Last night we were invited to ‘The World of Calvin Klein’, a cool party for CK’s new collection. When we got the invitation earlier this week (I seem to be one of their better customers), we thought it would be some sort of fashion show and at first I was not too excited. But when Friday’s Shanghai Daily had a glossy Calvin Klein cover and a full page pre-event coverage, I realized it would be a bit bigger than a catwalk with some models. Shanghai’s newspaper even called it Calvin Klein’s biggest event in Asia this year.

Whether it was the biggest I cannot judge, but it certainly was a great party. CK had reconverted a warehouse in Northern Shanghai into a hyper-modern white labyrinth in which models were showing the latest collection. The underwear models were in an enclosed room with small windows to peek at them, but most other models were in the ‘open’. Combined with special lightning and video screens it gave a very futuristic feeling. In the back there was a huge lounge area with a DJ, where top male models showed off their bodies to the ladies (and to some non-gay Chinese men, who even wanted to take pictures with them…).

The crowd was mixed, lots of beautiful well-dressed party people (I recognized quite a lot of faces from ad agencies, from my time working in TV commercials), people who want to look good but don’t know how to dress or who did not yet have the money for it (friends and family of sales staff?), more regular people (I guess I am in this segment now, just as some of Qi’s INSEAD classmates that we saw here), some very local Chinese (old-fashioned suit wearing men with fake leather shoes, a mobile and keychain on their belt and carrying a man bag), and of course the ubiquitous VIPs (film stars and TV personalities, followed by their fans and camera crews). A nice crowd to observe with drink in hand.

And these drinks were excellent. Good mixes, and an endless stream of Moet & Chandon, combined with well-designed and good tasting finger food. They even served small portions of french fries in paper cones (with mayonaise!), that tastes really good after some drinks (but ruins the taste of the champagne…).

At the exit all the female guests received a bottle of CK’s Euphoria Blossom eau de toilette, making sure the night would be one to remember for a long time. Once again a fantastic evening in Shanghai, I love this city!

It’s only early November and outside it’s still warm (tomorrow it will be 26 degrees), but I have spotted the first Christmas trees decorated with lights already. Two trees actually, standing outside the “Ye Olde Station” restaurant in Xujiahui (the old white building on Caoxi Bei Lu, this used to be Shanghai’s train station many decades ago – there are still train carriages in the garden). I can actually see the trees from my apartment window, but it’s way too early for me to get into Christmas mood.

If you blog with Google’s Blogger and don’t have your own hosting, you get a blogspot.com account name. This domain used to be blocked in China until this summer, but then the government suddenly unblocked it. I was happy because before that I often would get the ‘page not loading’ error message, when weblinks pointed to a blogspot weblog. This would now finally be over.

Until about a week ago that is, when blogspot stopped working again. I was thinking about calling the domain blockedspot, but this morning I see that all my RSS feeds from these accounts are suddenly filled with new posts. So I checked it, and it seems blogspot is again available in China. A mistake from the Great Webfilter or was the re-blocking just temporarily? We’ll find out soon.

Last week MBH, the manufacturer of the famous London taxis, signed an agreement with Chinese car manufacturer Geely to produce their cabs in Shanghai. Geely will hold 51% of the shares in the new joint venture. According to the press release, the cars will mainly be exported to England, but will also be sold in China.

Does this mean that now the Mercedes-Benz taxi’s in Shanghai are faded out, they will be replaced by London cabs? They would look good in Thamestown, that’s for sure.

Yesterday I was following Joi Ito’s observations during the Internet Governance Forum through my RSS reader. He was there on a panel about openness on the internet. During the panel China was discussed as well, and at that point a Chinese UN delegation member stood up and bluntly said: “China does not restrict any access to any content”.

Because everybody knows this is complete bullsh*t, the sympathy that the crowd had for the Chinese delegation was gone right away. Why does an official say something like this? It’s not a secret that the Net is censored here. Does he really believe this, or is he just plain unaware of the issues? For me it’s difficult to understand. But likely he was just fed up with the discussion, and wanted it to end. This I can imagine, because once ‘outsiders’ start talking about the Chinese Net there are a lot of misconceptions. Even I have to defend China’s policies sometimes, because people who have never been to China have a completely wrong idea about what’s happening here (mainly because of incorrect media reports)!

Or maybe the delegate just meant that every content is available, as long as you know how to use a proxy server 🙂

Update: Asiapundit links to another post about this on the China Digital Times called “China: we don’t censor the internet”. And as he notes: “Ironically, the above report cannot be accessed in China without a proxy.” In case you are in China and want or read it, this is the link with a proxy.

Update 2: Shanghaiist has the transcript of the conversation. It seems the Chinese delegate was totally ignorant about the censorship issue. Also his reasoning was strange: because he can listen to the BBC on his PC in his Geneva office, this site cannot be blocked in China…

On Sunday afternoon a new restaurant/brasserie/bar/lounge officially opened its doors in Shanghai: Hugo, located on Weihai Lu opposite Shanghai Television. During the soft opening I already had lunch here twice, and had enjoyed the food and the atmosphere very much. The place is owned by a Dutch Chinese couple, and serves mainly French and Dutch food. Dutch food? Yes, that exists. Among others pannekoeken (pancakes) and vleeskroketten (meat croquettes) can be found on its menu.

The restaurant is a combination of a brasserie, a cafe and an upscale restaurant. It can also be used for private functions, and the place even has meeting rooms with beamers. Several clubs, including the Dutch club in Shanghai, have made it their meeting place for monthly drinks already. Rumour has it that a former chef of a Dutch Michelin star-rated restaurant (De Hoefslag) is cooking here now, and that the manager hails from Amsterdam’s top hotel the Amstel Hotel. The food is excellent, and the guests could taste some of it during the opening reception.

This party was quite busy, and most people seemed to be from the Netherlands. Even the new Dutch consul could be seen walking around. The finger food was great, and also the drinks on offer were very nice. The waiters served among others champagne, good red and white wines, wodka mixes and of course Heineken beer. Interesting was that at the party a couple asked me whether I was Marc van der Chijs. I said yes, and they told me that they are regular readers of my blog and had recognized me. It happened several times that I met people who turned out to be readers of this blog, but being recognized from my pictures is a new experience 🙂 The couple was Dutch, and have been living as expats outside Holland for Philips for the past 17 years (in China for 2 years now). The husband is general manager for Philips, and is setting up a factory here for automotive playback modules (CD/DVD etc.). Different from my line of business, but facing similar problems as we do.

I think Hugo is a great addition to the restaurant scene in Shanghai. It has top-quality food, but next to that they can also serve simple lunches (kroketten with bread, one of the very few places in China!), and it’s a nice place to unwind with a beer in the evening (on one of the three terraces, or inside in the bar). I did not have dinner here yet, but plan to do this very soon!

This morning I went for a 15 kilometer run in the gym. I like to do that early on Sunday morning: after the run a big breakfast tastes great, and you still have a whole day ahead of you. The first machine I stepped on turned out to be set to French and was measuring the distance in miles instead of kilometers, so I took the one next to it.

About 30 minutes later someone else wanted to use the ‘French’ treadmill. He stepped on it, pressed ‘quick start’ and at that moment the machine immediately sped up to run at 10 mph (16 kmh). The guy fell down, but managed to hold on to the bar on the machine. He tried to stand up, but because the machine ran so fast he was not able to do it. He finally let go and was launched off the machine, hitting his head on the machine while falling.

At first I thought it was funny, but when I looked at the guy I realized he was hurt pretty bad. His whole face was covered in blood, and his arms and legs were also not looking too nice. None of the gym’s staff had noticed it, and other people had to alarm them. Not sure what happened to the guy, but I guess he had to go to hospital. The whole thing happened within 6 seconds, very scary.

Afterwards the gym put an ‘out of order’ sign on the machine. One of the staff looked into the treadmill’s computer, but had no clue what she was doing because it was set to French (which she clearly did not speak). Maybe I should have helped her, but I did not want to interrupt my run just because a staff member is incapable to change the language to English.

But I still think it’s scary that a top running machine (a Life Fitness treadmill) can suddenly get out of control. Especially when you just start your run this is extremely dangerous. I am glad I had not used the machine myself, and will watch out the next time I run on one of these machines.

During 1988-1989 I lived one year in the US, for my junior year in high school. The first 6 months I spent with the Sapp family in Quitman, Georgia, a small town not far from the Florida border, and the last 6 months with another host family in Valdosta, a city also located in south Georgia (on I-95). The second host family (Herman & Teresa Story, and their kids Jil and John Lee) were fans of Air Supply. I did not know the band at that time, but because I often heard the music there, I started to like it. Over the past years I bought some of their CD’s, and I still listen to it sometimes late at night.

Tonight Air Supply had a concert in the Shanghai Grand Stage, and so I decided to go there with my wife. Concerts in the Grand Stage are always convenient for us, because it’s just a 15 minute walk from our home. Many good performances seem to take place here, because this year I watched the Rolling Stones and Robin Gibb from the Bee Gees here as well. Marketing for the concert was not very good, I heard about the event a couple of months ago but totally forgot about it until a post on Shanghaiist last week reminded me. But although the place was not sold out, it was reasonably full. As usual all the most expensive seats were taken (I guess these tickets are bought by sponsors?), and the cheaper areas were about half full tonight.

Air Supply’s Russel and Graham have gotten quite old. I knew them mainly from pictures on their albums, and had not seen them live before. But when they entered the stage, I was surprised to see how they had aged, especially Russel. It reminded me a bit of the Rolling Stones actually. Also during the concert you could see that they were not in the best of shapes anymore. But the singing was still fantastic! Russel’s voice is great, and the moment he started the opening song I knew it would be a great concert.

I brought my binoculars (I bought an excellent pair for almost nothing just before the Xiangyang market shut down earlier this year), and that was a good decision: they were so good that I could even clearly see the tattoos on Russel’s hands (not that that was a great sight, but you catch my drift). Without them you could see and hear them play, but you miss some of the details. We had good seats (right behind the VIP table for government officials, that was almost empty), but were still at least 50 meters from the stage. One thing I noted, for example, was that Graham’s guitar was not working properly during the first song. He was gesturing to his technicians, and was not looking too happy. Kind of funny to being able observe these things that you otherwise would miss.

The songs the duo played were all their famous ballads from the 70’s and 80’s. During Russel’s tea break, Graham also sang a new song (called First Time?) for the audience. According to him it was the first time ever that he performed this song, and it will be released shortly. The rest was a nice combination of well-known songs, from The One that I Love, to Every Woman in the World, and of course at the end Here I Am. The mainly Chinese audience knew all the songs, but not the text: when Russel asked the audience to sing the lyrics only a handful of people was able to do so. The show lasted for about two hours, and we had a great evening here.