Whenever you hear "The Avocado Lady" uttered by Western lips it is quickly followed by "legend". Western palates have been enlivened, some may even say saved by the diverse array of produce offered at her ever expanding shop. Much has been written about The Avocado Lady: her 19 hour days beginning at 4 am for over 20 years, her astonishingly low 7-11RMB avocados depending on ...

Fred Kan is the owner of two Pho Real locations, and one Be Real location in Shanghai. L.A. born, Fred grew up in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. With one new location already in the works and plans for two to four more next year, this Master Chef shows no signs of slowing. For the past ten years he's called Shanghai home and what a home it has been. A Japanese rest...

Hundreds of people walk down this sidewalk every day on their way to a suburban Shanghai Metro station. But most people barely glance at what’s behind the cement wall alongside a path that was rebuilt after a storm destroyed the old one. Tons of trash is spread out behind the wall, in a landscape that looks nothing like the neatly-kept grounds nearby -- an en...

More often than not, the loud music you’re hearing each evening on Shanghai’s streets comes form a hair salon. Beyond the music fashionable bouffant-ed staff, style, manicure and trim local and expatriate alike. Of course, this flurry of hair, shampoo, peroxide and moisturizer is not the only source of beautification. Expat magazines, subway car walls, Shan...

Three-time Pulitzer Prize winning author and journalist, Thomas L. Friedman, gave the keynote address at last month’s University of Southern California (USC) Global Conference in Hong Kong. The sobering message delivered, which is detailed in his new book, “That Used To Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented, and How We Come Back,” was...

Over the past twenty-five years, China’s economy has developed rapidly to the point where China is now one of the world’s leading importers and exporters, with a year-on-year growth of 25.8% as the total calculation for import and exportation for 2011. The profit on exports alone was calculated to have grown by 27.6% in the first half of 2011 and despite recen...