As Seen by TV

March 2010… after over a 1 year of being closed, Shanghai’s most famous landmark reopened to the public; so is the tale of The Bund.

While “The Bund” usually refers to the buildings located along Zhongshan Road (and facing Pudong), my photography on the other hand, does not. 

The Bund is an amazing strip of structures from the [earlier] glory days when Shanghai was a huge financial and shipping hub (sound familiar!?!).  Consisting of a custom house, trading houses, and banks, which subsequently moved elsewhere after the Communist victory during the Chinese Civil War in the 1950′s.  The original institutions however, were given the opportunity during the 1980-90′s (with the thawing of the governments’  economic policy) to have the orignal buildings returned to their orignal uses.  It is truly an amazing strip of architecture, ranging from Gothic and Baroque, to Neo-Classical and Art Deco.

My walk originated from People’s Square through the hair-care area of Shanghai (every shop sells everything related to hair salons, from scissors to those rotating lights), along the Bund, and back down Suzhou Creek.

Also note, the two cars pictures are the BMW M3, and the Rolls Royce Phantom Coupé.  The Phantom is availible in 44,000 colors, which begs the question: is the owner color blind?  It costs about US$400,000, which is doubled in China due to the 100% luxury tax… ooh yeah, believe it. 

Which also reminds me… I’ve heard rumours there’s a Veyron floating around Shanghai.

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.

…is overrated.
But I’m far from the only one… it seems that our “week-long” holiday is in fact just a glorified long weekend considering the vast majority of people in China had to show up the weekend before the holiday as well as this weekend.  Pretty damn smart marketing.  Gimme a couple days off and gimme the weekends off would be 200% better for me, but whatever, that’s China.

I met a bunch of chill people through the Bulldog Pub, definitely a recommended hangout… they do [free] quiz nights, [free] pool tournaments (I won! I won!), and decent happy hours.  They also have free wi-fi, which sounds like nothing special, but it works better than my [paid] wi-fi at home.  I had taken some pictures last time I was there, but subsequently sat on my camera rendering it useless (yes, Timmy The Photographer finally broke his first camera… mazel tov!). Plus the Bulldog is situated right across the street from the American consulate, so if poop ever hits the fan, run across 2 lanes of traffic, scale the mean wall and you should be good (provided you have a US passport).

I’ll leave you with a quote from one of Bulldogs’ managers: “in China you could be one in a million, but that still means there are over a thousand others just like you.”