I’ve just spent a delightful morning poshing around the grounds of “The Official Residence of the Australian Consul General” here in Shanghai. One of the many privileges denied to you mere mortals back home, but one I’ll happily embrace as an expat.
It’s a great way to pro-actively claw back a small percentage of the thousands and thousands of dollars in tax I have paid over the years. Next on my missions agenda is to somehow get invited back for drinks, but I’ll need to pull something special out of the kitbag for that to happen.
So, back to the day, I was up at the frighteningly early time of 4:30am, yes that is in the morning, which was a struggle, as I had to order my own taxi in Mandarin, but happily the taxi operator was very patient. The taxi even managed to find my place. I told them the wrong suburb by getting confused between the word for “park”, and the word for “garden”. There is nothing like being in the deep end to FORCE me to learn.
Driving through Shanghai that early in the morning is a very enjoyable experience, before all the crowds, before the toxic fog that constantly shrouds the place arrives, before the footpaths are covered in saliva, the place looks stunning. Especially since today, is possibly the best weather I have ever seen here since January.
At the Residence, everyone was very well turned out. There were approximately 500 people, and two Bogans; one wearing a Quicksilver Australian Flag t-shirt and one guy sporting a Collingwood scarf. I am sure if it had been warmer, we may have seen at least one person in a Bintang singlet.
The usual ANZAC day ceremonies were conducted, with speeches, wreath laying, The Ode, The Last Post, Reveille, and one minute silence. In a “unique” Chinese touch, I heard someone out in the street, hawking up a lung oyster from what sounded like the soles of his feet, followed by the satisfying wet slap as it hit the footpath.
The Official Residence is in a distinctive old home. The house used to belong to a Portuguese businessman that owned coal mines in China in the 1920’s. It is one of a handful of Official Residences that have a fantastic outdoor garden, which was a superb place to enjoy the traditional gunfire breakfast after the ceremony.
During breakfast I met many interesting people, including a bloke from the office in Melbourne and some long term Australian residents of Shanghai. One bloke was telling me the story of a Kiwi guy that used to run the now defunct Kangaroo bar. Apparently, one ANZAC day, this joker turns up drunk, dressed in a British Admirals uniform and proceeds to give a speech about how the Japanese ate his Grandfather, not good form. After being forcibly extricated from the proceedings, he was sent a letter from the New Zealand Consul General, bared from any and all future Embassy functions. This letter was blown up and hung with pride of place in his bar.
After Richard’s recent performance at People7, I can easily see how this happened. Bloody Kiwi’s.
