.e. give Josh the ball, and play D).

We ended up playing Formosa in the final. We weren't as switched on during that match, and after establishing a very handy lead before half-time, we saw our offense dry-up during the second half when Formosa switched to zone. We couldn't buy a bucket. This let Formosa back into the match. Everything was quite tense, and it came down to tied-scores at full-time. During the 3 minutes of over-time, both teams were hesitant, waiting for the other team to slip up. Well, Formosa slipped up with some loose passing under defensive pressure and we came out as the victors. :D

I was pretty happy coming out of these games. From our first season, RD was 0-7, but made the semi-finals in the play-offs (again knocking out the top-ranked side). This season, we ended up 4-3 in the regular season (after a 0-3 start). Our final win also caps off a 7-0 unbeaten run. Tidy. On top of this, I displayed some form and was pretty happy with the way I played.

The team celebrated firstly on court with lots of the sponsors product (Cleaning Solutions, I kid not), and then at the Big Bamboo with a few coldies.

Some more photos from the games are posted on my Flickr page.

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Technorati Tags: Shanghai, China, expat, flickr

One feeling that you often get after reuniting with your parental units after a long absence is a feeling of frustration. This is usually the second-last stage of several fluctuating feelings that you reach after unbridled joy, reminiscence, and familiarity. I've now passed that feeling of frustration as we've once again achieved our familiar Beckenham Family equilibrium.

Reaching this point of even flux has meant that we can now move in-sync as a unit. When this happens, we're much happier. Thus, today was probably the best family day during my parent's visit to China.

So what did we do?

Our day started off in true Beckenham tradition. Slow, easy, and no rushing. I watched several episodes of 'The Glasshouse' which I obtained through the AussieTorrents website.

Later, reviving an old tradition, my father accompanied me to Reign Design's quarter final against the Shanghai Bar Association (lawyers, not alcoholics) in the Shanghai International Basketball League. During the week, we learnt from another RD player/lawyer Adam that the SBA team was already planning their party post-game. We definitely think they got their wires crossed somewhere along the line, as they obviously were partying too much before the match and failed to turn up. 1-0 RD. We're now deemed to meet Santa Fe next Saturday (probably the favourites for the title in our league). We spent our match time playing full-court intra-team match which was a good work-out.

During this, Linda and my mother explored one of Shanghai's best flower markets at Cao Jia Du (near the corner of Changshou Lu & Wanhangdu Lu). When I arrived home this evening, I was met with some great flowers that were promptly arranged and displayed in our new home.

The boys and the girls met up for lunch at Element Fresh at the Portman Centre. I love eating Element Fresh food. My mother summated the elegance of EF by stating ".... it doesn't leave you feeling heavy like the food I've eaten in China". We all enjoyed awesome sandwiches and fresh juices or smoothies. Tasty.

We then popped over Shanghai Railway Station to visit the Huan Long Mall Photographic Market. Along the way we got side-tracked. In a true Shanghai serendipitous moment, I learnt that there's a far more gritty North Railway Station Square (duh), that is distinctly separate from and hard to navigate between the more familiar Southern Railway Station Square. In our attempts to rediscover the location of the Huan Long Mall, we stumbled across one of Shanghai's Optical Glasses Markets (San Ye Glasses Market). My mother ended up purchasing 2 new fashion-frame glasses with progressive prescription lenses for RMB 1100. Pretty good deal as far as they were concerned.

Once finding our way through the warren of the Shanghai Railway Station Metro Maze, I finally purchased the Canon Digital Rebel XT EOS 350D with kit lens that I've mentioned earlier. Happy days! Now I can take some serious photos. I've been playing around with it a little so far today and have posted some images from my afternoon on my Flickr page.

We enjoyed a night in with my loved ones. Drinking beers, talking, about to enjoy some great food which was followed by a movie.

Bliss. What a good day!

Tags: Basketball, camera, China, Element Fresh, photography, flowers, Shanghai

Matt & Shanghai Railway Station Camera Market
See more images by timbeckenham at flickr.

One thing that I've missed since leaving Australia is my grandfather's old SLR camera. I inherited his beautiful Minolta SRT-1 complete with Rokkor lenses after his death. For a number of years this equipment sat unused in my parent's home until the day I learnt how powerful and creative SLR photography can be. I remembered this camera set, dug it out, and started mucking around with it. Soon I was hooked and spent a lot of time annoying my friends and family with constant shot-taking. All this occurred in the year before I left Australia for Shanghai. When faced with the reality of moving to Shanghai (as everyone knows this occurs when you pack your belongings) the hard decision was made of what to bring and what to leave behind. I ended up leaving my camera kit back in my parent's abode. The main reasons for this were... (1) uncertain shipping conditions, (2) I could use all of Linda's photographic equipment as she was bringing her Nikkon F80 SLR and a recently purchased Canon iXUS5 compact digital, (3) I thought it could be broken, and (4) it would get stolen.

Over 1 year later and living in Shanghai - I see that perhaps only 1 of those reasons was well-founded (shipping). Even though I have a SLR and digital compact at my fingertips, I do regret that decision - I miss my 'own' camera.

But now, its all happy days. I've made the two firm and unshakeable decisions. To first was to purchase a DSLR, with the second firm and unshakeable decision as to what one to buy. I have selected the Canon Digital Rebel XT EOS-350D Kit system. The only thing that needed to be done was to figure out where to purchase the darn thing. Shanghai, HK, or somewhere else?

Shanghai is a bit of a puzzle when it comes to purchasing 'authentic' items. First you have to find a place that sources the kosher items. Then there's a lot of conflicting information to what is cheap in China, and what you are better off purchasing abroad. One thing most people are certain of is that high-end electronics expensive in China, and that places like the U.S., Hong Kong, Singapore and even Japan are cheaper. But when it came down to checking out prices for my particular camera, I found that EOS-350D DSLRs are competitively priced in relation to HK, SG and AUS prices. I went and approached the Shanghai Flickr group and asked them the best places & prices for DSLRs in Shanghai. After confirming my price research, there were a few places that were recommended to me.

I shared this information with my friend Matt-man - he promptly jumped on the band-wagon, decided to purchase a 350D as well, and threw himself with gusto into the sourcing and negotiation process. He hit Cybermart (Hong Kong Plaza Electronics Mall on Huaihai Lu & Huangpi Lu), and the 3 electronics malls at Xujiahui, but ended up sinking lots of his RMB at the Huan Long Mall Photographic Market located above the Shanghai Railway Station Metro Station.

Needless to say when Matt-man showed me his camera gear, I went into a geek-envy-frenzy and needed to purchase my own. During the May 1st Holiday Week, Linda, myself and Matt-man returned to the scene of the purchase to check out the market. Linda has had designs on purchasing lots of lenses for her Nikkon F80 SLR. Three eager camera geeks. Our RMB were not going to last long in there. Miraculously, Linda & I managed to leave the mall salivating but without sinking money, but Matt-man (pictured: in deep shopping frenzy) was hit hard by the purchasing bug and picked up 'a couple of things'. He went back to his 'dealer' a few days later to pick up a wide-angle taking his lens count from 0 to 4 in less than 5 days. I am sure he will have hundreds of good quality photos of various RC-things in the near future.

As for me, I'm going to pop back there in the next fortnight, and perhaps I too will have some seriously high-quality photos on my website as well.

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Technorati Tags: Shanghai, China, expat, flickr

My blogging has tailed off since last December. Two main factors have been curtailing my writing efforts. Firstly, work has been eating into my idle time (i.e. there's not a lot left), and secondly I haven't really been into anything that novel or interesting lately. That has resulted in reduced posting frequency on this blog, but also, no little 'tweaking' of my site. However, the May Holidays that have just passed allowed me some free time to do some spring cleaning and some small upgrades on this site. So now, I'm going to geek up this entry and tell you all about it.

• Sick of Comment & Trackback spam, I upgraded my MT installation from 3.14 to 3.2.something last weekend. I'm still getting the same spam. Sigh.
• A week further back, I finally got around to uploading my old Gallery photo images which date back to 2002. Realising I couldn't really mash together my current Gallery database with my old ones, I decided to transfer the whole lot to my Flickr site. Everything was done care of phpFlickr & a script that I first spied on Dan's website. All the albums were converted into sets, and they can all be viewed over on my Flickr set page. There's still a lot of tags & titles to clean up. I got quite homesick when I started viewing these.
• I played around with new CSS for my site. I think this is going to take some time to implement what I want.
• I fixed up a couple of CGI scripts that I didn't realise were failing. Thanks to Sean to pointing out one example to me.
• I'm now registered with Google Analytics. It now seems my life is constantly surrounded by statistics (I'm enduring Six Sigma training/testing at this present time).

What's planned for this website...

• A new CSS/look to reflect my time in Shanghai.
• Some new MT Plugins.
• Upgraded photo albums page & integration with Flickr through the use of the phpFlickr PHP tools.
• An updated Bio.
• Killing of the 'Feeds' page.

The timeline...

• Mid-June

Tags: blogs, flickr, phpFlickr

If you've found yourself in Shanghai, it generally means that you're ready to shop. In fact, there's so much shopping to do in Shanghai that it would be impossible to give justice to all the nooks & crannies that can be found throughout the city. So this entry is focused upon a half to a full-days boutique shopping in the downtown area centred around Xiangyang Lu and Huaihai Lu area. In general, this statement fits the bill.

For boutique fashion shopping in Shanghai is... X Marks The Spot.

Xiangyang 'Fashion' Market

Heaps of articles have been written about this spot. Everyone realises that its not really the top-line destination for quality products, but if labelled items, trinkets are your desire - it is a place to check out. The market culture is aggressive. First timers (like my parents) can find it intimidating - touts get in your face, harassing and tugging at you to visit their unique stall for the best price ever. These promises are rarely met without some serious negotiation & walk-away tactics. The market tends to have the same products and not a lot of variety, hence if you're looking for that unique item I wouldn't recommend spending a great deal of time here. As almost every Shanghai resident (and those visiting from elsewhere) knows, Xiangyang Market won't be with us for very much longer, so if you haven't made it there yet (and I can't believe that most Shanghai residents haven't been there at all) make sure you do.

Shopping on Xiangyang Lu
For me, the shopping really starts when you get outside the Xiangyang 'Fashion Market' and start to explore the shop-fronts along Xiangyang Lu between Fuxing and Julu Lu. Between Xinle Lu and to the south of the market (near Fuxing Lu), there's a number of shop-front stores that sell fairly good quality brand name products - some said to be over-runs from the factories, but I find most to be good replicas or second qualities of these items. There are also some good casual fashion & lifestyle stores on Xiangyang Lu - the chain HOTWIND has a store here and is a prime example of what you can find in this area. HOTWIND really suits my tastes, but for guys like me (190cm, 95kg) there's not a lot that fits. Do not fret my larger framed friends, as to the north of Xinle Lu to Julu Lu there are a few factory outlet shops that sell a lot of Western clothes and Western sized shoes. Perhaps the best is an export factory samples & seconds shop where you can buy shoes such as Rockports, Doc Martens, CAT, Merrell for example. There's also a selection of these in Euro size 46-47 too!. The address is 95 Xiangyang Lu.

Located on Fuxing Lu & Xiangyang Lu is Modern Electronic City. Now this market isn't as well-stocked as Shanghai's two leading electronic markets located at Huangpi Lu & Xujiahui respectively, but with three levels of gadgets, computers, music equipment, and white-goods, you won't want to walk past this place. Haggle hard for the bargains.

Another reason people come to China is to purchase DVDs. Every Shanghai resident knows of 'the best place' to pick up that awesome selection of TV shows, movies or music CDs. For me, one of the best stores that I know of is directly opposite the above Factory outlet store. This shop was shown to be my Canadian friend Daniel. It is very non-descript, very well hidden store. It contains a very good selection of movies, ranging from US, French, Japanese, Chinese and German films. The DVDs are all good quality, except perhaps the most recent releases. You are actually told if you want these movies that they are bad quality & can also be told when to expect the best quality copies. Yes, you don't need to ask. There's a good selection of classic films too. The price you ask? Well, its not KaDe Club prices. DVD5 discs for RMB7 & DVD9 for RMB10. Hooked? The address is Lane 72, house #1 Xiangyang Lu.

Shopping on Xinle Lu
Shanghai's fashionistas like this street - there's heaps to see and browse. Nice items, not necessarily the bargains you'll get from hole-in the wall places, but it is good quality merchandise. My mate JM loves this street - he recently purchased a Zegna Jacket & authentic Polo clothes from a store located here. There's also a cool haunt called Boonna Cafe situated on this street (west of Xiangyang Lu).

Shan Xi Nan Lu.
Ok, this X is a bit of a stretch - but this would have to be Shanghai's best known boutique shopping street. Accessories galore, suits, shirts, jeans, the lot. The area north of Huaihai Lu to Changle Lu has most of the sights to be seen. Xinle Lu appears to be the extension of shopping from the condensed & competitive Shan Xi Nan Lu area.

Eating on Xiangyang Lu
Usually after a good day shopping, you need a decent feed. Xiangyang Lu has some awesome eateries & street snack options. There's a few good quality Xinjiang Restaurants to the south of the market on Xiangyang Lu. One located on Fuxing Lu & Xiangyang Lu) across from the Xiangyang Lu electronics market. But my favourites for price & quality are the Punjabi Indian Restaurant (102 Xiangyang Lu, RMB80 all you can eat buffet & beer to drink), and Turk's Restaurant (75 Xiangyang Lu) where you can get tasty kebabs and Turkish pizzas. Now thrown into the mix is Element Fresh in KWah House (5th floor, 1028 Huaihai Lu, located diagonally across from Xiangyang Market) and you'll never go hungry in this area.

Here end'eth Part 2. Keep an eye out for Part 3.

Tags: China, city, culture, expat, Food, Fuxing Lu, information, Julu Lu, Puxi, Shan Xi Lu, Shanghai, Shopping, walking, Xiangyang Lu, Xiangyang Market, Xinle Lu