If you’re like me, one of the things you love most about living abroad is when people come to visit.  It’s a little taste of home without the hassle or expense of actually going there.  Plus, I love Shanghai, so I also love to show it off to friends and family who come to see me.

But here’s what I discovered after a recent visit by my parents: Shanghai is not Beijing.  In Beijing, you’ll never run out of historic, cultural, touristy things to do.  In Shanghai, well, not so much.  The things that I enjoy on a regular basis in Shanghai don’t really cut it when my parents come and want to experience “China.”  So here are some ideas of what to do with your parents if they visit that try to blend the old and new of China while still showing off the personality of Shanghai.

Yu Gardens

Beautiful, traditional Chinese gardens.  It’s a great place to wander around, take pictures, and people watch.  My best advice: make a day of it and head to the gardens early to beat the crowds, see the gardens, and then have a walk around the bazaar.  Take your parents to eat some traditional xiaolongbao at the famous Nanxiang Steamed Bun Restaurant (the takeaway queue is intimidating, but you’ll have better luck if you just go inside and sit down).

After lunch, have a walk around the old town area.  There’s the Chenxiangge Nunnery as well as the Temple of the Town God, both near Yu Gardens and worth a quick visit.  Fangbang Zhong Lu is a great street to wander along as it’s got lots of souvenir shopping as well as nice shops, tea houses and restaurants if you need a break.  Also on Fangbang Zhong Lu is the Shiliupu Fabric Market if your parents want to have any clothes made before returning home.  It’s a good idea to hit the fabric market early in your Shanghai visit, in case the clothes you order don’t get done on time or need more than one fitting.

Do NOT go to Yu Gardens at the weekend, unless your goal is to show your parents just how many people live in Shanghai.

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So you’ve lived in Shanghai for a while and gotten pretty comfortable here? Or maybe you’re fresh off the boat and ready to take this city by storm? Either way, learning Mandarin Chinese is absolutely essential for surviving and thriving in this booming metropolis.News flash: We live in China! Now, although it is not even close to your native tongue and you can certainly get by without speaking Mandarin Chinese here, learning the national lingo will pay off in many ways.

1. Break down Cultural BarriersChances are that you don’t speak Chinese with your friends here, especially when you share a common or native language like English. But what about making Chinese friends? It truly makes my day when I go get a mani/pedi and I can talk to the manicurist about where she is from and what color is in style (liu xin). When you can speak with street vendors or stylists, living in Shanghai seems less foreign and friendlier in general. On the flip side, when you cannot communicate with taxi drivers or bank tellers, it can be extremely frustrating.

As a relatively new person in Shanghai, I have recently discovered the Fabric Market and I wanted to share my experience in this site as an addition to the great article that Sue wrote a couple of months back (if you haven’t read the article yet, make sure you check it out is full of very good info).Visiting the Fabric Market can be an exhilarating experience; no matter you are a tourist just passing through or a resident of Shanghai, visiting this place will always be a fun experience. If you are one of those people who prefer to shop their clothes of the rack, probably you won’t go back for a second time, on the other hand if you are one of those people who loves designing your clothes or that you always wish that the clothes were a little bit more or less... (like me), I promise you will be going back.

Not so long ago while chatting with Rebecca, who was the first Doll to recommend me different stalls in the market, mentioned to me that she goes there every other week. I personally thought that it was too often (yeah!!!), that was before I got the ‘flavor’ of the Fabric Market, now I know better and I have been going there more often that I care to admit.

What I really love about the Fabric Market is the opportunity of play ‘fashion designer’ for the day on a safe way, after all you won’t be doing the clothes and if they can’t do it, they will tell you.

There are two types of people in this world, the ones that like the challenge that doing fitness and being fit brings you and others (like me) who are ‘fitness challenged’.

When I arrived to Shanghai 9 months ago, I was in really bad shape (I’m sure you know the symptoms), luckily for me I met Julia Taylor (the original doll) who opposite to me really enjoys her daily doses of fitness. Long story short Julia had the great idea of starting a fitness program in the format of a ‘challenge’ to bring some of the Dolls together and help us to get in good shape for the summer.

The program is designed under the format that there are 2 competing teams (due to the location of the ‘challengers’ we had a JingAn and a Xujiahui teams) training twice a week at our local neighborhoods parks with a different trainer (10 people per team). After a period of 6 weeks both teams get together for a fun picnic day and to compete against each other (as a team) to declare a winning team of the Fitness Challenge. This fun event ends giving prices to the winning team (thanks to our generous sponsors). In addition because we truly believe that is not only important to win but also is important the effort you have put during the 6 weeks of training we gave awards to the people (in both teams) that showed the ‘most improvement’ since they started training. I’m proud to say that together with my friend Mirna we won the award for most improved for the JingAn team, I cannot tell you how much it means to a ‘fitness challenged’ person to get this kind of award. We also gave prizes in recognition to our team leaders because all the time they spent coordinating our teams, from scheduling to making sure we all got the materials we needed to work out. Our teams in addition to having the goal of getting in good shape, also had the goal of having a good time and laugh among friends that is why we decided to give the award to the laziest person in each team (by democratic vote), because you should never loose your sense of humor the winners of the ‘laziest’ person on each team received the prize of (1) one on one training session with our trainers.

As women, we all know the important role that shoes play in a lady’s life. Shanghai can definitely be a heaven for shoes shoppers IF you got little Cinderella feet.

I’m a 1.77 meter tall girl with US10 size shoes and soon after arriving to Shanghai I discovered that buying shoes was not going to be an easy task for me. My first encounter with the ‘shoes problem’ was in a little shoe store in Shaanxi Rd., where before even asking an employee looked at me and said: ‘No, we don’t have size 40’. The response got repeated over and over again in Parksons Mall: ‘No we don’t have that size’.

I cannot tell you how discouraged and inadequate I felt that day. Obviously there is always the solution of ordering shoes from the US, but this option didn’t attracted me that much not only because I will end up paying a lot in shipping, plus the waiting time plus the fact that you should try your shoes before buying them because they can ‘seriously hurt’.

I was committed to get my shoes and I decided to not give up, so after doing some research in different expat sites in the net, I discovered about the ‘custom made’ shoes option.

Coming from the US, a highly industrialized country, getting ‘custom made’ shoes has never been an option for a ‘working girl’ like me because of the extremely high price tag. In Shanghai the story is quite different and getting ‘custom made’ shoes although not an extremely cheap solution is definitely in the ‘affordable’ section.

Summer is about baring skin and showing off the beautiful (fake) summer tan you have. But in order to look good baring that skin, you need to take some time to ready your skin and reverse the signs of neglect you showed your skin during fall, winter and spring.

Knock of each step on my skin care tips for glowing skin and you'll be ready to pull out your favorite summer dress or bikini in no time flat. Most of the products mentioned in the article I buy from the well-known beauty online store strawberrynet.com, which I also recomment to you.

So here goes my ultimate list of 10 skin care tips for glowing skin in summer:

I am one of those people who is very protective of her hair.  When I say that I mean the cut, colour, the hairdresser I use, etc.  You could probably go so far as to call me slightly obsessive (only slightly, okay maybe no slightly!).  If I could I would pay for my hairdresser in Australia to come to China every 6-8 weeks to do my hair, but the budget really doesn’t cover that!

When I arrived in China 3.5 years ago I was Blonde!  Yes I know hard to believe with my current colour hair…  I attempted to go to a few different places to get this kept up, but I was originally living  Guangzhou and they are lacking good, western hairdressers who have a good supply of Blonde colours.  So Brunette I went and I love it!

In my attempt to find a hairdresser that I could trust in Shanghai I did the usual technique of asking as many women as I know who they go to and who they think are good.  At first I thought the only way I would get a good result was to pay through the roof for it…  I went to one of the famous places in the French Concession and was not only left with an empty wallet, but was really disappointed with both the cut and the colour.  I had got into the habit of leaving my hair for a very long time in between visits, because I really didn’t want to pay for what they did.  I also would try to wait for the last part of the year so that when I went back to Australia for my yearly trip I could get it fixed there!

Recently I started getting injury after injury… (actually maybe not real injuries, but aches and pains that I like to nickname “Julia Pains” and I always figure they will disappear if I ignore them for long enough!).  What can I blame for this recent spate of pains?  Too much exercise, not stretching, too much stress, not sleeping properly?  Who really knows, maybe it is a combination of the lot!  I first hurt my leg, which then lead to my back and shoulder hurting.  In the back of my mind I am thinking that maybe I am finally getting too old and need to slow down, but the energetic part of my personality refuses to accept that!

So in the search of a way to NOT slow down my lifestyle I went looking for something that will help me through and get me back into working order.  When you live in China there are different options to choose from when it comes to health.  You could go for western treatments, e.g. Chiropractor, Physio Therapist, etc, but these are not only western, but western prices and for people like me who are not on expat salaries they are not really an option for ongoing treatment.  Another option is obviously Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), which is what I decided I should try.  Okay, after this decision is made then you come up with a whole new set of questions...

There are several places every newcomer to Shanghai has to know. One of this places is Avocado lady's shop (also known as Arugula lady and Basil lady). I got to know about Ms Jiang Qin from the first issue of Time Out Shanghai and since then grocery shopping has never been the same again. Her shop at 274 Wulumuqi Rd is one of the only places in the city to buy cheap, fresh avocados (10 RMB), a rare find. Her store looks like nothing special from the outside, but the good import foods at incredibly low prices have made this woman famous.

Ms Jiang is a real entrepreneur and a smart cookie because she knows her laowai market very well. She has all those products that the other vegetable sellers don’t, such as fresh arugula, basil, frisée, blocks of parmesan, and balls of fresh mozzarella for only 17 RMB.

I think there can be a big misconception about the benefits of Boot Camp or what Boot Camp actually is!  I am what you could call a Boot Camp Junkie, because I love doing this kind of activity for many reasons.  Some of them include the fact that it is by far the fastest way to get fit, toned and to look fantastic!  Also, not to mention the huge effect it has on your mood in making you enjoy life way more.  I find it really inspiring and motivating to workout with other women who have their own set of goals and see not only my progression towards the end objective, but theirs too…One of the biggest preconceptions of this type of exercise probably comes from the name – Boot Camp!  It does tend to conjure up images of a drill sergeant screaming at you to drop and give him 20, but I am here to tell you that that is definitely a false idea!  The first Boot Camp I ever worked my way through was called “Bikini Boot Camp”, funny name I know and again even that invokes images of women running around in their Bikini’s!  It was actually called that, because it was to be used as a tool to get you looking hot in a Bikini.

A new place has opened in Shanghai that knows all there is to know about women’s eyes and eyebrows.  They do treading, waxing, eyelash curling, eyelash extensions, eyelash tinting and any other waxing that you need to get done to your face.

I thought I would take one for the team and go and try them out, so then I could tell the Dolls how good or bad they are.  Well I was lucky that they turned out to be good and I was very happy with the results.  One of the good things about this place at the moment is that they are new so you don’t need to worry about getting an appointment, which is the reason why my eyebrows were slowly taking over my face!  I tried various times to get appointments at some of the other reputable places around town and they are always booked out or never get back to me. 

Being from Australia “hate” is not a strong enough word for what I feel about Shanghai winters!  I absolutely despise being cold and cannot understand how or why people seem to rejoice when winter finally arrives in this awesome city!  I am forever striving for different ways to keep myself warm and comfortable and in my quest for this I made a great discovery of a tiny little hole-in-the-wall shop that I can only imagine in four months time will be empty of what is going on in there now and will start selling watermelons or other summer goodies that will make someone a quick buck! 

The current owners, or renters, of this shop are making puffer jackets in all shapes, sizes, colours and styles.  All of these jackets are made to measure and great quality and the price is also nothing to complain about.  There were three Shanghai Dolls buying at the same time, which I think helped with the price and the fact that I also told the woman that I know a lot of expat women in Shanghai.  One of the many great things about getting one of these jackets made to order is not only that they fit you very well, but that you can also choose your own stuffing.  We ended up choosing the middle price one, which is so warm that I quite often find myself sweating and needing to wear way less layers from place to place.