Dum Dee Dum... I am not a super hero neither am i spiderman. I am going to save the world... like as if you would believe. I am a maniac. I came from an outer space which is filled with water. I learn swimming at the age of zero.I wail like a cry baby. I crawl like spiderman, i fly like superman, i drive like batman. I live in wonderland. Rugrats is my friend, so is peter pan.
I first watched this show a while back, I think when I was in JC, but I never really got to know the ending and I missed episodes in between so I don't know what was really going on.
I watched it online yesterday, though (and have been watching it for a while, after all it's 30 episodes) and am so enraptured by the show that I am trying to find an old Shanghai map and try to locate the places where things took place, the kinds of homes they lived in and the roads they drove on, what it looked like in the period drama and what it looks like now.
I read some reviews when I googled "Riches and Stitches" and there were some bad reviews like "meaningless show", "crap ending" etc.
I think you've really gotta be in Shanghai, now, to see the point. The glamour of old Shanghai, the 'theatre's, the roads, the streets, they mentioned in the film places like Cheng Huang Miao, Zhabei, Hong Kou and these are real places in Shanghai and I actually know where these places are!
There's this guy called Chun Gien, the tailor who used to sell paintings at Cheng Huang Miao. Cheng Huang Miao today is a temple, with a great big square where people go for the local "xiao chi". There are stretches of walls bordering the Yuyuan Garden close by, where perhaps he might have set up his stall along. (Of course I know this is a fictitious story, I'm just saying)
And while the main part of the story takes place in the French Concession or 法租界 as it is called in the HongKong film and as it is termed in Chinese, they mention places like Zhabei（闸北）and 虹口.
The french concession is what most visitors to Shanghai know about, it's the Bund area, bund is 外滩. And it's actually a very big 'area'. To walk from 外滩to闸北is not that close, even by the shanghai metro (it's about... 5 or 6 stops) so people in the show had to have a lot of daylight hours since no public transport in that era of rickshaws.
But the homes they live in are so pretty. They look just like the ones on Hengshan Road 衡山路or 常熟路 that area now. (Almost near where I live in relative terms of course) and their interiors are always so lovely. Of course there are also scenes of where the poor people live. And these 弄堂still exist today.
Hong Kou is now a place where there is a football stadium and lots of great food. In the film, some gangsta from Japan had turned it into little japan. I visited it lately and it really is a place with lots of korean/japanese eateries.
Zhabei is not all that famous or popular, although the Shanghai Circus is there. They are also developing some arty soho loft kind of thing as a place for all the creative people to have offices etc. Something like Singapore's Mount Sophia but on a much larger scale.
What I'm most interested in though, is where the lady's restaurant is located!! Maybe it's inside Yuyuan Garden, cos the interior looks a little like it and it's near Cheng huang Miao and presumably it has to be near the temple for her to be able to go and see him sometimes during lunch. which also means her office should be in that area. GAWD! i'm going mad
*Just as a gauge, Singapore is the size of Pudong New Development Area 浦东新区 and the places I speak of are in Puxi, Pudong hadn't been developed yet. Puxi is of course, much bigger.
Such a lovely show. I'm filled with nostalgia about it and feel as if I can forgive Shanghai the horrible horrible weather and the pollution and spit everywhere just because they had such a glorious past.
