En garde! Fencers face off
Nearly 400 fencers from 46 countries and regions competed at the 2019 Westgate Mall Fencing Grand Prix Shanghai held this month in Jing’an.
Italian Alessio Foconi, 2018 individual and team world champion, won the top award in the men’s division. Russian fencer Inna Deriglazova, who won the gold medal in the 2016 Olympics, topped the competition in the women’s division for a second year.
The contest has been held in Jing’an for 16 years. The district now has 248 registered fencers and seven coaches. Over the years, Jing’an has produced its own class of great fencers, including Wang Lei and Zhong Weiping.
Basketball gets smart
Nearly 300 amateur basketball players joined in a variety of basketball activities held in a basketball court in the Jing’an Sculpture Park.
Neighborhood “self-service” courts offer basketball fans places to play and compete in their local communities.
So far, 16 neighborhood basketball courts in Jing’an have all been equipped with a smart system that allows self-service. They have been used by more than 100,000 people since 2017.
Users scan a QR code at the gate to gain entry and activate a timer. They pay via WeChat when they leave.
Neighborhood sports
Hundreds of international families living in the Daning neighborhood attended a neighborhood sports event held on May 12 at Shanghai Daning International Elementary School.
A variety of events for children and their parents included a five-kilometer race, magic shows and charity stalls.
Daning is popular with international families in Shanghai. More activities will be held through October to build community relations and create an internationally friendly environment.
Night in nature
The Shanghai Natural History Museum opened its doors to nearly 1,000 visitors in its annual night event on May 17.
This year, birds played a leading role as part of the museum’s three-month “Bird Season” series of activities, which are designed to raise public awareness of avian protection. The season runs through June 30.
The museum night started with the traditional Chinese music classic, “Bai Niao Chao Feng,” or “one hundred birds paying homage to the phoenix." Performers from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music played on traditional Chinese instruments that imitated birdsong.
Bird experts guided visitors on a tour of the museum, imparting information on the exhibits.
Workshops combining culture and science were placed around the museum and were a hit of evening. Children tried their skills at cutting two connected paper swans, received facial paintings of birds like peacocks and eagles, and blew bamboo whistles that imitated bird calls.
New blood for old brand
Budding designers, wearing a new collection from Kaikai, hosted a flash mob and dance show on the street, injecting new blood into the old brand and attracting young people to the store.
The flash mob took place outside the store on Shaanxi Road N., home to 17 of the city’s most revered brands.
Kaikai opened in 1936 as a department store and later became known for quality shirts. Every shirt requires more than 100 production processes and more than 18,000 stitches. However, over the years, Kaikai shirts suffered from a stereotype as dull clothes for middle-aged men.
To break the image and attract young buyers, the brand worked with students from the Fashion Institute of Design of Sanda University, using fabrics imported from Italy and Japan and incorporating trendy boyfriend designs, which are oversized with a button-down top.
The flash mob attracted many passers-by to step into the store.
“I hadn’t thought that the store has any good designs,” said a white-collar worker surnamed Zhang. “Today, historical brands are becoming trendy.”
Many time-honored old brands on Shaanxi Road N. have embraced new retailing concepts and modern promotional strategies.
Springtime tea tasting
Tea specialists wearing traditional Chinese garb brewed tea and displayed cha dao, or the art of making tea, in an elegant garden built in the classical Suzhou style. Surrounded by blooming peonies and singing birds, visitors could taste various teas at no cost and munch on delicate Chinese snacks.
The very traditional spring tea tasting of ancient China has been revived in the rooftop garden of Daning International Tea City, one of the most popular tea markets in Shanghai.
Recently, 163 of the tea retailers in the market were honored by the district’s tea industry association for operating businesses for more than 10 years.
Detective Conan Café
A coffee shop themed on the popular Japanese cartoon figure Detective Conan has become a popular rendezvous in the city.
The Detective Conan Café in Joy City in Jing’an is designed from scenes of the cartoon series and offers food and drinks related to the celebrated detective. Related products are also on sale.
In the cartoon, high school detective Shinichi Kudo is forced to take the poison APTX 4869 after he witnesses the illegal business of crime gang Black Organization. Due to a rare side effect, he doesn’t die. Instead, he “shrinks” into a primary school student and adopts the name Conan Edogawa to hide from the gangsters hunting him.
A single purchase
