e+lain-e

I had planned to blog about appearing on Discovery Channel...

… but then I kind of decided that rather than come home after a two day shoot and automatically get on the computer and slam out the bizarre and hilarious experience I’d just had, I would instead go to the boyfriend and tell an actual person the bizarre and hilarious experience I’d just had.

And THEN I told my roommates, and THEN I told everyone else who would listen, and THEN I drank a lot and was very hungover the next day. And today, I finally had the time to get on Tumblr and write it all down but I felt like the will to record everything had evaporated. So I’m almost forcing myself to write this now. Since I’m not inspired, I’m putting it all down in bullet points:

• I will apparently be in a Lonely Planet TV episode on Style in Shanghai. It will air sometime next year for the Discovery network, which means that it could be on Discovery Channel, National Geographic, Travel Channel… or Animal Planet.
• Yeah, it’s kind of funny that I would appear on something relating to style and shopping, one of which I have very little (I call it eclectic, but really it’s more “I don’t give a fuck”) and the other of which I do very little (hell, I don’t even buy clothes anymore - which is going fine by the way. I haven’t really blogged about it because I still forget to take pics of myself and since it’s winter now, my outfit doesn’t change much anyway, but that’s a digression I could save for another post).
• The host was a Lonely Planet guide writer, which sounds like a pretty sweet gig.
• The host was pretty sweet herself too. She divides her time between doing things for Lonely Planet and working with the UN in their human trafficking division. Crazy moonlighting combination, right? But awesome. I hope to have two awesome jobs at once - it makes me feel like Batman.
• All the people at Lonely Planet were very nice. They were always concerned about whether or not I was hungry, which is one very easy way to get on my good side. I ended up eating at Ding Tai Feng, Fountain Bistro and TMSK in one day - more Xintiandi than I’ve done the entire time I’ve been in Shanghai.
• Speaking of which, our locations for the shoot were Xintiandi, Tianzifang, and the Barbie store - all of which showcase Shanghai style in some way, I guess.
• Biggest style stretch: In Xintiandi, we went to the seat of the first National People’s Congress, where they have a room with wax figures of all the delegates of the first CPC ever. We had to tie talking about that into shopping in Xintiandi, and we couldn’t be sarcastic about it - no “Boy, would Mao be rolling in his grave if he knew the bourgeoisie he worked so hard to kick out would set up shop right next to here 80 years later?”
• So we ended up saying something along the lines of “These guys changed China and the world, but even they couldn’t imagine how Shanghai would be now” and “It’s nice that young Shanghai designers can look forward, and yet aren’t afraid to draw inspiration from their past.” Hm? Hm.
• Biggest me stretch: Me pretending to be an expert on Barbie world. I’d never been before and had absolutely no desire to ever go. But there I was, acting like I really knew what was going on, defending Barbie (she’s high fashion - Vera Wang, Patricia Fields!; there are no hang ups against her unrealistic figure here!; she has a Chinese friend!) and acting like I actually enjoyed owning one when I was a kid. Host got to be the cool chick who’s parents never let her own Barbies and who therefore looked down on this anti-feminist symbol.
• But it was a pretty fun shoot anyway, I guess. We walked by their display of “Personality Barbies.” Sassy Barbie, I told her, looked like the Puerto Rican girls outside my doorstep in Bushwick. Wild Barbie, she told me, was actually a Russian trafficking victim.
• Biggest factoid I was disappointed I didn’t get to drop: That Tianzifang was nearly torn down when the district government tried to pave it over to make way for another real estate development. It was one of the few cases where activists and artists (and at least one forward thinking government official) did manage to stop demolition from happening. That’s a really big step for Shanghai, you know? And to the best of my knowledge, it hasn’t been replicated by the city yet.
• In fact, I probably talked the least in Tianzifang. Ironic, because it’s the one place I actually go on a regular basis.
• All in all, being in movie things is fun. If it wasn’t so much work, I’d try to add some video element to Shanghaiist.

So my dinner today...

…consisted of a head of broccoli, boiled in water mixed with peanut, sriracha, and tabasco sauce and covered in that mix of seaweed/sesame seeds/other that you get in Japanese supermarkets (I never knew what they were called, my roommates used to just say they were “shakey shakey” things). I don’t know what made me decide on that combo, I just started cooking a head of broccoli and thought, “you know, I need to add things to it.” It looked every bit as disgusting as it sounds - but ended up tasting… edible. I’m not sure I would call it delicious. I would never serve it to anyone else. But as weird as it was, I craved more after I finished.

Or maybe that’s just my stomach telling me that a head of broccoli for dinner is not acceptable.