"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...

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

Finally I'm in Shanghai. Well, actually I've been here for aprox. 12 hours, but I haven't caught up with the web until now. This is definitely a change of scenery for me! The architecture amazing, the food is disgusting (seriously) and people look at us like we're from another planet. Try taking the metro with René and watch the Chinese as they look in amazement (or fear) at his viking-like red hair and beard. 

We left DK on monday night at 03.15, by bus for Hamburg airport. Everything went fine until the airport personnel found my zippo lighter which I, through several hours of rational calculation, had decided that I would use to start a bonfire in the planes center aisle, and then invite people over to roast marshmallows... My masterpiece of a plan was intervened, and I persuaded the nice germans to let me bring my trusted zippo onboard, as long as I broke it appart in four seperate pieces. Fire turns out to be a big no no, but they did however let me bring a pointy fork, 90 sleeping pills and a 30 centimeter long needle (don't ask). All of this after I made my stuffed racoon come to life and jump at the lady behind the counter... This is a true story.

We boarded the plane on time and headed for Heathrow airport near London. Here we had four hours before boarding the huge Boeing 747 to Shanghai. 

This is probably the coolest thing ever!!

Hellbilly Country Punk!!

Coffee... √ 

Croissants... √ 

Bob Dylan... √

Bad breath... √

Headaches... √

= A good night out...

I'm sitting at Under Masken.., again... Eating breakfast and getting the obligatory caffeine rush of the day. Buena Vista Social Club is playing on the stereo and several women in their twenties are sitting, in pairs of two, at the small circular tables discussing whatnot and drinking lattes.

I'm trying to connect the dots of yesterday. I went to a concert on my own, to experience a musician I had never before seen. Joe Buck (Yourself), brought in from Tennessee, turned out to be an interesting piece of strange. This hillbilly turned hellbilly put on the most intense show, that I've witnessed for several years! With just his acoustic guitar, a bass drum and rusty vocals, he managed to captivate everyone at musik caféen. Wether people were offended by his attitude (the majority of the crowd were there to see the lead singer from "Bli Glad's" new project) or they screamed along to the hook of "Evil Motherfucker from Tennessee", Mr. Buck definitely made an impression.

After the concert, Joe did some personal artwork on his cd for me (probably the same thing he does for everyone ;) and then I did a private show for him. I was thrilled to see this hellbillys reaction, when I swallowed a length of sowing thread and pulled it out of my eye socket. It was legendary.

I then met up with some of the guys and got even more drunk, visited three bars, fell 1,5 meters and kissed the concrete with my (now soar) hip, and got to bed at around four... All in all a great and entertaining last night out, in the city of Århus. Only three days to go now...

Que; the document of "Info"...

It has arrived! The Holy Bible of the uninformed traveler. The document of cultural learnings and Shanghainese mystique. My very own "do it yourself guide" to the land of the followers of Bruce Lee....

It's the Lonely Planet: Shanghai City Guide. 

I've already gained valuable information from it's pages. Qouting a British Shanghai resident from the 1930's; "If God allows Shanghai to endure, he will owe Sodom and Ghomorra an apology"...

I'm not sure if Lonely Planet enjoyed their stay in Shanghai, but I'm almost certain that this quote is the reason that the Beijing guide is rated higher on their sales list.

Oh, and they have an entire chapter devoted to drinking :) Only seven days to go...

Sign of Life...

Back from the dead.., or at least from the "Mountains of Slow".

A week ago I returned from 10 days of great snowboarding in Val Thorens. France really takes the cup when it comes to anti-service!  I think I spent more time waiting on food and beers, than I did on actual snowboarding. Perhaps it's the thin mountain air, or maybe the majority of french newborns get dropped on their head after birth. In any case, I'm in shock. I even witnessed the local bartender at the sports bar, "rinse" our beer mugs under a cold running tap, and then fill them up for the next customer. He looked baffled when I asked him how they pronounced "soap" in french... Sitting at café Under Masken in the aftermath of way to much booze and snow, I am still trying to recover from the mononucleosis I picked up in France. I'm paying the final bills, sending those vital emails and I'm mentally preparing myself for the chinese perils awaiting.

But everything is fine : ) I'm leaving my apartment on saturday, and the visa just arrived by mail today. Everything is going smoothly.

I can't wait to get to a country that says it like it is (see picture :)

P.s. The french bartender at Under Masken in Århus is definitely not slow. Just for the record ;)