christian renz // bassist

The new Shanghai Apple Store is located very close to my office. Therefore, I spontaneously decided to watch the opening of the Store. I came just after it opened and therefore still heard the countdown at 10:am.

In addition to all those people queuing, a lot of bystanders watched the spectacle. The luxury shopping centre directly next to the Apple store is still under construction, but a few shops are already open. I wonder how many people bought a matching LV bag for their new iPad?

Because there were so many people queuing, visitors were only admitted in groups. Each group was frenetically welcomed by the Apple Store employees.

There were a few observers in neutral clothes with “Apple Corp” tags, and a number of photographers taking pictures for apple. Hence the following signboard in front of the store.

Many people took a quick break from their Saturday shopping to snap a few pictures. It seems the Apple Crew shouting “Apple! Apple! Apple!“ caught quite a bit of attention. Almost a bit too much for me…

I decided to take advantage of my local knowledge. The office tower where I work also has a (not very well-known) restaurant witha good view. You can only take pictures through the window there, but at least it gives a good overview of the crowd.

For this Apple Store, Apple chose an interesting location: The store is not located in one of the famous shopping roads in Shanghai, but in the financial district Lujiazui in Pudong. Pudong is the area east of the Huangpu river. Development in this area only started 15-20 years ago. The famous Oriental Pearl Tower is very close to the Apple store, as well as other famous highrises such as Jinmao Tower and the Shanghai World Financial Centre. After the opening of Shanghai Expo, it seems a lot of (mostly Chinese) tourists come here. I guess that should provide a solid turnover for Apple.

Three hours after the opening, the queue was still very long. Compared to the queues at the Expo it would have been much less waiting time, but I still decided to look at the store later when there's less of a crowd… At that point in time, the 5000 t-shirts handed out to visitors were gone anyway.

More picture can be found at Shanghaiist and at IFO Applestore.

If you love tinkering with bass electronics (or just want to make some modifications to your bass yourself), check out the website of Markus Hoppe (alias „Cadfael“). He created a free thirty-something page PDF file with all kinds of different bass circuits. The diagrams also can be understood by people that – like me – were not born with a soldering iron. You only need to know some German… Thanks, Markus!

Free download of Cadfael's bass circuit diagram collection (PDF)

Shopping in Shanghai with a baby is a singular experience: I have seldom experienced so much attention. We quickly got used to people being very curious and supermarket workers calling their colleagues to take a look at the baby. But sometimes, there are still situations that leave us speechless: Seven, eight supposedly grown-up women swarming around the pram, shouting and cheering… well, that's China :-).

My personal theory is that zebra crossings in China are mostly meant to let pedestrians disturb cars only in certain areas. Because in China, in practice, cars very clearly have the right of way (but not by law, I think). In addition to that, cars are allowed to turn right even when facing a red traffic light. That makes crossing a road much more interesting experience than in Germany.

There is a online shopping heaven, and it has a Chinese name: Taobao.com (淘宝网). You can buy almost everything there: Kitchen appliances, clothing, nespresso capsules. I think Taobao offers at least as much as Amazon and eBay together.

But what makes shopping at Taobao really unique is the fact that in Shanghai it is cheap to deliver anything. Much cheaper than parcel fees in German, much faster (many things are delivered on the next day), and it also saves going down to the post office.

But compared to online shopping in Germany, you have to be even more careful who you buy from. There are the usual tricks (photo shows the complete package, the offer refers only to one piece), and then there's the basic rule: Basically everything you can buy on Taobao can be fake. If you want to be careful, better only buy from traders with many, many good ratings. Which still won't keep you from seeing comments such as: “No idea whether that thing is fake or real, but it works nicely.”

In the last few weeks, a few spam comments made it through the filter. I am not yet quite sure why: Either I created a security hole myself when implementing the spam protection, or Recaptcha has a general problem. If anybody has a clue, please let me know!

Sound is air being moved - as demonstrated in a rather impressive way by Addi Somekh's balloon bass. Using a balloon and a string, he creates interesting sound reminiscent of a rubber double bass.

This simple construction principle is taken to the extreme by his Rubber Tree Quartet, where everybody plays an instrument made of balloons. More information about him and his instruments can be found on his website Balloonbass.com. There, he also offers a free download of his album Air, Rubber and Soul. Obviously he played his balloon bass for this album, but also invited a whole bunch of other musicians.

Here's a video of the balloon bass live on stage:

Unfortunately, air conditioning can not really able to replace “real” heatings (known as “wall heating” here, and virtually nobody has it). Even if Shanghai cannot compete with the German winter 2010 – it still can have down to 0°C here.

Chinese household gadgets are a challenge of their own. There's a lot of software that can help you to translate Chinese words and sentences at the click of the mouse. What a pity such software doesn't exist for TVs, DVD players and all the other household items…

In China, “thank you” has – according to my impression – a lot stronger meaning than in Germany. Especially when you are in the role of a customer, you do not explicitly have to say thank you all the time, except when the service was exceptional. If you still do it, the other person often seems surprised.

Coming to Germany, some Chinese are surprised how often you have to say “thank you” as a customer…

Here's a first attempt to pack our living room view into a panorama. I still have to work n the technique, but at least it provides a quick overview. Click on the picture to get the panorama as a large version, the second picture is the XXL version (10000x2000 pixels) that shows the panorama artifacts very well ;-). In the left third of the picture, you see the Shanghai World Financial Centre (just look for a bottle opener), to the right of it you see the famous Pearl Tower.

February 14th 2010 marks the beginning of the new year of the tiger for the Chinese. The fireworks here in Shanghai dwarfed everything I ever saw in Germany on New Year's Eve. Here's a few pictures that hopefully give an impression of what we saw around our flat. Click on the picture to start.