Shanghai Tang

A few months ago I won $1,000 to spend at Shanghai Tang, and although this was splendid, I've been too busy to spend it until today, when, fortified by a pleasant bowl of soup and a panino rendered revolting by the inclusion of blue cheese, we went down to Shanghai Tang's flagship store on Pedder Street.

I was at first overawed, then disappointed. There's quite a lot of quite nice stuff in Shanghai Tang, but rather too much of it is emblazoned with an enormous red star, and almost all of it costs more than $1,000. If I were going to spend $17,000 on a leather armchair, I'd want it to be brown all over, and not with a gopping great red star printed on it.

Then again, perhaps all the red stars are necessary camouflage, in case the next time there's a reshuffle of leaders in Beijing and they decide that the last twenty years of capitalism weren't such a good idea. Shanghai Tang can then shelter behind the red star and pretend its ironic appropriation of communist imagery to sell a few t-shirts wasn't ironic after all, and everything will be just fine.

After looking at silk pyjamas that would cost about two hundred pounds in old money, we went downstairs to see if there was anything we could afford. And I don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but if somebody does give you a horse and it has terrible bad breath and problems chewing, maybe you should check out its dentistry.

Because once you look past all the things with huge Shanghai Tang logos, and the horrendous Genghis Khan polo shirts for you to dress your horrendous seven year-olds in, there's not much left. Some watches with huge red stars, some picture frames that look like a slightly pricier version of something from G.O.D. and some enormous key chains. Finally we found a pair of silver lion book-ends. Initially I thought these looked charming, then I realised they still came complete with Shanghai Tang logos - they're book ends, thank you very much, and so shouldn't be advertising themselves in my home - and they were also bent. Since most books are cuboid in shape, and most shelves are planes, you'd expect book ends to be right angled to hold books in place, not bending over at about 70 degrees, as if either they were designed to hold up trapezoidal copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica, a hundred unsold copies of A Chink In The Armour, or they box they had came in had been sat on rather heavily.

I mean, I don't mind overpriced expensive stuff, just make it look like it's not broken before we buy it. Or perhaps they could smell the gift token, and had shifted all the good stuff round the back, for the (proper cash) paying customers.

Never mind. We have until September to spend the voucher, and in the meantime we bought a Le Crueset burgler-battering implement / saucepan, so all's fine really.