Results tagged “pedestrian”

From 2 dogs: Nokia's flagship store on the Nanjing Lu pedestrian shopping street opens this Saturday, on 27 Oct.

From meckleychina:

Building with art deco tower at Fujian Lu and Yan'an Dong Lu. Very cool art deco building with corner tower. The building butts right up against the pedestrian overpass of Yan'an Lu. With the always present Bund Center in the back left. Anyone know this building? Is it an office? bank? commercial? apartments?

This week saw some interesting announcements regarding Shanghai's metro system. First off, Metro Line 4's circle closes this year:

This was not a very happy week for the -ist network as one of our own, Phillyist co-editor Star C. Foster, passed away early in the week. Her wit, intelligence, and good nature shone through the site, making Phillyist an immensely fun read. She was loved by many and will be missed by all.

Good

Austinist knows that few things in life are scarier than zombies, people with way too much money, and politicians who try too hard to be funny. Slightly less scary, depending on whom you ask, are indie film makers, screenwriters, R-Rated movies, and indie rockers.

The pedestrian experience in Shanghai is an interesting one, and by “interesting” we of course mean near fatal. Drivers don’t seem to have a lot of respect for traffic laws (in so far that they exist). Getting from point A to point B in the shortest amount of time possible is the only rule that applies. Anyone who dares stand in the way is, well, expendable. It’s like that game Crazy Taxi, except it’s not a game and you aren’t sitting in the driver’s seat.

In this week's edition of "Shanghaiist Trashes the Media" we have an article from the Sydney Morning Herald. Here's the premise:

Shanghaiist doesn't drink much (okay, the occasional snifter of brandy at Christmas), and we don't keep a lot of progressive trance on our iPod (none, in fact), but we've enjoyed enough nights on the tiles in Shanghai to speak with some confidence about the different clusters of clubs and bars in this city.

First, due to construction work on the Hongmei Road elevated highway, pedestrian crossings have been covered over and the only way for residents of the Gumei area to reach their home is to brave their way across several lanes of near-highway speed Humin Road traffic.

From the story in the Jiefang Daily:

Have you heard the one about the guy who suggested we lift up all the old buildings on the Bund several meters and cram a shopping mall underneath them? No? It's a good one. It goes something like --

Shanghai blogger Wang Jian Shuo has a funny/interesting post about some bad driving habits he picked up on a recent business trip to San Jose ... like stopping at stop signs and yielding to pedestrians. Here is his description of a recent encounter he had with two pedestrians back in Shanghai:

Shanghaiist has not witnessed, first-hand at least, many cities where traffic has gotten better. Usually we find ourselves in a city during the phase where traffic ineluctably changes from tolerable to shitty. But at least we know that here in Shanghai, there are city officials awake at night thinking about how to deal with this situation. Sometimes they think up modest measures, such as getting rid of the double-decker buses on the 911 line (we're sad about this one, lot of good memories on that bus) that take up so much room and disrupt traffic. More radical measures include creating those little bus stop islets so that buses don't block traffic when they stop. According to this report (in Chinese), this will have the effect of increasing traffic capacity by over 30 percent. That report also lists the 30 bottleneck spots that the city government are going to try to tackle, along with the proposed changes. Scroll down to the bottom to see if an intersection near you is going to be affected. Some will have left-turn lanes added, some will just add more lanes, others will have pedestrian lanes added.

It’s official, Xintiandi is the most popular entertainment street (even though it's not really a street) in the city according to 80 percent of respondents in a survey. Thirteen thousand votes were taken by mail, Internet and telephone from locals as well as “people from other places,” according to Shanghai Star (Nov. 10 print edition). We’re not sure if that means tourists, foreigners or aliens, but we do get a sneaking suspicion that the people surveyed were either a) relatively wealthy or b) mesmerized by the beauty of McCafe. The top streets also included Nanjing pedestrian street, most likely chosen by the “people from other places”; Binjiang Dadao, along the Huangpu River in Pudong; Duolun Lu, which houses art, old books, coffee shops and buildings from the early 20th century; the Bund and cultural streets like Meichuan Lu, North Street in Zhujiajiao (also known as the town where they throw goldfish over a bridge), Qibao Old Street and Fangbang Zhong Lu, near Yu Garden. We’d like to take this moment to thank those who gave the survey for providing us with a complete list of places to avoid during the next public holiday.

On our way to the gym on Sunday, Shanghaiist spotted two men riding what appeared to be Segway Human Transporters in front of the Xintiandi Starbucks. And we thought, Great, Shanghai needs more motorized vehicles on its already cluttered sidewalks. The men were meandering around, attracting stares from curious onlookers. A couple people approached the Segwayers and they handed out business cards. Could China be the next country Segway slowly rolls into (and fails to generate enough sales to survive)? According to Segway's official site, there are no Segway distributors in Mainland China -- Taiwan is the closest.

Shanghaiist recently headed over to the Benetton Building to check out a photo exhibition entitled Becoming Shanghai, Three Memories of a City's Transformation (作为上海，一个城市变化的三种记忆), featuring the work of three photographers -- Greg Girard, Fritz Hoffman and Jan Siefke. Greg Girard's preface to the exhibition states :

A little more than five years ago, Shanghai police arrested Chen Genrong, the mastermind behind the underground production of fake Phoenix-brand bicycles. Shanghai Star reported then that daily around 1,500 bicycles used to be shipped from his secret warehouse on Gong Qing Tuan Lu in order to be sold nationwide.

Being gay is pretty popular amongst the Shanghainese college set. But Shanghai only has one very popular gay bar and gay club. In a city of 20 million, it's not surprising that Shanghai has more tonzhi (同志) venues than say, Milwaukee, but still ... Shanghaiist was surprised to learn of the existence of a gay ballroom.