Lost Heaven, the Bund, Shanghai

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Creative fruit platters.
Lost Heaven, the Bund, Shanghai.
Text & Photo © C Nestor, JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

A seduction of the senses at first step through its doors. Deep ruby red against black lacquered wooden furniture, plush table settings and good Yunnan food. Outside, around the corner in a short stroll, the beautiful lights of The Bund after sunset. It is little wonder as to what elements make Lost Heaven an appealing dining venue for that just perfect romantic Shanghai night out.

Good thing, the place, has an address. Continue reading “Lost Heaven, the Bund, Shanghai” →

Visiting Volvo Group R&D, Shanghai

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Visiting Volvo Group, Trucks Technology, Advanced Technology and Research, Shanghai, China.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

On the second day of our visit in Shanghai, we had the pleasure of meeting with the Director of Advanced Technology & Research at the Volvo Group Headquarter in Shanghai. If it is confusing for a Swede to keep track of the difference between Volvo Cars (owned by the Chinese Geely Holding Group) and Volvo AB, very much still a Swedish company, it is even worse for the Chinese, where a representative from Volvo Group Shanghai told that she often got questions from relatives if she could help them buy a Volvo car on staff discount.

Today’s meeting was with the Volvo Group.
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The Nordic Centre at Fudan University, Shanghai

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The combined delegation of Management and Organisation,
and the Centre for International Business Studies (CIBS) of the School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, at the Nordic Centre, Fudan University, Shanghai.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

It was a brief early morning walk from the Crowne Plaza Hotel to the Nordic Centre, located in the Handan campus of Fudan University, one of China’s top ranked universities.
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North of the Bund, Shanghai

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Crowne Plaza Shanghai Fudan Hotel
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

When looking at the facade of the Crowne Plaza Shanghai Fudan Hotel it is difficult to not read into the facets of its facade some influences from the constructivist art movement that grew out of Russian Futurism in the early years of the 20th century.

Constructivist architecture flourished in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and early 1930s. Its ideas were revolutionary at the time and combined advanced technology and engineering with social purposes.

This era was also a formative one for Shanghai, as it acted as an eastern melting pot between East and West in the Warlord epoque of China in the 1910s, around the years of the Russian revolution and the financial boom of WWI. As such one would not be too surprised to find traces of these ideas right here in the Yangpu district of Shanghai where much of China’s academia flourishes today.

It is even difficult not to draw references to Russian industrialism and earlier, the cubism of Picasso and Braque, in the facets of the facade looking like human beings standing on top of, lifting, carrying and supporting each other. Architecture depicting the human strive to higher and higher achievements.

The Russian bicyclist painting by Natalia Goncharova (Cyclist, 1913) comes to mind as another reference to the Russian futurism of the 1910’s. This can be seen in contrast to the slightly older painting by Ramon Casas, of himself and Pere Romeu on a Tandem, 1897. The two works of art illustrate a dramatic change in ideologies and thus realities, that had come by in a mere few decades. The latter was painted specifically for the interior of the Els Quatre Gats in Barcelona, a restaurant and bar that was pretty much the center of the early Modernisme art movement in Barcelona at the turn of the century, and also the very place where Picasso had his first exhibition.
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Teahouse in Hangzhou

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Teahouse. 高山流水.
Tea-drinking at teahouses is a tradition in China that goes back to the Three Kingdoms of Wei, Wu and Shu, 220-280 AD.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2010-2013

Walking through the streets of Hangzhou, I could never quite grasp the sentimental feelings of its romantic past even as my eye caught the elegant lines of temples, the fine pagodas and the many intricately carved bridges that made the landscape so picturesque.

But arrive at the calm and mirroring waters of West Lake, and the realization sets in – that the city through numerous phases of transformations, carries within its aura a purity of natural beauty and a sense of timelessness. And it is perhaps this, that rocked the souls of the literati both past and present.
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The Blue Frog, Shanghai World Financial Center SWFC

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The Blue Frog restaurant, Shanghai World Financial Center.

The Blue Frog at the Shanghai World Financial Center.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro 2012

Even before my first visit to Shanghai, friends were recommending I visit two places, the Shanghai World Financial Center and the Blue Frog restaurant that as a friend put it, served “very good fusion food”. And I couldn’t have done serendipitously better than by dining at the Blue Frog at the Shanghai World Financial Center!
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China changing gears towards sophisticated luxury

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Dinner in Shanghai that is about ten hours by direct flight from Sweden.
Text and Photo © PO Larsson and CM Cordeiro 2012

Shanghai’s changing cityscape is reminiscent of the changing skyline of Singapore, where every time I visit I find myself looking at a skyline that is augmented in some manner especially in Lujiazui, which also most reminds me of the Singapore quiet in the Central Business District by Raffles Quay by night.
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Lulling hours in Shanghai, where old meets new…

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Cheryl Marie Cordeiro, Yuyuan, Shanghai 2011.

Along the streets at Yuyuan, Shanghai.
Text and Photo © CM Cordeiro 2011

Waking up in China’s largest city that is Shanghai, amongst its more than 24 million inhabitants certainly puts a perspective on how much of an impact you might make during a single day in your life when you finally step out the door and make your way around with your errands.

In just about twenty to thirty years, Shanghai as a city has grown at an amazing speed. The skyscrapers seen today along the Huangpu River, The Bund and Lujiazui were non-existent just a stone’s throw back in time, where it would’ve been difficult for most anyone to recognize the landscape and skyline of the central finance district between these decades if you were not at first shown pictures of the landscape from then till now.

The past decade alone has seen a paradigm shift in Shanghai from a city with Communist ideals to one that is cosmopolitan with a global outlook. Much of this is the fruitful result of the Chinese government’s efforts at economic reforms in China beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

If any organization could trace and reflect an aspect of Shanghai’s modern history in global trade and the resulting impact of the Chinese government’s efforts at bringing China and its state-owned enterprises to the global scene, then Baosteel Group Corporation, the second largest steel producer in the world with approximate annual revenues of around USD $21.5 billion would be a good case study to examine. With 45 wholly owned subsidiaries in markets across the world, in countries with as diverse cultures such as Brazil, France, Germany, Russia and in Asian and Southeast Asian countries such as Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore , Baosteel reflects the speed and tenacity at which Chinese organizations are able to make themselves visibly global whilst simultaneously catering to their very demanding and highly competitive domestic market.

Still, amongst the city’s global ambitions supported and run by its busy inhabitants who seem to maneuver through the city via just as many noisy and exuberant vehicles that never cease their honking, you’ll find in Shanghai that some waking hours beckon a certain lull to the senses, and are in effect… quieter than others. And it is in these hours that you can sit, think and breathe the calmer soul of the city as a mist that invites you to contemplate its living as an artfully drawn landscape, one perhaps seen in Chinese watercolour on silk or paper. It is these brief lulling hours of Shanghai, at dawn or just after dusk, that paints a picture of the place both past and present, juxtaposed in front of your very eyes in material form.
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Yuyuan street eating and daily practicalities, Shanghai

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Cheryl Marie Cordeiro 7 Dec 2011 Shanghai 03aWith the quick glances of distraction observed from tourists and a slight quickening of their pace past the local lunch scene at Yuyuan in Shanghai, where the local people seemed perfectly at east sitting along the roadside with their bowl of rice in one hand and chopsticks in the other, eating whilst waiting for their next customer to walk into the shop, I understood with clearing clarity that for most of Northern Europe, dining was a much more formal affair around a set table.

And the Northern European concept of dining was quite a contrast to this fairly common aspect of people eating on the move or simply eating outdoors in Asia in general. Whether in India or the various equatorial countries of Southeast-Asia such as Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore and Indonesia, or the more temperate regions of China, food sold along the streets in wheel carted food stalls and eating along the streets is as practical and nomadic as having all your goods for sale stacked onto a single bicycle or motorcycle and sold wherever you found a customer along the street.

Yuyuan wholesaler's street, Shanghai 2011.

Yuyuan Market, Shanghai.
Text and Photo © CM Cordeiro 2011

I grew up in the decades of Singapore where people did cart their goods around and sold them from their bicycles, and where food such as bowls of noodles, plates of fried kway teow and even cold food such as ice-shaved desserts called ice-kachang (a Singapore and Malaysian variation of ‘sorbets’ made from just rough shaven ice and sweetened with colourful syrup dripped all around the cone of ice shavings) were sold from wheel-carted trolleys. For warm dishes, burning charcoal was used for fuel in the mid-1900s for cooking and later on, small portable gas units were used.

Still, the scene in China is much more rustic and unaware – people just didn’t think if you stopped and stared at them eating, because for them, it was all part of the natural process of the day, just another practicality that you have to deal with, seamlessly interwoven into their main activity of the day, which is working. Living and working seamlessly – that is what you’ll witness at lunch hour at Yuyuan.

Continue reading “Yuyuan street eating and daily practicalities, Shanghai” →