Remembering the former glory of Cold China - with products

February 25, 2009: As this blog nears its death-knell i think it only appropriate to return it to its glory days. And of course that can only mean products.

But this presumptuous "blog" downright bloggy enough to "link" back to its own blog posts? Hell yes, they're all down the left side... However, the hardworking folk at Cold China (so hard-working they post once a month and then change the dates back to when they should have been posted) wouldn't be so lazy as to serve up refried "fashionable" horse beans from 2007. No sirs and madames. Behold, despite their surly countenance and resistance to being photographed, your intrepid correspondent got up in the face of four BRAND NEW PRODUCTS!


First up, we can see, we're actually not talking Chinglish here, but rather Chileans and their dodgy English. Because everyone knows the Andes are really known as the Ands in Chile. And "mouthfeel" is just one of those words that doesn't translate well from Spanish. This lack of guidance as to its advantages almost ruined this rare drop, with its fine bouquet of methylated spirits and ever-so-subtle undertones of rotten grapes.



The makers of the above two products are definitely clued-up cats, globally - anyone who's been to the UK can confirm it does indeed smell strongly of petroleum-derived edible lard.


I must say, however, the Appetizing Salt Soda line of biscuits really lives up to its name, especially with a hefty smear of vegemite. A worthy candidate for rebranding as "Australia Smell Biscuit" i say.

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Getting weed in Shanghai

February 5, 2009: I met Ima as i hurried past his flatbread shop on a beer-buying errand, stopping in my tracks as he called after me, "Hashish marrrwana." (the rrr is supposed to indicate a rolled r).

Well actually, yes please.

I'd been waiting almost 2 years for this, though never expecting it to happen. He took me into an upstairs room decked out like an Arabian desert tent with middle-eastern carpets and pictures of Xinjiang, his homeland, covering the walls. There we puffed on a couple of fat joints and drank bowls of Xinjiang tea for an hour or so before i left to continue on my errand. Once i reached the street however, i was seized by the thought of getting locked up if the police noticed, and i made straight for home, which thankfully was just around the corner.

I needn't have worried of course, given Ima's willingness to shout out "Hashish marrwana" on the street outside his shop whenever a foreigner walks past. As he pointed out the next time i saw him, the police in China barely even know the existence of "Big hemp", much less know it by the names the rest of the world knows it by. Almost nobody in China would even know the smell. The smell, that is, of the buds being burned. As some of you may recall, we discovered last year, a non-potent version of it grows freely in Gansu, both in fields entirely dedicated to it and also in ditches and wasteland alongside major roads, where it is considered a kind of easy-to-grow sesame seed. (Actually hemp and sesame are both represented by the same Chinese character.)

His weed isn't cheap by Chinese commodity prices - it's about the same price as in Australia or the UK - but it's strong enough. Ima claims "everyone" (that is, everyone except all the women) smokes it in his hometown. Judging by Ima, those stuck down here in China Proper wouldn't tolerate simply being without this essential element of their culture... I imagine from now on, the second-last month of our time in China, it will always be quite easy to obtain weed, as the supply lines are undoubtedly direct from Xinjiang, and people are coming and going from Xinjiang in large numbers every day by train. It would be very easy for him to simply get whatever friend-of-a-friend who was coming down to Shanghai next to pack a pack of the green stuff, and i'm sure many, many Uighurs - or other indigenous ethnic groups who i'll call collectively Xinjiangis - have such supply lines open.

That next time i saw him happened to be my 25th birthday - today (well, it should've been today so i'm backdating it). Until then it had been quite possibly the shittest birthday ever, spent reformatting my computer and re-installing windows. Then there was Ima's weed cafe for lunch. Not only did he supply weed, we ordered Xinjiang food for munchies, the main part of which turned out to be one of the best ideas i've ever seen in cooking. It was pieces of mutton and vegetables (not particularly special but delicious nonetheless) in a deep plate of soupy sauce - and here's the crucial bit - with a flatbreat submerged in the sauce...So fuckin good - the question i have now is: Why don't more people put flatbread at the bottom of juicy, sloppy dishes? In addition to all of this, he whacked on some music video VCDs that alternated song-by-song between fascinating lute-based Xinjiangi songs of love and loss filmed among the spectacular scenes of that land, and random 70s and 80s funk/soul - not your average Marvin Gaye or anything, but real random stuff that no-one's heard for more than 20 years. He told me these songs were popular on Xinjiang radio way back when he was a kid. Globalisation ain't no new thang eh.

A glorious monument to overproduction

February 2, 2009: Kenty and Tess have come and gone, and their admirable touristic fervour led me to experience the Real Shanghai, from a foreign visitor's perspective, for the first time.

First up was Yuyuan, the Mandarin's Garden, right near my place though i'd never gone inside.

Nice fishes they've got there.

From that rather desolate collection of crazy paving and courtyards (this may be a bit unfair as the day was very cold, but with its courtyard walls it's certainly designed to receive minimum sun) we hit up the world's highest observation deck, in the World Financial Center or whatever that massive building known as The Bottle Opener is actually called.


(Its non-identical 'twin' tower, the Jinmao Building across the road, is one building i really like.)


My cheapness meant we didn't go all the way to the top deck at 474 metres, only to the 430 metre one. Kenty, who seemed keen to spend RMB in a way somewhat resemblant of foreign sailors in Old Shanghai (the analogy doesn't actually extend to cheap hookers) wanted the extra 44 metres, and Tess seemed nonplussed, so my convoluted pseudo-mathematical protestations about the exponentially-decreasing significance of additional height beyond the pollution line won out.

We got there about half-past four and the sun was still above the above-mentioned pollution-line. However the astonishingly lame, compulsory, "Intro Show" on the basement floor - which consisted of a one=metre scale model of the tower embedded with LED lights, spinning around and around - was there to save us from seeing the city in its full, sunlit glory. When we reached the observation deck the mists were rolling in and the sun had all but disappeared into the haze.




Nonetheless we had spectacular views of the Sim City known as Pudong. (For the uninitiated that's the east side of the river, which has been almost entirely constructed since the mid-90s.)


Next up came Kenty's moment of glory, the Shanghai Tourist Tunnel. I'd never even heard of it, and his introduction to the idea of us going began, "I know it's crap but...." But despite the bitter wind, my scepticism, and Tess's continuing nonplussedness, he nonetheless emphasised repeatedly his burning desire to see it, due to its being there for tourists. And despite the total fluke required to actually find the entrance, tucked away in the forecourt of some big hotel, and despite its consisting of only 2 elements - WackyWavingInflatableArmFlailingTubeMen and more of those surplus LED lights from now-defunct Guangdong factories (I guess this is what's respectfully termed "the early signs of over-production"), i think anyone who says the Shanghai Tourist Tunnel is crap just isn't opening their mind (or maybe camera lens) long enough.



Bravo kenty, for speaking out for the unpopular cause.