Tattoo Time!

Sorry Mummy...I got another tattoo....but so did Alex, it was all his fault! Heehee. Not really.

We had both been planning to get tattoos here in China and we had asked about it in Nanjing but there were only  couple and I happened to pass by one when buying stuff for Nayi at Confucius and it looked so seedy. I wanted to get a clean tattoo thank you very much. Through a series of unfortunate events we ended up in Shanghai, but every cloud has a silver lining I guess and since Shanghai continued to be fairly lame, the silver lining was finding a professional, English speaking tattoo parlour downtown at NanPu Bridge. 

Front of the shop.

So we went over to investigate and get quotes etc. about a month ago. The place looked very clean, very professional and it was managed by a guy called Dylan from Drogheda no less! So with good english, impressive portfolio and clean surroundings we were happy to make an appointment at this studio for the end of April. 

The lounge area. 

The tattoo room.

I like to get tattoo's from where I've lived, so far I have one from Belfast, Bournemouth and Paris. This time I went for a tattoo based on traditional chinese tattoos, but with a little me twist. The traditional tattoo is a carpe fish with water surrounding it, to tell the tale of how the carpe swims upstream and up a waterfall and when it gets to the top, it turns into a Phoenix. It symbolises wealth and prosperity. As most people know, I don't actually like fish/sea creatures at all, they're really gross and wriggly and just generally mingin'. But I really like the tattoo of a carpe and it has also been simplified to not look so fishy. The water has been replaced with clouds, which I've seen on lots of the architecture here in China and that Matt helped me design. 

And put it all together and what do you get? 

Alex also got his first tattoo here, a design he co-designed with an illustrator friend, on his right wrist, to represent the films he has completed and where his ingenious stems from! 

Brilliant Photography...again. 

Alex and Ting getting down to business.

The transfer.

The Ink.

Discussion with Ting and Dylan.

The Finished Piece.

Me, Matt and Spidey messin'

Nerves

Putting the transfer on.

The beginning. Ow.

Blood!

Did it hurt?

Alex was very relaxed and very cool about his, even though it ws on his wrist/inner arm...a very sensitive place to get a tattoo but he handled it like a man. Got a little hot at one point and his arm swelled up but he was grand. 

I, on the other hand, even though I already had a tattoo on my inner arm and should have been ready for the pain, was in complete agony. When she started with the outline it hurt but I was handling it...kind of. Then she got higher towards my underarm and it was getting excruciating! After the outline was done, she had to darken some lines. Ow. THEN she had to shade it in, more than I was expecting. AND THEN she had to do the darker shading. By the end I was sweating, wincing, flinching, shaking and even let out one little arrrrrh!!! But I survived and it looks cooooooooooool. 

Now alls we gotta do is wear cling film around our arms in this blistering heat. 

Elderly People

The lives of old people in China amazes me. People in China generally seem to be more social than the people in the west but old people appear to have this amazing social life with other old people. When I leave my apartment in the morning and walk towards the gate I pass several groups of elderly people gathered together just having a nice sit down and chat with each other, laughing and smiling. Then at lunch when I walk through the streets looking for somewhere to eat I see groups of them, mixed with younger people, playing an animated game of cards or mahjong. In many apartment blocks and public venues there are small public play parks/gyms for the communities to use and I have mostly seen the aged use them. They can work a cross trainer better than I can! In addition, since coming to Shanghai, out here in the Technology Park there is a large square; a very clean, pretty arena-type place that, by day, is deserted (but where we now like to take our lunch breaks to soak up some Sun) but by night, as we walk home, the square is filled with people, mostly 40+ I’d say, dancing away in unison to various beats (including No No Limit by 2Unlimited, no joke). I know my Nanny goes dancing at her British Legion nights, which I think is wonderful and I would love if so many more elderly people had something like this that they could take part in, actually, not just the elderly but all people from a community! A bit of light exercise would be good for us all. It’s outdoors, it’s free, it’s fun and it’s good for you. Note to self, find square in Belfast and encourage all Clonlee residents to attend. Power to the pensioners. 

Stealthy Pap-ing

Extras

And just a couple of other things I wanted to show you. 

1) Pig snout.

2) Massive Nayi chillin' and illin'

Drinking in Shanghai

Good news! We have recently been told that we can return to Nanjing as out work in Shanghai is coming to an end. Very happy. There was just one thing we still hadn’t done here in Shanghai, which we had been talking about for a long time and that was going out for one night into Shanghai center, no matter the cost, it’s something we had to do.

Last night was that night out! And it was pretty good. We found a couple of websites online which lists all the events happening in and around Shanghai and from signing up to there mailing list every weekend you get an email about different things that are going down. This week I received and email featuring experimental/punk bands in bar/club ‘Yu YinTang’.

Since this is our last weekend in Shanghai we decided to go to this gig. When we first got there the outside was a lot dingier and rough looking than the photos online lead to believe. GREAT! We love grot and we love dank. It was pretty cool to go to a rock bar, I haven’t been to one is so long. Their drinks list was pretty extensive and cheap! Only 20RMB for a Budweiser. Unfortunately cider doesn’t exist in China so I was reduced to drinking beers all night, with one special glass of whiskey and lemonade at the end.

The music from the first couple of bands was…interesting. The advertisement wasn’t joking when it said ‘experimental’. The support band I remember most clearly, was comprised of a little female singer and 4 guys, all of whom didn’t really have an instrument specialty, they were just swapping around. They were playing short outbursts of song that were not really in any particular tune and the girl screamed, but not in a way I’ve heard in music before. There was even a guy on the violin…I’ve never seen someone shred on the violin until now, he destroyed that thing. And on top of all this, there ‘thing’ was, I guess, standing with their backs to the audience the whole time. RUDE!

The band that followed was the headliner, I think. No one really introduced themselves…or maybe they did but they were Chinese. ‘Fading Horizon’ was a lot better, more tuneful and in sync with each other. Pretty good.

Suddenly after the band played, almost everyone left…What’s going on? I could swear I read online somewhere that there was another band playing after, ‘Boys Climbing Ropes’ who I had a little listen to on MySpaceMusic and sounded wicked, which was why I really wanted to come. Guess I was wrong, since everyone was leaving but the bar was open to 2am so we’ll just hang out till we get tired and go home. Gradually more and more western people gathered and another band started setting up on stage at about 1am. What’s going on? Is it the band I thought I read about? YES! Yes it was, I wasn’t crazy! We hung around for about another hour and half until they finally began there set. This band was made up of 3 Canadian guys and a TINY little Chinese girl who sang and played some electronic instrument like a keyboard. Excuse my ignorance. So many people had turned out to watch them, more people than came before for the headliners. And after they palyed it was clear why. They were bloody awesome and the really got the crowd going. It was a nice gig to be at cause it felt really intimate, that most people there were their friends and everyone was just playing. Great fun.

On a side note, we have had several conversation with the Chinese guys from the studio asking about if the Chinese get drunk and stumble about like us British idiots do and they said, oh no no, we just get tired. BS! There were plenty of wasted Chinese people at this gig. Maybe because it’s a different group of people. But still.

All-in-all though, a good night out in Shanghai having a casual drink and listening to some good (and god awful) music. Done.

(Totally stung by the taxi driver though…100RMB! Ouch.)

Tattoo Taboo

Tattoos cause mixed opinions everywhere, no matter what country you’re in but I was surprised when I was met with such a firm opinion from the Chinese that if you have tattoos you are a gangster. I don’t think they were calling me a gangster but strongly standing behind that tattoos aren’t for people like us, only bad men. It was a strange opinion to meet. This wasn’t an opinion of whether they personally just did or did not like tattoos. ‘Tattoos are for gangsters’. Fact. Everyone was joined on this opinion making it, in my mind, not a personal opinion but a prejudice that is instilled in them from their culture. Another reason I should keep my body covered in layers during the sunny days. 

Traffic

 

 The roads in Nanjing are busy all the time, full of cars and public buses whereas in Shanghai, where we live in the sticks, the roads are a bit less crowded but still busy enough. We can’t for the life of us figure out the rules for the lights here. When there is a green man for us to walk and a red light for the traffic to stop everyone continues to drive…faster, round corners, buses especially. It’s as if were being told, OK you can walk now but we’re not going to make it easy for you! And other times when the red man is up and the traffic lights are green the cars are sitting perfectly still. Arg. I’m a good jay-walker, I’m up there with the best, only nearly died once but these roads SCARE me! 

Shanghai Weekend

This weekend we received a visit from our Producer back in Nanjing and with him he brought Matt! And because of this we were all kindly put up in a hotel near work! Lush! Breakfast and everything! Omelette, yoghurt, fruit, cereal, toast! We were living like kings! Saturday was spent at work but with an extra long lunch with Calvin and GND people. In the evening Calvin and Aaron kindly took us downtown into Shanghai. We went to People's Square and grabbed some food, extra sugary food, that is apparently very like English Chinese food, I wouldn't know, it's what I'm told! After dinner we made our way towards the French Concession area to grab some drinks but our leisurely walk was interrupted, deliciously interrupted by a surprise DUNKIN' DONUTS! I haven't had a Dunkin' Donut since it was in Belfast and that was a long time ago! I only got two though, I had just eaten dinner so I wasn't at my optimum performance level. 

As we continued to walk, the amount of western people grew and grew until the Chinese were the minority. It was very strange. The area was very European, full of bars with clever names concerning Western life, names Nicola didn't quite grasp. Ven-ice. Brow Sugar. Rendez-Vous. 

At 'TMSK' we had some familiar alcohol, on Calvin. Mojito, G&T, Cosmopolitan, Tequila Sunrise. Only a few cause they were bloody expensive, even for the west! 

Sunday brought another early start with more yummy breakfast. On the way through our apartment block we found a deserted kitty! It was so young and it was crying so much for its mummy but we had no idea where it came from and if we left it, it would wander out on the road and get squished by cars and bikes! But we had to leave it and it was clawing the sh*t outta me. I may have rabies now.  

I know this is a horrible picture of me but it's genuine concern for this kitten. :(

Anyway, into Shanghai independently (again :D) to find the Art Quarter as a friend form Uni told us there is a rising art scene in Shanghai and we should find it!

And here it is! Seiji, we found it!

 It took a while but we found it eventually but not the animator exhibit we set out to find. 

This gallery has a strangely large, heavy door. Art installation?

Shanghai, for some reason, seemed so much bigger this time. I'd never realised how massive the buildings are and how many of them they are. I thought London was big, actually I used to tell people Belfast was big, but they're nothing compared to Shanghai! The apartment blocks just go on and on and on into the sky! I guess there are 20 million people living in this city, they have to put them somewhere and they can't all live in a Technology park like us. 

There was some cool graffiti around the art quarter too.

Here is my 'Gillian waz 'ere 09' graffiti, which I did 2 weeks ago in some dirt and it's still here!

After getting some culture up by ZhongtanLu we headed back to People's Square and chilled for a bit on the grass and actually did a little bit of drawing, the galleries must have inspired us or something. 

Then onto chocolate land.

Yes...A Hershey's shop!!! Next to a KFC! Next to a Starbucks! Next to an Ajisen Ramen! Whoo! 

I discovered the macro close up tool on the digital camera...

We walked around for a bit in the Neon Metropolis that is Shanghai by night. 

There is a Tom's World arcade here too, just like in Nanjing. I used to love the dance machines in arcade, but Asian ones are bloody confusing. I didn't have a clue, couldn't get past the 1st round. Lame. 

Alex and Nicola found fun on drumming game. Apologies for sideways recording! Check out their timing though!

Nicola has a weird obsession with eggs. She went crazy when she saw this guy!

So crazy in fact, it had to be videotaped. 

And just a little extra...if you're looking for a nice gift for a lady friend, don't forget to check out Ming Jewelry, it's where all the chavs get their bling. 

Bai bai for now!