Shanghai 15 Years Later

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[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.