Dan Washburn's Shanghai Diaries: Site News Archives

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Please visit my new personal blog!

Here’s the link:

blog.danwashburn.com.

And here is the new RSS feed:

feeds.feedburner.com/danwashburn

The new site is still a work in progress, but that is where I am posting things these days.

I will no longer be updating Shanghai Diaries, which should have been pretty obvious to anyone who has bothered to check the site the past year or so.

It was time for a change.

So come and check me out.

07.05.2007, 4:41 PM · Site News

Live near Atlanta? Got plans this weekend?

Why not head on out to a festival in a park? From the Mudan Boutique Blog:

This Weekend: Visit Mudan in Atlanta’s Inman Park!

For the second year in a row, Mudan Boutique has been selected to participate in Atlanta’s biggest street market, the Inman Park Spring Festival on Saturday, April 28 and Sunday, April 29. We will be showcasing a full array of Mudan pearl, jade, and handbag fashion accessories as well as several product lines not yet available on mudanboutique.com. (Looks like we are going to have some great weather, too.) The festival is from 11 am-6 pm both days and if you’re in the Atlanta area, please come by — we’d love to meet some of our customers in person! Here are directions to Inman Park (Google Maps).

And mention you read about this in the blog and get 10% off any purchase.

See you soon!

04.26.2007, 11:41 AM · Site News

I am a media whore

Or at least lately it seems that way. I promise I haven’t sought out any of this recent trickle of media attention — I can’t even read most of it — it’s just that with two websites (make that three) I am very easy to get ahold of. So if the Chinese media need a toothy laowai to fill up their pages, why not email the editor of Shanghaiist?

That’s what local weekly glossy Modern Weekly did recently, and I ended up being their American voice for a feature called “Foreigner’s Map of Shanghai,” although all the restaurants I recommended cater more to locals than foreigners. They also interviewed guys from France, England and Japan. Not sure why they didn’t talk to any girls. You can read an abbreviated English version of the story here. The Modern Weekly printed version has a longer profile of me — they refer to me both as “a cowboy” and, naturally, “Matthew.”

Back in April, I was the subject of another Chinese magazine story, this time in a monthly called Shanghai Pictorial. The story was the brainchild of my former landlord Alex Huang, a very helpful man who is both good friends with the magazine’s editor and the kind of guy you really can’t say no to — so I kind of had to go along with the plan, although I really had no idea why they wanted to do a story on me. It could be because Alex, I’m not sure knowingly or unknowingly, has a habit of making me sound more important than I am. I used to work for a small Georgia newspaper called The Times, so he tells people I write for TIME. My last name begins with “Wash,” so according to Alex I have written for the Washington Post. I have tried to correct him, but I think he prefers the more successful Dan Washburn he has created in his head. (I actually did write a story for TIME Asia late last year, only to have it killed sometime this spring.)

The Shanghai Pictorial story got its start more than one year before it was published. The idea was they follow me around and document my presumably exciting life in photos. I tried to explain that on an average day this plan would result in a captivating series of photographs of me sitting in front of my computer in my pajamas. Lucky for them, my friends Brian and Jill were visiting China at that time, so for one of our days touring Shanghai, we had a photographer follow us around as though we were important. And the end result is that a normal day in the life of Dan Washburn appears to be filled with trips to the Peace Hotel, the Urban Planning Center and Jinmao Tower. The photographer met up with us a couple times over the next year (I thought the story had been scrapped) and so it also includes photos of our old apartment and our new one, Fat Dan and Thin Dan and a very small Ozzie curled up on Bliss’ lap. There is also a page of my photos from The Trip. There title for the story was “The City Walker: Dan Washburn.”

Modern Weekly: “Foreigner’s Map of Shanghai” [PDF, 1.4 mb]
Shanghai Pictorial: “The City Walker: Dan Washburn” [PDF, 1.2 mb]

07.17.2006, 10:34 PM · Diary, Site News · Comments (3)

Introducing Mudan Boutique

I have hinted at it a couple times on this site, and now I am finally ready to go public with my latest project. It’s a bit of a departure for me, but something I am really excited about. It’s an online store called Mudan Boutique. To start, we are featuring affordable pearls and jade and a variety of handbags, fashion accessories and gift items — all of which embody an Asian aesthetic. (We’re offering free worldwide shipping until July 17, too.)

Most exciting to me right now are the partnerships we are forging with local Shanghai designers, like Fiona Peng of Punk Pilgrim and Christine Tsui of Christine Tsui’s Fashion Club on Xinle Lu. That duo is responsible for Mudan Boutique’s current crop of handbags and clutches. And we’re currently working on adding more items from different local designers to the store — products and designs that until now were only available in small stores and boutiques in Shanghai.

Surprised by this? Yeah, me too. But something about Shanghai turns almost everyone into an entrepreneur. Ask most people what they do here, and their answer usually begins with, “Well, that’s a good question …” Most people I know have a few irons in the fire here. Maybe that’s why some people are calling Shanghai the new city of dreams.

So, I invite you to take a look at Mudan Boutique. I am really proud of the way the shop looks right now, and I really like the products we have been able to find thus far. We’re a small “company” — just a couple of us here in Shanghai and a couple of my oldest friends back in the States — but we have big plans and high expectations. Expect our product lines to grow in the very near future.

Mudan Boutique welcomes your input about anything. We have a boutique blog, a newsletter and you can always reach us by email: info at mudanboutique.com. If you are a China-based designer or artist and you think your work would be a good fit for Mudan Boutique, please email me directly at dan at mudanboutique.com.

You might also like to know that Mudan Boutique contributes five percent of net proceeds from each purchase to CARE, a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty.

So there you have it, my new baby Mudan Boutique. Please have a look and tell me what you think. Perhaps it (and Shanghaiist, celebrating its one-year anniversary today) offer some excuse for why I have been so out of reach and this site has been so neglected for, oh, I don’t know, the past year or so.

I sure am busy for an unemployed guy.

Mudan Boutique’s online store was designed by the great team at Rockbeatspaper and the product photography was taken by Brad at Shanghai Streets.

07.11.2006, 12:44 PM · Culture, Diary, Featured, Site News · Comments (1)

Weblog Awards: Nominate Shanghaiist in the 2006 Bloggies

Just a quick note to let you know that nominations for the Sixth Annual Weblog Awards (aka The Bloggies) close in about 36 hours. I’m not going to ask you to nominate Shanghai Diaries for Best Asian Weblog — 2005 was a down year for this site — but I am going to encourage you to nominate Shanghaiist in that category (and whatever other categories you think it might deserve). Make sure to read the directions carefully and make your Bloggie nominations now! (Or should that be Bloggy nominations? Anyway, just do it.)

Turns out Shanghai Diaries, and not Shanghaiist, was nominated for Best Asian Blog in the Weblog Awards 2005. I didn’t realize this, however, until after voting closed. At least we didn’t finish last.

01.09.2006, 11:46 PM · Site News

7,000 photos moved from Gallery to Flickr … easily

In preparation for the major redesign Frank has in store for Shanghai Diaries, we had to figure out a way to transfer all of the photos from our existing photo gallery to my space over at Flickr. Gallery is a fine app, but I just find Flickr much easier to use. And Flickr seems to be more adaptable, too — Frank’s already done some cool stuff with it over at Shanghaiist. We both like the community aspect of Flickr, as well.

Anyway, I figured the Gallery-to-Flickr switch would be a time-consuming nightmare. Actually, I expected I would have upload all my pre-Flickr photos — some 7,000 of them — from scratch using iPhoto. And I was dreading this, because many of the photos from early in my digital days are not very well, um, organized. Thankfully, Frank stumbled upon this page, where a guy offered up $200 to the first person who could solve the very same problem we were dealing with. Someone delivered, Frank installed the script, I started the transfer process before I went to bed one night … and next morning I had 7,598 photos in 69 photo sets (albums, tags and captions survive the transfer, as well) over at Flickr. For free. Pretty slick.

The one downside is that since these photos were tranferred from Gallery and not uploaded directly from iPhoto, they are small. For some reason, I only uploaded pics to Gallery at a 400 or 500 pixels max for height and width. Sorry.

If you’d like to check out my photos from the past three years, head to my Flickr page. Here are some direct links to some of my recent photo sets:

There are about sixty other photo sets that I don’t feel like typing in links for. They include all the photos from my 18-province trip through China and plenty of photos from outside of China: Cambodia, Georgia, Hawaii, Montana, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C. and Wyoming. Check it all out here.

10.16.2005, 9:39 AM · Internet, Photos, Site News · Comments (1)

Shanghai Diaries featured in TIME magazine

It seems that when you neglect your blog for most of the month of July, major magazines take notice … and reward you for it. TIME magazine, in its Europe and Asia editions for August 8, ran a story titled “Web of Knowledge: Some of the most informative travel guides are now online,” by Graham Holliday, who writes a column called “Time Traveler.” Here’s an excerpt:

Planning a trip and need a heads-up on the hidden quarters and cool hangouts that the average visitor doesn’t get to hear about? Then leave your guidebook at home and instead let a growing army of travel bloggers show you the way. Traditional travel books often can’t compete with the vast breadth of information on the Internet — or a dedicated blogger’s constantly updated insights into his home turf or topic. So whether you’re after the best burger in Brooklyn or the hottest hotel in Berlin, simply log on. There’s a blogger waiting to help.
Our favorites:

SHANGHAIDIARIES.COM This stylish blog is the work of American journalist Dan Washburn, who moved to China in 2002. Alongside Shanghai restaurant reviews and city listings, you’ll find hundreds of articles, pictures and short videos. And if that isn’t enough coverage of China’s most dynamic city, Washburn also edits online city guide shanghaiist.com.

Other sites featured in the story are Notes From The Road, Vagablogging, Derelict London and Gridskipper.

While I’m bragging, Shanghaiist, my other online project, has been getting a fair amount of international attention, as well. You can read all about that here. And, in case you didn’t already know, the real brains behind both of these operations is Frank — he’s going to own the internet one day.

Links:
Story in TIME Asia
Story in TIME Europe

UPDATE: I am quoted, somewhat randomly, in Sunday’s New York Daily News. ~~Rumor has it~~ I ~~will~~ also ~~be making~~ make an appearance in Monday’s paper. And my friend Liu Yi should be featured in Wednesday’s Daily News.

08.05.2005, 11:59 PM · Featured, Site News · Comments (3)

Take a sneak peak at Shanghaiist.com

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

We haven’t officially launched yet — we are currently in what they call “soft launch” or “beta” mode — but I think Shanghaiist.com is starting to look pretty damn good. So, go ahead, take a look. This is your invitation.

We’re still working out some kinks, and all of our features haven’t been added yet and most of our contributors still haven’t contributed anything. But there’s enough there for you to click around in. Let us know what you think. And feel free to leave some comments on the site.

Also, don’t forget to sign up for Consumating and 43 Things. And you Flickr users can start tagging your photos “shanghaiist” — when our photo page is live, you’ll see your photos there.

Finally, Shanghaiist is still looking for some dedicated posters who know Shanghai well. If you’d like to join our team, send us a non-boring email.

Now, get on over to Shanghaiist.

06.22.2005, 1:23 PM · Site News · Comments (4)

‘Consummate’ your relationship with the internet

‘0 people would do ShanghaiDan.’ Awwwww.

“ShanghaiDan is a 31-year old boy located in Shanghai, who is taken and looking for boys and girls for friends, online buddies, and consumating fun!”

So begins my profile on the social/dating website Consumating, which according to its tagline is targeting the “Hot nerdy girls and indie rock boys! With glasses!” crowd. You might be wondering why someone who labels himself “taken” would sign up for an online dating site (or maybe you’re not … some chicks dig “unavailable” guys). I signed up for Consumating because it’s the site Shanghaiist is going to partner with for personals — and right now there are a total of two Consumating users living in Shanghai. It’s me and Micah, and he only signed up because I asked him to. I’m trying to build up a base of Shanghai users before Shanghaiist officially goes live in a couple weeks. So, head on over to Consumating and sign up!

You don’t have to be single. You don’t have to be looking for a date. It’s a social site, not just a dating site. And it’s 2005 — I think the stigma associated with meeting people online has gone the way of the Yunnan Box Turtle. Especially in a sometimes intimidating city of 20 million, it’s often easier to meet people with similar interests online than inside a shabbily appointed, smoky bar playing a Celine Dion/Kenny G/Whitney Houston/Mariah Carey mix CD. Of course, if you’re from Shanghai and your interests aren’t similar to mine or Micah’s, you are pretty much screwed right now. That’s why you need to get all your friends to sign up for Consumating! Or else you’ll spend all your time at the site flirting with hipsters in Seattle. And, I guess there are worse things in the world to do than that.

Consumating uses the oh-so-hip tagging technology, which is like crack for computer geeks. Oh, the site is free, too. That’s also pretty cool. (And, one of Consumating’s creators is the editor of Austinist.)

Finally, Shanghaiist will also be running a feed from 43 Things, a goal-sharing social site. This is what 43 Things’ Shanghai users want to do with their lives.

So, check these sites out. (And would someone please give me a thumbs-up at Consumating? This is getting embarrassing.)

06.15.2005, 4:43 PM · Internet, Site News · Comments (3)

Do you want to write for Shanghaiist.com?

Site will be better than Star Wars III. I promise.

While in New York a few weeks ago, I had lunch with Jake Dobkin, publisher of the highly-successful Gothamist family of city blogs. We met at a bagel joint on 20th and 3rd. I had a very tasty Reuben and a Diet Coke. I can’t remember what Jake had, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that Jake and I decided to team up and launch Shanghaiist. It will be the first -ist site in Asia — and I’m confident it won’t be long before Shanghaiist is considered the best website about Shanghai on the internet.

I am in the process of of putting together the Shanghaiist team. Interested?

06.06.2005, 1:50 PM · Culture, Site News · Comments (13)

I am leaving China!

(And then I am coming back!)

I fly to New York City on Sunday for a stateside trip I wasn’t really planning until a couple weeks ago. That’s when I learned that the return flight on a ticket I own — the first leg of which I used last May on my way back to Shanghai from Brian and Jill’s wedding — expires on May 8. So, I’m using it … on May 8.

The timing of the trip works out quite well, actually. In New York, I can meet with my literary agent face-to-face and hopefully get things moving on my book project. And, later in May, Dave, Lani and Sam will be in Pennsylvania — so prepare yourselves for many more photos of my nephew.

Other than that, I don’t have much planned. I’ll need to buy a ticket to get back to Shanghai — the cheaper the better — and I was thinking about trying to find a travel agent in New York’s Chinatown (any suggestions?). Maybe I’ll buy a new computer, seeing how my iBook’s hard drive appears to be fried again. Maybe I’ll help my dad sell his house — half of which is in my name — so I can actually afford a new computer. And maybe, while I’m home, the Yankees will actually win a game.

I’ll be spending most of my U.S. time in Bloomsburg, Pa., but I also plan on visiting New York, D.C. and maybe either Pittsburgh or Philadelphia. If you live any of those places and would like to get together — or buy me a new computer — drop me a line.

05.06.2005, 3:15 PM · Site News · Comments (5)

The best events calendar in Shanghai

That is, of course, if you want it to be

Look to your right. No, not that far. On your computer screen. On your web browser. On this web page. In that gray area over there. Below SPONSORS. Above SEARCH. Welcome to your very own Shanghai events calendar. I say “your very own” because that’s exactly what it is. You — the people of Shanghai — control the content of this calendar. And the 15 most current events will always appear under EVENTS on this website.

We are pulling events for our calendar from the Shanghai metro listing of a great site called Upcoming.org. Anyone can browse the listings at Upcoming, and registered users (it’s free) can add events, tag them, comment on events and “mingle” with people who have similar interests. Upcoming also allows you to create private events — ones that won’t appear on the main calendar — and you can use the site to organize the event and send out invites. Not bad.

Right now, thanks to me and Micah, Upcoming’s Shanghai metro has 60 events listed. That ties us with the San Francisco Bay Area for eighth most in the world. New York City is No. 1 with 267 events listed.

Currently, all of the Shanghai listings are either sports or music. I added the Shanghai schedules for the China Super League and the China Baseball League. And Micah added a bunch of listings from Shanghai’s underground music scene, which does indeed exist and is only getting better.

But for an events calendar like this to work, we need many more people to add listings — listings that cover a wide range of interests. So if you know of something that needs/deserves publicity, go add it to the list. And tell your friends to do the same. (Note: Right now all the Shanghai listings have address information in English and Chinese. It would be cool, and very helpful, if that trend would continue.) I know if I was in charge of publicity for a band, a bar, an art gallery — any event, really — I’d be all over Upcoming. It’s free. It’s easy. And it has the potential to be seen by many, many people.

I’ve always wanted a tool like this on the web — a listing of Shanghai events that I’d actually be interested in. I have one now. And you can too. Check it out.

04.13.2005, 2:25 PM · Best of Shanghai, Featured, Site News · Comments (2)

Your man in Yunnan

Everything you need to know or Everything I know or Everything I felt like typing

Mediocre things come to those who have no choice but to wait. I am talking about my most recent batch of photos from Xishuangbanna. Not that the month-and-a-half-old photos (all 117 of them) are bad — actually, I think some of them turned out pretty well — but the image quality of the versions I added to the photo gallery is a little subpar, in my opinion. The reason? I started to use this iPhoto plugin called iPhotoToGallery. It really does make the uploading process a lot easier, but the tradeoff is that your photos look like crap. Until they clean up the crap, I won’t be using it again. But I won’t be re-uploading anything, either — just don’t have time. Still, the photos should give you a good feel for ‘Banna, which, after two visits, is one of my favorite spots in China — because the place, not far from Burma and Laos, is like a vacation from China. A slice of Southeast Asia without having to go through an airport security check.

I don’t have time to the write the long, vivid travelog that a trip to Xishuangbanna warrants (my time is currently occupied by a longer, hopefully vivider[1] travelog), but I would like to leave you with a few brief Yunnan travel tips:

Tip one: Go to Yunnan. You will love it.

04.12.2005, 9:50 PM · Observations, Photos, Site News, Travel

‘From travel bug to travel blog’

That’s the title of ShanghaiTalk’s January 2005 cover story — and you may recognize the “cover boy.” Oh, wait. You probably won’t. My face is covered in the photo, which likely explains why it made the cover. The magazine’s managing editor Shamus Sillar did a nice little story about The Trip and the two-page spread also features a slew of my photos and an excerpt from one of my trip stories. I’m pretty pleased with the way it all turned out.

Unfortunately, ShanghaiTalk does not have a real website — it is only 2005, after all — so if you want to read the story, you’ll have to pick up an issue in Shanghai. This may prove to be difficult if you happen to live in, say, Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, or anywhere else in the world. The photo is also the cover of this month’s BeijingTalk, but I’m not sure if the story ran in that magazine, as well [UPDATE: The story did run in Beijing … and Guangzhou, as well]. Maybe Shamus can hook me up with a PDF file of the story that I could post here or something [UPDATE: See below … Thanks, Shamus!]. I’ll let you know.

For now, you can check out these ~~not-so-great pics of the story~~ high-quality images Shamus gave me. Just click on the icons, keeping in mind that some of the images are rather large:

But, really, if I were you I’d check out this great video of The Arcade Fire playing live instead (thanks for the link, Daily Refill). And stay tuned for the Shanghai Diaries Top 25 Albums Of 2004 list, which will appear right here very soon — maybe even tomorrow. I have a feeling The Arcade Fire might make it. Yeah, I’m pretty sure about that.

01.02.2005, 2:15 AM · Music, Site News · Comments (5)

Not bloggy enough for you?

The Blotter: So many links it’s silly

Like links? Love links? Need links? Are you like Levene in Glengarry Glen Ross? “I can’t (open) these (links), (Dan). No one can. It’s a joke. (Dan), look, just give me a hot (link). Just give me two of the premium (links). As a “test,” alright? As a “test” and I promise you …” *

No test necessary. I got your premium links right here.

Please allow me to introduce, or re-introduce, you to The Blotter. Definitely the bloggiest section of this site, The Blotter is usually updated several times a day with random links that happen to catch our eye. Many of the links have to do with China — many of the links do not. But they’re all worth checking out.

Why just today we have Pam Anderson naked, Beijing Pizza Hut salad stacking contests, Chinese women discussing lubricant and Japanese men who like to rest their heads on fake female laps.

Check it all out here. Or just move your head slightly to the right — the most recent posts to The Blotter always appear on the right of every site page, not too far beneath the Categories.

If you would like to add The Blotter to your RSS reader, you can use this link.

If you would like to recommend a link for inclusion in The Blotter, please contact us. If we use your link, we will mention that we got it from you.

Head on over to The Blotter!

If you were wondering, the photo used with this entry is an ink blotter. Weak, I know. I couldn’t think of anything else.

* Apologies to David Mamet.

12.16.2004, 3:19 PM · Site News

Asia Blog Awards 2004

Vote early. Vote often.

The nominations are in. Now it’s time to vote in the 2004 Asia Blog Awards.

There are 23 categories. And Shanghai Diaries was lucky enough to be nominated in three of them: Best Mainland China Blog, Best Designed Blog and Best Essayist.

You can vote once a day in every category until voting ends December 31.

So tell all your friends, and go vote for your favorites!

I’m pretty sure this is one election the good guys (and girls) have a chance of winning.

Link: 2004 Asia Blog Awards

12.15.2004, 1:41 PM · Site News · Comments (1)

new photos: flying and fireworks

happy new year.

and happy new year.

i owe you two of those, i believe. one for parts west. one for parts east. i’ve been incommunicado since way back in 2003 — no matter what calendar you go by. i am such a bad blogger.

but at least i carry a camera. and that’s what i’m here to tell you about today.

01.26.2004, 3:25 AM · Photos, Site News · Comments (1)

my uncle olaf used to say …

… whenever you finish four mind-numbing days spent grading 400 final exams (which require students, among other things, to “write two examples of a swear word”) …

… go to cambodia.

well, i’m taking ol’ ollie’s advice. i’ll be in cambodia until nov. 28.

how do you say “happy thanksgiving” in cambodi … um … cambodianese? (i really should have read up on this place a little more. cambodiahua? cambodinglish?)

[olaf also used to tell me never to mention stories i have promised to readers, but, for whatever reason, haven’t written yet. so i won’t mention the xinjiang stories that i owe you, among others. i won’t apologize. i won’t blame the the fact that they’re not written on 400 final exams … but i could.]

see you in 10 days!

(by the way, i got my camera fixed. so expect some pics.)

11.18.2003, 4:35 AM · Cambodia, Site News

lost in translation

click here if you would like to see the shanghai diaries translated into chinese, korean, japanese, italian, german, french, spanish — hell, even portuguese. someone is trying to sell me this service … but i’m not buying. have a feeling there would be lots of “super karate monkey death car”-type stuff in there.

don’t get that reference? well, you need to watch more newsradio, one of the best television shows — ever.

10.13.2003, 1:07 AM · Site News, Television

christmas is only 87 days away!

now available at the online store … 2004 calendars featuring some of your favorite photos from this site! click here to get yours now. other new products coming soon!