Expo Mania!

As Beijing was wild with excitement and anticipation for last year's Olympics, Shanghai is preparing in the same way for next year's international exposition. They have a furry mascot, whom I initially thought looked like a tooth but it turns out is actually supposed to represent the Chinese character ren 人, meaning person or in this sense humanity. They've got billboards plastered all over the city advertising Better City Better Life, echoing of the Olympics' One World One Dream or New Olympics New Beijing. Hell, they're even tearing down a large area of old housing on the riverbank south of the city center to create a massive exposition park...sound familiar?

The Chinese are really taking to the culture of internationalism and international events: trade forums, Olympics, expos, etc. But what seems to be the case is that more often than not the local residents end up suffering at the expense of impressing the rest of the world.


But hey, this girl above (taken last weekend at the Shanghai Urban Planning Museum's exhibit on the Expo) seems pretty captivated by the model of China's pavillion at the Expo, which interestingly enough is based on the traditional wood bracket design of the very Chinese buildings that have been leveled across the country for the type of economic modernization and globalization celebrated by events like the Olympics and the Expo...

Shanghai Dreaming

Two views of Shanghai, one the obligatory bund photo, the other in Yu Gardens...

Shanghai is a slice of Europe in China and when I was there I didn't feel like I was in an exotic Eastern country...this is true in many places in China but in Shanghai especially so.

Highlights: surveying the smoggy skyline from WFC, world's tallest building (until the Burj Dubai opens), eating xiaolongbao dumpling amongst the crowds of Yuyuan Bazaar, wandering the few remaining alleys of the old city in the shadow of nearby Pudong, visiting the site where the Communist Party of China was founded, club-hobbing (with a girl from Kazakhstan and two guys from Germany and Holland) until 6 AM ending up at a sketchy techno place called Dragon Club filled with druggies, riding the world's only maglev to the airport (5 min)....Shanghai is quite a town. But I'm glad I decided to study in Beijing--at least I feel like I'm in China there. I hope in ten years time I can say the same thing about Beijing...

But its good to know that there is a place in China where one can go to indulge all of ones desires and material wants, and all of ones yearnings for life at home. In many ways Shanghai seemed more relaxed than Beijing, the people not necessarily friendlier but less formal, not having to live under the constant eye of Zhongnanhai and not emburdened with the same weight of history and national pride that one sometimes feels while in Beijing.


PS: I absolute love this picture (taken in Yu gardens)

The Ford of Heaven

I know its been quite a while, I've been quite busy here in the Middle Country...but I thought I would return to the blogosphere by posting some pictures of Shanghai and reflecting on my recent weekend trip to China's financial center (via Tianjin), a brief but packed trip...

Tianjin:

Darkness whizzes by my window as my train speeds south to Shanghai, the financial capital of China and the glittering metropolis which I have heard and seen so much of. Like the Emperor on his southern inspection tour I first journeyed from Beijing to Tianjin, the ford of heaven, this time via China’s fastest conventional high speed train rather than an imperial procession. We reached speeds of up to 300 km/hr and zipped through the soggy flat green countryside between Tianjin and Bejing, dotted here and there with smoke spewing factories, villages, every inch of land cultivated, in intensive agricultural or industrial use.

It was beginning to sprinkle when I disembarked in Tianjin and took a cab to Wudadao, where I walked around the stately, leafy streets of a former European-dominated area where wealthy Europeans built homes. I felt like I had left China for good, and had landed either in America or in Europe. Brick and stucco residences graced the street, most with a historical plaque detailing their preservation status and significance. I tried putting my entire suitcase/backpack on my shoulders but this proved a cumbersome system, and I felt like a pack animal. I ended up having to schlep my bag around the streets of Tianjin but only for a few hours. I walked into a strange building featuring odd art pieces all around it which turned out to be a sort of private antiquities museum also featuring a restaurant and known as the “Eatable Museum” I went next door to find something cheaper and ended up eating at Cheng Gui’s western food restaurant where I actually had quite a decent fried chicken with ham and cheese, vegetable soup, and rice, and moderately priced for western food. After stuffing myself, listening to a Britishman talk business in the restaurant with his Chinese colleagues, I left.

I took a taxi to Jiefanglu, one of the main streets in Tianjin’s Americanesque downtown, where neoclassical and neo-Baroque former bank buildings graced every block of a quiet pedestrian street near the river. I decided Tianjin was about as American as any city I’d seen in China. Its scale was more manageable than Beijing’s and it was laid out like an American city, with a downtown area near a river, its buildings a mix of styles ranging from the turn of the century to the present.

I had my quick sojourn in Tianjin planned out perfectly so that I ended up back at the train station, crossing the Hai River by a clunky iron footbridge that reminded me of something from the Mississippi. Across the river from downtown was the train station, built around a large plaza snug against the river. Tianjin was a booming city, a rather modest metropolis compared with Beijing, but altogether, I decided, a much finer city from what I saw, than from the horrendous descriptions of industrial waste and decay that I had heard elsewhere.

The waiting hall of Tianjin’s train station is massive, and upon entering I felt like for sure this was the harbinger of China’s future role as a global leader. Every semi-important city it seemed had a brand new transport hub that was capable of handling millions. The high speed trains that pulled out of Beijing’s Southern Station (equally massive and one of four other massive Beijing stations) arrived in Tianjin every half hour.

On the train, where I unfortunately am stuck with a back breaking upper berth, I chatted with a Chinese family (two sisters and one of their middle school boys) for quite some time, every so often being reminded how good my Chinese is, and trying to think of ways to throw in grammar patterns that I just studied. Fifteen minutes ago the lights were turned off so I am sitting here in the dark aisle of the compartment typing, trying to make myself tired enough so I can fall asleep in my 6’ x 3’ cell of luxury.

…So I will await my arrival in Shanghai as my southern inspection tour continues.