Hey folks, sorry I missed a post last night, but the internet facilities at my hostel are standing up and outdoors, and since I got in late last night, I waited until I could find a good internet bar to send out another dispatch. Here was my route yesterday:
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And then my train route, roughly:
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And then, walking, today:
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I got up early in the morning, and dropped off my stuff at the train station (which, despite my paranoia, of course went off without a hitch) and caught the bus to Dai Miao, or the Dai Temple. This bus was really a piece of work, weaving through heavy, motorbike traffic on a half paved road. The temple itself (you may know it as - and here, my geekiness inevitably shows - the Daoist wonder from Civ IV), although recommended by the guidebook, was nothing really that special. It had a nice set of walls you could walk on, a bonzai garden and a fantastic mural dating back to the Song Dynasty in deplorable condition, but otherwise, not so impressive. There was, however, because of the Chinese New Year, a set of pretty awesome, wacked out floats that I can't even describe...just see the pictures, when I eventually post them.
I got to the station about two and a half hours early, having nothing better to do. This time, I was travelling de-luxe, soft seat, and so got to sit in the very special soft seat waiting room. Overall, the soft seat ride is more or less what you pay for, a nice seat, like one you'd get for forty bucks here in the states, with a sweet little bottle of mineral water thrown in. This trip was not particularly fun however. First of all, as is clear to everyone in China including me, I'm travelling with way too much stuff, especially my one huge bag. I think I could probably check this bag, but I don't want to have to worry about getting my bag back, so I keep it with me. On this train, I dragged the bag all the way down to my seat, bumping elbows, running over stuff and generally being a very evident nuisance, only to see that there was no way in hell it was fitting overhead, and then, red-faced, dragged it back to the end of the car as the whole car watched and frowned with disdain. I had no choice but to mutter "duibuqi" and slink back to my seat.
Part of the reason I've had a rough couple of days is all of this worry about transportation. Travelling around with all of your stuff and worrying about catching trains is hard enough as is, and when you never completely understand exactly what's going on and what you're supposed to do, it's that much worse. It also definitely makes you feel more alone; everyone else seems to know what to do, and if you screw up, it's just your problem.
True to form, not five minutes in Shanghai, I got ripped off bad. This one really burns because I should have known better. Touts mobbed me as soon as I got off the train, grabbed my bags, and got me into a van to my hotel for 80 yuan. I acquiesced because in Taishan, the touts led me to a legitimate taxi, but I knew this wasn't on the level. It really burned when I found out that my hostel was less than a kilometer from the station. These scams are worse since I'm a city kid and not born yesterday, after all, so I can see them coming, but I'm often too tired, frustrated and anxious to put up a big fight against pushy scammers for ten dollars.
In any case, I got to my hostel alright. It's a nice place, relatively new, with a chic little bar in the middle. The Chinese clearly just use it as a budget hotel, but it is designed like a hostel, and I share my bathroom with another room. Also, the location is great, right near Shanghai's central railway hub and park and walking distance from most major sights. It's like having a room for ten bucks near Columbus Circle.
Got out of bed around 9, and walked from my hostel to the Bund. Bottom line, I love Shanghai. Beijing may be China's national city, but Shanghai is an international city, more modern and more comfortable in every way. Shanghai really feels like New York, the same energy, the same international feel. Both of those cities are cities built around money, with all that entails: the freedom, the energy, and the cruelty. For once, there's no shouts of hellloooo, no picture requests, no waiguoren and no laowai. People here are all busy with their own thing, they've seen you before and they don't care. It's really refreshing. I've had a few Chinese strike up conversations with me, but they're clearly tourists; the Shanghainese are used to foreigners.
That said, I'm glad that I'm not doing my program here. Shanghai is comfortable, but a little too comfortable. I didn't come here to be perfectly at ease, I came here to be shaken just a bit. It disturbs me how much I have retreated back to certain comforts, and how badly I've reacted when I can't get to them. I want to grow, and Shanghai would be perfectly happy letting me lead my New York life. For example, I've mostly used English here, since many Shanghai residents speak it rather well, and so it makes no sense to break out the Mandarin just to frustrate everybody. The expat situation (gleaned from reading an expat magazine and watching the expats, some of them - gasp - even hipster looking) is disturbing. It seems like extraterritoriality still exists, even if not in name, in fact.
The Bund is nice, though not incredible. I had a shot of espresso in a lovely cafe in what used to be a foreign bank building, now filled with offices that reminded me of when I had to deliver packages for the ARChive (complete with that outsider feel). I like Shanghai the city much more than what's in Shanghai, pretty much exactly the opposite of my feelings on Beijing. I also had another great experience with street food. Seeing some Chinese eating some crazy stuff on a stick, I walked over, and ordered one shrimp (since the person before me ordered it) and one wild card looking thing. The shrimp was eh (basically like imitation crab from a california roll, but on a stick), but the wild card, aw man! New York could learn a lot about street food from China; I won't rest until I can get all sorts of weird stuff on a stick back in the States.
After the Bund, I walked down to Yu Gardens. To reach the gardens, I had to walk through an insane tourist/capitalist maelstrom, the likes of which only China could muster. The gardens themselves are very nice, very polite Ming era chinese gardens, beautiful architecture. It was a place I might actually want to live. A remarkable thing about walking around in the gardens: I heard Japanese. Sure enough, there were the world's greatest tourists, the Japanese, in big mobs. It's somewhat jarring, especially after visiting the Marco Polo Bridge, to see the home of China's Anti-Imperialist left welcome in the Japanese. But as I said before, Shanghai's a city of money, and that means old quarrels are forgotten, I guess.
I tried to get Shanghai's famous dumplings, xiaolongbao, at a noted place near the Gardens, but the line was insane and did not move. I opted for another place, and got some no problem. As I bit into the dumplings, I realized that they were my old friend, soup dumplings, and as usual, were pretty great. I guess it isn't called Joe's Shanghai for nothing.
I finished the day off at the Shanghai Museum. Here in Shanghai, it seems the Chinese have finally mastered the very necessary art of curation. The museum's collection is not exactly huge (I did most of the museum in about an hour and twenty minutes, on slightly quick museum pace), but there are some lovely pieces in there. The ceramics and bronzes are exceptional, and I even liked the painting and calligraphy, which usually aren't my thing. I found the seal galleries particularly interesting, since I had never thought about all the artistic elements of the seal: not only the decorative carving, but the calligraphy and composition of the characters.
I went to get dinner at a place in the French Concession, and it was probably my best meal yet. It was a small noodle shop off a main street, run by elderly Chinese women who bared an uncanny resemblance to my paternal grandmother. For once, I did this pretty much entirely in Mandarin, with little recourse even to pointing. I got spicy pork with noodles in a fish broth, and it was filling, and so incredibly delicious I do not know what to say. After a few minutes, the most surly Shanghai women I have ever seen were seated next to me, Carnegie Deli style, but that didn't get me down. The best part? My best meal was probably also my cheapest meal, at a little under three dollars american. Hell yes.
Shanghai's had me thinking a bit. First, my first week in China, I've felt particularly American, but here, I realize, feeling so at home, my real identity is more linked to the international, cosmopolitan city. I am more home here than say, in St. Louis. I don't know how to feel about that. The cosmopolitan identity is a particularly bourgeoise identity, available to people only of a certain status and background. My retreat into comfort plays into this. It gets harder to say that everyone's going to need to live less well when you have sampled the realities of a country like China, and realize that you miss certain facets of middle class existence. I think that maybe, the goal is to spread this existence as much as possible, and just cut over the top consumption. Although, Marx, in his critique of bourgeoise socialism, points out that this is an impossible and ineffectual goal, with quite solid logic, but then, who knows, he certainly wasn't right about everything.
It's certainly the goal of the Communist party. Walking around here, I realize more and more that the goal of the CCP - started in Shanghai, and dominated by quite a few Shanghai party members - is to Shanghaize the country. There is an interesting slogan here, related to the 2010 Shanghai expo, which is as much a crazed state objective here as the Olympics were a year ago for Beijing. It is "chengshi, rang shenghuo geng meihao", and is translated as "Better city, better life", but a more accurate translation would be "City, make life even grander". The urban, cosmopolitan existence of Shanghai seems to be seen as a dream and a goal for all of China. Whether it's attainable or sustainable, well, we'll see how well the party can do it.
The other three big words I see around China coming from the government are "wenming" (civilized), "hexie" (harmonious) and "heping" (fair). They all have interesting connotations, particularly "wenming", which is everywhere and related to all sorts of things. It seems to mean more Western, quieter, more developed. It makes dissent seem like a question of good manners.
So I'm doing pretty good here, and am looking forward tomorrow. I'll probably do some combination of the French Concession, Pudong or the Lu Xun memorial. See you folks tomorrow.
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