SmartShanghai Turns Five
'Twas five years ago today that SmartShanghai officially went "live," and we'd just like to take the opportunity to say thanks to the people that have helped us along the way -- fledgling webzine to the most respected name in online journalism worldwide, we couldn't have done it without you!Konstanin Lederer was the co-founder of SmartShanghai, along with fellow German, Alexander Weng, and it was in Konstantin's small, unheated living room next to Jiaotong University where SmartShanghai was officially launched. Soon after, Tomislav Vilusic joined the pair, and although Konstantin left the team after less than a year, Tomislav actively worked on the website for a number of years afterwards. Another early supporter, Volker Staffendt, rounded out the team, and together the four Germans descended upon the venues of Shanghai with unsettling tenacity, collecting listings information, hand-drawing the first SmartShanghai.com maps, and taking the first blurry and unfocused party pictures.
In the early months, SmartShanghai progressed along its affable, drunken way, going largely unnoticed in the expat community, until a partnership with a local nightlife scene superstar increased the profile of the webzine considerably. Paul Gray (a one-time manager of many clubs in Shanghai, including Pegasus and Racks) was, at the time, writing a weekly email newsletter and sending it out to his friends every Friday (in those days, he had about 1,500 friends). In March '04, Paul Gray joined forces with SmartShanghai, and together with the assistance of Gilles Bihi-Zenou the weekly newsletter "Shanghai_nightlife" was created. "Shanghai_nightlife" is currently the vessel for delivering good-natured obscenity to about 25,000 subscribers every week, and the website as a whole owes Paulie a debt of gratitude for his contribution.
Although SmartShanghai.com was growing in popularity and traffic numbers were increasing steadily, the future of the webzine was still uncertain. The concept of online advertising was something unknown to the Shanghai F&B business at the time, and a small, independent platform like SmartShanghai seemed a relatively more volatile and financially unstable entity than the more established expat media
It was a cold winter night at Mural Bar, when Carsten Warga (present day manager of The Bulldog) motivated the founders not to give up, and he's been a great supporter of the site ever since. Incidentally, Mural Bar shares a founding year with SmartShanghai, and were the first to buy advertising on the website. With actual RMBs no less. Flora Li and Mural bar have been staunch supporters of the SmSh in times prosperous and dire, and we offer our unwavering gratitude to them.
In 2005, with the help of Sebastian Scholz (aka DJ tootekool), SmartShanghai was introduced to Christian Stipp from the German events agency, Avantgarde. Avantgarde had just opened their first Shanghai office and generously offered us some fantastic office space for free. Gone where the days when SmartShanghai was based in the cramped and frigid apartment of a university student, with content being typed out by gloved hands to avoid frost bite (very Oliver Twist, we know.)
In those early days, SmartShanghai didn't have a very clear editorial direction. We always tried to be "more than just a nightlife publication," and thanks to the help of a few talented writers, we've been able to get out of that niche somewhat: Jerome Hainz wrote the very first dining reviews for SmSh, and he also worked hard to improve the site with new ideas, positive criticism, and new contacts. A similar role was played by Christiane Slansky, who was involved in Shanghai's arts community. In the summer of 2005, SmartShanghai launched a new newsletter, "Shanghai_lifestyle" which went out to 15,000 email subscribers twice a month penned by the wonderful, charming and, intelligent Caroline Rowe.
As the website continued to develop, we outgrew our place at Avantgarde and we moved into our first proper office, a beautiful apartment on Gao'An Lu. Ashlea Mayne became our first full-time editor, and she contributed a great deal to the editorial quality of the site (before she joined, SmSh had a lot of speeling mistackes and German-English -- "Ginglish").
Hien Huynh also joined the team as the co-director with Alex, and he brought with him new insights, business acumen, and fresh ideas, like the Shanghai Social Series and SmartShanghai's most popular regular feature, "AskMatsume," penned by noted international sex authority Matsume Kai.
2005 also saw another addition to the SmartShanghai team. Charlie Xia replaced us as "party photographer," and since then, his picture galleries have never failed to shame our earlier efforts in the field. Charlie has gone on to much-deserved international success and accolade for his work, and he continues to set the standards in Shanghai for photographic excellence and stylish headwear.
The following winter brought a big shock and a little drama to the office. Just as we were beginning to "break event" with a modest full-time staff and a few regular freelance contributors, the filth shut down our server. Just before Christmas in 2006, SmartShanghai was blocked by the powers that be with no reason given. The site remained offline for two weeks until Lawrence Sheed, of our long-time hosting company ComputerSolutions, helped us restore things back to normal.
The shutting down of the site by the fuzz compelled some changes to be made, and the then-popular SmartShanghai Forum was separated from the site, and moved to a host server located in Hong Kong. It was believed that the obscene but entertaining juvenilia of regular posters like DJ Sexy Paul, Luciferio, Jinaq, Stokes, Chinaman, Trix, Seachick, Casper, Rob. R., lictdsecretlove - et al. would end up pissing off some censorious government types, and cause the website as a whole to be shut down.
Earlier this year, the SmartShanghai Forum was eventually discontinued completely when it was generally deemed to "kinda suck" by the webzine founders. There remains a modest petition for the re-institution of the SmartShanghai Forum, and one never knows what the future may bring, or what creative exhaustion may engender.
In the summer of 2006, SmartShanghai launched its first, bold foray into Beijing, and together with 500 other revilers, we descended on the nation's capital for the "SmartBeijing Launch Party" (music by tootekool and long-time SmartShanghai supporter, jazz vocalist Coco Zhao).
Some say the party was the "event of the season" (thanks to Eric Poepper) and perhaps if the actual website was tackled with the same enthusiasm, it would actually exist. Alas, it wasn't and doesn't.
But you never know... it's impossible to find shit in Beijing so maybe we'll be back.
Also in 2006, SmartShanghai entered the wonderful world of the Chinese-language internet with the launch of the Chinese-language version of the site, Louder.cn. Louder.cn was fuelled by the considerable talents of the lovely Ciga Zhou, a local mainstay from the days of Shanghai nightlife yore (Buddha bbbbaaaaarrr). And thanks to Drew Tayler, it had a very wonderful logo too. To our great misfortune, Ciga was courted away to bigger and grander opportunities last summer by local promoters Split Works, and we've had to take a break from Louder.cn for a little while.... but -- again -- you never know.
Perhaps we'll relaunch Louder.cn soon; this Chinese language thing.... it looks like it's here to stay.
Summer 2007 saw us moving into a great new office space, our current place on Donghu Lu. Perhaps it was the stylish new office environment (but more likely it was the free open-bar office opening party) that caught the attention of handsome, 24-year old Canadian/ American Morgan Short, and he henceforth started working for us as our new full-time editor--crossing T's, dotting I's, and shoving in the odd F-bomb here and there.
And so today the content of SmSh -- all that shit you skip on the way to the event listings and the maps -- is comprised of Morgan's blatherings, and work from a bevy of other freelance writers. Their number has grown too large over the years to thank them individually -- suffice it to say, if you've had an article on SmartShanghai.com in the last five years, thanks very much.
Special thanks to Michael O. and Melanie McG, who've both done lots and lots of writing for SmartShanghai.
The summer of 2008 saw one of the darker periods in the SmartShanghai saga and we came very close to shutting down completely. You see ... we had these investors right .... who were working with us to expand the tertiary projects of the website: a concierge service, expansions to other cities, and a telephone hotline, among other grandiose plans. Anyways, promises were made, massive expenditures were undertaken, alas ... investment capital was never forthcoming as promised. Said investors saw the collapse of their other various dealings in Shanghai, were forced to sod off back to wherever, and SmartShanghai were left holding massive debts.
And so there was a tense few days. The website founders, nearing bankruptcy and themselves very tired after working very hard for five years, considered calling it a day.
After much soul searching they decided to press on, and we're happy to say that as we start our sixth year of existence, things are looking stable for the website for at least the near future, thanks in no small part to the people mentioned above who have helped us along the way and the people who still help us today.
Our newest addition to the team is graphic designer Juli de No, and he's the reason SmSh has been looking so damn slick these days.
What will SmartShanghai be like in five years? Probably you'll be able to check it on your microxbox-iPod-handheld-phone in your flying car on your way to an open bar on Neptune.
But that doesn't mean you shouldn't buy all your tickets from us so we can pay rent and shit like that.
Last but not least, thanks to you, reader who has managed to make it to the end of the article. We hope we've been funny, helpful, entertaining, interesting, provocative, and worthy of revisiting more often than not these past five years.
- Alex, Hien, Morgan, Juli, Helen, Ada, Ryan and Liu Shifu.
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To learn more about SmartShanghai click here.