Memories of China: Nanxun, Zhejiang

During my Christmas-slash-New Year vacation, I went on a day trip to Nanxun, Zhejiang, one of the many water towns outside of Shanghai. Since we went on a weekday, the touristic part of the city was very calm, almost too empty... but it was exactly the kinda escape I needed at the time, just an hour away from home.

We walked along the canal and visited some of the old houses, temples, and gardens. I wish I could go back during the spring or early summer, I'm sure it would look and feel completely different!


Nanxun being the only water town I've visited in the Shanghai area, I can't compare it to the other ones based on experience. HOWEVER, I heard that Qibao, although the closest one from Shanghai proper, is too small with not much to see. Zhujiajiao, on the other hand, sounds like it might be the best one to visit; it's closer to Shanghai and livelier than Nanxun!


I put together a short video of the town to capture the atmosphere a little better. This is my first 5x5 video (Vimeo has a whole special category for these if you wanna check it out) so don't look for anything fancy here.. they're just a few scenes from the trip ;)

P.S. I noticed a huuuge number of new visitors on my blog this past week (thank you, Tumblr, for featuring my DIY post!). Welcome all! Thanks for checkin' this blog out! I've actually been working on an "About" page, so bear with me!

Mess everywhere!

(Lanterns at the Grand Gateway, Xujiahui, Shanghai)

Everything has been put on hold!

I'm having the worst luck these days: no internet at home, my computer crashed, too many things are breaking down in the apartment and I'm supposed to be moving back to the US next week!
Thankfully the problem with my computer has been found (I shake my fist at you, Windows!) but the Xujiahui computer guys didn't have a copy of any of the Windows operating systems in English... so that's not really fixed yet.
Anyways, all this will be solved once I'm back in the US! I'm very excited, yet a little scared to move back, but it is definitely the right decision for me right now :)

More updates hopefully this weekend!

Xujiahui

A few steps away from Xujiahui's huge malls, we can find older buildings of the late nineteenth century
from the Jesuit influence in the area. Here are a few pictures that were taken a few weeks ago.


St. Ignatius Cathedral of Shanghai

Small park next to the Cathedral where many (many!) newlyweds took pictures that afternoon.
Guangqi Park - Park where lies Chinese scholar-official, scientist, and astronomer, Xu Guangqi.

Pudong

Quite a few things changed in the last weeks and I'm having a hard time to schedule some blogging-time into my new routine. Anyways, the HK posts will continue soon but first, I'd like to share a few pictures of Pudong (east side of the Huangpu River in Shanghai) from last weekend. I had forgotten my camera (yet again), so please excuse the meh quality - these were taken with my phone.


The Oriental Pearl Tower
I've been to Pudong quite a few times and yet, I've never been up the Pearl Tower. Frankly, I don't think the view will be worth the expensive entry ticket...

That evening, the boy and I decided to chill on the Pudong Riverside and admire the view of Puxi (west side of river in Shanghai). People (mostly tourists) usually go to the Bund to look at Pudong's skyscrapers (Oriental Pearl tower, The Bottle Opener, etc).. but this side is quite nice, actually! And there are definitely less people than on the Bund - always a plus ;)

On the way home, dinner at Pho Yummy

Luwan, Xintiandi, Laoximen

Weeks ago, a friend and I decided to walk around in the not-so-crowded streets of Shanghai. We began our trip at the Shaanxi Nan lu stop and walked down Nanchang lu, a cute street parallel to the busy Huahai zhong lu. It has many little shops and trees on both sides of the road, keeping us in the much-needed shade.


At the end of the road, we crossed Yan'an lu and walked through Xintiandi
(famous little area for expats, full of restaurants and bars) and saw this little park.



After a few wrong turns, we finally found the "antics" market on Dongpin lu. My friend had seen it over a year ago and had ever since tried to find it again.

As we made our way back to the subway (at the Laoximen stop this time) we saw this little shop. If you ever need a replica of the Terracotta Warriors, no need to go all the way to Xi'An!

Here's a map of Shanghai with the route we took that day:

It's been a while

Yesterday, we went to South Huangpi road to take a stroll through the little parks there and then walk towards People's Square. Unfortunately, a thunderstorm started right when we got out of the metro station! It looked worse than the typhoon we were supposed to get last week.
In a few days, I'll finally publish pictures (that have been collecting digital dust for the past month) of a nice stroll I took in Shanghai :)

Commercial Experience

These pictures have been on my computer for months and I almost forgot to share this experience! Tsk, tsk.

Last March (yep, that's three months ago), a friend of mine talked me into joining him and his friend to work as an extra in a commercial. He said: "the job's simple: just show up around 1pm, they'll provide us with clothes if needed, act like a "cheerleader" for about 4 hours of shooting and then go back home with the cash in the evening." If only it had been really that simple...




Here's the timeline (as I noted down that during the shooting):

1pm: We got on the bus arranged by the shooting people to go to the filming location. Bus half full of young Chinese girls, half of "foreign" boys and girls. 2:20: Arrived at location, out in some factory. And then, we wait... 4:30: The team finally gets started on giving us "costumes" (consisting of tiny shirts and skirts for the cheerleaders, joy), hair and make-up. 6:00: Sun is down, we start the shooting in the cold. There were essentially 3 scenes involving everyone. Each scene took forever to achieve and everybody was freezing off. No one in the staff ever gave us clear information as to how long the shooting will take, how many scenes we'd be doing, etc. It was very frustrating! 10:30: Some of us return to the bus but the shooting is not over. Now come the small group shots. I was part of the third small group to be shot and there were two more to go after us. 3:45am: We leave the shooting location to get back to Shanghai. Everybody's tired and still freezing, complaining about the experience. The Chinese girls were even calling their agent to scream at them ha! 5am: I'm finally back in my room, took a warm shower and passed out. Needless to say, I didn't go to classes the next day.

Foreigners can always find jobs as extras or "models" in China and usually the experience is not this awful. A month later, I went to another commercial shooting, this time for a spot for the Xi'An International Horticultural Expo 2011. It took place in Shanghai, 20 minutes away from school, and I only had to be in front of the camera for 5 minutes! However, as nice and easy as that was, I don't plan on doing this often in the future - I'm way too self-conscious to be in front of a camera.

Today for brunch

Since I have to share a "kitchen" that consists of a microwave and two hotplates, I love my friends who have their own kitchens! And I especially love those who can cook in them! ;)
Yesterday afternoon, while it was raining cats and dogs outside, Joel and I prepared some crepe dough so that we'd have a yummy brunch today. They were delicious!

Midi Music Festival

About a month ago, the Midi Music Festival (迷笛音乐节), an electronic and rock music festival originating from Beijing, arrived in Shanghai for the first time ever. There were performers from all over the world, but I gotta admit I was not familiar with any of them prior to the event. A few friends and I got 3-day tickets for cheap (oh, to be well-connected!) and had a good time by the electronic music stage.


There was quite an interesting crowd there: lots of foreigners and college students, young parents and their kids and a few older music fans. It was a nice to be around the alternative, artsy Chinese crowd for once, especially the ones with "kooky" fashion style. Even though I study in a fashion school, the fashion students I see usually don't wear very interesting outfits.

凉面

I'm taking a small break from midterm cramming just to share my excitement over the arrival of one of my favorite spring/summer dishes: 凉面 cold noodles! I guess now we can officially say that it is Spring time here in Shanghai! (Although it was 30*C today, oi).

注意安全

As I mentioned in a previous post, a few months ago there was a great fire in a high-rise in Shanghai causing many deaths and injuring many people (I don't remember the numbers exactly, but maybe the Wikipedia entry is accurate). There's been a lot of talk on fire safety around the city ever since, including many new notices on how to prevent fires and how to evacuate in case of emergency.

Well, as part of this initiative, yesterday morning the security people of my building were going from room to room to paste lovely personalized evacuation posters on our walls. Now all I have to do is figure out how to go down 14 flights of stairs quickly enough to survive a fire in this building, siiigh.

Year of the Rabbit

Wednesday night for Chinese New Year's eve, a group of us went to Le Royal Méridien's 66th floor Bar & Lounge on People's Square and enjoyed an amazing view of the park and the city. There were no big official fireworks organized (most likely because of the huge fire that happened months ago and the fire security concerns that came after), but there were many "small" fireworks all over the city set off by Shanghainese people themselves (how is this safe, hmm?). The fireworks that night lasted at least an hour. Taking a decent picture of that was difficult, sorry :) It's well known that Chinese people celebrate the New Year for at least a week, and I can assure you that every evening I can here the rumbling of fireworks being shot off nearby.

Edit: few minutes after I first published this entry, I realized that tonight's fireworks were getting bigger and louder by the minute. So I decided to shoot this short video for you!


This is the first time I use Flickr to host a video. If there are any problems, please let me know!


Thursday evening, I went downtown to Yu Yuan Garden's Market to see the New Year decorations, including a huge rabbit. I loved it!

Getting ready for Chinese New Year 2011

Chinese New Year is right around the corner and Carrefour has become a red and gold mad house! I took these pictures a while ago before all of Shanghai needed to do their New Year shopping which includes the rabbits, fish, 福 (blessing, good fortune), lanterns, red envelops, nuts, etc. I, myself, bought a rabbit & 福 sign (2 in 1!) for my door AND resisted in buying the pool of cute stuffed rabbits. To be honest though, I wish the rabbit signs didn't look so Disney/Looney Tunes-ish. Oh, well!

Snowy week

It doesn't snow often in Shanghai and when it does it's just "cute" snow - the perfect amount if you ask me!