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The Adventures Of Susan & Lars "Where are we going?" said Pooh... "Nowhere", said Christopher Robin. So they began going there...

At least the dumplings are good (Shanghai)

CHINA | Thursday, 8 May 2008 | Views [2121] | Comments [3]

We're in Asia now. Susan kind of looked at me funny when I would say that Japan seemed more like Europe than the Asia I remembered. My last trip here was Thailand, Cambodia and Viet Nam. The dusty hustle and flow of those countries did not match the clean and ordered masses of the Japanese streets. But we're in complete agreement now; we are definitely in Asia.


Shanghai is very alive. Everywhere there are people, never an empty sidewalk or deserted street. As we walk we're weaving through people; some on their way somewhere and some tending their shop or chores on the stoop. Like southeast asia, life is lived on the street. There is the sidewalk bicycle repair shop, we saw a pair of men using an arc welder to patch together a hand-cart, and it seems every third door has someone selling produce, or preparing the groceries they just bought. Traffic roars by, with the growl of the double-banger motorcycles and the slow squeeks of bicycle-trucks. The traffic is relatively ordered, with red lights by and large obeyed, and few bikes on the sidewalks.


It's dirty here. Literally. The whole city is covered with a layer of dirt, not just dust, that has settled out of the air onto every imaginable surface. The dirt comes from the construction, I suspect, which is also ubiquitous. Nearly every block has a new building going up, and it took us quite a while to find refuge from the sounds of the jackhammers ripping out the streets and sidewalks.

After the reserve and fastidiousness of Japan, it's a bit of a shock at first. And it didn't take long for our introduction to it. As we deplaned last night the first thing we saw was a uniformed policeman spitting on the jetway floor, and the first thing we smelled was... well it smells something like wet horse. It's better right now (Wednesday noon-ish) but was there all last night and all this morning. I don't know if it depends on the prevailing winds or if we have walked into a less polluted part of the city.


The spitting is sort of funny. At first your natural reaction as a westerner is a mix of curiosity and mild disgust. But then you start walking around the city. Soon you realize you are breathing almost exclusively through your nose because the air bothers your throat. You sneeze a bit. On a particularly dusty street the tickle in your throat is becoming a benign but persistent cough. Now you understand it, this isn't just a cultural difference but also a reaction to the difference of the environment. Like a tradition of removing shoes in a rainy country, the norms are suited to make life more comfortable.


The streetscapes are also much more distinct. We breakfasted in a cafe along a little arts district walk-street in the former French concession. A gallery there had a lot of really striking photographs of Shanghai; this is a very photogenic city. Present here are all the contrasts that make Asia so romantic for the adventurous traveller. The contrast of modern and historical, rich and poor, new and run-down. The dichotomies of the subject are shared by the images themselves. After the rich tones of Japan, green trees, bright flowers, bold tile roofs and freshly painted walls, Shanghai is like a sepia photograph of itself, muted by the dust and dirt. Rather than cherry blossoms the sudden accent of color comes from the wash hung out of every window, and in the background, one of the towering stupas of steel and glass housing the newest Buddha of China, commerce.


As an engineer, I am impressed by the practicality you see outside America. As an iPod and iMac owner I'd be a hypocrite to wantonly disparage the contributions of the design movement. But it has created a wedge between people and their mechanisms. The stress of form over function is to a point where we in the west don't really have a good handle on what things are capable of, only of what we use them for by tradition. The necessities of scarcity in other countries leaves no room for this luxury, and here people exhibit a wealth of practical innovation. “Waste not want not” and here things are used and reused, and not replaced or disposed of until they can truly no longer serve. Even then, things will typically be reappropriated to a new function. A plastic bag will be used and reused until it finally gives out, and then it may very well find use as windowing or rupholstery for a bicycle seat. As we were walking a woman pulled over on her motorcycle, pulled out a wrench, made some adjustments and was on her way. The “taxi” (more on that later) that we took last night was banged up and dirty, devoid of any style, on the tail end of it's shocks and hardly had a clutch – but it ran and gave it's owner a livelihood. On the washroom at the restaurant for lunch the faucet was loose in it's fixture and you sort of had to hold it up with one hand as the water ran over your other hand – but it was water tight and clean. So much of what we have in the west is over-engineered, and really capable of so much more than we use it for. Here they push things to their limit, of course what you trade is safety and reliability, but when walking around your home city requires regular games of chicken with speeding traffic and dodge-em with motorbikes, safety is very relative.

By lunch of the frst day we were pretty deep into the former French concession. The streets are still tree-lined, and many of the old houses still stand. This is also a big expat at tourist area, and the stores, restaurants and galleries all reflect the western clientele. As she read the post, Susan said I had overlooked the charm of the city. With a full belly I tried to agree, and at times in this area I could almost.

But it is definitely interesting. Houses that formally would be for a single family have been carved up into apartment blocks, with two or more families per floor. The gardens completely neglected if extant at all. Many paved over with salvaged bricks and tiles for use as areas to dry laundry.


That night we walked along the Bund, the riverfront. It's “golden week” here and a major holiday. This has only swelled the ever present crowds, but it was fun to see the local hordes recreating. The Bund provides a great view of the skyscrapers across the river n Pudong. Twenty years ago it was rice paddies (literally) today, sky-scrapers as far as the eye can see. And along the Bund itself, lots of little tchotke peddlers with all sorts of crap (most of which lights up) but oddly all with the same crap, each pitch a carbon copy of the previous one.

Thursday we got up from our pile of bricks that is a mattress (I literally pulled up the sheet to see if it was some sort of adapted bedspring) and went across town to get tickets for an Acrobat show the next night. The subway here is clean and prompt, but the stations are pretty far apart. The trains leave every two minutes, and get you to your destination swiftly, but because they integrate such a large area they are always packed (and I do mean packed, no photos in the car because there was no way I could have dug my camera out of my pocket). Walking to the box office we passed store after mall after store, and mostly western brands. Shanghai is one giant shopping mall, Susan said it's like being trapped inside the Beverly Center with 20 million people.

The dress here is completely western, more casual than Japan. The sea of T-shirts and jeans broken by the occasional uniform. At first you're thinking there are a lot of police here, especially because that's what we're led to expect by what we read at home. But then you realize a lot are “Parking assistants” or private rent-a-cops hired by the store or the mall or whatever. This got me thinking that America must be a really confusing place to visit, and intimidating in a lot of ways. The proliferation of private security in recent years means lots of people with badges (though they don't mean anything) and more than a few walking around with guns. One could easily get the impression that in the US, we live in a police state.


Billboards are everywhere, stores are everywhere, and there was even a brass band promoting one place. This is not the China of old (or even 20 years ago). This is a big developed city, only more commercial. It is very strange to see thousands of Chinese shopping in some mall, and two blocks away you have what to western eyes are tenements with almost all the paint peeled from disrepair.


Like everyone in the west, I've read a lot about the development of China. But to see it... It seems to me this isn't just some flash in the pan Pacific tiger economy, or that this is a bubble waiting to burst, this is irreversible. Though I'm sure this is what many people said about Cambodia, or Zimbabwe, or any number of other “success stories” that went bad. Time will tell, but I don't envy the economic planners at the central office trying to thread the needle between modernizing the economy and avoiding the risks of political instability posed by such visible economic disparities. To paraphrase Josh, and old college friend of Susan's, 'the danger of a command economy is what happens if someone makes a mistake'.


We met up with Josh Thursday afternoon after an unsuccessful attempt at going to the Shanghai museum. This had been the plan for the day after getting our tickets; stroll through the museum, meet an old friend for drinks. But the line for the museum... well, I took a photo.


Anyway, we met Josh for a drink, and then he took us for dumplings at a cool little street that is all food vendors. Then we hit up an American bar/cafe for more dinner and some Jazz. Lots of fun.


Friday was pretty easy going, more exploring the city on foot and eventually ending up at the theater for the acrobats. OK, so evidently this is THE thing to do when visiting Shanghai. Almost the whole theater was filled by groups of westerners who filed in behind their little tour leader holding up his flag. Nonetheless the show was great, worth the price and the guy behind us who provided a running commentary of “no way, that's impossible, she must be double jointed!” Susan thought he was the best part, I was ready to report him to the secret police.


It was a great show, and we had a fun drink before at a little bar across from the theater. But this too was an expat bar. It is actually really, really hard to get off the western tourist/expat circuit in this city. The language barrier is huge, much more than I expected, and the attitude of the locals is kind of surly. We got lots of looks that seemed to say “It's so crowded we're only allowed one kid, why are you here adding to the problem?”


But the language barrier also got me thinking about home. I'm finding picking up a couple of words of Chinesevery difficult, for example there is no one way to just say “no”, it always depends on context. But English, with its double negatives, negative understatements to mean hyperbole, liberal use of slang or French or Latin or Spanish must be nearly impenetrable. One of the little games we play from time to time is “what would the guidebook say about America.” It helps us to remember that the signposts or guidebooks can easily have characaturized versions of things. Like when you sneeze in America “it is polite to say 'God Bless You' because the Americans believe that evil spirits cause sneezing and illness and this scares away the evil spirit.” So in that sense you can imagine the guidebook to “City Angels of” telling them to order “cow meat cooked on skillet” and “egg of chicken fried to look like sun” for a traditional local breakfast. It helps keep things you read in perspective. But anyway, I have a whole new level of appreciation for people who visit the States and don't speak English or why many immigrants chose to live in communities comprised of their countrymen.


Finally, Saturday morning, after what felt lke an eternity spent in purgatory (though it was only 3 days), we got on the train for Hangzhou. We had fun together, got to do a lot of people watching and get a real 'beat' on Shanghai, but didn't really find anything in the city to cling to. It's like a giant, crowded mall on Christmas Eve, surrounded by a giant slum, and most of the things old enough to have character was razed or destroyed by neglect.

 

Comments

1

Hi there,
I stumbled upon your page while looking for pictures of Budapest (!?) but once I started reading I wanted to read it all! Well done. Especially your take on American-culture-for-tourists :-) I'm an American living in Italy and working as an English teaching assistant, my first job out of college. I often feel pangs of pity and compassion for my students in their courageos attempts to decipher the mangled hodge-podge that is the English language. As soon as I teach a rule, I find myself contradicting it in my speech a moment later. It's absurd that English is our lingua franca today when so many other, more sensible languages abound...any Latin-based language would be so much simpler! And when I see the work my high school students put into studying German, English, Spanish & Chinese simultaneously...well, it makes me feel more than a trifle embarrased that so many American public schools see foreign languages as optional!
Anyway, buon viaggio a te, and thanks for the glimpse into another place!

  Laura May 8, 2008 7:39 PM

2

great photos! It looks soooo crowded. But, Lars, at least you are heads above anyone else, so you should be able to steer yourself through the crowds without too much trouble.

Glad your emails indicate you have enjoyed Hong Kong.

Mom

  Luuk May 9, 2008 6:59 AM

3

Oh no, not the Beverly Center!! But if that is the Beverly Center, at least it lights up well at night! Love it, esp. the “It's so crowded we're only allowed one kid, why are you here adding to the problem?” looks. Two tall, white people in China? I bet you guys are fitting right in! xoxo JK

  Jen May 14, 2008 9:57 AM

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