I’ve been in Shanghai for four years now and, if you are my friend J, that’s how long you have spent listening to me moan about how there is no good live music around these parts.

To be clear, by “live music”, I mean “live music that I like”.   Which, if you’re me, is the only kind of live music that matters.

Over the past six weeks I have been a bit obsessive in my hunt because I really felt like Shanghai had thrown down the gauntlet of “You think this is bad?  Wait till you go to Place X”  There is an abundance of plankton swimming around like big, talentless fish in a small musical pond here.

Now to the stuff I like

1.    House of Blues and Jazz: Straight in at number one.

I don’t know if I’m rating the venue or the band but who doesn’t like to watch boys soulfully strumming their guitars?  And, as ZZ Top so eloquently put it: “Every girl is crazy ’bout a sharp dressed man.” Never mind the  fact that I have a crush on three-quarters of the Mike Null band – the only one I’ve seen play – it’s the feel that they have for the music that is so easy to get on board with.

You go to some clubs and you feel that most of the acts have memorized all the cool riffs and you can almost make out the performers’ lips moving as  the count down the notes till they can bust out their “improvised” solos.  Mike Null and his band play the blues with feel.  Like it’s what they’re about.  It’s a little bit dirty too.  Enough to make you think you probably wouldn’t want to be in the same room as your parents while you watch them play.

What they wear: Suits.  Crisp.  Sometimes shiny.  Always smart.
What they sing: The promo stuff says blues, jazz and funk.   Who am I to argue?
When they play: Tuesday to Sunday (till the end of November)
Thing I like the best: All of it.  They are that good.
Thing I ‘m not such a big fan of: That they’re off soon.

2.    Carlton J. Smith – Park Hyatt
I’ve just been to see him tonight off a couple of pretty heady recommendations. And they weren’t wrong.  This man can sing. I spent much of the night willing him to do Al Greene’s Let’s Stay Together or Otis Redding’s My Lover’s Prayer.  Two of my favorite male vocals ever.  He’s that good.  And not in the oh-I’ve-been-in-Shanghai-so-long-any-old-guff-blows-my-mind-now way, either.  I mean this dude’s voice is soulful and brash and caressing and smooth in all the right places.  I was really pleased he lived up to the hype because I got there thinking, “There is no way you are going to be as good as I’ve heard”. But he was.  He really was.    There was also a band but I didn’t notice them because Carlton fills up the stage.  He is very, almost alarmingly, high-octane – but it works.

What he wears: Velour.  Black Velour from top to toe.  “Velour” is a word, right?
What he sings: He mixes it up.  Some Marvin Gaye, Beatles, Maroon Five peppered in amongst is own original tunes.
When he plays: Monday to Saturday (till February 2010)
Thing I like the best: Has to be the vocals.  That voice…I think if he sang the instructions to them,  he could get people to do pretty much anything.
Thing I ‘m not such a big fan of: Pudong (ew) and the Park Hyatt (92 floors up and zero view – that doesn’t seem very smart).  And the patrons are beyond posh.  Not so much “get down with the getdowns” as “Another cucumber sandwich, Nigel?”

3.    Cabaret – Gardenia Girl (I just gave her that name)
This one  is a toughie because the first time I went, I loved it.  Apparently the singer that night was just a stand-in.  She was really good.  She had this smoky, achy voice that I really, really dug.  Think Rachel Yamagata (*swoon*
) and you are close to what she sounded like.  She was backed by a band.  J and I went and were so into it we went again two nights later when the regular girl was back.  Back and very underwhelming.  I think that’s all I have to say about that.  So, back to Gardenia Girl…

What she wears: A gardenia in her hair – Billie Holiday style.  How can you not adore that?
What she sings: The usual standards, from “What a Wonderful World” to Alicia Keys’ “Falling”
When she plays: Never, unless the main chick is ill.
Thing I like the best: I had zero expectations from Cabaret.  So everything was a pleasant surprise.   Except the drinks prices.  Those were a nasty surprise.
Thing I ‘m not such a big fan of: The regular girl.  Sorry.

Honorable Mention

Redbeat.  Seedy?  You betcha.  Good anyway?  It used to be.  I used to love me a little bit of RedBeat action on Friday or Saturday nights when I couldn’t be asked to struggle with make up or dress like anything other than a hobo to go out.   The band before – with the three girls up front and the four guys jamming in the back – really worked.  It was fun and although they weren’t as vocally proficient as any of my top three, they made up for it in performance and charisma.  Plus Vincent’s guitar solos for Zombie and Sweet Child of Mine were so cool it was easy to regress to  1992 all over again.  The last two times I went, though,  the band seems to have undergone  a dramatic facelift.  Hello new faces.  Goodbye charisma and sparkle.  Boo.

Farewell good Redbeat band.  I loved you well

What they used to wear: The girls: very little.  The boys: hard to describe.  There seemed to be a lot of dangly strings and interlocking buckles involved.
What they used to sing: 80s and 90s pop and rock.  Oasis, Guns and Roses, Roxette, Tina Turner – a marvelous mish-mash
When they play: Who cares?  It’s not the same anymore.
Thing I liked the best: Cathy.  My favorite of the all-singing, high-kicking trio of girls.  She always gave us a shout-out when we arrived, even if she was mid-song.
Thing I ‘m not such a big fan of: The interlopers new people.

So my blouse was ripped open today. In the mêlée that is getting off the bus in rush hour traffic. Happily, I was wearing my best bra. The pink one. On the down side, that was not the “big reveal” I envisioned when I bought it.

Yeah. In my reverie, it wasn’t Angry Old Chinese Woman that was disrobing me.

I’m off to Hong Kong in a few weeks and have decided to take the train. For a few reasons. One of them is that I’ve never tried it before. One of them is that Shanghai – Beijing – Shanghai by train is one of the easiest trips I have ever taken. No drama, nominal foreplanning required. Just turn up at the station, buy your ticket and snooze your way to the capital. Yay, the train! But the most important factor is that I am a terrible flyer.

Last time, on the flight back from Hong Kong, we had really freaky turbulence that caused one of the hostesses to scream and scurry the length of the aisle to her seat. More than the turbulence itself, the sight of one of the airline staff losing control took my confidence in flying from zero, to negative figures.  High negative figures.

So me and J are going on a bit of an adventure. It looks like we can get the swish deluxe sleepers and still make a pretty good saving over the flight prices. Which I think will translate into being able to stay in a nice hotel.   Yay, nice hotels!

So, what should I know about getting to Hong Kong by train?

Here’s what I would like.  For those expats who send out endless tweets about how they are singlehandedly bridging the gap between China and the West to get over themselves.  Right.  Over.  Their.  Deluded.  Selves.

I don’t think your swilling cocktails for 100RMB a pop at Pretentious Bar X is doing anything to bridge the intercultural divide and the fact that you’ve managed to convince yourself that it does, explains a lot about how people get sucked into joining cults and  jumping off buildings in the belief that the Great Grand Wizard will grow them a pair of wings before they land.

Last week, I thought about joining a volunteer organization. Truth be told, volunteering is not something that comes naturally to me.  Usually, I kinda have to know you before I am inclined to help you.

But I need to store up some major credit with God right now.  I need him to do me a huuuuuge solid and I figure that if I start volunteering, and giving back a little bit, he’ll be more predisposed to helping me out.  Yes, of course that’s how it works.

The logistics are still a nightmare and it may or may not be something I end up doing – we’ll have to see.  But it did make me think.

In the very unlikely event that I am ever asked to write a book on how to bridge the  Sino-Western Gap, you can expect just two, pithy chapters.

Step 1.    Stop fricking talking about it all the time.  It is tedious.

Step 2.    It’s not “helping” if you’re the only one who’s benefiting

On that note, here are some organizations in this smoggy, we’ll-catch-up-with-the-West-in-no-time-even-if-it-kills-you-us city that could probably do with a little help:

• BEAN Shanghai
• Project Hope
• Shanghai Red Cross
• Hands on Shanghai
• Shanghai Disabled People’s Federation
• Lifeline Shanghai

Hi Blogitita,

It really has been too long.

What is on my mind today?

Too much. A lot of it family-related stuff, and therefore not really for here and now. But I was thinking about pedantry a little bit yesterday.

We were in Chinese class and the teacher, who, for the record, I adore, said:

我忙的时侯不胖。

Translation: When I am busy, I am not fat.

So I asked her, what does that mean? She looked me straight in the eye and simply repeated the sentence in English. Except she articulated it like it was two sentences this time.

When I am busy. *exaggerated pause* I am not fat.

Oh, ok. Much clearer.

Now I like my pedagogy…pedagogical. I really think clarity and rules and linear thinking are the best ways of learning language. This is not everyone’s way of thinking, I’m sure, but it’s my way so let’s call it “The Right Way”, just for fun.

You can’t say, “When I am busy, I am not fat.” As a fatty I feel obliged to point out that being fat is something you first become and then be. You’re not fat today, skinny tomorrow. Even if you were busy for a crunching 3-week spell, you’d have to have been pretty porky before to get fat in that space of time. Or if you were thin before, you’re not suddenly fat now. You make the transition from skinny to slim. But you’re still not fat. You’re busy. And gorging yourself on Quality Street chocolates and coke (o’cola, not o’caine) because you need the sugar rush, the caffeine high, the focus to keep going through an incredibly stressful time. But you can’t just “be” fat. It’s not like getting struck by lightning. It doesn’t come from nowhere. Laoshi, I reject this sentence. So, did you in fact mean:

When I am busy, I don’t put on weight.

Or

When I am busy, I lose weight.

Because your offering – When I’m busy I’m not fat – that don’t mean diddly. It’s just a garbled mélange of nonsense words. Much like this blog. “Garbled mélange” is fun to say, tho, isn’t it? I will see if there are more opportunities to use it more today. But it’s bugging me. You can tell because after the two weeks that I have had, the fact that this is the thing that is dancing on my brain says something about how I have letting go issues.

I’d like to blog about something more substantial (as huge as the fat-busy thing is) except I haven’t read a newspaper or talked to my family or rang any of my friends or watched a TV show in about 10 days.

Is that swine flu thing still about?

I’m going to a barbecue today. It is sooooooooo far away. About 45 minutes in a taxi. 45 minutes or a kerjillion dollars, depending on how tight your budget is and how you measure taxi rides. But I do dig the chick who is hosting it – she’s a grown up. Lord knows those can be hard to find in Shanghai. And I’m 30, you know.

1. Hoarding.  If it’s tiny, if you’ll never miss it until it’s gone, if you got it eons ago from a boy you’re no longer sure you didn’t imagine into existence, hold on to it. 
2. Saying goodbye to beauty sleep and getting used to large dark rings under your eyes
3. Having a nephew who is gorgeous and funny and able to make all the other stuff seem inconsequential with one gooily mispronounced syllable.
4. Walking away rather than putting up your dukes.
5. Planning extravagant holidays, that you’ll probably never be able to afford, with people you love.
6. Giving up on make-up during the sticky Shanghai summer
7. Giving up on make-up altogether.  
8. Learning what the cool kids are saying in Chinese slang.
9. Letting your phone run out of credit and not topping it up for a week.  The silence will be sublime.
10. Finding someone who is not freaked out by your special brand of “weird” – then never letting them go.

What do you recommend?

“A **** company in **** district of ****, is looking for native English copywrites to write copy for *****”

That sounds so like me!

“…The candidate should come from England, the USA, New Zealand, Canada, or Australia.”

Ah, not so much, then. It’s the last sentence that really makes my heart sing. Because they’re saying No darkies, basically. Which is fine by me, China. Honestly. Despite the fact that I am blogging about it. Doesn’t mean that I have a problem with your blatant discrimination or the fact that you assume someone with a light skin or a certain color passport is automatically more competent or superior. I mean, have you seen my people on the dance floor? Or do you just watch us swim?

I wonder what’d happen if only a bunch a bunch of Maoris, Aborigines, Native Americans, Black Brits and Black Americans applied. But China, join us in the 21st century some time. The water’s mighty fine. Wait, what century is this? It is the 21st one, right? Or is it the 22nd? Certainly not still the 20th – feels like that one’s been going on forever!

Ties in nicely with what my sister was saying about education in the West. I remember learning how to give speeches, spell words like rhododendron, miscellany and diarrhoea as well as how and when to use a semi-colon*** by the time I was 11 years old. And that was considered normal in deep dark Africa where dangly-breasted women shun bras and apparently eat their own children.

Now you see kids (and grown ups) in certain countries using words like “carn’t” and “lyk” without even a smidgen of irony. But these are the people that make the “Preferential Candidate” list because their passports are pretty.

Though, to be fair: my passport is pretty minging. Bottle green, Zimbabwe. What were you thinking?

***The best way to use a semicolon is…sparingly.

I always thought you had to be one of those long established, extravagantly priced, we-don’t-really-serve-your-kind-here restaurants to be snooty and dismissive. Not if you’re The Fat Olive’s maitre d’ (if that’s what they’re called these days). Nope. Then you just wait till you’re barely past the embryonic phase of the restaurant’s life cycle before bringing out your alter-ego: Captain Curt.

On Thursday afternoon, we made a reservation for Friday night, for 3 people. Come Friday afternoon, both my would-be dinner companions canceled on me. Since I still planned on being hungry around 7, I called The FO and told them it would just be me. Below is as close to a transcript as we are going to get:

Me: Hi, this is Susan James (That’s right, I fake name restaurants) I’d booked a table for 3 people tonight
Phone Guy: Yes…
Me: Well, it’s just going to be me – I’d like to change it to a table for one
PG: I’m sorry, we don’t take single person bookings
Me: Sure, but I’m not making a booking, I’m amending an existing booking. You had already reserved my table, right?
PG: Yes, but I can’t hold a table for 1.
You: Oh, you won’t have to hold it, I’m pretty punctual. I’ll be there at 7.
PG: I’m sorry, but we don’t do that-
Me: Let me get this straight: If I come there by myself, at 7pm on the dot, you are saying that you’ll refuse to serve me?
PG: No, of course not. Of course not. Of course not. Of course not.

That’s right. I watched Frasier. I know that dining alone, though a little bit sad, is well within the bounds of proper etiquette.

On to the good stuff. The FO’s staff, the ones who don’t answer the phone, are fantastic. One waitress, Linda, was really charming, and friendly. She even knew all the ingredients in baklava (the other dessert choice was semolina). The description of baklava sounded truly awful but I was so impressed with her upsell I ordered some anyway. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t like it. But that’s was nothing to do with the food, it’s just what happens when a person who hates nutty or sweet things orders a dish made of nuts and sugar. Nicely done, Linda.

Service: Ashtrays were changed regularly. Desserts delivered promptly. We ended up sharing a table with another couple and between us we probably ordered about 10 glasses of wine. Two of those had to be reordered because the waitress forgot but both times she was very apologetic and, on a Friday night, it can happen to anyone.

Menu: Greek is not my thing so I really can’t say. Is pita supposed to be oily and bing-like in texture? I didn’t expect the bread to have been fried but it did taste good, despite my arteries’ protestations.

Wine: This was delicious. And at 38RMB a glass, it made it very easy to fall in love with all things FO. I was a little disappointed that they’d already run out of house red when we got there. Isn’t that kind of like George Clooney running out of charisma just before a date? Of the wines (Argentinean) they did have, we drank the Bodega Norton Malbec (38RMB) and the Lo Tengo (34RMB, I think – by this time we got to this one my note-taking powers had been acutely diminished)

Toilets: Sparkly, spacious and clean

Vibe: Mellow music. No frantic wait staff rushing around. You don’t have to yell to talk to each other and it feels like one of those scenes in the movies when a bunch of people are hanging out by the lake, there’s much laughter, merriment and clinking of glasses and then suddenly a body surfaces in the water and some shrieky drama student starts screaming. The corpse and hysteria bit, thankfully, didn’t happen. Just Morcheeba-esque tunes, the obligatory summery jazz anthem (Girl from Ipanema Pt.2,000,676) and people decompressing after a Shanghai week. We all know how those can go.
People-watching: Has a little of that self-congratulating vibe that I dislike so much about everything along the Bund. But the absence of a dress code – boys in shorts and flip-flops, girls in wafting summer dresses and cheery smiles – means that there’s a breezy balance between the posers and the…er…the non-poseurs.

Verdict: It’s nothing you haven’t seen before and they can probably get rid of the half used bags of cement piled up in one corner of the patio. But all in all I really liked the service. The prices are more than reasonable and there are worse ways to spend an evening than lounging around on plush white sofas drinking in the balmy Shanghai breeze and indulging a little bit of oenophilia with your friends.

6/F, Silver Court Building
228 Xizhang Nan Lu,
near Huaihai Lu

Reservations: 6334 3288

Five tips to help you hold on to your sanity and get a fair deal in the Shanghai property search.

1. The estate agent doesn’t care what kind of apartment you want.

This can be the most frustrating thing to come to terms with if you aren’t expecting it. So expect it. You’ll tell him:

• your budget
• the location you want to live in
• he number of bedrooms and bathrooms you expect,
• the minimum square measurements you want
• even the street you want to live on

He, with commission on the brain and a total disregard for your spec in his heart, will proceed to take you on a wild, incredibly hot and rage-inducing goose chase, showing you everything but what you actually asked for.
The way round this: Don’t blindly agree to meet the agent at his office so he can lead you a merry dance. Over the phone, ask him for precise details of each property he wants to show. If they are not exactly what you are after, don’t bother leaving the air-conditioned sanctity of home – he can call you back when he’s found something that meets your criteria.

2. Expat-focused sites AREN’T a good resource for good deals on housing

The apartments advertised on City Weekend, Emoo and Craigslist are invariably pitched at above market value. While these sites, and others like them, might offer ease of search (English listings, English-speaking agents) that’s the only thing they have over Chinese sites or walking into agencies. If you go the local route:

• you will get a much wider range of choice
• you can be a lot more promiscuous in your search by engaging several agents to look for a place for you at the same time
• you can get the local rate; not the you’re-not-Chinese-so-I’m-going-to-assume-you’re-loaded rate

How to do this: A combination of Dict.cn and Google Translate are all you need to get the ball rolling. Without being able to read a single Chinese character, you can still pinpoint addresses that have apartments in your price range by doing simple searches for the street or district name and the Chinese word for either “rent” or “apartment”. Then translate the results into your language. Of course, setting up the appointments is a little trickier. Trickier but still do-able. When my sister first arrived in China and I couldn’t get time off work to look for a place, she had to do it. She’d been in Shanghai about three weeks when I wrote down key phrases for her on a sheet of paper which she produced at each agency she visited. That’s how we found our last place. And, the apartment hunting lexis is tiny – you pick up the key phrases in no time.

3. Don’t be seduced by subway-adjacent properties.

They’re much more expensive than those only served by buses and not at all worth it. For a city that likes to bill itself as a kick-ass metropolis, Shanghai’s metro shuts down at a ridiculously early hour (10pm on average). Instead, find a property near the end/beginning of a popular bus route. One that passes by at least one of your most frequently visited locations.
How to do this – Set aside a weekend to just ride random buses. It’s a great way to explore the city, it’s cheap and it’s useful for harvesting estate agent telephone numbers as you ride through areas you wouldn’t mind living in. As you go, you’ll also learn a lot about the amenities – markets, gyms, supermarkets, bars, restaurants – and figure out what routes serve which subway stations.

4. Be demanding.

This is not the same as being rude or unyielding but there are certain extras that you should go ahead and ask for. It’ll go one of two ways: the landlord will say no (and you’ve lost nothing), or he’ll say yes, and you win. 50-50. I’ll take those odds. I’m a bit of a hoarder so I’m always keen for extra storage space – bookshelves, night stands, laundry baskets, coat racks, shoe stands etc. Right now is a particularly good time to be up front about your requests; it’s definitely a renter’s market.

5. Bargain like you mean it.

Not like it’s an annoying preamble you can’t wait to get out of the way. You see this all the time when you go to the markets: people paying the second price that they are quoted. As they fish out 500RMB for a faux-leather handbag with some historic dignitary’s face emblazoned across it, you hear the self-congratulation dripping from their voices: “Ooh, that’s only $X in real money.” Egads.

If the landlord’s haggling over that last 300RMB, tell him that the 3600RMB he’ll lose over a year by renting it out to you at your price is less than the thousands he’ll lose if the property stays vacant even a single month more. That’s logical and fair. Most people respond to that.