[Note: this travel
piece was requested but not published -- nor was it rejected--by a trashy local
rag that quickly bit the dust due to the editor's dementia. I hope you will
check out the pics.]
Returning to Shanghai
almost fifteen years after my first stay there, I’m shocked that my mental
topography of the city is now almost entirely obsolete. I must spend a lot of
my short visit here trying to figure out what happened to the city I knew.
Since my departure in 1986, cataclysms have reordered the
town politically and geographically: the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989, Deng’s
death, the reign of his conservative successor Zhang Zemin (Shanghai’s former
mayor), then a new regime with even less personality but with the same dogged
approach to politics. The big transformation of course is the economic one.
Without really admitting it, the country has gone from Maoist socialism to a
kind of authoritarian capitalism never before fully tested. I’m sceptical about
it of course, never imagining that China could be anything other than what I
had seen, a dark place full of socialist virtue and strange smells.
My first trip to China was as a “foreign expert” in the
English Department at East China Normal University (Hua Dong Shifan Daxue) in
1985-86, a mellow time in East West relations when China, starting to flourish
in the late-Deng era, seemed on a liberalizing course (Tiananmem was a few
years away).
I’d heard much about the big capitalist transformation but
didn’t see how any good come out of such contradictory conditions – a free
economy with unfree people-- but a few hours traipsing around Shanghai proves
me wrong. The city has not only changed; it has been totally transformed in the
places that count. My conviction that not many people could profit from such
disorderly change is also off the mark. The changes seem to affect Chinese
generally, raising the standard of living for huge numbers of them, visible in
the many hypermarkets that have replaced the vibrant street markets. Chinese
are filling large shopping carts with food, detergent and drinks just like
people everywhere else.
Another big change is the disappearance of the “mei-you”
culture; in virtuous old pre-Boom China, whenever you went into a store or
restaurant asking for almost anything the chorus reply from the multitude of
featherbedded clerks was always “Mei-you!” (“There isn’t any!”). It became a
half-humorous refrain. If you wanted to buy something with any class, you had
to go to the Friendship Store (foreigners only!) and pay for it in FECs
(foreign exchange currency). This totally corrupt and ineffective dual economy
is now abolished, and the Chinese all have their solid, dignified Renmin Yuan.
What else?
Since I’d been able to ramble anywhere in Shanghai by on
well-known and deeply loved routes where the biggest danger was an errant
fellow cyclist. Now, those routes seem to have disappeared. Bicycles still
flow, but the primary fact is the river of automobile traffic equal in its
density to that of any big capital. I give up trying to trace my once cherished
bike ride from the university to downtown Shanghai – doable back then in about
30 minutes: whole neighborhoods have been razed, and new powerful looking
skyscrapers block the path.
The Normal University of East China is still recognizable,
in fact, disturbingly entrenched in the past. The Foreign Experts Building,
where we had once enjoyed a lifestyle so enviable that we had to be protected
by strict door guardians, sports a thick layer of grime that disconcerts even a
nostalgic like me. The investment in reconstruction obviously isn’t spread
evenly throughout all sectors.
What I liked about Shanghai was its jumble of styles, moods,
and neighborhoods, which you saw in the old linangs
(enclosed neighborhoods that were like mini-cities within the city, neighborly
and close, like the Chinese themselves) and concession areas. The latter were
the legacy of the bad old days of the exclusive Imperialist zones when Shanghai
(and China) was carved up by the French, Russians, British, Americans, and
Japanese who all left their mark on Shanghai’s appearance. As a result, as you
walk through its streets you get, along with the usual Chinese clutter
& bric-a-brac, ghostly echoes of other cityscapes, a kind of surreal
dream city.
The building Boom threatens this living museum of city
styles that Shanghai is made up of – especially since the Chinese themselves
don’t seem to care about it. My wife, for example, isn’t as disturbed as I am
when we learn while touring one of the most “Shanghai-esque” of neighborhoods,
said to have been built by the Japanese during the war, that this odd and
charming place is slated for demolition within a year. The rule of thumb, she
says, is to tear down any “slums” visible from the windows of the new 5 star
luxury hotels.
Why can’t the Chinese skip immediately to the
“gentrification” stage, I wonder. Think of the tourist revenues for “Old Shanghai.”
(In fact, according to my ex-wife something like this
recently did get started.)
One of those unique Shanghai genres was (and still is) the
Russian restaurant, established by post-Revolutionary White Russians – there
were about a half-dozen well-known ones where you could get “borscht,” cheap
caviar and beef Stroganoff. I’m glad to say that at least one is still going
strong –the famous Red House on Huaihailu. Not only are its prices still low, I
notice that Chinese are still using those work unit coupons to pay for their
meals.
(It’s amusing to observe this enclave of socialism surviving
in the precincts of former counter revolutionaries!)
Of course my point of view as a foreigner lamenting
Shanghai’s quaint, architectural past is out of step with the point of view of
the Chinese who are understandably proud of their economic and architectural
accomplishments: there is much to wonder at: the new Opera House on People’s
Square, for example, and the Pudong fantasyland of towers, turrets and crystal
spheres, constantly on display across the river from the Bund, once Shanghai’s
glory but now a bit dowdy compared to the fantasmagoric sculptures in steel and
glass of the New China.
I get twitted by my old Chinese friends for still situating
everything in Shanghai by means of the Peace Hotel—the former headquarters of
foreign splendor and decadence –a sad relic of 14 stories now dwarfed by dozens
of shiny new steel and glass creations nearby.
One of the most amazing signs of China’s transformation comes
at the railway station where we go to buy tickets for Hanzhou, a famous
resort town barely an hour and ½ south of Shanghai.
It was no doubt the very difficulty of traveling anywhere in
pre-boom China that made any destination you managed to get to seem wonderful
by its rarity; non Chinese speakers had to go to a special office in the Peace
Hotel and book weeks in advance for the simplest trip. Otherwise, you’d have to
brave the horrific confusion and mobs of the central train station where
thousands, it seemed, were vying for the same precious seat you wanted.
Then, when you got your ticket, whether for “soft seat”
class or only slightly less desirable “hard class” sleeper, you’d have to
battle the mobs again since your “reservation” was void until you boarded the
train and struggled again, this fight taking place in the confines of the
train corridor. Then you signed in with the officials who doled out the actual seats
if there were any left (most Chinese travelled in “standing class”). Your only
chance was to tough it out and wait for a seat to open up at a stop. Since this
was China though, and your bragging rights depended on getting to the famous
sites, you tried to keep your temper and not strain your health. The wonderful
Chinese that you met and the fabulous destinations made it all worthwhile.
Now, however, we simply go the central station, drop some
bills and coins into an automatic vendor, and amazingly, tickets emerge without
the slightest human struggle. I’m not entirely convinced though, and when the
train pulls up, I brace myself for the rugby match on board (old reflexes die
hard). Incredibly, however, I find, once on the train, a clean modern express,
that not only is there no sunflower seed debris on the floor but our tickets
entitle us to two very comfortable seats in the “soft” class. It’s still a
privilege, but one that many Shanghainese can now afford.
Such cosseted splendors are no longer for the glorious
foreigners alone. But looking out the windows at the next train over, I see an
image of the past – an overcrowded non A/C local, windows open, crowded to the
gills with Chinese who stare silently at the flashy modern express pulling away
from them.
The celebrated West Lake (Xilu) which I’d thought of as the ne plus ultra of Chinese scenic wonder
is not as spectacular as I remembered from those days of fresh “Eastern
intoxication.” It is after all artificial and very shallow; still the setting
with its pines and pagodas is pleasant and relaxed with the distant hills
receding pictorially into successively fainter layers. It is now I realize a
Chinese cliché but one worth the trip considering how close it is to Shanghai.
I’d forgotten though about its most beautiful feature, the
wooden walkway that goes from one bank to another and takes you straight to one
of the most charming teahouses imaginable: a red wicker like roof, dark
lacquered wood inside with rattan chairs and open windows for coolness. You can
sit amid the grey drift of lake sipping fresh tea from bright green newly
picked leaves.
“Do Chinese ever strain their tea?” I asked my too beautiful
wife. (Every time I tried to woo her, I'd commit some incredibly gauche act --
like the poor bloke in The Gods Must be Crazy.)
“No, never.”
“Why is that?”
“We like to look at the leaves,” she replied. (later I realized how innocently she essentialized herself and her fellow Chinese in this statement).
Just then a small, rural looking Chinese man approached Jane
and smilingly spoke in low tones. She dismissed him, and the man departed
without protest.
“What was that all about?”
“He wanted to tell my fortune.”
In some ways it’s too bad we didn’t let him read our tea
leaves, because we didn’t at that point know what our future would bring.
Within five years, we would no longer be married, and sadly my returns to
Shanghai would end.
P. S. Should one go to China? In view of the huge progress
made by China in improving the infrastructure in recent decades, most travelers
shouldn’t hesitate; people looking to broaden their horizons, who have some
cross-cultural mileage under their belts and aren’t looking for superficial
kicks or an experience of what they already know, are the best candidates.
Prices though have gone up sharply; in 2001the Xinxin Hotel in Hanzhou cost $50
for a double; the average room rate now is $150.
--J. D.
