Shanghai Streets

Sunday, January 21st -

Since I moaned about the weather yesterday I thought I'd share some of the really great things about Shanghai - to even out the old Yin and Yang. Well it's really true, I do love Shanghai. It's an incredibly vibrant, nutso city with such rich east/west history. It's a speedball of a city. I recently read a pretty good book called Shanghai: The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City, by Stella Dong. It details the birth and growth of Shanghai from the beginnings of the European and American traders in the 19th century, to the revolution of 1949. Before reading the book I had only a sketchy idea about what it was like when it was the 'Paris of the east', but now a lot of 'typical Shanghainese' (you hear this all the time) ways and lifestyle make more sense. The city was built on commerce, for one: westerners doing business in China commerce at that. Opium- for-tea gets all the headlines, but there was so much more going on.
After the first so-called Opium War, when the British got Hong Kong, Shanghai started to become a serious hub for trade - and more importantly it became the first really open city in China. Chinese mixed freely with westerners, although the two were officially separated in their different areas of the city. But the great houses of Jardine and Matheson, Dent's, and Sassoon Bros. (Scots, Brits, and Sephardic Jews from Baghdad respectively) had to have Chinese compradores to run their docks and deal with all the Chinese workers - and these men became very rich and powerful. At the same time a powerful underworld sprang up around the futile (and hypocritical) attempts of the Emperor to outlaw opium. The men who rose to the top of the smuggling game also became extremely wealthy and eventually these rich Chinese began a parallel society that enjoyed all the same western tastes and ideas. So Shanghai has had free market minded, capitalist Chinese culture for well over a hundred years.
All of this was born of commerce, so it's no surprise that today's Shanghai is also strictly business. Thirty odd years of communist suppression couldn't keep down a fierce independent trader's spirit, and now that Shanghai has been opened up it's every man for himself. The skyline is changing daily, in front of my eyes. People are building skyscrapers in the same way that they once built robber baron style mansions in the French Concession. In fact, they're building more of those too. Their hunger for luxury brands is insatiable, and I'm sure Louis Vuitton and Prada sell more here than they do in the States. But all of this is not what I love about Shanghai. It's just the reason for the things I love.
Let me start with my own neighborhood. The other day I was walking through Xintiandi, which is an old neighborhood that was knocked down (by an American architect named Ben Wood) and then built back up in an idealised version of quaint cobbled alleyways and clever original looking stone row houses. Of course it's all filled with shops and restaurants now (Starbuck's and Coffee Bean within shouting distance of each other). It's expensive and perpetually filled with tourists and expats. It's annoying. It's also handy. Anyway, I was walking home (I live three blocks away) in a cold mist, the predecessor to a freezing, foggy night. I was walking with a friend who recently moved to the area also, and we both were complaining about the weather. We walked around the man made pond that serves as scenic backdrop for Xintiandi and also provides the 'Lake' for the newly built, and prohibitively expensive 'Lakeville' condos. Yes, even more blocks of old, foreign built row houses were obliterated to make Lakeville. The old row houses are definitely an endangered species, and except for a few areas in the French Concession they seem to still be open game to developers, and are disappearing quickly. Since I moved into my building ten months ago two whole blocks have gone down, and the one across the street from me is a ghost town now, waiting for the final tenants to clear out so they can start smashing it to bits.
Anyway, as we crossed Zizhong Lu and the recently crafted lake and Gotham inspired condo mini-city, we started walking up a road I've never taken before called Shun Chang Lu. As soon as we got past Fuxing Lu (one of the cities main East-West arteries) we were back in Old Shanghai, with it's frenetic emporium look and feel. This area is not far from the original old Chinese city, and is a maze of wiggly little roads that can end abruptly when they dead end into larger roads. The architecture is all low, two and three story buildings made solidly of bricks and wood - built by the French and Americans mainly, to rent out to Chinese workers that were the city's support system and backbone during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Each street uses a European system of multiple entries per block, with lovely stone entry ways and hidden courtyards leading to alleys and mini neighborhoods within the neighborhood. Of course most of the buildings are going to seed, as the Shanghainese are generally more concerned with function over form. But still they retain an old world charm, despite (or possibly because of) the washing hanging everywhere and the hodge podge repair work to original elements. For example, many of the street facing apartments have second story sun rooms with intricate, many paned windows. But this must get cold in winter, and glass breaks, so many of these are covered up with such charming materials as plywood and tin. It's sad, but you often see an intricately carved window frame with equally ornate stone work around it that's had the panes knocked out to make room for an air conditioner or worse, just boarded up for heating.
But Shun Chang Lu is wider than most streets in this district, and is wall to wall shop fronts on either side, so it's easier to forgive the aesthetic transgressions. Along the road I saw the usual human bazaar: clothes sellers, fruiterers (too many to count), a fish monger, barbecue guy on the corner wearing a muslim fez-like hat (from western China), a floating card game, smoke shops, and of course the omnipresent barber shops. There are two kinds, actually. The first are legitimate salons where young Shanghai kids get their main form of self expression done - some pretty funky 'do's, mostly aping Tokyo and Taipei styles. The second type is a small shop front with a pink light emanating from within, and you'll be hard pressed to find any scissors inside. Instead you will see (if you're so inclined) a gaggle of young girls from the countryside in nylon mini dresses, and all very healthily endowed. I'm told that they have small cubicles in the back where you can "get your hair cut". I wouldn't know, as I've never done more than look sheepishly through the windows as I pass by. Really, I haven't been inside one, but I admit I always get my voyeur on.
So anyway, all of this is going on...a normal street scene on a normal day. But this street had so much of it going on. It really was hectic, and I stopped to take it all in, and once again pinch myself say "I'm living in China". The Shanghai fog was coming in off the Huangpu River; a misty shroud, softening everything I saw. A last ember of sun was trying to fight its way through the filmy air, and I realised it was what they call in the movie business "magic hour", just before sundown. As we passed a knock-off clothing store a group of four High School girls, all of them cute, giggled when the ring leader said "Hello!" We smiled and looked back saying Hi, and they all took turns trying out a cheeky bit of English as they followed us for a while. "How are you?" said one. "May I know your name?" said another. And suddenly the street was even more interesting.
On the corner we discovered a pharmacy that I didn't know was there before. Good to know, as they can be few and far between in Shanghai. Across the street we stopped at a big fruit stand and bought some small, sweet 'mandarin' oranges which have just come into season somewhere in the south. I joked around with the girl working there, flexing a bit of my lame Chinese. She wasn't going for it, barely cracking a smile. Strictly business. But it's all good, and I will come back to check out this street more thoroughly soon. And tomorrow will show me something else I haven't seen I'm sure. That's all I really need to make me happy.