As Seen by TV

Tianzifang is definitely worth the visit.  Not to mention only 15min walking from where I live (who knew?!).  Quaint, and in a city like Shanghai that is extremely difficult to come by.  Located between Taikang Lu and Jianguo Lu, it is filled with little boutiques, galleries, and restaurants and is situated in the traditional tiny backstreets that are massively giving way to apartment complexes elsewhere in this urban jungle.  The locals still live in these streets, so it is somewhat strange to see the little old lady washing clothes in a sink next to modern art galleries (last picture).
Tianzifang still has a real feel, whereas Xin Tian Di (a more well-known and remodeled version of the backstreets) gave way to über expensive restaurants and bars.  Xin Tian Di still holds a notch in my record books for most expensive beer I have ever bought ($20.29 for 1.0 liter of Paulaner Lager at the Paulaner Bräuhaus), beating out a 1.0 liter of Würzburger Pilsener for $12 from Zum Schneider in NYC and a $14.50 bottle of Stella Artois from the New York Palace Hotel, plus tip.

I ended up having a Long Island Ice Tea for 35RMB (same price of a Heineken) at an Indian restaurant called Lotus Land… my new-found friend is planning on opening an Indian fusion bar & grill in the very near future, so we were testing out the competition.

I met up with a buddy yesterday and we aimlessly hit up SH, meeting at People’s Square and walking east down Nanjing towards the river, grabbing some dumplings then catching a ferry over to Pudong and hitting up the Jin Mao Tower.  We had wanted to go up the SWFC, but weren’t about to drop 150RMB for the experience.  We figured we didn’t have to spend 70RMB for the JMT either, as we could just walk into the Grand Hyatt (the hotel that occupies the top 35 stories) as “hotel guests”.  We were right.

Standing from inside the Jin Mao, I had forgotten how unsettling it was to stand there and look down all those hollow stories, the spiraling balconies don’t help either.
One picture also shows the footprint for the 632m (2073ft) Shanghai Tower set for 2014 completion and designed by Gensler (a nice video can be found on their website).
One thing that I think is kind of funny, is how back-in-the-day all the tallest buildings were in Europe, then they all moved to North America, and now Asia.  China/Hong Kong/Taiwan as of right this moment account for 6 of the top 10, Malaysia has 2, the US has 1, and I hear there’s a beast of a building in Dubai.  Europe’s tallest on the other hand, comes in at #89… and it isn’t even in “Europe-Europe”, it’s in Moscow.
To put it in perspective, the Shanghai Tower will be 3.5x taller than the London Gherkin or almost 2x that of  New York City’s Chrysler Building.  I’m pretty excited to witness the birth of a crazy structure (I gave up on the Freedom Tower).

So I figured out how to work the slideshow… here are some preliminary shots taken down Jiashan Lu (my street)… in my neighborhood which I refer to as South-Central French Concession (modern day Xuhui District).

I also finished my residency procedure just today, my permit should be sent to me in 2-3 weeks… the process wasn’t at all that bad.  A lot of steps, and more paperwork than anything I’ve ever had to do before… but the longest wait at any government building/police station/hospital was only just over an hour (and that was today, at 4pm on a Friday).  All the facilities were clean, nice, and modern (except the PoPo building) and people were generally friendly.  Plus I had an “agent” with me (colleague from work) who helped me out tremendously.  Actually the whole damn thing would have been near impossible considering all the non-Englishness.  Thank you Pauline!