Category: Shanghai
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Look Like a Shanghai Girl in Six Easy Surgeries
Go into any antique market here in Shanghai and you’ll find plenty of reproduction posters featuring the famous “Shanghai Girls” of the 1920s and ’30s. These were calendars and advertisements for products like alcohol, cigarettes, soap, and so forth that featured qipao-wearing beauties with pale skin, pinned-back wavy hair, and a gentle demeanor. The Shanghai…
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Cai Guo-Qiang: The Ninth Wave
One of the things that I have not done nearly enough of during my almost two years (!) in Shanghai is go to the many art shows that pass through the city. I often intend to and then don’t make it, or only hear about them when there are two days left and it’s a…
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The Cronut Comes to Shanghai
I’m a little surprised at how far behind Shanghai has lagged in opening a cronut (I’m sorry, a Cronut™) shop. In New York, the birthplace of the croissant/donut hybrid, cronuts are old news: the inventor of last summer’s trendy dessert has already moved on to pushing his other creations, like an ice-cream sundae in a…
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The Billfold: The Cost of Living in Shanghai
I’m a loyal reader of The Billfold, which describes itself as simply “a site about money.” There’s some personal finance stuff—how to save for retirement, why you should know your credit score, what goes in to buying a house, etc.—but most of the articles are less predictable, and some are downright quirky (last week they…
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LA Review of Books: City of Reinvention
I took a short break from the LA Review of Books China Blog this spring, as I had conferences to attend and a dissertation to write, but I’m back now and returning to my schedule of posting there once every month or so. My latest post, a review of Amy Tan’s recent novel The Valley…
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Bookshelf: And the City Swallowed Them
Late one night in July 2008, a 22-year-old Canadian model named Diana O’Brien died in the stairwell of her Shanghai apartment building after being stabbed more than 20 times. O’Brien’s assailant was Chen Jun, an 18-year-old migrant worker from impoverished Anhui Province. Like O’Brien, Chen had traveled to Shanghai without proper papers, hoping to wedge…
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A New Act in Shanghai Security Theater
As I said a couple of days ago, there’s a much more visible police presence on the streets of Shanghai these days, particularly on major avenues like Nanjing and Huaihai Roads. The increased patrols started in the days leading up to Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin’s visit last week, and it seems that they’ll now…
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A Brief Encounter with the Chengguan
Shanghai is enjoying some absolutely glorious spring weather right now, and since it’s not likely to last long, I’m trying to savor it while I can. I went for a walk after lunch today, passing fruit stands filled with mountains of newly arrived pineapples on every block I traveled. Though I’m not a big fruit…
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Shanghai Event: History in the Headlines
Next Thursday (March 13), Jeff Wasserstrom and I will be speaking at lunchtime event hosted by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Shanghai. In “History in the Headlines: How Does China’s Past Inform the Present?”, we’ll be putting current events in a long-term perspective, which is something that both of us do in our respective writing…
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It’s Shanghai Litfest Time Again!
The Shanghai International Literary Festival is a bright spot in the middle of Shanghai’s cold, damp winters. This year’s festival kicked off last night with a very swanky cocktail party at the Glamour Bar on the Bund. (The fact that I was willing to put on makeup, heels, and stockings on a Wednesday night is…
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 