Leaving Gifts at Ikea

On a recent trip to an Ikea in Shanghai, we discovered this toilet. It's in one of the model apartments that Ikea constructs so that city residents can envisage exactly how well Ikea furniture might fit into one of the city's notoriously small apartments.

 What stirred my interest, however, were the toilets in the model bathrooms. The seats had been removed and a perspex cover placed over the toilets (see above). One can only deduce that at some point in the early days of the store, someone (or possibly unknown someones) must have left a "gift" or two in one of these. Perhaps they had expected the toilets to be flushable. One can only imagine that the seats were also removed so as to neuter any lingering desire for visitors to leave a deposit.

Red Star

Distracted by the gleaming office towers and Bladerunner-like backdrop of contemporary Shanghai, one often fails to remember that China's emergence from hard-assed dictatorship of the masses was not actually that long ago. Walk about a bit, though, and you will be abruptly dragged back to the past. Doorways like this are now either collectors pieces or replicated en masse; this one is an authentic gate that still guards the entrance to an alleyway in the city centre.

Firecrackers!

One of the delights of living in another language is coming across signage that can be initially perplexing. This one, as you might already have guessed, concerns the use - or not - of ran fang, or firecrackers.

Mobile Entrepreneur

Entrepreneurship is all around you in Shanghai. This fellow is a regular in our neighbourhood, just one of the many people eking out a living by trading in the streets. The quality of the chairs is quite good, but rattan is the only product on offer.

Four Socialists

If you look closely, you can see the outlines of four famous socialists. Alternatively, this Cultural Revolution-era wall painting is a fading monument to four men whose ideological leanings caused the deaths of millions and millions of people.  

Fu Xing Lu Bar

 A new Belgian bar on Fu Xing Lu in the former French Concession. The kind of place to read a weekend paper in its entirety and gently shitfaced while doing so.

Another of Rock Man's Rocks

This gives a sense of the dimensions...and the potential cost