Shanghai has always had a place in my imagination, from some mixture of movies and cartoons. “I think maybe because of Jackie Chan?” “Jackie Chan?! Jackie Chan is from Hong Kong!” “Yeah but some of his movies are in Shanghai probably, right?” So yeah I don’t know why, but I’ve always wanted to come here, and since the hacker-tour-group was moving onto Beijing the day after I arrived, I decided to stick it out with some new friends at Xin Che Jian.
It is an extremely active and welcoming community at Xin Che Jian: within hours of ■■■■■ getting in touch via IRC, we were let into the space and shown around. A couple hours after that, ■■■■■ got a commission to work on the space’s security features (name redacted due to maybe-his-visa-doesn’t-allow-commissions). So the members there are always looking for ways to improve the space and come up with new workshops: I hear they do workshops every weekend bringing in dozens of kids or adults— workshops every week is AMAZING for an ad-hoc organized community group.
They are tucked in a co-working space among design studios and probably tech-consulting firms (Wild guess, maybe I’ll ask next time I’m there). The kind of office where all the walls are made of glass and people seem to do business without a scrap of paper. There’s a nice hydroponics setup with a fat tilapia fish named Henry. There’s water-jugs converted to RGB LED lanterns hanging from the ceiling. Actually now that I look up at the ceiling I see all kinds of things hanging up: an RC helicopter, a model fighter plane, a bag of large sheets of styrofoam, and the wooden frame of an ultimaker 3D printer (lol). It reminds me of Makerspace Urbana, really, just big tables to spread out, and lots of boxes of old projects residing on shelves. Also you have to walk through a backalley to get in and you’re not sure if you’re in the right place until you see gears and LED strips.
Shanghai is an incredible place to have a hackerspace. Head east on Beijing road to the electronics markets: outdoor stalls in addition to a multi-story mall dedicated to selling electronics components. You can point to the one you want, haggle a price, head back to your hackerspace to see if it works, and come back and buy 1,000 of them if you want. My friend and I recalled all the times a project was slowed down to wait 2 weeks for a part (always faced with the dilemma, get it in 2 days, or get it cheap, I had the realization yesterday that all those parts I buy off eBay are available at the Chinese price, but I can get it today. Cause I’m in China. Mind blown.)
