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.

Kunming, enroute to Beijing

It's been quite a while since I've last checked in (what a trite blogger refrain) and as I sit in the lobby of the anywhere Haishi Hotel in Kunming, I thought I'd post to save myself from boredom as I await tomorrow's flight back to Beijing after a long and extensive spring break trip through Sichuan and Yunnan provinces. My favorite part was Chengdu, its pandas, nearby giant buddha, hot pot, leafy streets, temples, and fun-loving locals who we partied with on our second night in town, and from which my throat has not yet recovered--i guess chain smoking a pack of cigarettes wasn't such a good idea.

But now I'm in Kunming and at a hotel close to the airport for my three hour flight. Yunnan was beautiful, its rice-paddied hills speckled with white walled villages. Its two historic towns we visited Dali and Lijiang were picturesque and interesting albeit both completely touristic-ified and slightly less authentic for it. In Dali I got to visit a truly beautiful temple complex situated on the slopes of mountains and with views of the lake below. In Lijiang I met one of the 8 remaining Dongba script masters, and received a written scroll of goodwill from him.

Pictures are soon to follow after I get back to my comfortable dorm room. Zai jian for now!!

Chengde Old and New

Puning Si, houses largest wooden Buddha in world

The new Chengde

The Bus Ride from hell... to Chengde

This past weekend I went to Chengde with some friends from my program. Chengde is a city home to the Qing emperor's old summer palace and several impressive Buddhist temples dating from the 18th century. To get there we took a bus..the bus ride from hell.

Getting settled into our bus at Liuliqiao Station, everything seems fine--the bus is rather comfortable. Annoyance number one, however, is made apparent to us when we get going: Beijing traffic sucks. It's a Saturday morning and traffic is worse than the 405 at rush hour on Beijing's not 1st, not 2nd, not 3rd, but 4th ring road. Black Audis, Volkswagen, Nissans with strange names, and the ubiquitous Jinbei mianbaoche (colloquial nickname meaning bread car) all clog the road and change 4 lanes in an instant. Believe what you've heard: Chinese roads are dangerous.

An hour later we are still in Beijing, somewhere on the northern outskirts of the city, just beyond the 4th ring road on the Jingmi Expressway. Now, let me tell you about the Jingmi Expressway. It's basically a country road, like any you would find in the United States, two lanes and undivided. But it's clogged with myriad buses, pedestrians, bicyclists, men and women peddling odd vehicles burdened with towering stacks of recycled plastic, horses pulling carts, and motorcyclists. All of this developing-world hubbub is directly adjacent to the recently built Airport Expressway that passes above our heads. I wonder, "why don't we use this road?"

The next outrage occurs soon as the bus pulls over to the side of the road and remains there for the next twenty minutes. A few people get off to pee, get back on, and I think "ok we can leave now." No. The bus driver has decided to have a long and apparently engrossing conversation with a friend who happens to be sitting on the side of the road. Twenty minutes later he comes back on the bus to inform us that the bus is broken and we must switch to another bus.

It's another fifteen minutes on this bus until we actually depart. We clank along this busy two lane road, past the hodgepodge northern fringe of Beijing home to exclusive expat compounds evocative of American suburbia, impromptu car-repair shops, factories of multinational corporations, and horses.

The rest of the ride consisted of us clanging along this bumpy highway, while a perfectly good, brand-new high speed expressway ran directly next to us. I cursed the idiocy of the driver, which turned into more general puzzlement. I wondered, "why is it that this 5,000 year old civilization that invented gunpowder, typing, and fireworks is unable to figure out how to operate buses.

The scheduled arrival time of 2:00 turned into 3:30. And of course it could have been worse. But when we finally got off in Chengde, nestled within the brown mountains of the hibernating Chinese countryside, we were rewarded with a visit to the beautiful Puning Si temple, an active Buddhist temple. We were also able to stay in a hotel in the temple itself. The next day we visited the Emperor's summer resort park (Bishushanzhuang), and another temple modelled on the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet, designed to accomodate visiting Tibetan emissaries. The trip was worth it, but next time I think we'll take a train.

Hutong Life

Since I have been living in a modern dormitory building for a month now I thought I'd reflect on my first few days in Beijing living in a courtyard hotel in a hutong, or alleyway, neighborhood.

Before 1949 hutong neighborhoods covered most of Beijing's old walled inner city. After the Communists came to power, Mao began ordering many of them leveled and replaced with new Soviet-style housing blocks. Though most still remained even up through the 1990's, the era of rampant commercial real-estate speculation has finally turned the hutong into an endangered urban species.

A hutong is basically a lane running east to west, lined with traditional siheyuan, courtyard homes. Traditionally, Beijing's urban fabric consisted entirely of these homes patterned across the city like bricks and subdivided by hutongs. Today, there are several preservation districts but even these special restrictions against 拆-ing (chai) meaning destroy, are sometimes not enough to prevent developers with important connections from tearing down neighborhoods and evicting residents, who are often old and powerless people.

Hutong life is a glimpse into the past, quite different from the modern lifestyle that most Beijingers enjoy. There are no cars, residents must use public toilets, and often no heating except for coal burning. But despite the lack of creature comforts, hutongs are living communities. In the alley, local kids play soccer under the watch of the elderly, women buy their groceries, and men play Chinese checkers on the stoop of their home. Often inaccurately called slums, hutongs are more accurately low-rent neighborhoods that have suffered from years of neglect and with some upgrading could be turned into very comfortable modern environments. Hopefully the authorities will realize this and decide that preserving the old environments is essential to preserving the soul of the city.

A Massage and Mao Kitsch

A couple days ago, I went to get a massage at a place around the corner. We ended up paying 20 bucks for about 2 hours of full-body massaging. I went with a friend from my program and they put us in the same room. My friend had an older masseuse, while I had a younger girl. Both looked like they were probably former peasants from the provinces in Beijing to make a life.

There was a lot of banter and talk between the two masseuses( I think this is the plural form), and I for the most part had no idea what was going on. Then I feel my masseuse slip something into my hand. When I had turned over and had the chance to examine it, I realized it was a small red pin featuring Mao's portrait.

At this point I didn't know what the hell I was supposed to do with this, but I assumed it was some sort of flirtatious token. Then towards the end of the massage I find out, after asking my friend, that the girl wanted my phone number.

I said I didn't know my phone number, but my friend told it to her anyways. The next day I received a bunch of text messages but couldn't read them since my phone is unable to display characters. Thus, this was the last I heard from her.

But...I still have that piece of Mao kitsch as a little souvenir from my first massage in China.