Så kom der lige en håndfuld stemnings billeder fra Shanghai. Ikke det store. Klokken er tre om natten og jeg burde sove, men syntes lige at jeg ville lægge billederne op.

Det her billede er taget i en park på en hverdag. Så er der dans og træning for alle de ældre.
Fantastisk mur ved Old Town. Jeg er vild med hvordan man forsøger at reparere hullet med store sten : )

Her har vi en improviseret vandhane fra Tai Kang Lu.

Jeg har fundet et sted hvor der er mos overalt. Meget grønt.

DISCIPLES of THE BEND + "HOW TO BECOME A CELEBRITY.., OR AT LEAST GET CHEAP BEER...".

Today was a very special day for me in Shanghai. It was the day that 5 of the worlds best magicians would perform at The Shanghai Art.., something of Shanghai. Never the less.., this was a great evening for me. When we got out of the cab, the 5 performers (including world famous Lennart Green, Shoot Ogawa and Rocco Siliano) were taking group photos in front of the theatre!

I had a brief conversation with Lennart Green (who is one of my favourite sleight of hand magic performers). It went something like this:

Kim: "Excuse me sir", "I'm a huge fan of you".

Lennart Green: "Ok".

Kim: "Can I take a photo together with you"?

Lennart Green: "Well of Course" (thick Sweedish Accent).

Kim: "I have all of your dvd's".

Lennart Green: "Do you have number seven"?

Kim: "...I thought there was only five.."?

Lennart Green: "There is seven..."?

Kim: "Ok"

Lennart Green: "...".

Kim: "Good luck with the show"...

Inside the lobby I showed a fellow magician a card trick, and within thirty seconds I had (unwillingly) gathered a crowd of twenty curious chinese people. It was nice to experience this eagerness to experience astonishment. (After the show (in the restroom), an elderly chinese man came up to me and said; "you forgot to  go on stage and perform". He had seen me doing magic in the lobby before the show, and thought that I was one of the performers. I asked him to say that to the people in charge of the event : )
The show was great (not thanks to me) an we went to Tai Kang Lu for Mojitos. It turned out to be a quite a many mojitos, beers, gin and tonics and brazillian coffees (you should try this... They're are really good). Brazi'es where recommended by Geoffrey the Doc, who specializes in herbs. I had a very good conversation with Geoffrey, about everything from asthma to logics. 

As allways, I ended up doing a lot of magic. This photo shows the owner of "The Bell" and her employee, trying to bend spoons with the power of their minds. 

"HE BANG FRIED MEAT..."

Ok. Tonight I had a great night out with my project group. We went for a nice dinner and some beer (I'm not mentioning the rice-wine that almost made me puke. Never doing that again).

We where let to out restaurant (tied together with ribbon and a beer in hand) by three lovely (female) team 13'ers. I don't know why, but they granted us with a plunger (this came in handy later when we got lost in this huge parking building. Rikhard fought of invisible enemies with it and tried to make it stick to our butts. Hence the name; The Buttplug. We eventually found a wormhole that let us out through the back of a cinema).

At the restaurant, they had the greatest menu card of all time!! I obviously ordered; "He Bang Fried Meat".

E. kept ordering aubergine since our food consisted of 80% chili. More beer please...

I brought Play-Doh.

We ended up on Windows Scoreboard to play dart. Rikhard almost had us thrown out because he put the plunger on the bar... How where they to know, that drunk norwegians wouldn't dream of carrying used bathroom cleaning equipment with them at social events..?

FROM THE ASHES OF BATTLES...

So... Battles last night. Great great concert!!

We arrived when the doors opened at about nine. I'd never heard of the two warm-up bands P.K.14 and Lava/Ox/Sea. P.K.14 had cancelled and was replaced by a crappy chinese band that everyone but me, seemed to love... 

But Lava/Ox/Sea turned out to be quite an experience. This mix of post-rock, math (-something) and guitar driven instrumental parts really drew me in. It was like attending a Dillinger Escape Plan concert performed by three shy chinese emo guys (this is supposed to be a compliment). You can check them out on youtube: Here

Or you can grab three free mp3 downloads from SmartShanghai.com: Here

It's all from live performances so the quality is pretty bad, but you'll get the idea.

Underneath is a photo of the band. You can't see them, but you can see the venue. It's called The Dream Factory and I love this place (except for the beer prices.)

Enter Battles. Guitarist Dave Konopka (left) and singer/guitarist/keyboard Tyonda Braxton greeting some fans.
I saw Battles last year at Roskilde, but it was cool experiencing them up close. If you look in the left side of the photo underneath, you'll see John Stanier's (former Helmet drummer.., I learned yesterday) characteristic drum setup. He actually stands up when he needs to hit that cymbal. Have a listen at the bands myspace: Here
A great concert and a bruised toe (after an unwelcome mosh-pit) later, we find Simon actually stretching, to hinder soar loins... I'm pretty sure Slash never stretched.

UPDATE: I just received a link from Joey, a nice guy I met at yesterdays concert. He's taken some really cool photos of the event. For an up-close look at what happened, click on THIS LINK. You have to scroll a bit down for the concert pics. Dude with glasses and the Jaguar is from Lava/Ox/Sea...

GAMBAI BAI BAI...

I just got home after a night filled with magic and the worlds largest mini-bar. I'm now preparing for the concert of the year (or at least my stay in Shanghai). "Battles" will be playing tonight and I'm looking so much forward to it! Kick-ass show at Roskilde so expectations are high...

These are pictures from where I had my gig last night. I'll try to get some video up soon. The two guests in the photo below kept wanting to have pictures taken with me, so I decided to have on taken as well. It's was "Gambai" night at the party. This involved all the chinese "pressuring" the expats (foreigners) into downing their drinks every five minutes or so. Too bad I couldn't join in. 
This last photo is taken at around four in the morning, in a bar called Windows Scoreboard. An american guy talked me into giving a close-up show for the bars staff. I ended up doing magic in the smallest kitchen in the history kitchens... They didn't understand a word of what I said, but I think we all had a great time. At least I finished the evening drinking gin and tonics on the house : )

"Foreign Mud..."

Sunday! The day I've been eagerly awaiting... Last night is a bit blurry, but I remember having great mojitos and white russians at The Bell in Tang Kai Lu (spelling), doing magic for the owner of Windows Underground and Windows Scoreboard (sports bars with good and cheap beer), and then playing darts with three english skaters while being heavily sedated. Pointy objects do not go hand in hand with alcohol. Luckily no one got hurt.

I got home at around 5 this morning, after René and I had made a ritual offering on the altar of McDonalds. Sleep...

When I woke up i decided to spend the day on my own. I visited a great little restaurant called the Noodle House. This is by far the best food I've had so far here in Shanghai. Great vegetables and chicken served with noodles. Mmmmm... Not the, now frequently, expected fat and bones. 

5 stars out of 5 from me.

Just next to the Noodle House is a small café. It was really nice just sitting and relaxing while reading in my lonely planet about opium and mob-wars. Did you know that opium used to be referred to as "foreign mud"? Neither did I. This was one of the few places where I've actually felt that I could relax in this often chaotic and stressful city. The owners weren't hiding their dreams of an "American" style café. I Love NY stickers on the cash register and episodes of Friends playing on a big TV. But non the less this was a quiet and peaceful place. 
 

Back on Track...

Finally I'm back with more news from this nation turned upside down. A lot has happened since my last update. I have met a lot of nice and very exciting people here in Shanghai. I have done some magic, and I've been invited to do a couple of shows during the next month or so. I've had a very cultural experience while visiting IKEA... I had pasta! In IKEA, the chinese really do sit ind relax in the exhibited furniture and some people actually fall asleep in the beds.
I just needed to include this photo. As far as I could see, it's a packet of condoms. "DAD. Effect is very good". I would like to talk to that company's brand manager.

I have challenged myself, for the past couple of weeks, on the chinese food issue. My new rule to live by is called; "5 Days of Feeding Frenzy" (self-titled). The idea is, that I have to try out a new dish or odd-looking chinese "cuisine", at least 5 times a week. I already hate myself for this idea, but I must admit that I've also tried some really great things. Imagine a lump of unbaked dough, stuffed with brown sauce and onions... That was on of the good things I've had  : ) The picture below is taken at a local soup kitchen. They wouldn't have lasted five minutes in denmark : ) But it's actually a good place.

This photo is taken in my favorite labyrinth of Shanghai. It has the coolest little cafés and the worlds, probably, most expensive coffee : )

I got lost a couple of days ago and accidentally found myself in Barbie-land (you'll stop laughing when you realized I've signed you up for their weekly news letter and "dress-up" offers). Four floors of Barbie-mania!! It was the most disgusting place that I've ever set my foot in... So I left

Still Alive!!

 I haven't forgotten you at home. I'm experiencing troubles with uploading my pictures and film. This could be caused by the merciless chinese censorship, but is most likely due to a french and lazy web connection. We'll hopefully get a new and improved connection some time tomorrow.

Until then.., goodnight.

"I Kina Spiser De Hunde"

We have finally gotten our assignments! This is great news since we're all eager to get started on these projects, after twelve days of settling in here in Shanghai. Our Homebase is also starting to come together quite nicely. Tomorrow I will join the rest of the team and hopefully finish the paint job that was started two days ago. Everything is great, except for the fact that Shanghai is fucking cold this time of the year! As you can see on the picture below, we use electrical heaters... As of now, we only  have two of these..., to heat up all of the Homebase. Yesterday we were all wearing jackets and whatnot to stay warm. Kristian is on the job though, so we'll hopefully be getting more heaters in the beginning of next week : )

While searching for apartments, we ran into this fellow. He had just set up his "shop" in the middle of the sidewalk. No walls... (ok. this is creepy... I'm lying in bed while writing this, and the aircondition just started making spooky noises. It sounds like something from an old B-movie. Like a humming thermine... I'm gonna get me one of those). Sorry. No walls or desks. Just his (seemingly) hand build machine to sharpen peoples knives on. This was so cool. I especially love how the sparks fly off of the blade of the knife.
Haha! This was a really funny sign I came across earlier today. This appeared to be an insurance company of some sort. If this is their standard policy, I'm definitely signing up for it. 
Yesterday I had dinner at a local restaurant and while the waitress was serving us, she noticed that I was looking at a small dog outside the window... "Do you like dogs?", she asked me. Forgetting possibly every rumor I ever heard about chinese cuisine, I said yes... That mistake I'll never do again...

The fish actually has nothing to do with this update. I just felt really sorry for them and at the time they amazed me.  
Signing of I can mention that we finally found an apartment today. Great place very close to Homebase. I'll see if I can find the time, to give you the grand tour tomorrow.

Oh, please check this guy out. Super cool: Raymond Crowe Shadows

As they say in China; "Goodnight".

The Most Secret of Secrets...

I am currently sitting in the Lu Wan District of Shanghai, in a small and cozy café. I'm the only guest, my Latté cost me 35 rmb (expensive in China),  now they charged me 25 rmb for 20 cl. of drinking water and I think the employes are laughing at me... But this is a really nice café and I feel so relaxed : )

I was actually looking for "Tailor's Wu's Custom Clothes" (what it says on the bizz' card), and I was wandering helplessly around the streets. Even the chinese have a hard time reading adresses. Seems as if there's no logic in the numbering of buildings. I found a street that went from 2 - 47 and then it skipped to 15 and upwards again... When I finally found nr. 48, four different buildings insisted on being nr. 48!! I finally found Wu's, and then he tried to rip me of... He tried to charge me for a suit, more than I originally paid for it in Denmark : )  Silly tailor. 

It's with mixed feelings, that I explore the city that surrounds me. On one hand it's fascinating to watch the constant growing buildings, that construction workers build on day and night. On the other hand it´s terrible to learn that chinese families are evicted on a daily basis and moved to other parts of the city, against their will, just so the government can build shopping malls, hotels and record breaking tall skyscrapers.

After taking the above picture, I walked through a narrow alley and was amazed at what I found! This was a fantastic maze of old buildings with a mix of traditional chinese tea-houses, art-shops and cafés. I could spend hours just walking around and breathing in the atmosphere. I feel like I have found something very special here. The most secret of secrets in Shanghai : )

The narrow streets were filled with lights and palm trees and in the picture above, you can barely see the tops of the buildings from the previous photo. Two very different sceneries, so very close to each other. So sad that this place might get destroyed, when the building-lot steadily expands, to make room for another shopping mall. I'd better enjoy it while I can. 

Earlier today we had a lecture with a professor from a Tibetan university. I can't pronounce nor spell his name, but he specializes in Tibetan culture and linguistics. He is also currently working on establishing the first Tibetan animation studio. The english name of this studio is: Oriental Pearl Electronic Technical... I wonder who translated that for him... He mostly talked about Tibet's history and he invited us to come to Tibet and work on a project. After the lecture he gave us four documentary dvd's about Tibet. Nice guy. 

To Bite a Turtle...

I've finally seen chinese people practise Tai Chi (at least I think it was) in the streets of Shanghai! Just like in the movies : ) Except these elderly people weren't doing it in the park. They were doing this at seven o'clock in the morning, in front of a huge shopping mall with  western advertising on the building front. Talk about culture clash! A thing to notice is the bamboo-scaffolding in front of the burberry sign. It's just cool to walk by these things and realize, that the chinese construction workers trust their lives with mother natures finest. I keep thinking of the old Dalloon spring roll commercials : )

This morning we had a presentation of Shanghais creative business culture, given by people from the Danish Consulate and a local design company. It was nice getting some insider  info on the industries that we'll be working with.

I had turtle for dinner tonight... Tasted a bit like very tender veal. But it was weird that it was served with head shell and legs. Here I am picking my teeth with it's toe nails. No wonder I have so much spare time to practice my card skills...

By pure coincidence I discovered a very secret room at our homebase. I think it used to be nightclub. It was dark with light shinning in through holes in the walls. I found this weird and scary bust. Scary!

I went to see five possible apartments to move into today. More about that tomorrow.

Magic Show + Video

The hour is late and I am tired.

It's been a long day. René and I went to Pudong, which is about half an hour away from where we live by cab. I had been asked to do a show and some walk around magic for about 150 danes at a "fastelavns fest" (says carnival in the dictionary...) held by "Det Danske Hus i Shanghai" (an organisation for danes living in Shanghai, with the focus on arranging danish traditions for the settlers). The people were really nice and I had a great time there. I did magic for both the grown-ups and their kids and René caught it all on tape. I've spent the evening on editing a 3 minute video for you to watch.

Goodnight world...

Oh... after the show we got seventy (70!) "fastelavnsboller" (special cakes, according to my sleepy head) to share with the rest of the team. We didn't meet up with everyone tonight, so due to the lack of a refrigerator, I have hung them (big box in a bag) from my fourth floor window so that they stay cool.

Magical Rantings...

First of all. I'm trying to upload a video compilation of the past days, but the chinese web Gods are not with me it seems. It's as if the web speed gets slower day by day. But I'm crossing my fingers for an update later tonight.

I was planning to write about saturday nights daring adventures in the city of Shanghai, but that will have to wait for another update, since I just had a very unpleasant experience. This might sound like trivial to some of you, but it actually pissed me of!

I had found out about something called Magic Bar at the Cloud 9 shopping mall near changning lu and zhongshan park. Their website promised an entertaining evening with close up magic, non-alcoholic drinks and snacks. So I travel by cab for about half an hour to get to this place. I'm eager to meet like minded colleagues from china, passionate about doing magic. It wasn't the fact that the skill levels of the working magicians wasn't David Blaine'ish. I actually enjoyed the first two minutes of my hosts magic. But then it turned ugly... He produced (not by magic) a price list of their services, and it turns out that for 2.000 to 20.000 (VIP's) renminbi (betweeen 1800Dkk to 18.000Dkk) you can become a student of this magic bar. I told them that I was just passing through, that I did magic and how I wanted to meet magicians in Shanghai. The boss (a mean looking guy) literally yelled at the magician who was serving me and told him to stop showing me magic. Then I was told that I could finish my soda, and that they wouldn't speak to me anymore. The boss even ordered the nice magician to give me back the call card that he had gotten from me.

I was nice and polite when I told the senior manager, that I would write a very negative review of their bar for scandinavias largest magic magasin. She didn't look happy when she found out that it is read by the approximately 250 scandinavians that will be in China in four months for the world championship of magic. Even if they don't post I just hope that they'll be nicer to next guy who comes around.

On a positive note, I can inform you that I have my first magic show in Shanghai Tomorrow :) It's for "Det Danske hus i Shanghai" and it's a mixed ages show.., so no rude humour or cruel jokes. This is a free gig, but I'm hoping that I can make some good contacts through it. You'll get a personal review tommorrow.

Live Footage

Hi Guys.

It's been a long day, but I'll come back to that in the next update : ) I'm on my way out the door, too visit a really cool underground nightclub in Shanghai. Had a talk with the manager last night about doing magic for their guests, so I'm gonna check out who comes there tonight. So it's not called drinking. It's called "reasearch"...

I bought a digital camcorder yesterday, so from now on you'll both get still photos and video updates, from time to time.

This is the smallest video camera I could find, and it was also the cheapest, so don't expect HD quality or anything...

It has a "blog" setting (perfect!), which can hold 23 hours of footage. I'll try to keep the updates to a minimum for your sake. Those of you who has seen The Dall Tours tapes knows what I'm talking about ; )

Breakfast Buddies...

So... Getting up at half past seven is new to me.

The bright side of it all is that people in Shanghai eat great breakfast. At least compared to the eyeball and bone crunching lunch I had two days ago : ) This one really was good. Poached  eggs, cofee, great noodles and some really tasty dumplings!

I had breakfast with René (left) and Gorka. We had a talk about last night and I was told to visit this great restaurant that Gorka went to yesterday. It's funny, and contradictory to what I said last night, but I already feel safe when it's comes to the Chinese kitchen...

...on my way out of the hotels kitchen, I found this in the corner... Back to reality ; ) 

Now we're going to get the first official glimpse of our new homebase. I'll give you a heads up later.

Second Upload of The Day // Comments...

It's now possible for you to leave comments without creating an account. 

Video Upload + Alcoholic Tea

Today was tough to get rolling. René and I overslept due to the jet-lag and missed the sightseeing bus. More precisely we overslept with six and a half hours... We finally managed to hook up with the rest of the team at the Shanghai Urban Planning Museum. This is pretty impressive, due to the fact that Shanghai houses more than 17 million people and we didn't know where to search.

I found a way of uploading my pictures without tripping over blogspots digital obstacles. From now on I will upload the as a small video file, whenever I have the time to do so. I hope you enjoy it... (Depending on you connection, it might take a short while to load).

While exploring the city, we met some really nice Chinese students who offered to take us to a traditional chinese tea ceremony. We declined, due to our search party, but shared emails and got a rain-check on the ceremony. Later we found our own tea bar. After downing a cup of Chinas finest, we noticed how our legs felt tingly and our head started to buzz. Definitely buying a six-pack of that tea tomorrow...

After finding the rest of our team, we visited the museum. This was quite an experience. This was a six stories tall building, with a main focus on showing the vision of Shanghai as it may look in 2010 for the World EXPO. Every level of the building exceeded the previous in displaying beautiful models of Shanghai (see video above). The models do depict a more cleaner and greener Shanghai than what is real though.

I had dinner at KFC (very cultural, I know) to avoid choking on bone pieces and eyeballs. This, however, made me wanna try traditional food again tomorrow. Nothing like grease and french fries... After eating, I went to the dvd shop. Here I did my first magic "show" in Shanghai. After five minutes of trying explain the inner secrets of the word "magic" to the shop owner (he kept bringing me Michael Jackson albums), I produced a deck of cards. I did, Probably, my worst performance of 2009. After that he brought me a copy of "Cirque de Soleil". I guess this was a nice way of calling me a bozo...

Tomorrow we'll visit our Homebase for the next three months. Looking forward...

"Seriously. It could've been dog"... part 3. The pics...

  

  

"Seriously. It could've been dog"... part 2.

Ok!! I'm jet-lagged and now I'm also seriously irritated with blogspot... I can't control the placement of the photos that I upload on this blog. I even tried looking into the source code (Jaja!!) but that just reminded me why I'm not studying math.

I'll just upload the rest in a separate post (take that blogspot).

Stepping out of the plane and into Shanghai airport was somewhat of an experience. Just by looking at the walls and the carpet, you got the feeling that you had just slammed the door on democracy. After being checked at the immigration counter, I was opted with a choice. I could now decide how I wanted to rate the service of the officer, who had just stamped and approved my passport. I was offered four different smiley face buttons... I decided to go for the green and very happy one, considering the recent news coverage of China...

After a one hour buss trip to our hotel (for the first two weeks), René and I decided to have a look around town. Within the next five hours we managed to get lost in the subway, buy special edition (very good quality) dvds for 9 Dkr. a piece, have a near-death experience in a cab (major adrenalin boost) and I think I ate dog...