Shanghai
I've just gotten back from Shanghai, where I was visiting my dad. He recently started working for R&D at the Chinese division of a multinational pharmaceutical company, and I've been excited about this trip ever since he moved there from Pennsylvania back in February - odd though it is to imagine my parents living in China after 24 years in the US.
Well, livejournal is banned in China, a fact I actually wasn't aware of until I got over there, funnily enough. Apparently, the Chinese censors perceive there is too much immorality and indecent behavior associated with that particular web venture. Just another reason why I couldn't live in China long term. Nevertheless, Shanghai is as I remembered (I last visited in 2002) and more: a wonderfully cosmopolitan, strangely naive and rather perplexingly postmodern metropolis - a big, brash, bumbling child of a city.
There's something so wonderfully literary about Shanghai's patchwork urban character; I once considered setting an AU! story here, in which one of them grew up in Shanghai, a product of the city's international aristocracy and its American schools, the bilingual son of wealthy expat American businesspeople working in China, while the other finds himself in town briefly because his famous doctor father has been invited to speak at a Chinese university.....
At any rate, here are my attempts to capture a few of Shanghai's paradoxical faces:
First thing to know about Shanghai - alone among all of China's other major cities, it is the only one that is essentially not ancient. This leads us to the peculiar fact that China's largest city was not originally built by the Chinese; for centuries there was a little fishing village where Shanghai now stands, but the city as we know it was really the creation of 19th century colonial powers, for whom it was the open Chinese port of choice. The legacy of being carved up among British, French, American, Japanese and Russian concessions has left this once and future colony with a fractious, postmodern character that continues to set it apart from the rest of China.
Above, you see the most memorable souvenir of the colonial era, the waterfront thoroughfare known as the Bund, a protected strip where several Belle Epoque, Art Deco and Maharaja shamtique buildings still stand in all their ostentious glory.
Any part of "historic" Shanghai that is not protected tends to meet the fate that you see above: National Economic Redevelopment. Right across the Huangpu River from the Bund, the old European buildings are now dwarfed by the new manifestation of China's runaway expansion, best exemplified in the Pudong New Area, Shanghai's largest "Economic Develoment Zone", where the Communist government hopes to attract so much foreign investment and unbridled capitalistic fervor that Shanghai will become Asia's new financial capital. What would poor Karl Marx think?
One might point out that there's way more space for rent than tenants in Pudong right now, as one can see at night when most of these half empty buildings are dark rather than lit up with signs of life. Yet another crystal ball vision suggesting China's buoyant fortunes are going to have to come back down to earth at some point. For now, though, the Shanghainese could hardly care less; they just want to build, build and build.
On another note, skyscraper aficionados such as myself enjoy Shanghai because the city's malignant growth, combined with the unsavvy and gullible nature of the Chinese authorities in charge of urban planning and design, have led to some very interesting and flashy experiments in modern architecture. We get the thrill of seeing these grandiose projects built, as well as the luxury of laughing at the results without having to worry about such structures scarring our own cities. Every now and then, one of these experiments of questionable taste will actually churn out a structure that is quite striking and memorable.
Nevertheless, the city does offer us many sobering reminders of the dangers of letting architects regurgitate any half baked vomitous idea that crosses their minds.... as you can see above.
One of the main reasons I was so excited about this trip was because I wanted to see my dad's new living situation, the modern day Shanghai expat's dream setting - a spacious high rise apartment in the ever expanding Manhattan-like skyline of Pudong, overlooking the Huangpu River. Back in the 19th century, the foreign community of Shanghai formed a little international aristocracy of their own, and they could be found living in the French Concession, behind the Bund, along Nanjing Rd.... nowadays, the affluent internationals, profiting off of the relative weakness of China's yuan currency, are living in the vertical neighborhood on this side of the river. Here's a snapshot of the view from dad's living room balcony....
And here's the view from my bedroom. Worthy of Hong Kong, really....
This is the first time dad has lived in Mainland China long term, though we've all visited several times. Like him, I was born in Taiwan, but I only lived there till I was three years old. Fortunately, the official language of China is the same as Taiwan's.... Mandarin. So no real language problem to deal with. A significant number of expats working in Shanghai today actually do their work through interpreters, or in English.
In an age when most of China's cities are notable for massive roads congested with smog-belching cars and lined by monolithic architecture, it's quite surprising to see something as human in scale as the French Concession, an old favorite neighborhood with the colonial aristocracy of Shanghai. Suddenly, the skyscrapers and high rises disappear and you find yourself walking through green leafy streets lined by walled off and serenely aloof villas, in a fusion European/Oriental style.
Shanghai's main thoroughfare, and the most famous shopping street in China, is Nanjing Road. Foreign brands and department stores dominate this stretch of the city, though they've cunningly adapted themselves to appeal to the native Chinese, even as they offer a modern escape to the international community. For instance, the Coca Cola banners that you can barely see on the sides of the street essentially capture the spirit of the times.... "Zhong Guo Jia You!" (Go, China Go!) - urging on the already frenetic population in their ceaseless, high pressure obsession with making money and getting ahead.
But take a high speed train out of Shanghai and only 100 km away you can find yourself staring at the face of another China entirely.... The ancient city of Suzhou enjoys a central position in the history of Chinese visual arts and literature, due in large part to its famously well preserved medieval gardens. The "Suzhou style garden" is still regarded by the Chinese as an epitome of beauty in their culture, a classic aesthetic ideal that captivates the Chinese imagination. Poems have been written about them, paintings have depicted them and famous chronicles feature scenes set in their serene courtyards.
Our new family friend, Vicky Wu from Shanghai, provided some lovely and savvy company on my day trip to Suzhou. Together, we escaped from Shanghai for some hours and let ourselves gaze upon a different world.... Here we are standing in front of a "Jia Shan" ("fake mountain"), a common motif characteristic of the Suzhou style garden. Other classic features of Suzhou horticulture and landscaping include:
....artfully arranged rock piles (here at the delightfully named Master of the Nets Garden, Wang Shi Yuan).
....liberal recourse to water and minature bridge motifs (Master of the Nets Garden again).
....careful integration of architectural features with circumscribed arboreal/botanical spaces (The Lingering Garden, Liu Yuan)
....pavilions and gazebos, such as this one surrounded by water with lily pads. It's tucked away in the most famous of Suzhou's gardens, the Humble Administrator's Garden (Zhuo Zheng Yuan).
This Jia Shan (fake mountain) happened to have a water feature, offering much welcome respite from the midday heat, as we were able to duck into a little grotto underneath its cascade to hide out from the sun for a while.
View of Suzhou's touched up and remodeled medieval city gate, Pan Men. Suzhou has been a prosperous city since the days of the Song Dynasty (the same time period when Saxon Jack and Norman Ennis are living over in England). And it still prospers today, although the source of its wealth is no longer silk crafts and paper manufacturing as it was in Marco Polo's day. Instead, it's now the world's largest metropolitan producer of laptops, with Lenovo, the former IBM laptop division, using it as a manufacturing hub. The new city of Suzhou can be seen in the big expansive skyline in the distant background, assuring us that even as some things change, the intangibles may stay very much the same.
Back in Shanghai, here's Dad and yours truly. We're dining at a most peculiar restaurant in Pudong that served Shanghainese cuisine, but whose decor was apparently inspired by a Greco/Roman/Italianate brothel theme. I'm not kidding - this "upscale" restaurant actually had private rooms going off in all directions to complement the gaudy furniture and the faux marble statues of nymphs and divinities standing on plastic pedestals by the doorways. I won't mention the chandeliers.... Despite the respectable crowd and the posh environs, it would have taken no remodeling whatsoever to turn this space into a high end brothel. As a result, I can't look at this picture of me and Dad without a certain unease.