As Seen by TV

Recently moved into a new apartment… 17th floor, which means I have a view!

Another, somewhat coldish night… hit up Lujiazhui, Pudong [again] with the dope wide angled lens.  Booyakasha.

During the Chinese New Year holiday we hit up Gao Qiao, located on the northern tip of Pudong, just over an hour north via subway from downtown Shanghai.   Our mission was “Holland Village,” a residential complex built by Dutch architects to reflect living in Holland which is part of the “1 City – 9 Towns” initiative.  On the 20min walk from the metro station to this new town, we were fortunate to follow along a picturesque, and relatively traditional Chinese street. 

Is this England or China?

It is in fact: Thames Town, Songjiang, Shanghai [map].  A housing project which is part of the “One City - Nine Towns” initiative the Shanghai Planning Commission set up in early 2001.  All are situated around the suburbs of Shanghai, this one resembling life in Britain (others include Sweden, Holland, Germany, Canada, Spain, Italy, and China – don’t worry, I’ll get to them eventually!).  Thames Town, at a 20% occupancy is hardly a success, but it does make for an incredibly bizarre experience… somewhere between a ghost town and a film set. 
Only difference is: this is real.

It’s a playground for the Chinese wedding photographers… with among other things, a church based on one in Bristol, and with a price tag of over 5 billion RMB ($750 million), this didn’t come cheap.

Part 2

I live a 4 minute walk from the Jiatong University campus, decided to wander and meander around… this is from over a month ago (work has been keeping me too busy!).

EXPOdition Pt. II
August 8, 2010 – 390,700 visitors

Thanks to the Israeli Pavilion, we got VIP tickets to the pavilions of Israel, Japan, France, and Spain. I also dropped by Finland and Belgium, and take it from me, you can skip the French one, unless you really need to see more pictures of Paris and have never seen a Citroën. Japan was interesting, you certainly don’t see a robot playing a violin every day. The Spain pavilion is a definite success, the wicker building, great cave-like entrance and then the infamous gigantic moving baby, something I will not forget any time soon.

Also pictured are the pavilions of Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, and of course China. In my Danish Pavilion image, if you squint, you can see the Little Mermaid statue which was taken outside of Denmark for the very first time (unless you count all the times it has been stolen and vandalized; of which including 4 decapitations, an amputated arm, numerous paintings, and the addition of a dildo).

Those final images are from inside the Smurftastic Belgium Pavilion, another one worth visiting (without my bias). The Expo Axis (the massive tent construction in the images before the Smurf invasion) is the largest membrane construction in the world, whatever that means.

You will also notice all the water being sprayed in the air… temperatures hit 40C that day.

View my post and all the imagery from EXPOdition Pt. I.

Went to the Super Brand Mall in Lujiazui, Pudong to have some Korean BBQ with my Mom who was visiting. 

 The new elevated walkway was finished and open, so I took just a couple shots.

These are images I took just over a month ago from around my neighborhood, Xujiahui.  When I moved here, this site was just a normal block filled with shops and traditional Chinese houses (my complex is right across the street), which was then reduced to this construction site 2 months later, and is now subsequently, a massive parking lot.  So goes the large-scale urbanization of China.

My somewhat short walk took me from Tianping Road & Guangyuan Road, across Huashan, up Gongcheng, and back down Hongqiao to the XJH intersection (by the way, in case I haven’t mentioned it before, all the streets in Shanghai (well, most of them) are named after the cities and towns of China).