Shanghai China Snippets Observations about living in Shanghai and China in general

I get the key and wander into the locker room

It’s quiet in the fitness centre, not more then 5 people (men and women). (more…)

How many smiles do you see on a typical Shanghai day.

Does the 24 hours shop assistant smile at you when you buy your late night milk. Does your apartment complex guard curl his lips when you greet him in the morning.

(One of the 3 guards in our building actually always smiles and waves friendly, the other two have mastered the “You nod at me but I can stare through you anytime as you are completely non-existent to me” skill.)

In general smiling is not a standard practice but it’s about to change, at least if you can believe the [tag]China[/tag] Daily.

China seems to be in the middle of a smiling deficit, but one group in [tag]Shanghai [/tag]is doing what it can to turn those frowns upside down.

According to a recent online survey by Extrawhite, a maker of chewing gum, a quarter of the people in China never smile or smile less than five times a day. The survey found that only 2 per cent of Chinese people are willing to smile at strangers.

To reverse this situation, a group of 40 students from the Humanities and Communications College of Shanghai Normal University launched a team of “smiling volunteers” last month. Their technique is simple enough: they smile at people.

Triggered by a chewing gum maker….we’ll all smile in the near future when we fight our way into the subway, handle elevators that are closed in front of us, bump into cyclists that are color blind and pick up the small change from the counter when your hand is still hanging in the air to collect the money.

If you like to become a volunteer, it’s not that hard,

The only requirement is that they have sincere smiles and helping hearts, and are always ready to assist other people.

All you have to do actually is being a human being. And now go outside and just do it, SMILE.

From the Daily Prop.

A guest post by my good friend Hide who went through some ordeals getting his deposit back. It includes some useful tips on how to secure your deposit before you leave your Shanghai apartment.

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Author Hide
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Are you going to stay in Shanghai city?
If so, you should watch out for a “disease” rampant in the area.

Nowadays there is a tendency that [tag]Shanghai[/tag] landowners don`t pay you back a deposit when you leave an apartment.

It is unbelievable that everyone in the city connives at those embezzlement.

They will apply a variety of tactics, either switching off their mobile phones, not answering your calls, tell you that they are outside Shanghai so they are not available etc, all for evading their responsibility- paying back your full deposit.

Therefore as a result, you will end up loosing the deposit because you have to leave there anyway for your next busy life.

In order to get your deposit back without such troubles, please keep in mind the following before you decide to leave an apartment,

• Never say to your landowners that you have to go back to your home country. Instead you better say you decided to move to your friend`s apartment in “Shanghai city”.

  Let him know that you still have plenty of time to chase for your deposit.

• Before you sign a contract with your landowner, carefully look at the contract whether it clearly mentions about details of a penalty and a deposit amount he or she pays back to you, “EVEN” when you must leave “before” duration of your stay you set previously with your landowner”.

  And “Add one sentence specifically that a landowner must pay back your deposit for example “one week” before your leaving date, otherwise some sort of penalty occurs.

• Get not only their telephone number but also their home address phone number so that you can chase them when something unpleasant like this happens.

Hope you can leave for your country with a good memory of your china stay in your heart ! Do you have this kind of experience in Shanghai or any other cities in China? Please share.

It’s almost 2 years now that I live in [tag]Shanghai[/tag].

In those almost 2 years I have been mildy frustrated with service, bemused over the way traffic behaves and amused about the image Shanghai tries to display to the outside world regarding laundry hanging outside. I have been a lot more probably but I don’t want to bore the reader to death.

Shanghai is a modern city, at least that’s what I read in the [tag]Shanghai Daily[/tag], what people back in [tag]Holland[/tag] tell me who have seen some skyscrapers in the news and today I realized it is indeed getting more civilized too.

They have placed new bins. Nice design, clear instuctions and finally a place where I can dump all my old batteries in the appropriate hole.

STOP, you hear me, STOP [tag]JAYWALKING[/tag], STOP IGNORING THE RED LIGHT.
Why all the fuss you may ask. A new career incentive system has been implemented.
Part of a traffic copper’s evaluation will be based on the number of [tag]fines[/tag] they hand out during a week
I predict the competition for handling busy intersections in [tag]Shanghai[/tag] will increase as one day of work will make you chief in a month.

Fines go from 5 [tag]kuai[/tag] if you keep your mouth shut to 50 [tag]Renminbi[/tag] if you lash out at your best friend.

Source: SH Daily

Walking down Shaanxi Road, crossing Changle Road, my eyes noticed a shop sign saying “Garden Books”.

The interesting part is that it didn’t seem to bear any Chinese name. Just Garden Books. In a city that is pretty much Chinese that was a pleasant surprise as it might mean that they would have books and books and all in English.

I know, I am somehow still old fashioned in the sense that I prefer reading books and papers while holding the paper.

They just opened and it seems they have a nice selection of books as well as Western magazines and newspapers.

The address is 325 Chang Le Rd Shanghai.
(To be more precise it’s on the corner of Shaanxi Lu/ Changle Lu)

And unfortunately I am not getting any free books out of this.