Photos of our favourite spot in Shanghai

This is where we go on our days off work. The Park in the middle of Old Shanghai. Here we sit and drink beer, take the most interesting photos of real life in this city, watch people (and thousands of tourists) passing by, smile at the various and weird means of transport, chat to the locals and simply relax.

First photo is of the place we sit, with the little stalls behind us. This is where we buy the beer, and have now befriended the family that runs the 3 stalls.

Second photo is of Mau and Robert, our one colleague, surrounded by the street vendors. They are the ones selling their stuff to the passing foreign tourists. A kind, hilarious bunch of people. They laugh at our Chinese, we laugh at their English and then we laugh together at how they bullshit the foreigners into buying their wares. They have now started "protecting" us from other vendors, chasing away any "new" vendors should they try to sell their rubbish to us.

Here they are showing us their various foreign notes, and having a look at our foreign notes and coins.

Third and 4th photos are of the young guy who is the father of the baby in the last 2 photos. Very nice man. They work here all day, until well after dark. He kinda runs the family business here.

Then, our favourite Shanghai boy, with his Grandmother. As you can see from the last photo, he is not allowed inside the stalls, because he is at the age where he touches everything, so he runs around the seating area, off into the bamboo wood behind the stalls, and generally terrorises us and his family into entertaining him. Then he falls asleep in his pram outsde the stall for an hour, wakes up and starts terrorising some other poor sod who happens to sit down in the shade.

Three typical scenes

Almost all babies here walk around in these pants, all open at the bottom - back and front !! This enables the mom to make them do a wee or more when needed.

And then, walking around in your PJs is a cultural thing.

It is a status symbol, as it tells others that you live so close to the CBD that you can "quickly" pop out of your home, do shopping and then go back. All without having to change for a whole trip to town.


It is, however, becoming a less common site, yet some of the older people still cling to this.

An indication of how cheap living here can be

Mondays are our days off. Just about nobody at school works on Mondays, so by around 16h00 on Sunday afternoon, there is a palpable feeling of "weekend" in the air. By the time we all leave the office at around 17h00 - 17h30, a sense of euphoria prevails. Everybody has plans, and many pre-planned get-togethers are about to come true.

Mau and I have kinda slipped out of the staff party thingie on Sunday nights as, invariably, they involve long taxi treks to another side of town, very expensive beers as the haunts frequented are mostly touristy and thus priced accordingly. We have come to prefer the local as in Chinese and local as in around our flat.

Also, being home bunnies, we really do enjoy simply schlumfing in front of the TV or the computer with a beer or two. So, that was where we ended up Sunday, two nights ago. Home.

We had a few beers, and the next morning slept in. Planning to go for a walk along a tributary of the Huangpo River (the river you have seen on the photos), we left the house around lunch time.

Now I have to explain that about two weeks ago, a new skyscraper (about 50 storeys high, and that is small for around here) opened up outside our flat's entrance, and a helluva lot of shops, including Gucci, have moved into the new building. So, as we exited our flat on the way to the little tributary, we noticed a sign for a new Italian (nogal!!) Restaurant having opened on the 3rd floor. We immediately decided to investigate.

We were rather sceptical, for one of the other "Italian" Rest's in town is nothing like Italian, and the food is pretty shitey. But, my gosh, were we pleasantly surprised with the new one.

There is Italian music, the food IS Italian (or very close to it), delicious and bespotlikly cheap.

A glass of red wine is R5, a seafood pasta is R11, as is a seafood risotto. A Penne Pasta tossed in pesto with some fresh veg, R8!!!! Garlic snails go at R11. And those of you who know us, know how we feel about garlic snails. We have not been able to find them here, yet ... until now.

So, for R45, we can have a starter, a main course and wine. For the both of us. Incredible. And this is really quality food.

We can cook at home for about 2/3's of that, but getting home from the school, like tonight, at 20h30, no one feels like spending an hour or two in front of the stove, and then having to do the dishes. So, this will be where we eat from now on on those two nights of the week when we work late.

Happy days, indeed.

O yes, the building is called The Peace. Fashion. Plaza. Full stops and all!!!! One thing these people must do ... learn how to spell.

Hi all

22/10/06 Shanghai, China

Hi to all our friends and family test driving this site in response to our email. We do hope it works for you.

We have been toying with the idea of a blog for some time now, but never truly knew exactly how to go about getting it started. You know, being born a wee while short of the computerised generation and all that ...

Luckily we found this site, from initial info Jay's sis gave us regarding a lovely photo editing site. And yes, here we are. Two guys not really too sure about the intricacies of the Net, but we have found a way of doing it. Very easy.

The long and the short of it is .... if we could, you can.

Simply go for it. If you wanna write, if you wanna play, if you wanna publish photos, this is the place for it. Thus far we are impressed.

We really are not sure as to what is gonna come out'a this site / blog. Guess that, initially, it will be a random collection of thoughts and reflections, yet like all new borns, it will probably develop a character of its own in due course. We both love writing, as some of you'd know - and as some of you had come to fear, judging from the silence to most of our emails to you - but yes, guess it will simply evolve into an outlet for what we'd like to view as our respective creative beings.

Also not too sure as to which of one of us would be using this more frequently. At this stage my money is on Jay (me) as Mau has his own creative outlets. He loves the photo side of it, and I will take a wild guess by saying that most of the photies we publish on here will be from his fingers.

But we are not counting. As you should know by now, we are as good as one.

So, as an intro, this is our site. Come back frequently for we are quite typie ... and have lots to say.

Just a note to passers-by, happening upon this site by accident. The language and spelling used on here are S'African. It's simply another localised version of English, like Australian. Just looking at the two capital letters at the start of the name of this "new" language, should have warned you that it might be a wee different from the standards accepted by the Queen. Yet, like all languages over the ages, it is an evolving being. This S'Affie English too, is evolving here in the oven of Mother Africa, being baked, slowly and very, oh, so very gently.