World's biggest Flagship Barbie store in Shanghai

(Pictobank)


(Pictobank)


(Flickr/Tomo.moko)


(Flickr/Rintak)


(Travelpod/NinaVersteeg)


(Getty images)


(Newsobserver)


(Guardian)


(ShoppingBlog)


(TheSpec)


(Guardian)


(AP photo)

Just read over at Bibiliew about the world's largest Barbie store right here in our very own Shanghai, on Huaihai Road. Check it out! (the article and the store).

You know China is doing well when Mattel decide to open their flagship store in Shanghai and not New York!

The design of the store is genius and reminds me of the Apple Stores... a lot. All that glass and modern architectural styles.. love it.

However, I do have a love/hate relationship with Barbie. I loved playing with her as a young girl but I did resent the fact there was no Asian/Chinese Barbie, and the fact that all dolls were blonde and blue-eyed back then in the 80s. And let's not get started with her incredibly unrealistic body proportions! She makes Dolly Parton and Pamela Anderson look normal. I was watching some news report about her 50th anniversary and Mattel was saying they are empowering women, not de-powering them as everyone thinks and that's one of the reasons why Ken and Barbie broke up. 'Cause you know, Barbie doesn't need Ken, right? Who needs Ken when you have millions of friends and clothes, and fancy cars, houses, horses.. and money coming at you every day Paris Hilton style? (that is tongue in cheek of course). Whatever. If I had a daughter I wouldn't persuade or dissuade her from owning a Barbie though. She'll probably grow out of it eventually, like I did. I try not to take these things too seriously like all the feminists out there ;)


Official Barbie Shanghai Flagship store website

Address: 550 Central HuaiHai Road

More articles:

International Herald Tribune
The Wall Street Journal
All Roads lead to China blog
GMA News
Gold Sea
UK Telegraph blog

Things to do in Shanghai...

After having guests stay with us recently I have made some mental notes of what they like to do.

Some are obvious like shop and eat, and shop some more, and eat some more... go to or just look at the Orient Pearl Tower. :)

Others which may not be so obvious but seem popular are:

1. Go to the fabric market. Get something made. If you want a suit you'll need at the very least a full week though. Simple things can be done in about 4 days. Bargain at least 10% if not 20% off! Start with 70% of the price they quote you. Addresses are listed in one of my older posts.

2. Get a massage. Massage places are EVERYWHERE and compared to almost any other country, are dirt cheap. The place we go to we pay 60 RMB for 1 hour for either a full body massage or foot massage. It is located in the Hongqiao/Gubei/Changning area known as "Little Japan" on Xianxia Lu and Zunyi Lu. It is always busy and they do a pretty good job!

When that's done, shop some more and eat some more ;)

Some places I can recommend are:

1. Xujiahui - where you can get anything under the sun, where there are 6? department stores, and the big Grand Gateway mall. Where the geeks can go crazy at Best Buy (or Metro City or Pacific Digital Plaza), and the foodies can go crazy at the top of Grand Gateway and Novel Place, and the shoe-aholics and clothes-aholics can go crazy at any store. My favourites are Pacific and No.6 department store. I can usually find clothes and shoes in there that I like at reasonable prices. The brands at Grand Gateway are generally way too expensive for me (since they are mostly foreign, mostly European brands). For basic staples (plain coloured tops, pants) Uniqlo (in GG) is great. Lots of easy-to-wear, mix-and-match stuff at great prices.

2. Huaihai Lu - previously known as Avenue Joffre, or the "Champs Elysee of the Orient" this road is about 15km long. Yep, mega long. It's divided up into three parts - West, Central and East. Most of the 'action' can be found in the Central part (which is also the longest). I have pretty much walked along the entire street. It is tiring but the most benefit can be gained (for a shopaholic) by walking across most of length of this street (not in the one go!). There is no point to take a taxi and you can take a bus or the subway but you miss a lot doing that since the stops can be far apart. If you are just randomly browsing it's much better to walk, and walk and... walk. Near Shaanxi Nan Lu, Maoming Nang Lu, Huangpi Nan Lu (and in between) there are lots of department stores and boutiques. This street is also the home of wedding dresses and bridal photography stores. One after another, big glass windows with glittering displays of fancy sequinned, frilled, coloured, embroidered, wedding dresses. Billions and billions of different kinds. They must do a good business because day or night, they are filled with customers looking at their large sample albums. I like to take the 911 bus along this street because it's a double decker one and you can feel like a real tourist sitting at the top and looking out the windows. At 2 RMB a trip it's fun just to ride the bus along the whole length of this road to get a feel of what it has to offer you! :) Once you have pinpointed the places that interest you (I actually marked on a map where my favourite stores were), then you can get out and start pounding the pavement.

3. Dain Ti Hill/Neo Tang Dynasty - crazy Chinese modern fushion cuisine. Really tasty. There are chains everywhere but seeing as I just talked about XJH there is one on the 5th floor of Grand Gateway. Usually it's so popular you have to queue for an hour or so but sometimes you can get lucky and only have to wait 5-10 minutes. There is also one in an expat type mall on Huahai Lu near the Hong Kong Plaza. The one with Delifrance out the front.

4. Lynn - modern Shanghainese cuisine. Now I don't normally like Chinese food much but this place was out of this world. It would have gotten a 10/10 if it weren't for the fact that they allowed smoking. The fish with pinenuts was absolutely delicious. It looks like an expensive type of place too (being right near the Ritz Carlton hotel and Nanjing Xi Lu) but for 4 people we paid 490 RMB including drinks.
99-1 Xikang Lu near Nanjing Xi Lu 西康路99-1号近南京西路

5. Wagas - the good ol' staple. My husband is addicted to this place. Opened by an Australian there are now restaurants all over Shanghai. It serves simple, healthy stuff - sandwiches, wraps, salads, pasta for a reasonable price, and great smoothies and freshly squeezed juices. Everything is really fresh! If you go after 6pm they have specials on the pasta. The one on Huaihai Lu near Huangpi Nan Lu is always busy and easily accessible.

Our sixth month wedding anniversary...

Last night we celebrated our 6th month anniversary. We were to-ing and fro-ing about which restaurant to go to. It is always so hard to choose because they are just SO many here! We were going to go to a fancy one but it was raining and a bit horrible so we decided just to go to a cheapish one, more like a cafe, serving Western-style dishes. We already have their menu in a home delivery booklet so we knew the types of dishes they had and it seemed to have good reviews online.

We decided to go to Wagas on Huaihai Rd (not the one in the picture)

As soon as we walked in I was really happy because 1) it did not reek of smoke (in fact the whole place was non-smoking, a rarity and a treasure in China!) 2) there were lots of people on laptops (free wireless?) and it just reminded me so much of home. The only thing that gave it away that we were in China was the bilingual menu and all Chinese staff.

There were 4 people with laptops and 2 of them had macs (a fairly high ratio I would say!) that made me feel like it was even more like 'home' haha.

I was very impressed and humbled when a guy sitting next to us, typing on his Mac laptop, was speaking to the waitress in fluent Mandarin. But not only was it fluent, it was quite complicated business-like jargon. I actually didn't even really know what he was saying as it was far beyond my level of comprehension. In that precise moment I felt ashamed and embarrassed that I, with my Chinese background, and him with his American or wherever (Western country) background could speak such great Mandarin! (and not to mention read and type it too).

What better way to console myself than going across the road to the Pacific department store (gotta love the 10pm closing time every night) and going shoe shopping! It was packed as usual and the sales are so great. Eg 50% off then another 20% off. And beautiful soft leather, both inner and upper. My size is also right in the middle of the range and very common (whereas in Australia I can hardly ever buy anything because they just don't make my size or have sold out of it). They were 890 RMB (AU$140) down to 350 RMB ($55) which is freakin' expensive for China but the quality is so good, and leather so soft, like Italian shoes.

Oh btw the food was absolutely scrumptious and now I have read more from the site I just posted, I had a good reason why it felt so much like 'home'. Because the manager is Chinese Australian and there is definitely the Australian connection there... :)

Ahh... such is the life.

Today I had quite an enjoyable and interesting day.

Started off by getting up early and leaving the house at 8am, then coming back and getting ready to go to the gym at 10am for a pilates class. Meanwhile, got an email from my sister saying she needed an invitation for a birthday party she is having. She wanted it by 11:30am. Umm.. it was now 9am and I had to get ready for the class. Not long later, I get my expat wife friend chatting to me through gmail and asked if I was free to meet up for lunch. I had planned on going to Carrefour and some other shops but I hadn't seen her in maybe a month so I said, OK, sure.

So I frantically designed this invite, emailed it off to my sister, went to the gym class (was a bit late), did an hour of pilates (and boy does my neck and back hurt now, not to mention I realised my stomach muscles suck, and my hamstrings are totally inflexible!) Got chatting to a middle-aged lady that I met before, 2 weeks ago when I turnee up for a Chinese dance class which unfortunately was the last class. It was such a funny class I was trying so hard not to laugh at the movements and then when hubby got home I performed them for him, then he mimicked ME and we were both laughing hysterically! :D

Then I did 10 mins on the treadmill, walked back home and got ready to leave. Also was frantically tidying the house for my guest!

She picked me up and we drove to a vegetarian restaurant for lunch. It was kind of Buddhist style in that everything was made to look like meat, and in some cases even tasted like meat. The restaurant was surprisingly busy and crowded. We both also loved that it was non-smoking (a rarity in China!) and everything was organic, fresh, and clean.

Afterwards she was going to take me to the fake market (after I asked where she got her nice handbag from) but instead decided to go to the hairdresser instead. I was glad I had not washed my hair (no time) so I followed her and got my hair washed and blow dried too. We were there for over an hour! In that time I also got an extensive head, shoulder, neck and upper back massage. All for 23 RMB. The other day hubby got a haircut for 10 RMB and was raving about how good it was so it goes to show you that price doesn't always dictate quality in China!

The guy washing my hair wanted to sell me some really expensive Kerastase vials of some 'anti hair loss' liquid. He started getting me all paranoid about my hairloss but it was so ridiculously expensive of course I didn't buy any! He also asked whether I was from overseas and why I had 'returned' to China. I said I am not returning because I never lived here! haha. Anyway we left and I felt very relaxed. I got professional blow dry and my hair had never looked better. It looks so straight and shiny.

I forgot to mention that whilst driving from the restaurant to the hairdresser the strangest thing happened. I started telling my friend about the day I took a bus to Huaihai Lu (and the trip took an hour <_< ) and walked for 6 hours straight in the boiling hot sun. I was crazy. Now I can barely do 10 minutes! I walked from Maison Mode / Times Square, onto Changle Lu, then Maoming Lu and then back onto Huaihai Lu and Parksons. On the way I passed so many places I wanted to go to it just wasn't feasible to keep getting on and off a taxi, train or bus so I just walked the whole way.

I meant to do a post about that mammoth day that night or the day after but I was sooooo exhausted that even 24 hours later after I arrived home I could still barely move!

On Monday I went to Carrefour after going to the Chinese herbal doctor (TCM) (which is my Monday morning routine), and was basically killing time wandering around the upper floor (which sells non-food items). I saw a bargain desk and I had to have it! I have been killing my back sitting on a hard wooden dining chair and wanted a desk chair but instead I found the perfect desk, for a bargain 159 RMB so I got both the desk and a desk chair. The computer desk has a slide out drawer (good ergonomics and all that) and is the exact same honey wood colour as all our other furniture so it matches. The chair is padded with armrests and castors. It is super comfy and has good lower back support. I asked a sales assistant if they had any in stock (not seeing any on the floor) and how I would get it delivered to me. He said that there would be more coming in and when they came he would deliver AND assemble for me. I said I didn't need it assembled (since hubby loves putting things together like all guys do) and he said it was only 10 RMB extra so I thought why not. So right now, the man is here busy screwing in all the parts together. He is super fast too. In the time I have typed up the last 4 paragraphs (and I'm a very fast typer) he has almost finished putting the desk together. It cost us a whopping 50 RMB to have the desk and chair delivered and assembled.

I love China! ;) :)