As Seen by TV

Last Sunday [while it was snowing!] I went with my girl to hit up the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center (Official site / Frommer’s site), which is home to the largest to-scale city model in the world: Shanghai 2020!

I have always been a architecture fiend, and this was a hidden delight.  Well, maybe not so hidden, as the Exhibition Center is located inside a massive modern building in the middle of People’s Square.  5 floors of exhibits chronicle the history and modernization of Shanghai, from the feudal dynasties (SH was a fishing village), to when the first Europeans arrived to trade (SH was a fishing village), through to today (when SH was a massive city), and on into the future (when SH turns into the worlds’ economic metropolis of the world (you heard it hear first!)).

Old photographs were what I found the most interesting, as the trasformation of this city is truly beyond words.  Just look at the image of the Pudong skyline in my last post, when I was in Shanghai for the first time some 10 years ago, only 3-4 buildings were built (including the Pearl Tower), so I can only imagine what Shanghai will look like in another decade in 2020… oh wait nevermind, on the 5th floor they have the worlds largest to-scale city-model in the world: Shanghai 2020!

The center obviously showcases much about the upcoming Shanghai Expo, and I can’t wait to see some of the structures they are planning to build, truly remarkable stuff.   Still can’t decide which one I will like more… Thomas Heatherwick’s UK Pavilion (consisting of 60,000 transparent rods) or the Switzerland Pavilion by Buchner Bründler Architects (which has a ski lift through, over, and around it  -no I am not joking).

For Christmas Day, a friend and I headed down to the Shanghai South Bund Fabric Market (and had some street dumplings right out side)… and I kind of wish I had known about this before.  Just think, having custom-tailored suits, coats, and shirts at a fraction of the price as the pre-made mass-produced and over-priced articles you find in shops (they even have official Boss, Armani, etc catalogs for “help” with your design).  You just got to know how to bargain, which I can’t say I’m too good at, but I think we got a decent deal on our “kungfu-style” shirts (I refer to it as my “Chinese pimp shirt“), for 160RMB each.  After walking around the market (it’s 3 full floors inside a building on 399 Lujiabang Road) and doing some research, typically suits go for 400-600RMB and dress shirts around 100RMB… all of course depending on size, material, and quantity you are buying.

After the Fabric Market, we followed a tip of a nice (and free) view of the infamous Pudong skyline, located on the roof bar/restaurant of the Captain’s Hostel located just off the Bund (which has been closed entirely for renovations since I arrived here). [sorry, those pics will have to wait another day or two]

I learned this a couple weeks ago, and I must admit that if you are planning a trip to China (and thinking about buying stuff), this comes in quite handy (!!!).
Numbers 0-5 are standard internationally, but 6-10 is where it can get tricky:

Although one should always learn to speak/understand the numbers.  Mandarin uses a simple formula, in that you only need to learn 11 seperate words to build and count numbers 0 to 99 (English/French/Spanish requires 28).  For example eight (8) is pronounced “ba”, while ten (10) is “shir”, so eighty (80) is “ba shir”, and eigthy-eight (88) is “ba shir ba”.  Of course keeping in mind that every “word” in Mandarin has 4+ tones, so pronouncing it correctly is another story, learn more precisely here.

DianHua is a great iPhone application for learning the numbers as well as general translations, get it free here.

2009 was a fine year, but 2010 will be the shiznit.

Now I bring you my highlights of a year in Facebook status updates:

Timothy Vanhonacker…

is actually REALLY gonna miss that retarded ape we have grown to love… ah yes, Mr. Bush

is getting fitted & suited for his gig as best man this summer

is runnin around robbing banks all wacked off of scooby snacks

just got his foot into the door of a gallery, now if only he can get his work in there too

is Brooklyn’s answer to Travis Bickle

is preparing for tomorrows dystopian onslaught

c’mon people… stop dying

RIP 92

is having issues on finding a suitable way of transporting his beast of a CPU

is worried about tonight… between my friends’ threats of “kill[ing] me with alcohol” and finalizing my move, is a large fuzzy area

Peace out America!!

has eaten more Chinese food than you have in the past week

SavageHenry 3.0 is online!

just realized that “1,2,3″ in Mandarin sounds like a homie tryin to get to the hospital… “E.R., son!”

So apparently in China I might be one in a million, but that still means there are over a thousand others just like me

I have to take Friday off which means that yes, I don’t get paid for working on Christmas Day… one of the negative aspects of living in a non-Christian nation.
My job almost sent me off to Chongqing for 2 weeks (for what, I still don’t know), but I fought back.
Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas.

…and on the seventh day God created the potato.

Here is the whole family of Lay’s (乐事: “Happy Things” in Chinese) potato chips in China.

The cucumber ones are on my weekly grocery list, oh my they are über good, while the blueberry flavor tasted like powdered pancake mix, with salt.
As for lychee flavor… after testing out blueberry and mango, I couldn’t stomach the thought of a lychee flavored potato chip, considering I despise lychee anything.
The Chinese relationship with sweets is a strange thing… I bought sliced bread the other day (the entire bag was decorated with American flags, so it had to be decent… right?), and it was sweeter than a croissant dipped in chocolate and covered in powdered sugar.

Week 51, this is the second post in my “Mission: Lunch” series, which will showcase some of the lunches I have had the [mis]fortune of having.

First up was “the spiciest thing on our menu”, a hot beef noodle to which I added some Chinese cabbage at Ajisen Ramen, a Japanese restaurant located in the Infiniti Mall on Huai Hai Road (*update* just found out via wikipedia, that they have over 86 locations in Shanghai alone!)… good stuff (but not spicy enough for me!).

Second and third up are from the company hot spot, where we take new colleagues for their first lunch, definitely a good spot.  A Hunan-style restuarant located just around the corner of the office on Yunnan Road (south of Huai Hai Road).  Their spicy string beans are mighty good, although I am biased as this is one of my favorite dishes (picture #2).  Image #3 shows roughly 2/3′s of the dishes from that day… which included bullfrog (square dish), 2 varieties of tofu dishes (one with shredded pork that was amazing), cabbages, pork, chicken, normal eggs and quail eggs.

The last image is of a pickled pepper sort (very unlike the ones you can find in the US which have no spice-factor whatsoever), from a hot pot spot that were so damn tasty I just had to snap a shot.  I was with 2 other guys, and we held a little contest to see how many we could each eat.  Contestant #1 had zero (0).  Contestant #2 had three (3).  While contestant #3 had six (6).
I’ll let you decide which one was me.

Later that evening [after the spicy peppers] I finally knocked in my first 8-ball off a break… which I have been trying to do for years.  Yes, it was a good day…. yay me!

As feared, my whole website has been blocked here in China amidst a recent massive crackdown on… uhm, beautiful photography?   Who knows, but who cares, it is just ridiculous how the government blocks blocks blocks.

I am accessing this now via proxy, and was going to offer a link for fellow people stuck up the same creek, but considering you now need the software to even get here, it would be pointless.   In the upcoming weeks I will be researching various alternatives… Freedur, VPN, etc.

Damn you Great Firewall of China!

“Proper Management of Internet Brings About Harmony”
[ChinaDaily.com.cn - 2009-12-01]