There are such beautiful old colonial houses in Shanghai, especially in the French Concession where villas often have a garden and you can imagine them in former times, full of life and wealthy foreign families living the high life. Many of these houses are of course still here and preserved for posterity. However there are… Read More »
The cold weather is coming and we’re wrapping up warm against the elemental forces of a Shanghai winter. Everything is slowing down, fewer people out and about in the evening and people scurrying along the streets instead of ambling. It seems that even on Nanchang Lu, somebody is looking after the trees and preparing them… Read More »
My community is dirty enough without the added complexity of building rubble piling up outside my door. Yesterday I went downstairs to find a cabinet blocking my path. Today waiting for me was a pile of builders bags from the renovations going on next door. In the other direction, the ground floor flats are getting… Read More »
I have never seen Hongqiao Railway Station as full as on Sunday when I went to pick up some friends. Apparently there was a flurry of snow up in Beijing which resulted in three hours or more delays to trains coming south. Killig some of this time, I went to the departure lounge and looked… Read More »
Laoximen is a tremendous place, full of old lanes and fantastic communities its lanes full of little businesses like pavement barber shops, mending workshops, corner shops and fruit and veg markets which line the main street. Here fish flap about and struggle to breathe in the shallow water of the washing up bowl they’re held… Read More »
It’s hard to believe that these are small lane houses mostly inhabited by little old Chinese men and women. The rents charged to foreigners is staggering. Granted, these renovated flats are considerably nicer than those the locals inhabit bit the difference in rent is out of proportion to the difference in standards. Yesterday I was… Read More »
I don’t often go to the park on a week day but the opportunity presented itself and I had had a huge lunch with my Chinese mother and father and needed a walk. As usual there were a lot of people in the park and I spent a lot of time watching a group of… Read More »
Sports Day is a funny day – funny and fun. The trouble is that because we don’t have any sports facilities at the school we have to rent the running track at the Sports University nearby and often, the first time a student has run such a long distance or done any jumping or throwing… Read More »
It was a bad idea to go across the river to Pudong on National Holiday but I had thought it would be nice to walk along the river on such a sunny day. That was my error – thinking that it would be a pleasant stroll instead of trying to move through a scrum of… Read More »
The Art District had alluded me for years but I had a spare day and it was sunny so I got the metro up there and with the help of my trusty iPhone maps and the hindrance of my inbuilt sense of direction I ended up in a semi-industrial. The empty buildings, construction workers huts… Read More »