That's City Talk
In a life long ago, when print was still king, I was a magazine editor in China, from entertainment titles in Shanghai to Beijing's first design and architecture monthly
Prologue
Before I begin, a little back story. In 2004 I was a broke foreign student (liu xuesheng) ‘studying’ Chinese at Suzhou University. I put the word in quotation marks, as I was very loosely attempting to learn Mandarin. Most of my time was actually spent down dive bars on Shiquan Jie, or eating three kuai bowls of niu rou la mian, delicious and cheap beef noodle soup, and hanging out with Australian and American students, many of whom were decidedly more focused on actually learning the language.
The year before I’d given up on making a career work in either insurance or banking, and instead done what directionless foreigners had been doing for generations - run off to the Orient. Despite having grown up in Hong Kong, I’d learned little to no local language, and Cantonese swear words picked up on the football field weren’t going to get me very far in mainland China. After considering Shanghai, I’d picked Suzhou as a smaller city where I’d be forced to learn Mandarin, not anticipating I would discover a crew of similarly lost souls all intent on imbibing as much cheap beer as possible.
Our drinking knew no bounds, so when we decided to spend the weekend visiting the nearby city of Hangzhou, it only made sense for my American friend and I to make a pact to not stop drinking for the entire weekend (from hazy recollection I think we lasted about a day and a half, is that right Pete?). We started drinking on the bus ride, much to the disgust of an Australian friend, “How dare you turn your back on the best friend you ever had!”, we retorted, and continued through reggae bars and boat rides. Finally, at the tail end of this booze-fueled trip, we wound up eating McDonald’s and ordering much-needed coffees from a Starbucks by the city’s West Lake, where I, always a fan of magazines, picked up a copy of a Shanghai title called City Weekend.
After browsing through numerous stories I don’t recall, I found myself in the listings section, and my eyes wandered down the job ads. At some point they stopped on one in particular that said, ‘Wanted: Shanghai City Editor’. The magazine was looking for an assistant editor, with a mix of duties that included attending parties and writing about them. In my post-inebriated state, it seemed like the ideal job, and I remarked as much to an Australian friend as he sipped on his flat white. I followed it up with something along the lines of, “They’ll never hire me, I have no relevant experience”, to which he replied: “What’s the worst that can happen - they say no?”. He had a point.
The next day back in Suzhou at the internet cafe (yes, I’m that old), I composed an email that would change my life’s direction forever. I can’t imagine my CV had much to warrant reading it, but somehow I eventually received a reply - an editor called Jo Lusby wanted to meet, but would I be able to travel to Nanjing? Of course I would. We met in the lobby of some hotel, I think I was wearing a leather jacket, and after a short interview it was over, and I headed back to Suzhou. I carried on with my Chinese ‘studies’ at the university, and didn’t hear back for weeks. Then, out of nowhere, an email appeared in my inbox: ‘Was I still interested in the position, and when could I start?’ I pretty much dropped everything, and caught the next bus to Shanghai.
City Weekend
To be honest, I wasn't the best employee at City Weekend. I was brought in to assist the local editor, we’ll call her ‘DeeDee’, and our personalities seemed to clash right from the start. I do remember putting in many late hours, but I also remember staying out all hours, and coming into work with massive hangovers. To be fair, I was in my mid-20s, single, and living in Shanghai at possibly the most exciting time to live in the city since its 1920s heyday. The city was open to new ideas, it was my job to review new bars, and I was meeting similarly adventurous people from all around the world.
I distinctly recall one of the first events I attended, the opening of a new wine shop on the Bund. I had stayed around the area previously, budget digs up in the attic at the Astor House Hotel, but this was my first time to see the district’s transformation up close. I believe it was around the side of Three on the Bund, the building that would become most synonymous with the rebirth of Shanghai, and I recall being amazed to be there. Perhaps sensing my wide-eyed awe, an older editor by the name of Michael Cole, who I believe was working at that’s Shanghai (and would later head up 8 Days), leaned in with a knowing wink, and told me: “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to this.”
He wasn’t wrong. I quickly dove headlong into a world of perks and prestige, as my English magazine editor status opened up doors throughout the city. However, there couldn’t have been a bigger contrast between my work and home life - while I was attending lavish hotel product launches and being showered with champagne by celebrity chef David Laris, I was still earning a pittance (I later discovered the only reason I was hired was because I was the only one to accept the salary!), and living in a fifth floor walkup in a 1970s-era building on Panyu Lu, where my breakfast was pork baozi and dinner the same three kuai bowls of la mian I’d eaten as a poor student.
Meanwhile though, things weren’t working out in the office, and - despite some well-intentioned HR mediation from the Managing Editor - the writing was on the wall for my position (here’s some actual writing of mine from the time, from when I first visited Beijing). However, I’d heard that the main competition in the city, that’s Shanghai, was looking for new staff, and somehow, following a casual interview with their managing editor, a charming Irishman named Steven Crane, my timing was perfect, and I was able to jump ship before I was pushed, becoming that’s new Food & Drink Editor.
that’s Shanghai
I’d joined that’s Shanghai at a very interesting point in time. The existing staff at the magazine had just either been fired or walked out, and the British owner Mark Kitto (read my interview with him here) abruptly removed from the company he founded. He retreated to the former hill station of Moganshan to write his memoirs, apparently the first foreigner to live up there since its peak back in the 1930s. As Kitto’s former team were busy setting up the rival 8 Days magazine, I slotted into the empty editor position, and tried to figure out how I was going to write eight restaurant reviews and four bar reviews every month. Fortunately I had an assistant to help me, a young Russian lady from Vladivostok called Masha, who spoke fluent Chinese and also taught me some Russian words like spasiba (thank you), and puka puka (bye bye).
Our magazine office was an amazing old mansion in the former French Concession on Yueyang Lu, with worn, creaky wooden floorboards, and oodles of character. Despite it taking an hour, I would deliberately walk from my poky old apartment just to enjoy the atmosphere of the treelined avenues along the way. We had an open plan office on the first floor, in what might have once been a dining room, with other departments squeezed into various other nooks and crannies around the building (I recall IT being hidden away in the attic). An ayi would make pots of tremendously strong, but terrible tasting coffee, which was what we needed after being out late the previous evening.
As with City Weekend, socializing was a huge part of the job for us as editors, which included a talented young Canadian named Rebecca Catching on the arts and literary beat - she was married to a promising local Shanghainese artist called Hang Feng - and an inspiring British lady called Miriam Rayman who oversaw fashion and lifestyle and exuded the confidence I secretly lacked (after she left, she was eventually replaced by the glamorous Australian Amy Fabris-Shi, a former ballerina). Work was intense but relaxed, I remember coming in one morning before 9am (we normally staggered in around 10), and being questioned by the editor Steven why I was in so early - obviously I had not been doing my job attending parties and reviewing bars.
For a while, life was great. A job I really loved, colleagues that were fun to hang out with, and access to a world I could never afford on my salary - at one memorable event on the top of Three on the Bund, in the cupola on its corner overlooking the Huangpu, I was presented with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot with my name on the label, my own personal champagne. We were also producing great magazines, which were raking in the advertising revenue. After a sharp design revamp by Miriam’s husband, a Frenchman called Arno Devo (the city was such a melting pot of nationalities and young people), we achieved even greater heights, and I was promoted to be the Deputy Editor, bringing in young American writer Summer Block to oversee Food and Drink instead. Remarkably, she had only arrived in the city two weeks before, but that was Shanghai then - opportunities abounded, if you were keen and adventurous.
The city was now flush with English-language magazines all chasing advertising revenue, with titles like City Weekend, that’s Shanghai, 8 Days, Shanghai Talk, and Asia & Away. And that was just the print, with websites such as Shanghaiist (helmed by a chap called Dan Washburn, who would go on to write a seminal book about golf in China ‘The Forbidden Game’) and SmartShanghai, which is still around today (just).
I’d become friends with many of the editors as we’d often see each other at events, including a friendly Australian guy called Shamus Sillar who helmed Shanghai Talk (and would later go on to write hilarious travelogue, ‘Sicily, It’s Not Quite Tuscany’). The way we saw it, the bosses could fight it out for bragging rights, but there was no reason we couldn’t be friends. Years later, I’d randomly meet him in Phuket, where I was running a newspaper, when he stopped on a journalist’s cruise from Singapore.
Meanwhile, we’d launched a new magazine into the already crowded market, a weekly news digest based on ‘The Week’ in the UK called News, Views and Reviews, or NVR for short - among our that’s Shanghai team, we jokingly called it ‘never-never land’, as the entire conceit seemed ridiculous, considering 99% of the population of Shanghai were native Chinese speakers and probably not that interested in an edited version of foreign news (and even if they were, the internet was still fairly open, so they could read for themselves. However, the shadow of the ‘Great Firewall’ was looming large).
There were also a few that’s spinoff magazines running, including that’s Guangzhou down south, or as the American who ran it - an interesting guy called Chris Cottrell - preferred to call it: “Goat City”, due to the city’s famous statue of five rams. As the government’s priorities changed, it transformed into that’s PRD, PRD standing for Pearl River Delta, and then later changed into that’s GBA for the region’s new moniker, ‘Greater Bay Area’. At some point there was also that’s Suzhou, that’s Tianjin, that’s China, and that’s Ulaanbaatar - a copycat publication, which a travel guide friend of mine saw, thought was hilarious, and posted me a copy from Mongolia. Biggest of all the that’s family though was sister title that’s Beijing, which easily rivaled Shanghai.
tbjhome & Urbane
At some point in Shanghai I’d started dating a Canadian girl (there’s a complicated courting story, which I’ll tell at another time - but we are still together 20 years later, with two children), and when she was offered a job in Beijing I had to consider what I wanted to do. Did I follow? Speaking to friends at the time it seemed that most expats in China either chose to live in Shanghai or Beijing, but never did both. The Chinese capital attracted the type of foreigner who was really invested in having an authentic China experience: they wanted to learn the language, immerse in the culture, and get under the skin of the Middle Kingdom. Whereas those in Shanghai were mainly there to have a good time, seek out opportunities, and make friends from around the world.
Having already lived in Suzhou and Shanghai, I figured why not try somewhere else - after all, when would there be another opportunity to live in Beijing (this attitude later led us to Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Phuket and Phnom Penh)? So I took the plunge and moved up to the capital. At this stage I didn’t have a full-time role confirmed, but after a lunch meeting with the publisher of that’s Beijing, Mike Wester, soon found myself asked to run a new magazine they were setting up called tbjhome. It was what they called a ‘shelter’ magazine, focused on interior design and architecture, and was a way for them to tap into new advertisers (sister title tbjkids did the same for families).
Excited to be given a new project, I jumped headlong into putting it together, with the help of my talented assistant editor, Yang Jie. With the 2008 Olympics on the horizon, Beijing was full of amazing architectural projects, and we quickly lined up interviews with a slew of ‘starchitects’, such as Ole Scheeren from OMA, co-designer of the mind-boggling CCTV Headquarters (locals nicknamed it ‘da kuzi’ or ‘big trousers’ for its look); Paul Andreu, who built the ‘Giant Egg’, aka the National Grand Theatre; and local Beijinger Ma Yansong, founder of MAD Architects and creator of a multitude of projects. French designer Philippe Starck even made a cover for his latest furniture.
At some point though, I began to branch out, adding content that was only vaguely shelter-related, a creative path that reached its zenith when I published a travel story about Papua New Guinea by the ever lovely writer Robert La Bua. As my colleague Adam Pillsbury, head of the guidebook and special projects department, sagely remarked at the time: “We’re sure not at ‘tbj’ home anymore”. This led us to revisit what the magazine should become, and after a long process of trying many different names, we eventually settled on ‘Urbane’ with a deliberately stylized ‘e’. Features writer Alex Pasternack best explained our uncertainty: “It works, no really, it does”. Alex went on to become a successful editor and writer at Vice and Fast Company, but before all that he was our star writer, and did the cover story for the relaunch, an interview with an Inner Mongolian developer building a city in the desert. The photo showed the man up close with a cigar in hand, the headline: ‘Citizen Khan’. Perfect.
Despite our doubts about the name, we were extremely proud of the magazine, which brought together a fantastic roster of writers, including talents like Mitch Moxley, Gary Bowerman (now an expert on Southeast Asian travel), and my old Shanghai colleague Amy Fabris-Shi, who I recruited for her own suitably glamorous column, ‘Travels in Style’. In a lovely bit of serendipity and life coming full circle, I have managed to meet up with her several times this last year - she now runs a ballet school (in a former life, she was a professional ballerina) and still resides in Shanghai, some 20 years later. I have also made friends with former City Weekend editor Lee Mack (we climbed a mountain together back in December), as well as ex-8 Days writer Chris St. Cavish.
Most crazily, I now live in Hangzhou, the same city where I saw that job advert looking for an editor almost two decades ago. That Starbucks is still there, and I went back and sat in the same spot where I’d had the conversation with a friend that started this whole journalistic journey. Danny, if you’re reading this, thank you - you were right.
Footnote: For 20 years I have carried these magazines from home to home, while my wife bemoaned these large boxes taking up space. I see them as an archive, a place to remember years past. Who knows, they may be the only copies still in existence?
Terrific story and great writing Simon. Some may call it serendipity or being in the right place at the right time but I envy the mindset and courage you have to give something a go (called having a crack in Australian!) and take on new challenges and adventures throughout your time in China and Asia more generally. Love your work!
Marvellous story with a touch of nostalgia I believe. I do remember browsing through City Weekend and that’s Shanghai for food and leisure tips during my trips to China in the beginning of 2000s. ..