Lisa: Your Local Tour Guide in SHanghai – on SHownbylocals.com

Gift giving is turning into an imperfect art. Many roam from store to store, mentally debating whether the single item they choose will be cherished or banished into a closet. Luckily for us, local merchants have the perfect solution: custom gifts. Shanghai expat Min Joo Shin is a proponent of customized gifts. “I give gifts I know a person will like,” she says, “the more personal the better.”

This is exactly what you get at the Mai Ou Bakery, a creative heaven for sweet lovers. This bakery specializes in designing and customizing cakes for all occasions. “Most people bring a photo for us to put on their cake. Our digital photocake is our most popular item,” explains manager Chen Yu Lee. “We use a special printer that prints in edible ink, so it’s perfectly safe to eat.” An eight inch cake goes for RMB180, and for a larger party, RMB448 will get you a 16 inch cake. Place orders at least two days in advance.

Sofapop is a great alternative for home decorating aficionados. The shop lets you customize sofa and cushion cases, wall furnishings and even curtains. Sofapop uses state-of-the-art printing technology, Digitex, to print stunning colors that won’t rub or wash off. Prices range from RMB95-8,855.

For people who love a challenge, Renoir Puzzles is another great option. The store turns any of your pictures into a puzzle, for a gift that not only is unforgettable but also entertaining. If your lucky recipient is a beginning puzzler, bring in two pictures for two puzzles made up of 108 pieces for RMB160. For more of a challenge, try the 300-piece puzzle for RMB300 or a 500-piece puzzle for RMB360.

Finally, in the basement of Dragon Gate Mall, there is Papaya Yamazaki, a store filled with interesting notebooks (RMB95), postcards (RMB10 per card) and planners (RMB95), all designed by owner Mango Lee herself. “I loved designing all of these items and helping people choose the covers that they want for their notebooks,” she happily explains. These notebooks are perfect for budding artists, but great for anyone who loves to write.

Although finding the perfect gift takes a lot of time and effort, with your own custom made present in hand, giving a heartfelt present has never been this easy.

Revolutionary Road: The second collaboration between Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet has them portraying an American couple who plan to give up everything and move to Paris. But different values lead to constant argument with a predictably tragic conclusion. Watch for Winslet’s Golden Globe winning performance.

Defiance: Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell play three Jewish brothers in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe who join the Russian resistance. After escaping from the Nazis, they set out to build a village to house themselves and 1,000 Jewish non-combatants. Guess Mr. Craig felt like taking a break from Bond-related duties.

Watchmen: Director Zack Snyder comes up with another graphic novel adaptation. Set in a dystopia where Richard Nixon is still President, the plot is too convoluted to summarize in a few words. Let’s just say it features glowing blue superheroes and a jaded protagonist. Critics hate it, fans love it.

Shoppers in the Chinese city of Shanghai are welcoming a new fashion icon to town, as the pink Barbie flagship store opens its doors.

The six-storey emporium displays almost 900 different Barbie dolls, many of which date back decades.

It also contains a spa, a bar and a studio where fans can try on human-sized items from Barbie’s wardrobe.

The opening of the Shanghai store coincides with another Barbie milestone – she turns 50 on Monday.

Toy-maker Mattel has sold more than one billion Barbies since the blond, blue-eyed doll was first introduced on 9 March 1959.

Barbie brand manager Richard Dickson said Asia was a region of opportunity for the company, which has been hit by falling profits.

“We have been looking at various cities,” he told the Associated Press news agency.

“Shanghai showed the absolute most passion for the Barbie brand, not only among girls three to eight years old, but for teenagers and mums, too.”

‘All-girl’

Shoppers enter the store via a pink neon escalator tube, to the recorded sound of giggling girls.

Inside, the 900 different Barbies are exhibited in glass cases that form a three-storey spiral staircase.

Browsers can get their nails done, sit in a glitzy bar with a fashion runway or eat in a pink and black restaurant.

There is also a computer studio were Barbie die-hards can design and take away their ideal version of the doll.

The store is “unapologetically all-girl”, Mr Dickson said.

Mattel is planning more stores around the world, but not on the scale of the Shanghai one, he said.

There’s something fun about a vending machine. You click in the coins, push buttons, and it drops your snack or drink into the till; it’s like simple magic. In the US, most of the vending machines I have come across sell things at a mark-up—adding up to a dollar onto the regular price of drinks or snacks. But in the Shanghai subway, I’ve always appreciated that vending machine drinks are sold for about the same price you can buy them in convenience stores, only adding a 5 mao surcharge or so.

The other day, I was thirsting for a cold drink in the Shanxi Nan Lu subway station and I made my way to the usual spot where the vending machines stand, behind the escalators. I popped my coins in, and lo and behold!, that’s when I discovered that someone in the Shanghai Metro had invested in a fancy Robo-Quencher-style machine: refrigerated interior, mistake-canceling keypad, and yes, a robotic arm! An arm which “gently delivers” your selection to you without shaking, dropping, or breaking. In a machine like this, glass bottles can even be placed on the top shelves.

I was mesmerized by the smooth and precise movements of the arm, I felt momentarily like one of the alien toys in Toy Story’s claw vending machine (“The Claw, It moves!”). I later searched in other subway stations around town, but found only the traditional corkscrew twist delivery system vending machines in other stations.

The machine inspired me to research vending machines online, to learn about the history of vending. I remember my father telling me stories about eating at automats when he was young (although by then automats were already in decline) and he felt nostalgia for the vending-style machines–or at least for that era; maybe that’s why I sense something historical and Chaplin-esque about the vending experience. Believe it or not, back in the early 1900’s, the food from automats was tasty and freshly-made, and “no one made a better cup of coffee”.

Coincidentally as I was doing my vending machine research, the New York Times came out with an article about a new revolutionary machine: a $32,000 pizza vending machine, which begins with flour and water and turns out hot pizza, recently launched by an Italian entrepreneur.

Well, freshly-made pizza or a hot cuppa may not be available inside the Shanxi Nan Lu subway, but I can always get an affordable cold drink, delivered by a magic robotic arm.

A SECOND cruise-ship terminal will open in April, 2010, enabling the city to cope with a boom of the industry.

More than 30 luxury passenger liners are scheduled to dock in Shanghai this month – a city record – bringing 25,000 visitors to town, Lu Jun, a media coordinator with Shanghai port immigration police said on Thursday.

About 20 percent of cruise ships now have to dock at the mouth of the Yangtze River because they’re too big to fit under the Yangpu Bridge over the Huangpu River, forcing tourists to spend up to four hours on buses getting into the city and back to their ships even though they may only have a 12-hour stopover.

The new terminal is closer to town, located at Paotai Bay in Wusong Port, Baoshan District. It will include three berths, the same as Shanghai Port International Cruise Terminal on the North Bund, with a capacity to handle 70,000-ton vessels.

The new terminal will also include ferry services to downtown Shanghai as well as buses.

More than 150,000 foreign and Chinese tourists arrived here on cruise ships last year, 17 percent more than in 2007.

Last year 112 cruise ships stopped in the city, 10 more than in 2007.

According to the port authority, cruise ship arrivals will increase 12 percent this year.

Next year’s World Expo is expected to attract even more cruise ships and double the number of visitors arriving in the city on them.

Police also confirmed that construction will be completed next month on the last building at Shanghai Port International Cruise Terminal.

A JAPAN Airlines passenger plane carrying 208 passengers and 14 crew made a safe emergency landing at Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport shortly after take-off yesterday afternoon.
No casualties were reported, local border inspection sources said.
Flight JL8878 took off at 2:30pm from Shanghai’s Hongqiao Airport and was heading to Tokyo’s Haneda Airport when problems occurred.
The crew noticed engine problems and the plane began to shake slightly, Pudong border inspection authorities told Xinhua News Agency.
The crew wanted an emergency landing at Hongqiao after the engine problems developed, said Liu Yongjian, an immigration officer.
But the plane was diverted instead to land at Pudong International Airport because there were no immediate landing slots available at Hongqiao Airport, he added.
The aircraft landed at Pudong at 3:15pm with no causalities reported.
An initial investigation indicates a bird strike 10 minutes after take-off, however the exact cause of the incident remains under investigation.
About 70 passengers were re-booked onto other flights to Japan yesterday afternoon and remaining travelers will leave Shanghai today, authorities said.
Japan Airlines operates daily flights between Hongqiao Airport and Haneda Airport.

SHANGHAI Mayor Han Zheng said yesterday that the city is still negotiating with Walt Disney on opening the first Disney theme park on the Chinese mainland.

“We are like a couple in love, not married yet, and so far there’s no timetable for the ‘marriage’,” the mayor joked with journalists at an opening session of Shanghai delegation during the ongoing annual session of the National People’s Congress in Beijing.

Han said the Shanghai government and Disney have always maintained communication and negotiation on the project, and both teams adopted a more practical attitude in the past year.

In January the local government signed a framework agreement with Disney, a standard procedure toward a possible deal. No details were disclosed, however. If the Shanghai government and Disney finally agree to “tie the knot,” it will become a third Disney theme park in Asia after Tokyo and Hong Kong.

In the Great Hall of the People yesterday afternoon, Shanghai Party Secretary Yu Zhengsheng and Mayor Han met more than 100 reporters at the opening session, a tradition for every delegation during the annual Parliament session.

Yu addressed the trial of yuan-denominated settlements of trade deals between some areas including Shanghai and neighboring Yangtze River Delta region and Hong Kong and Macau, and between the southwestern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Yunnan Province with Southeast Asian countries.

He said it would benefit Shanghai, the mainland and the two special administrative regions.

Hu Xiping, governor of Shanghai Rural Commercial Bank, explained that the yuan settlement is “vital” for the country to deal with the current financial crisis.

“Considering China’s continuous trade surplus and the scale of foreign reserve, the yuan settlement will strengthen the currency’s role in the international trade,” Hu said.

The governor revealed that Shanghai is also applying to the central government for a trial of yuan-based settlement with foreign trade partners.

Mayor Han also addressed the progress of the maglev project connecting Shanghai’s two airports. He said the government would announce the appraisal result and invite experts to evaluate the plan. Meanwhile, the government will listen to the opinions of those residents who live nearby the maglev line.

Some residents have voiced concern on the possible pollution caused by the speedy train after the initial plan was revealed.

For the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, the mayor said the preparation work in on schedule.

Another hot topic is the trial of household registration system, or hukou, which is designed to attract out-of-town talents. The three-year test run enables new Shanghainese to enjoy the same social insurance benefits as locals.

The mayor said more details of the hukou system will be released in the second half of this year.

Thinking of abandoning Cancun this summer for something a tad more exotic? Just beyond the hassle of negotiating a visa is Shanghai, and coming in May, its first Art Deco Boutique Hotel: the Langham Yangtze. Having taken over the old Yangtze Hotel masterpiece in 2008 for a renovation, Langham was lucky to have snatched a rare bit of Shanghai’s old world architectural glamor.

Since this will be a part of the luxurious Langham line, expect rates to be far higher than they were as the old and generically-outfitted Yangtze Hotel; something like $300 a night versus the $60 of several years ago. For this price and to rival the growing competition among luxury hotels in Shanghai, the hotel has some goodies planned.

n addition to 96 opulent guest rooms, the Langham Yangtze will be housing T’ang Court, the first location of the Michelin two-starred restaurant outside of their Hong Kong hotel, four other restaurants and China’s first Chuan Spa.

Situated in the business district yet around the corner from People’s Square in central Shanghai, the Langham is poised to return as a landmark for the area. In fact, every element of the property has been “carefully visualized to recapture the glamour and grandeur of the era when Shanghai was famed as the ‘Paris of the East,’” so perhaps we can expect the old worldly tinkling of champagne glasses and piano keys in the lobby. Until it opens, however, we are only left with the hope that the restoration will make this place gleam and stand up to the coming Waldorf-Astoria and Peninsula on the Bund, as we have high hopes for this baby.