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BRAVO!
Super thread with some great pix.
Super thread with some great pix.
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My traveling hats - Around the World in 98 Days
- Thread starter Shanghailander
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carter
I'll Lock Up
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BUMP
Shanghailander's wonderful thread of his travels over 6 months in 2006-07. Some great pictures.
Shanghailander's wonderful thread of his travels over 6 months in 2006-07. Some great pictures.
Flitcraft
One Too Many
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Glad you Bumped this Puppy, Carter...
missed it the first time around!
missed it the first time around!
KY Gentleman
One Too Many
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I can't believe I missed this! I just had a great time reading this thread, awesome pictures and superb commentary. Thanks a lot for re-circulating this one.
Tango Yankee
Call Me a Cab
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Flitcraft said:
Ditto! Thanks for the bump... and Shanghailander, thanks for taking us along!
Cheers,
Tom
Shanghailander
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This was first posted 20 years ago.
The thread here:
https://www.thefedoralounge.com/threads/where-has-everyone-gone-to.118243/
made me look back and sure enough, a lot of the commenters have disappeared.
Edward
Bartender
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Interesting to see this twenty years on. Some small changes in the parts of the world with which I'm familiar. Here in London, I'd say hats are a little more common than they were in 2006. By no means the norm, but a brimmed hat doesn't attract the double-takes it once did. Traditional flat caps and eight-panels have had a bit of a comeback. Ballcaps are still common, moreso in Summer, but not quite as much the dominant headgear as once they might have been. Knitted watch-caps and bobble hats are probably the most common headwear you'll see in Winter now. Brimmed hats more common in Summer than Winter, usually some form of boonie, daisy mae, or panama / other straw type. I think that's due to much greater awareness of the health damages the Sun can wreak now.
Over in Beijing, it's interesting. I've been in and out of the City a couple of times a year since 2006, most commonly in April - June, though a couple of times in December. All sorts of Winter hats are popular in the cold - variations on ushankas, watch-caps, Elmer Fudd type hunting caps and the rest. Brimmed hats aren't at all common. I do see, especially post-Covid, an increasing number of Beijinger women wearing brimmed sun hats, often with all sorts of face and neck covering attachments. (Beauty standards there entail maintaining skin as pale as possible, so avoiding the sun helps significantly with that.) Western-style fedoras remain unseen out there. There's an awareness of the look, of course; period television shows and films are big in China, particularly the Revolutionary Period. There have been a few big movies as well set in and around Shanghai in the 30s. One in particular that was very big was The Bullet Vanishes, a 30s Shanghai-set noir that was huge maybe a decade ago. Saw part of it on a plane and it looked beautiful, but alas Air China had assumed that no non-Mandarin speaker would be interested in it and hadn't provided subtitles, so I couldn't really follow much of the narrative. As a fashion norm, however, they're long gone as in the West. I suspect it's more than plausible the Cultural Revolution would have knocked anything that remained of that on the head by 1966. Since 1990, and particularly post 2003, Western clothing fashions have been influential, so maybe we'll see it come back. The undergraduates I teach out there dress very similarly to their London counterparts. The biggest difference is I think I see a lot more short trousers there, though as typically I've taught in late April / May / early June there when term is over in London, it may well be a timing difference rather than a fashion one. The Eighties fashion bug has caught China too in the last few years - indeed, I remember seeing BOY London branded t-shirts there before I saw them in London, so they were ahead of that particular repop game.
The only hat shop I've ever found in Beijing - another old, and venerated family business - is dominated by unremarkable modern flatcaps and the likes, with the occasional ushanka or ushanka-style trapper hat in Winter. (The Chinese military and police have an interesting variation on the Ushanka. Examples I've seen in the West look quite decently made, with a fur (I think faux) interior and a leather outer. I've always had half a mind to pick one up in Beijing as a souvenir, but military surplus is not something I've ever been able to find in the City - I'm guessing there's no demand for it, at least the domestic stuff, as fashion novelty because everyone there does compulsory military service and likely has their issued stuff. As a friend who is ex-forces once said: "If you're issued with it, you'd never wear it on your own time."
Taking the boat looks like a fun way to travel if you have the time. I definitely take the train when I can. Since 2006 there's been a third overnight train added, up the East Coast and over the border to Aberdeen. I'd love to try that one some time. I was last in Aberdeen for a work conference in 2018, but the office declined to let me take the train as it was cheaper by some £70 or so to fly me up there and put me in a hotel for the night I'd have spent on the train. For Edinburgh and Glasgow I always take the train (just five and four hours respectively from London - door to door, it's as fast as flying), Paris also. An adventure by boat would be the next big one, though. I do fancy the idea of taking the boat to New York, though save in the unlikely event of us having the time to do it both ways, I think the return trip by boat might be the better option for me.
Great thread, though. Enjoyed seeing the photos; have you considered repeating the same trip twenty years on to see what has changed?
Over in Beijing, it's interesting. I've been in and out of the City a couple of times a year since 2006, most commonly in April - June, though a couple of times in December. All sorts of Winter hats are popular in the cold - variations on ushankas, watch-caps, Elmer Fudd type hunting caps and the rest. Brimmed hats aren't at all common. I do see, especially post-Covid, an increasing number of Beijinger women wearing brimmed sun hats, often with all sorts of face and neck covering attachments. (Beauty standards there entail maintaining skin as pale as possible, so avoiding the sun helps significantly with that.) Western-style fedoras remain unseen out there. There's an awareness of the look, of course; period television shows and films are big in China, particularly the Revolutionary Period. There have been a few big movies as well set in and around Shanghai in the 30s. One in particular that was very big was The Bullet Vanishes, a 30s Shanghai-set noir that was huge maybe a decade ago. Saw part of it on a plane and it looked beautiful, but alas Air China had assumed that no non-Mandarin speaker would be interested in it and hadn't provided subtitles, so I couldn't really follow much of the narrative. As a fashion norm, however, they're long gone as in the West. I suspect it's more than plausible the Cultural Revolution would have knocked anything that remained of that on the head by 1966. Since 1990, and particularly post 2003, Western clothing fashions have been influential, so maybe we'll see it come back. The undergraduates I teach out there dress very similarly to their London counterparts. The biggest difference is I think I see a lot more short trousers there, though as typically I've taught in late April / May / early June there when term is over in London, it may well be a timing difference rather than a fashion one. The Eighties fashion bug has caught China too in the last few years - indeed, I remember seeing BOY London branded t-shirts there before I saw them in London, so they were ahead of that particular repop game.
The only hat shop I've ever found in Beijing - another old, and venerated family business - is dominated by unremarkable modern flatcaps and the likes, with the occasional ushanka or ushanka-style trapper hat in Winter. (The Chinese military and police have an interesting variation on the Ushanka. Examples I've seen in the West look quite decently made, with a fur (I think faux) interior and a leather outer. I've always had half a mind to pick one up in Beijing as a souvenir, but military surplus is not something I've ever been able to find in the City - I'm guessing there's no demand for it, at least the domestic stuff, as fashion novelty because everyone there does compulsory military service and likely has their issued stuff. As a friend who is ex-forces once said: "If you're issued with it, you'd never wear it on your own time."
Taking the boat looks like a fun way to travel if you have the time. I definitely take the train when I can. Since 2006 there's been a third overnight train added, up the East Coast and over the border to Aberdeen. I'd love to try that one some time. I was last in Aberdeen for a work conference in 2018, but the office declined to let me take the train as it was cheaper by some £70 or so to fly me up there and put me in a hotel for the night I'd have spent on the train. For Edinburgh and Glasgow I always take the train (just five and four hours respectively from London - door to door, it's as fast as flying), Paris also. An adventure by boat would be the next big one, though. I do fancy the idea of taking the boat to New York, though save in the unlikely event of us having the time to do it both ways, I think the return trip by boat might be the better option for me.
Great thread, though. Enjoyed seeing the photos; have you considered repeating the same trip twenty years on to see what has changed?
