Urban Oasis and the rest of Shanghai

Work brought me to Shanghai in September so I spent a week at The PuLi, one of the earlier "urban oasis" style properties opened in this city back in 2009. The city has changed quite a bit since my last visit in late 2019 and I was eager to see and experience this dynamic city in the post-COVID times. 

Design Society Shekou

The only “sightseeing” stuff we did in our long weekend in Shenzhen was a trip to Shekou on the outskirt of the city now easily accessible by metro/subway. True, our main mission to Shenzhen was to check out the new Muji Hotel, but a visit to the new Design Society complex on the coast of Shekou was also something on my to-do list for a while so I decided to hit two birds with one stone and make a slight detour there before heading home.

Staycation of Doing Nothing

We figure we should stay put during the Easter long weekend since half of people in Hong Kong were gone elsewhere so we could enjoy some much-needed tranquility in town, but it didn’t stop us from hopping onto the bus and head just north of our border to Shenzhen for a short overnight break for a staycation of sorts. Especially there’s a certain new hotel we would love to visit in town.

Exploring the Garment District

The neighborhood of Shum Shui Po could be different things to different people – to computer and electonics geeks, this is the place where they fetch the latest gadgets inside the legendary Golden Arcade, or at one of the outdoor stalls on the block of Ap Liu Street; there’s also a street dedicated to toys, dai pai dong/street food, Chinese dessert soups and many more. And on the other side of this old commercial/residential mixed neighborhood, there were a few blocks of shops for fabrics and all garment accessories – there were specialty shops for everything from buttons to ribbons to threads and needles and more, carrying down from the days when this is where all the garment factories were.

Retail Therapy

I was surprised that it snowed and sleeted, at times heavily, during my stay in Kyushu, especially during my first stop in Fukuoka. That means I ended up spending more time indoors, shopping and chilling in a much slower pace, which was not bad an alternative, given I didn't have anything particular in mind to go or do anyway.

Fly me to the (Mira) Moon

Last Tuesday night I was at Supergiant, the casual tapas bar at the new boutique hotel Mira Moon in Wanchai. Well I vaguely remembered there's some mentioning of the opening of this design hotel late last year, but I didn't realize there's also a full-service restaurant on-premise as well until the hotel PR team mentioned this one day and asked whether I would be interested in trying some of the dishes there.

The restaurant (and the hotel) is located somewhere in between Wanchai and Causeway Bay at a street corner on the unremarkable Jaffe Road. I was somewhat confused by the name which I didn't quite relate to being a tapas bar, but I was told that it's named after an astronomical term of a super bright star, hence consistent with the overall design theme of the hotel, which was inspired by the moon and the Chinese folklore surrounding it. Now that made a little bit more sense to me.