frauke at large

I have mentioned many many times before that Shanghai is one of my favourite cities i the world … well, of all those that I have been to, obviously … rivaled only by New York, Sydney, Tokyo and parts of Paris. And so, after not having been there for quite a while, it was about time that I went back to see what’s new … what with the Expo starting soon and all …

And quite a few things have changed: for one, brand new taxis are mingled among the old ones. They now feature seat belts and no longer have the plastic or steal cages that separate you from the driver, protects the driver from angry passengers or slices you into neat slices should you ever have a crash and go through the windscreen. Also new are the Expo taxis roaming the streets: a mini van type car that costs the same as a normal taxi, but also has seat belts, smells of new plastic and a driver who attempts to speak English … no good if, like me, you use the taxi drivers to practice you chinese … But not everything is new and shiny and smells of plastic. Shanghai, as you might well know by now, does not get it’s charm from the new, but rather the old … and so after finally gathering all my courage and wander down one of those quirky old lane streets in the French Concession and marveling at some of the lane houses, I found, at the end of one such lane, around the corner of another corner: an indigo cloth dying museum and shop. What a little gem of a find.

The place features clothes and indigo dyed cloth from as far back as the 1890’s with beautiful patterns of rising Phoenix, fish and chinese ‘good luck’ symbols. The old weaving chairs and wooden print blocks that make the patterns of the cloth are on display … in fact some of the wooden print blocks are still in use now. How can you possibly resist not taking a souvenir from a place like this?

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