simonb.com: blog > articles tagged with shanghai

Elegance in fiagiance.

Guijin shop corner of Huaihai and Maoming.

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WELCO ME

Art gallery Wukang Lu Shanghai.

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Apple's first store in Shanghai has opened in Pudong in the IFC Mall. All praise the Steve. We took a quick gander the other night. It was packed. "Genius" bar was full too. It is conveniently just round the corner from City Super (quality supermarket from Hong Kong, also newly opened, hey the IFC has only just opened its doors, everything is newly opened in Shanghai.) So, you can visit the Apple Store for some quality tech produce then pop to City Super for quality groceries and baking produce. Mall-tastic heaven.

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Last week I tried to visit my local DVD store only to discover it under construction. It looked like they were building more shelves to house their vast stock. Today I discovered the purpose of the shelves. They're a false wall. I walk into the place and discover it is now a quarter of its former size and only stocks Chinese movies. But then an assistant beckons to me as she pushes on one of the shelves. It opens to reveal the rest of the store with all the regular stock.

This is obviously a pre-Expo measure to stay in…

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Here’s a game you can play along with at home: cover design for free English language listing magazines in Shanghai.

It’s time for the annual Shanghai International Literary Festival (SILF). Your task is to design a magazine cover with this subject. So, like any good designer your first port of call is Getty Images. You search for Royalty-free (RF) Creative images with the term “bookshelf”. Scroll down the results and near the bottom you’ll find this image.

Here it is on Getty and here it is on Flickr.

“Perfect,” you think. “That’ll do. A bit of Photoshopping and…

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Every so often Shanghai goes through various schemes to improve how it looks. For example, we've had the ban on the hanging out of washing and a general disapproving eye turned on the wearing of pajamas in the street. These schemes usually take hold when they're first introduced for a few weeks then gradually everything goes back to the way it was. Take spitting for example, during SARS there were lots of public service posters about spitting, it declined a lot. The problem is a Shanghai male cannot pass an ashtray or a urinal with out feeling the need to…

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The Shanghai Daily is reporting that Shanghai will build three large emergency shelters. 4000 sqm each! Infrastructure investment or preparing for something? Hmmm. Presumably these will be underground. This together with the expansion of the metro system leads one to wonder what's left underground to hold Shanghai up.

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It snowed yesterday in Shanghai. Snow is a tricky subject for photography - it moves too fast and the autofocus doesn't see it. The two above are about the best of a few shots out of our office window. Done with manual focus and shutter speed priority.

In other news the temperature in Shanghai is predicted to go form -7 to +20 C. Spring is just around the corner.

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Shanghai's bizarre weather continues Shanghai Daily is predicting this winter will be the longest this century. I can believe it. It is currently cold, raining and thundering outside.

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Remember the Plaza 66 Christmas decorations? In a tremendous effort of re-cycling for the new year they got a colour upgrade to red.

At the other end of the mall...

Loads-a-money.

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