Sunny Fuxing Road

This was my favorite place in Shanghai during this trip. It's Fuxing Road. They have some very nice cafes and small shops, and gives you a really nice rest from the Shanghai city life and the typical food. It is where many of the ambassadors' residences are located. The green trees planted on both sides of the street and the slow pace of the shops was very nice.

Next time we will try the cafe called Ginger (299 Fuxing West Road, +86 21 3406 0599) that our friend had recommended. This area also has a chocolate place called Whisk that we should also try next time (they were closed on Mondays: 1250 Huaihai Zhong Lu, +86 21 5404 7700). This time we stopped by an organic looking cafe, which was surprisingly nice (sorry I forgot its name).

Beautiful indigenous costumes at the Shanghai Museum

Lovely mask.

Ni Youyu's A Brief History

I thought this exhibit had a different and very interesting touch at the Shanghai Art Museum. The visitors and security guards blended in very well with many of the work of this young artist.



Furniture art



This lady looked like she was part of the exhibit as an elegant grocery shopper...

Lovely Song Fang fragrance tea from Shanghai

Near the Bund, I randomly went into a tea shop called Song Fang and picked up a tea called Shanghai Dreams, which smelled wonderfully. The super simple decor and concept of this store is really romantic.



Interestingly, the French woman Song Fang who started this company sounds like a combined image of my closest friends. She worked at LVMH and DIOR, graduated from Hitotsubashi and HBS, and loves tea and fragrance. Ring a bell?

Cute pants!

Beautiful day in Xin Tian Di Shanghai

I went to Xin Tian Di today. It feels a little like Ebisu or Omotesando in Tokyo, very clean and expensive. It was a beautiful sunny day, and everything and everyone looked very happy. We had dim sum at Crystal Jade, which had the best dan dan noodles (even better than the one in Hong Kong!). We also picked up tea cups from Afternoon Tea, a tea place I used to like going in Roppongi Hills. It was very fitting for the day to buy this pretty pair of light green tea cups, which I will definitely post sometime later.

Langham Hotel in Shanghai

My sister and I stayed at the Langham Hotel in Shanghai for a wedding. It was a really cute and simple hotel, and probably very new. There was an adjacent cafe to the hotel that we really liked too.



The Langham Hotel
99 Madang Road, Xintiandi, Shanghai 200021, China
+86 (21) 2330 2288

I am in Shanghai!

I am in Shanghai for my sister's friend's wedding! The girl to wed gave us a lot of tips on what to do in Shanghai. The first morning, my sister went to buy these fried dumplings, and they were truly DELICIOUS. We look forward to checking off the list one by one!



Have Yang's Fried Dumplings (小杨生煎) for breakfast on Day 1 and Jia Jia Tang Bao (小籠包) on Day 2. Both are typical breakfast food. Be aware of the soup and bring an extra pack of tissue paper with you. It's about 10-15 minutes walk from the hotel.

Yang's Fried Dumplings, on Huanghe Lu right across the street from Jia Jia Tang Bao.

Jia Jia Tang Bao, soup dumplings

Have an egg custard tart at Lillian's Cake Shop - there is one in the basement of the Raffles mall (来福士广场) across the hotel

Go to 国际饭店 lobby. It has the original sign that marks it the center of Shanghai.

Sample snacks and desserts on Wujiang Lu. If you like durian, don't miss Man Ji (满记甜品). I am a big fan of their durian desserts. "Awfully Chocolate" has good cakes.

Sir Elly bar on 14F of Peninsula Hotel. Happy hour is between 5pm and 8pm (buy 1 drink and get 1 free). The bar has the best outdoor view. Their mini hamburgers are delicious!

Jade Restaurant in Xin Tian Di 6385 8752 翡翠酒家(新天地店), 卢湾区自忠路338号新天地南里6-7号2楼(近马当 路) Excellent dim sum. Suckling pork roast is delicious.

Glamour Bar, 6329 3751 Five on the Bund, 6/F, 20 Guangdong Lu, near Zhongshan Dong Yi Lu 广东路20号, 外滩五号6楼, 近中山东一路

Kaiba (Kangding Lu), 6288 9676 528 Kangding Lu, near Xikang Lu 康定路528号，近西康路 Imported Belgian and international beers. Beer drinkers won't be disappointed here.

Whisk, 5404 7770 1250 Huaihai Lu, near Huating Lu 淮海路1250号，近华亭路 METRO: Changshu Rd HOURS: Tue-Sun, 10.30am-11.30pm Hot chocolate and chocolate cakes. Reservations recommended on weekends

Hof, 6093 2058 30 Sinan Lu, near Huaihai Zhong Lu 思南路30号， 近淮海中路 Chocolate dessert and cocktail lounge

Shanghainese restaurants: 1. 新吉士酒楼 in XinTianDi 2. 鹭鹭 3. 小南国 4. 苏浙汇 (food may vary from branch to branch)

Sichuan restaurants: 1. 渝信

My favorite massage place is called Da Ban (大班). They are reasonably priced and you get all the food and drinks for free while receiving your massage. 1. 大班休闲SPA(大沽路店) 63400366, 大沽路370号，成都北路以西 2. 大班休闲SPA(大同花园店) 63023466, 斜徐路595号地下一层，丽园路口

Another good massage place is called Kongen (康骏). They don't serve food, but the service is good.

One day in Hangzhou

I am in Hangzhou for a meeting. It's probably the most beautiful city I've seen in China, contributed by the extremely nice people here and the peaceful streets (everyone talks very quietly here and nobody is honking while driving). So nice, that I changed my travel plan to stay over one night and go to horrific Beijing tomorrow morning instead. In the evening, I took a nice stroll around West Lake... If only it weren't raining and cold, but my loop scarf and cherry blossom coat protected me well.

How to make a shirt

One weekend ago, I went to China's Gaomin to check out a textile factory for fun. It was set up as an MIT event, by an MIT alum who now manages a company of 50,000 people and produces clothing for BOSS, Abercrombie, etc. (funny how even MIT people go into commercial business if they are from this money town called HK!)

We walked through the process of starting with raw cotton (mixture of organic and non organic), turning that into thread (this was a really long process), to making the pattern of the fabric, then weaving, quality controlling, then changing the texture of the fabric, cutting and sewing, to finally the end product of an ironed cotton shirt! Pfew.

It is amazing to see the entire process. And being China, this is done at a scale unimaginable. After the experience, I couldn't imagine how they could possibly sell anything for below $100. It's so much work! Now I would really consider buying more expensive clothing and not expending anything.

Beautiful Guilin river cruise

I was told that Guilin is one of the prettiest places in China, and so it was. The multiples and densely packed miniature mountains beautifully reflected on the calm water, as we slowly cruised down the river on a bamboo boat.

Chinese lessons

I went to my first ever Mandarin class today. It was at the Japan Club of Hong Kong, with a Hongkie teacher, who specializes in teaching Cantonese. The setting sounds a little ironic but it was so much fun!

Ma ma ma ma

Today was all about the pronunciation. This apparently is super critical when speaking Chinese!

There are so many sounds that we don't use in Japanese or English. You really have to move your mouth like a crazy person, and I couldn't stop laughing at myself (and honestly, my classmates!).

While being worked up, I was thinking my brain must already be completely compartamentalized with what I already know, into mini bento boxes.

Every new word or sound that I learned today must have gone into the box that seem most related... and will come out sounding like Japanese and English when I open my mouth...

The class will be for 3 months, so let's see how far I get!



Photo context: Hong Hao, Morono Kiang Gallery

Hunan Province in China

I could not post anything as I was traveling through China this week. The government's ban on blogs and facebook indeed gave me a strange feeling, especially that I'm a novice to such situations.


A mother watching her child from the inside of the room...


Girls playing cards outside. Very picturesque.

I traveled from a village in the northeastern China close to Vladivostok called Mundanjian, through Beijing and Shanghai, all the way down to the southwest in Hunan, back to HK. As the last half of the travel was on a car, I felt like I saw all of China - some legs were 7 hours long! But of course this was a mere, tiny glimpse of what one can cover in one week.

The last stop was a little indigenous village in Hunan called Blue Mountains. As we crossed the village from the rather privleged side (due to tourism and some small industry) to the poor side, there was a sudden downgrade of road quality. And on the car, it was like a 90-minute long roller coaster! Yet, when we reached the top of the mountain and saw this view, all scary memories on the road were negated. The mountains were as beautiful as the name of the village (or exactly as the name thereof)...

Shanghai Skyscraper

I was briefly in Beijing, Tianjing, Hefei, then reached Shanghai for a work trip. As I arrived, I immediately felt that Shanghai looked the most normal and livable out of all the Chinese cities, including Hong Kong. But one must not forget it is not normal at all, how much it developed over such a short period of time!

Strolling in Xian

There were many artistic sights while walking down the street of Xian. This one house on top of a hill was about to be torn down, and was standing beautifully with pink flowers in the background...


I also really liked the daily landscape of people working on the street.

Xian

Xian is the old capital of China that Kyoto copied back in year 710. It was THE city back in the days which made Kyoto, the old capital of Japan adopt the grid-like city planning.

Indeed, Xian was a grid, and everything else I saw in this city was just as I learned in my Japanese elementary school textbook. This made me feel nostalgic, although it was completely my first time visiting here.

I must say though, as many foreigners who visited this city have witnessed, Xian is now a little Disney Landish. For foreigners who romanticize these things, it is a little unfortunate. I hope it will reverse itself soon, as it was once such a special city for many...