Oh, Shanghai There

On pretty much every blog you’ll read written by a foreigner living in China, the main focus is always on those little differences in Chinese and Western thinking. Things like the Chinese inability to queue properly, the non-existent health and safety procedures, the ridiculous bureaucracy… and given that my last post was about what I consider to be “funny Chinese habits”, I’m happy to admit that I’m as guilty as anybody else […]

I recently celebrated my 18 month anniversary of moving to this fantastic city, and I’ve found that the longer you live here, the more you find some Chinese habits quirky and silly rather than alien or culturally significant. For example, it’s quite well known that Chinese people drink hot water instead of cold water, because they believe that cold water will make you ill. Nothing refreshes you on a hot, humid day like a glass of piping hot water, eh? There’s also a rule that […]

好久不见 (hǎo jiǔ bù jiàn – “long time no see”), everybody. I should apologise for not updating for so long, but if I did that be prefacing every post with the same thing, and that’ll get boring pretty quickly. Recently China celebrated the Lunar New Year, which is a […]

Well, that’s one of the weirdest titles I’ve ever written. The Chinese language has a few awesome quirks, probably acquired through thousands of years of use. One of my favourite things is the way they combine or compound words to make a whole new word, often with a different meaning. Sometimes, the words are opposites. For example, the word zuǒyòu (左右), literally means “left right”, but put together the word comes to mean “approximately” […]

OK, so this isn’t Shanghai, but it’s still worth posting. The city of Kunming – capital of the south-western Chinese province of Yunnan – has around 7 million residents. It is more known for its traffic, with over 1,000 cars added to the already overcrowded roads each and every day. Now, I see a few pretty mean feats of driving living here in Shanghai on a pretty much daily basis – and when I say “mean feats”, I […]

There are a hell of a lot of westerners in Shanghai – many come to study, many come backpacking, some to shag as many Chinese girls as they possibly can… but I’d estimate that the vast majority are here for work. A lot of them are contracted to be here for a while, so they inevitably take Chinese lessons to help them get through daily life here – ordering in restaurants, telling cab drivers where to go, etc. Apparently quite a common thing for Chinese teachers […]

OK, Chinese slang is weird. 牛逼 (niú bī) is often used by Chinese teenagers, and it’s slang for “awesome” or “great”. Occasionally it’s shortened to just “niú“. The phrase is interesting, however, because it literally means “cow vagina”. It’s most often written 牛逼, even though the second character 逼 actually […]

When I talk of Shanghai, I often speak of the amazing food. And I’m not mistaken in doing so – this city is amazing for the sheer range and quality of the food on offer. You can find restaurants serving food from anywhere – not just all corners of China and the rest of Asia, but also gourmet hamburgers, Indian […]

As summer arrives in Shanghai, the weather has taken a sharp turn towards hot and humid. Today it’s 32 degrees celsius outside, and you’re sweating pretty much from the moment you leave the house. Thankfully, Shanghai is well equipped to deal with the May heat: any shop, restaurant or […]

Apologies for the lack of recent updates. Yesterday I came back from spending the weekend with friends of my girlfriend in Seoul. While I’d love to say it was a trip purely for the sake of pleasure, my visiting there had an ulterior motive. While I love living in Shanghai, sometimes I do feel like they have me jumping through increasingly ridiculous hoops just to stay here. For starters, the visa: you need a visa to come to China in the first place […]