Pictures from Shanghai

Here you can see some nice pictures from the first round railway station in the world.

I will try to take some myself soon. There is also an amusement park nearby.

Labels: China, Shanghai

I decided to use my Bloglines feed subscriptions for my links to blogs
section. This way I can keep it updated more easily and it shows what
I really read.

I only hope that this JScript works well...

I used the oven for the first time and I used some easy-to-make mix from the States. I never used an oven before to bake something so it was quite interesting. :-)

Anyhow - this is the stuff:


It is all "imitated" and "artificial" but anyway it was worth a try.


This was the result... 

Labels: China, Shanghai

Humidity :-) 

Labels: China

The lotus flower festival in Hangzhou is starting now and the flowers should be very nice next week. 

Labels: China

This is a picture taken just before the start of a plum rain. It gets dark within minutes and a storm starts and distributes all the nice dust from construction sites all over town. This is the time when I start to run and try to hide in a metro station. 

Labels: China, Shanghai

I finally got invited to PicasaWeb and I'm experimenting with it just now. You can find these pictures here. 

I have been in Hangzhou again - this time for a company event.

These are some pictures taken from the hotel room.




 

Labels: China, Shanghai

A property agent offers a nearly complete metro plan, including a lot of the planned metro lines and their stations.

I think it gives a good overview of what we can expect in the future.

 

Labels: China, Shanghai

Empty streets for SCO... 

Labels: China, Shanghai

I registered some new domains - just for fun. I already had the domain witt-24.de, which is this webserver (has some historic reasons). My "oldest" domain is christian-witt.net - but it is only virtual, without any webserver behind it. It redirects to the first one. It's a nice one for mails etc.
The third one I registered some time ago out of fun and without any special reason (excluding the fact that it has only 3 letters) and is e-0.de. It is fun to use with mails...

The newest ones are:

shanghai-pics.de, which actually makes sense now with this blog and which is clearer than any others I have.
he-wei.de, which is my Chinese name. My Chinese name in Pinyin is He Wei, which has a nice meaning (find out yourself ;-)).
dr-cheffe.de, which is connected to one mailadress and which is also my Gaming-Nick.

If you would like to send me a mail - use shanghai.blog@ any of these domains.

I currently seem to have problems with my domain e-0.de in China, which I use for my blog. Does that only happen to me or should I move my blog to one of the others? 

This is a view of Hengshan Road last Saturday.

You can see a lot of "Bud"-Umbrellas here - the whole street is branded like this. It's the US Version though and not the original.


This here is a Tibetian Bar/Restaurant next to the metro station Hengshan Road. They also have a big TV outside during the championship (the traffic is too loud though).



This whole area looks very nice with all the trees at the road. This is actually the old "French Concession", one of the nicest areas of Shanghai with a lot of old European houses. 

Labels: China, Shanghai

I'm eagerly waiting for the V8 Supercars Challenge from Australia to return to Shanghai.

This was the best race I ever saw - forget MotoGP (it rains every time they are here) and forget F1 (too fast to look at).
Austrailians are much more relaxed and much cooler - we also got a very cool Pit Stop walk through.
There we saw cars like these:


And things like that:


And the weather was perfect:


And the girls were nice:


;-) 

Labels: China, Shanghai

For stupid foreigners like me the metro company uses a colour system.
Line 3 is yellow:


Line 4 is purple:


Both lines use the best trains of the Shanghai metro - much better than Line 1 or 2.

This is a blurry picture from inside the Shanghai Stadium Station:


And this is what we did that night - we watch the championship in the Irish Pub. It even had an English comment, because they showed a South African channel:

 

Labels: China, Shanghai

There are currently 5 Metro lines operating in Shanghai and No. 4 is the newest one. Yes Line No. 5 came before 4 - I explain why later.
This is a plan of the current metro system:


(Red: Line 1, Green: Line 2, Yellow: Line 3, Purple: Line 4. Line 5 is not visible because it is in the suburbs after the end of Line 1)
Metro line 4 is a circle line, which means it goes around and around...
It would if it would be finished - but obviously it's not. The reason for that is an accident some years ago where a building vanished in a metro construction site nearby Nanpu Bridge. Obviously some calculations went wrong and because of that the whole construction got delayed. So it is a 3/4 circle or something like that. I live next to Dongchang road station of Line 2 and the interchange to line 4 is the next station - DongFang road. But this station is closed at least until October.
That much about good planning.

Anyway - we went to the Zhongshan Park Station to catch a train that would get us to a Line 1 interchange. This is the staion of Line 3 and 4 (Line 3 is also named the "Pearl Line" because it is above ground). The station for Line 2 is seperate and underground. Line 3 and 4 share quite some tracks.



(Yes he is just spitting onto the tracks. ;-))

 

Labels: China, Shanghai

We went to HongQiao on Saturday, which is basically the other end of the town. Pudong is our "end of town". On both sides of town is an airport. HongQiao is the old airport and is used for domestic flights only. Pudong is the new one and is used mainly for international flights.

Anyway - the (currently) last station of line two on the way to HongQiao is "Zhongshan Park", which is also an interchange with Metro Line 3 and 4.

Carrefour opened a new store in a shopping centre directly at the metro station a short time ago:


When I came to Shanghai one year ago Carrefour (a French chain) had a lot of imported food that suits Europeans. This changed by now and the stores don't offer more than a small "imported food" corner.
Metro on the other hand offers now a lot more imported products and it is nicer to go shopping in there.
Normal apartment buildings in Shanghai look like this - check all the a/c exhausts:


A big Korean BBQ restaurant:


There are plenty of these in town.

I'm still not sure what the English sign means - maybe "Jawbreaking"?

 

Labels: China, Shanghai

I'm currently thinking about how to publish my pictures better. I currently use flickr but I'm not sure if it's worth it to switch to the Pro version (You can find my flickr-Pictures in the sidebar).
The reason is quite simple - I heavily use Picasa from Google and I love it. The now also offer a Webgallery but I need an invitation from Google for that. I applied for that one week ago but got nothing until now.
Not sure if I have a realistic chance to get that this year...

It got hot this weekend. It's currently only 32 degrees but the humidity is very high again. We decided to use the a/c now regularly. :-)

It is really not so much about the heat - it is the humidity that is annoying. This also is the cause for a little lake on our balcony (one part of the balcony is only for the outside parts of the a/c).

Most people here have at least one a/c at home and most taxis have one too, though some taxi drivers don't like to use it because of the fuel consumption.

So even the buses need some extra cooling now:


The external a/c spill a lot of water on the streets and you have to watch up that you don't get blown over by the hot air they create on head level.

The scooters you see here are actually all electric or LPG scooters. Only these are allowed - scooters that use normal gasoline are illegal.


Electric bikes are the most common transportation way:


You will realize that these pictures have been taken in Pudong because of all the trees and wide streets. It's an older part of Pudong and only very few foreigners are there.

This is a typical neigbourhood convience store:


There are thousands of different little shops in town and quite a few are open 24/7. Normal shops are open until 10 pm 7 days a week.

I also must admit that we went to a German restaurant today again for brunch. :-)
It is named "Max und Moritz" and is on Pudong Avenue nearby Dongfang Road. It is better and cheaper than the Paulaner Restaurants and it also has much less drunk Chinese tourists. It also looks like a normal German restaurant. The brunch price is 188 RMB but it is "buy one, get one free" and the variety is nice. Beer is not included though... 

Labels: China, Shanghai

There could be some problems with my blog at the moment because I'm playing around with server-paths etc.

I hope I will solve my own problems soon. :-) 

OK I switched now my main domain witt-24.de to the subdirectory that I used for this blog. Now all my domains are directing to this one blog and nothing else.

I also got me some new domains tonight - it was a special offer because soon 1 Million .de-Domains will be registered. They don't work at the moment because it will take some time until all DNS-Servers know them.

Negative effect is now, that I have to move some directories right now because of the changed master domain...

Labels: China, Shanghai

Yesterday was the official firework for the SCO-Meeting. Due to the haze the result was not very good and it was shorter than the testrun on Monday night.

Hopefully another one will follow, because I didn't get it very well on video. This also because the police closed the whole area around the firework.

More here:

http://shanghaidaily.com/art/2006/06/15/283212/Barrage_of_fireworks_greets_SCO_leaders.htm

Labels: China, Shanghai

Surprisingly it's raining again and this also brings wounderful haze...

Anyway - no ferry service anymore due to the SCO-Meeting.



Instead some fancy little police ships are on the river with flashing lights. Also every street corner and house is guarded by police now.

 

Labels: China, Shanghai

If you ever wonder what I'm doing tonight (not that anyone would care) - I'm watching the Korea - Togo match in Chinese TV (CCTV5, the state sports channel). I don't really understand the comments though...

 

Labels: China, Shanghai

I have a fantastic night view today:





It was never so clear and bright before - the view is perfect. 

Labels: China, Shanghai

Even in Shanghai fancy limousines can be found - though the import tax must make them extremely expensive.

This one was parked in front of the Jin Mao Tower/Grand Hyatt Hotel.

You can see the driving range with some restaurants in the back. There is also a nice "Tony" restaurant where you have a view to Jin Mao.

 

Labels: China, Shanghai

This "historic" street scenery of Shanghai is under the Urban Planning Musuem. It looks quite OK but the ads in there destroy a bit the looks.

You can find it under People's Square and it seems as if it will be expanded soon.



 

Labels: China, Shanghai

This is the Fiat Sina in the "Ferrari" Edition.

Price is around 80.000 to 90.000 RMB. 

Labels: China, Shanghai

As promised here is the paper:



I sadly have neither name or phone number of the policeman in charge so that I can't contact him. 

Labels: China, Shanghai

China Railways recently added also the English name of train stations to the tickets - this way also foreigner have a chance to find out where it goes to. Though "Meilong" is not very helpful for somebody like me, because I don't know that this somehow means "Temporay station as a replacement of Shanghai South Railway Station". Something really stupid is the fact, that you have to pay an extra charge if you want to buy the return ticket at the same time.


The hotel get's an extra bonus for not being able to read my passport. My name is not "Christian Deutsch". "Deutsch" is my nationality - "German".

But anyhow - who cares?

 

Labels: China

We went to a nice restaurant for lunch on our first day - it actually has some kind of decoration:


This is one of the famous local dishes - lake fish in vinegar:


There are two kinds of fish that you can order/get. One has many little bones and one not. Luckily we got the one with many bones so I passed for most parts.


This is one of the local beers, that we drank from fashionable plastic cups. 

Labels: China

Some of you may know that the new football stadium in Munich is named "Allianz Arena". The changed the name now for the World Championship because Allianz is no global sponsor of the FIFA.
Because of that the "Allianz Arena" is now in Shanghai!

You don't believe that? There is the proof:




It is currently under construction and will be finished for the TV-Transmissons from Friday on. It has been built next to the "Nextage" Shoppingmall (Chinese name: BaBaiBan).

Absolutely fascinating what ideas some people have. 

Labels: China, Shanghai

The town government officially goes crazy. Every tree on Century Avenue got these fashionable little lights and and additional green big lights:


They also built some "fake" flower islands on the pedestrian ways. This simply means that they built a stone circle on the walkway with some earth inside. Then they put in some flower pots. Advantage: Deconstruction takes only seconds.

Some more traffic education is available now:


Always remember, that pedestrians are bad and cars/buses/trucks are good. 

Labels: China, Shanghai

I'm preparing for the weekend and there is a lot to come - it's
football world championship!

The funny part about this is that it is in Germany and I'm a German
living in China. It finally is "nearby" but I moved away just in time.

So I (and many other Germans) will watch it at the German Centre in Shanghai:

http://www.china.ahk.de/chamber/shanghai/events/details.asp?ID=667

Some German beer and food is nice from time to time...

And I made some tips to check if I have any idea about the whole thing:

http://shanghai.ixpat.com/?p=worldcupgame

I also got a notice yesterday from the police about the upcoming SCO
Summit here in Shanghai. They tell us to "decrease going outside" and
to "not open windows and doors at certain times" and so on. I will
post a picture of this later.

Also our compound management will clean the whole building walls on
this weekend. It of course has nothing to do with this.

They also finished the painting of all these old buildings around.

Labels: China, Shanghai

 We passed a train service facility where many steamers stood around - they all seem to be out of service for a long time.

Labels: China

I just ate the last piece of my birthday cake.

This is a "Black Forest Cake" made in China, which is somehow funny. 

Labels: China, Shanghai

 This one shows some typical scenes of China along the railway.

Labels: China, Shanghai

 

Labels: China

Got back from Hangzhou Sunday night and I'm checking the pictures.

This is one of the train car "Attached 3":


Better than this one:


I seem to have problems with Picasa - it only uploads one of the two pictures. If this doesn't work I will upload the missing one manually. 

Labels: China

Two recycling specialists chatting:


A specialized truck (look at the height of the load):


"I was a traffic light."


"I was a Motorola factory."

 

Labels: China, Shanghai

I walked a bit around nearby the metro station and there were some interesting signs at the main road:




Somebody must have had a lot of time! 

Labels: China, Shanghai

For my German speaking readers - there is a new blog from a German student in Shanghai. Quite nice and the view of the town is of course a bit different from mine. ;-)

Labels: China, Shanghai

I'm going to Hangzhou this weekend to enjoy my birthday outside of Shanghai. It's a "little" city (1 million people) city nearby Shanghai.

The train there will take 2 hours and we chose the "hard seater" (no classes in China).

I went until now only one time by train in China, and that was to Nanjing with soft seater.

Some pictures from this trip follow now.

The train in the train station of Nanjing:















The train station from the outside - looks like a brand new airport:

Inside the train station. This one is really futuristic and looks brand new:

The layout is somehow crap in this post but I can't get it better. This is definitly no WYSIWYG-Editor.

Labels: China, Shanghai

OK so I live next to/in the CBD of Shanghai. This also is one of the
main routes of transportation and because of that also the main route
for any government guests.
The police likes to close roads for important guests - and I read just
now that this will happen tonight.

(I didn't see that yesterday - maybe came online during the evening.)

So I will better stay at home tonight...

Edit: Stayed at home, was not much better. There was a big firework show which made our windows shake pretty badly. I couldn't hear anything else than that for 20 minutes. But it was nice to see all the tourist boats on the river without them moving. The apperantly closed the river for other boats and only allowed these sightseeing boats.

Next week (7. to 9. of June) will be the college entrance exams.
Thousands of young people try to get a good result so that they have a
realistic chance for one of the few college places.

Job chances are bad without a college degree so their parents try to
do everything to get them into college.

Which means my chances to get a taxi on this day are not very high.
Maybe I can get one with an unlucky number plate. ;-)

Then in the following week another meeting is held in the CBD.

I don't get any leave but I live there and will have real fun trying
to get a taxi.

Labels: China, Shanghai