July 1, 2008
My father and I land in Pudong International Airport. It is one of two Shanghai international airports and its interior is reminiscent of Toronto’s Pearson. High ceilings and extensive metallic lines parallel the crisp, official-accented voice through the speakerphones.
We board the magnetic levitation train. It was built by a German firm looking to showcase its technology. It is impressive, world-class, and a world first. But the ridership is only at 20 percent capacity, and as we reach the top speed of 435 km/h, the car is not so steady. It does not bother me so much, but I do begin to draw my first links in this city. In the grand halls of the airport we passed through customs without a flinch; the man at the machine was alone and he barely cared to inspect. At the maglev luggage scan I was stopped. They told me to sip my liquid in front of them. The link is not so clear, but something is up. We float to a stop. We must descend somewhere in the suburbs of Shanghai.
The taxi is mid-afternoon-hot despite the air conditioning. The cabby takes us from Longyang Road station in Pudong to our hotel in the central city. The ride is long because of the traffic; we drive west, over the Huangpu river and connect to a highway that cuts callously through the city heart. My father has often critiqued the slowness of democratic urban construction in Montreal and in Hong Kong; it is evident that here such democracy is not an issue. On both sides of this wide, elevated freeway are high-rises that do not differ architecturally or functionally. The commercial towers are just as alluring in their design and just as dispersed in their siting. This last point is of additional interest. It was to be quite difficult to conceptualize Shanghai in only several days as a similarly undulating landscape would characterize long stretches of the central city.
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The hotel is called New World Mayfair Hotel, though in Chinese it transliterates as Paris Spring Hotel. Perhaps it did not wish to be judged by Western visitors for not living up to its stated identity. Whatever the case, this five-star hotel has covered itself with Western idioms and images. A reproduction of Van Gogh’s Terrase de Café la Nuit framed into the big glass revolving entrance greets the visitor. The second-floor restaurant is called Chez Lili. But the French metaphors end there as the latter serves a medley Chinese cuisine including the very popular Cantonese dim sum. Reproductions of European canonical paintings irrespective of country are fitted in every room and the bar vivifies with live American and British soft rock at night – performed by an alluring Chinese songbird.
The sun is still in mid-sky so, after dropping our bags, we make our way to the purpose of this trip: a printing and design trade show involving my father’s business. We board the air conditioned subway train and make our way across the city, back east to Longyang Road station. In the metro car, a young girl near me is intense in cell phone conversation. I find it curious that she speaks the Shanghai dialect – how does this linguistic island survive in a sea of Mandarin (and English) schooling, media, and business communication? My father tells me that it will pass away, that only the older generations stick to it. But listening to the adolescent enunciate, I do not think so – not for a while at least. Though it would be later that I would be able to articulate why.
The Shanghai New International Exhibition Center is located in Pudong, one of several districts fringing the central city that have seen rapid development in the reform era partly as a result of absorbing inner city relocation[2]. Since urban form in prereform China bore no heed to land value, the gap between existing and potential rent in the market transition has resulted in extensive property redevelopment and gentrification in the inner city[3]. The inner and outer suburbs have thus increased in residential developments, factories, and work units. But Pudong specifically has also been the site of high-profile commercial, financial, and technological investment, owing in part to it being a New Open Economic Development Zone since 1990. Pudong’s geography is also salient as it stretches between the Huangpu river and the East China Sea. In addition to port access, being across the Huangpu means that it flanks the riverside city heart in the same way that a boomed Kowloon has flanked the skyscraping bank of Hong Kong Island.
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When I speak of the central city or the inner city I am referring to Puxi, the traditional Shanghai west of the Huangpu. A vernacular region, Puxi remains Shanghai’s political, commercial, and cultural center despite Pudong’s recent ascendancy. It is also referred to as the city core in scholarly works that deal with the dynamics of Shanghai’s sociospatial restructuring in the market transition[4]. Below is a map that illustrates the entire metropolitan area of Shanghai including Puxi’s nine adminsitrative districts. For interest sake, I have also included a table of various Shanghai statistics in comparison with Beijing. One notes, for instance, the intense population density of Puxi.
Shanghai
|
Beijing
| |
Area (km²)
|
6 340
|
16 800
|
Central city
|
289
|
1 370
|
Suburb
|
6 051
|
15 430
|
Population
|
16 400 000
|
13 600 000
|
Central city
|
6 900 000
|
8 500 000
|
Suburb
|
9 500 000
|
5 100 000
|
Density (ppl per km²)
|
2 588
|
807
|
Central city
|
23 944
|
6 200
|
Suburb
|
1 566
|
330
|
Per capita income (yuan)
| ||
Urban
|
16 683
|
15 640
|
Rural
|
7 066
|
6 170
|
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By the time we emerge from setting up the trade exhibit, the sun has set. My father, Rita – a Hong Kong communications associate – and I take a taxi back to the hotel where all three of us are staying. One of the Shanghainese employees had beckoned this taxi whose engine purred smooth like the air conditioning. We spot a red ferrari and the driver comments that these are common sightings now in Shanghai. The two Hongkongers disagree and suggest that perhaps the red car is counterfeit. No no no, the driver insists. Rita tells me that Shanghai is exciting but it is very much a spectacle. The buildings gleam with neon patterns and swirl like spaceships, but inside things do not live up to standard. The materials may be faulty; the facilities may lack bathroom paper; the staff may disregard your requests; you may be mistakenly charged to a wrong account. I wondered about that. Were these select Hong Kong frustrations, or was this Shanghai?
July 2, 2008
As in Tokyo, my premier day-time mission is the search for a library. It is for the reasons I have written about previously, but it is also a simple, arbitrary destination. I know not who or what I shall encounter.
The place that I decide to visit – Shanghai Jiaotong University – is nearby in Xuhui district, which touches the southeast border of Changning district where the hotel is located. I step into the subway station for lunch. I pass through a dense network of little shops mainly selling women’s clothing, shoes, and accessories. There is then a dense network of busy underground eateries. A roomy McDonald’s catches my curiosity. Dozens of bright and healthy-looking young workers maneuver behind the counter; the eating area is accordingly full. Walking further in, I pick a large oval table and take a seat beside my new friends. This collective sitting reminds me of the library in Tokyo. It was impossible to find a table to work until I stumbled upon the study room. There we all worked, side by side.
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There is no rail stop at Jiaotong University. Walking out of the nearest station, I ask a young lady for directions. Like so many other women in the city she holds a sunbrella, despite the day’s cloudiness. To be fair-skinned is to be urban, civilized, and – according to my mother – it is just plain prettier.
I must have missed the scale of my map because I am walking many blocks that are invisible on paper. I turn onto a smaller street – a gentleman explicates clearly that I only need to follow this road to its end. I notice the many commoners, bikes, and motorcycles and think of a quaint university service pocket similar to the cheap eateries around Concordia University in Montreal. The road curves often, and the buildings are low, old, and often placed at interesting angles to the road. A cultural intimacy is felt through the street life. I glimpse openings and alleys with low-tabled eateries and poorly-lit spaces shops I think or fixing spaces or perhaps just places to gather. I make out a “Chongqing Hot-and-Numb Soup” shop, a hardware shop, a window-fitting shop, and a tailor shop.
This place, in fact, is not so different from the area around New World Mayfair Hotel. True, the roads are more grid-like and the buildings line up to face the street in that Changning area. And true, the buildings are slightly higher and the sidewalks are wide, but there is still a distinctive, intimate local street life. The dress code is very lax, especially for the way men wear (or do not wear) shirts, make-shift barbecue and hot-pot stands flank street merchants with a blanket full of wares, and late soup sippers in humble restaurants deck the sidewalk sides. This is what I love about central Shanghai – you may not find these props at certain sanitized tourist havens but if you turn a corner and walk a couple blocks, the informal economy will be there to welcome you again.
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Both Changning and Xuhui are older districts. In Shanghai’s old city, you find street and housing patterns of diverse urbanist lineages, from the wide avenues and geometric corners of the 19th century International Settlement – re-asserted in utilitarian and formalistic Soviet “superblocks” – to autonomous “neighbourhood units” and “microdistricts” of Anglo-American community planning descent laid out in flexible accomodation to site topographies[7]. Within the areas I described, the buildings specifically reflect a Maoist austerity prioritizing production and capital accumulation. In the dual nationalist narrative of postcolonial, socialist victory over formerly imperialist, advanced capitalist societies, it was imperative that present consumption be sacrificed for future, modern glory[8]. Now, however, these dilapidating matchbox walk-ups are a shame to be demolished. In the early-to-mid nineties urban renewal in Shanghai involved mostly small-scale housing renovation projects. Then in the late nineties city policies reflected an impatience for larger-scale redevelopment[9]. Due to a cool real estate market and the subordination of property firms by city governance, such redevelopment at first benefitted former residents. For instance, New Fukangli in Jiang’an district was financed in large part by local residents, who were in turn extensively consulted as to the form of their new home[10]. But by the new millenium, the city was in need of additional capital in order for the reconstruction to continue apace; property firms were thus privatized and a concurrent market rebound incited a trend of luxury commodity developments in the inner city.
In the bid to modernize, old Shanghai is not only being torn down but forgotten as well, along with the displaced residents who can no longer afford to live in the new complexes. The old lilong – low-rise lane houses typical of pre-revolutionary Shanghai – are razed and replaced by scientific, gated showcases. Though this may have concerned civic-minded planners, it has unmistakably supported Shanghai’s aspiration to be a cosmopolitan, world city. A young and educated generation of street officers in inner city areas compete, in coordination with real estate developers and like-minded municipal planners, to demonstrate ”model communities”. Like the infamous urban renewal of postwar America, marginal spaces – in this case often neighbourhoods impoverished by state enterprise restructuring – are simply rebuilt. But unlike the 50s and 60s of American suburbanization, the rich move in and perpetuate a sociospatial stratification reinforced by poorly serviced, distant suburbs[11]. Finally, in the process of forgetting, a new history is propagated. Shanghai’s cosmopolitan, colonial era is evoked as the city’s authentic identity[12]. Maoist history – a history that had given inner city dwellers work and security and honour – is for many an inconvenient blip in the city’s internationalist becoming.
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The 1935 campus I finally reach, a fine-lined garden, though perhaps soon to be shadowed by high-rises. For now, tall buildings stand side by side smaller ones, and a bank will be neighbour to an improvised eatery. A skinny man sleeps on the sidewalk under a tree; his wife tends the cart they pull. A bike heaves by: are the piled sacks the person’s entire possessions? You see elderly women in standard dress methodically clean the refuse bins. For now, even as they pick up after a society that worships the young the handsome and the educated, they may still call this place their own.
--
Tonight is company party night. After work, the employees taxi to meet us at a finer restaurant. Our taxi – containing my father, Rita, and I – is a little lost. My father notes that this is not uncommon: Shanghai taxi drivers do not know where restaurants are. I am told that in Hong Kong they will even comment on the venue and menu. But watching the taxi meter here tick at an impossibly economical rate, the dissimilarity is unsurprising.
We gather round the white circular table. Apart from us three, there is Howard, the Shanghai office manager for my father’s firm, and seven office workers. The seating is unintentionally compartmentalized, with the female employees in one group, the males in a second group, and the directors in a third. One exception is Wei, who sits between Howard and I.
Wei is Shanghainese, though she lies and says that she is from Anhui province – an impoverished region from which many migrants come, staffing Shanghai’s spaces of consumption. My father laughs. I met her yesterday – I asked if she lived with her colleagues, in a work unit dormitory. Yes, she replies. I laugh.
She comments on the dour attitude of our waitresses. She explains that it is because they are migrants and – Howard jumps in: “To put it simply, this dish here, it will take them a night of work to afford.” I understand this, but then I do not agree with customers complaining about the service. Wei tries to help me to understand: “It is like there is something wrong with their psychology.” I cannot disagree with that: one sign of pathology is the denial of reality. I push the absurdity further and compare them to black people who do not appreciate their situation. “Exactly! That is a perfect analogy,” says Howard.
Wei tells me that it is no longer acceptable to see a black man on the street and call out, “Hey, Black!”
We go for a walk. She was born the year of the rat, so we are juxtaposed in age. I tell her I am not sure why we in North America do not usually sing karaoke. She tells me it is because people in America like to play their own guitars and sing. I find out that sometimes marriages are facilitated by elders – there simply are not the same opportunities to meet new people in a casual setting. Yes, she is a native Shanghainese and works in an office, but still she must live at an hour’s commute. I do not know her history, why her mother and father must live there. I do not know why she dresses so plainly, unlike the other employees. And I wonder at when she told us not to waste the nation’s food. The Shanghainese may have appropriated a new teleology now, but the former historicism remains in movements, utterances, thoughts. After all, it was the Maoist control of urban migration that elevated Shanghai privilege. Though their parents were almost all immigrants, the new generation in Communist Shanghai would identify themselves with this prized place[14]. Their dialect was perfect.
July 3, 2008
After a morning of writing, I clue back into the actual hotel that is my environment. When the air conditioner is on and the towels are clean, one can leave the physical plane. But the world of imagination soon ends; I am back on a steaming street in Shanghai, and I cannot see the sky.
I arrive at the International Arena of the new exhibition center. The floor space here is four times as expensive as the other sections. My dad informs me of last night’s robbery. It only adds to all the negative experiences he has had doing business on the mainland. The officials do not let him see the security footage because they fear that it might be their own personnel; in such a case all would have to be fired. This is what they tell him.
The staff is exhausted from last night’s extended shift that finale-ed at the karaoke club. They live the furthest away and they were not singing as much as their bosses, but it was still important as it was a rare social occasion. Howard sings his heart to the familiar Cantonese refrains; because of my father he rarely sees his wife and two teenage children in Hong Kong. My father shouts out too but is laughing; he is used to living away from us and telephoning in the business hours of others.
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It is time to go. The convention center tells us this by turning off the air conditioning a half-hour beforehand. At the exit are two very long lines of people awaiting taxis and coaches (the metro is at an inconvenient distance). The sun is still pounding through the smog. We get onto an unlicenced van. I am connecting the dots. I begin to understand what Rita was getting at in the car that first night.
--
We take the metro in the opposite direction so as to get a seat (the exhibition station is only one stop away from the end of the line). On the Shanghai metro, there is a clear prioritizing of sitting. You see people bunch up close to the screen doors in preparation for a sprint in.
I stand beside Alyssa – as the accounts person she must return to the office after each exhibition day. She is sitting. She tells me that she does not like to stand because some men will press their bodies up close. She speaks quickly but precisely; it is a person listening and responding to a time full of permutation and opportunity. China is on its way, she tells me – though it is not there yet it still needs time. Then she asks herself why she tells me this, as if speaking to a foreigner. Her children – after she marries – will study abroad like me, even though children nowadays begin to learn English by primary school. But first she will move out with a friend: presently she is staying with her uncle as a temporary arrangement. Her dress is trendy and dialoguing with me she recollects and re-asserts the path of her thoughts; it is a personal, fleeting ground.
Her negotiation of the post-reform world has taken her to Shanghai from her home city in Hubei province. Though Wuhan is a capital city and the most populous in central China, she is nonetheless a migrant, with all the formal and informal meanings attached to such a status. Beijing is too harsh for migrants, she tells me. I have indeed heard from others of a Beijing attitude, a pretension towards outsiders worse than in Shanghai. I ask Alyssa how it is better in Shanghai. She admits that it is probably not much better, but at least at the (Hong Kong based) office it is not an issue. Still, it is not certain that she will stay here.
The group of us squeeze up a tiny elevator to the office.
July 4, 2008
Groggy-eyed, I pull on the closet door. The handle breaks off.
At breakfast, a busgirl drops a knife. She is lectured on how to do things right. She learns that she must not rush, that there is time.
I recall the evening before. A waitress leaves a bit of beer in the bottle. This is a faux-pas, according to the two businessmen with whom I am dining. I suggest that she was probably not brought up dining in nice places. Perhaps to her, it all seems like an arbitrary set of gestures.
The waitresses stand at their spots and watch – as they have been instructed to do.
Returning to my room, a young woman is scrubbing the wall. She bids me well. She is my age. Why is it me walking to the hotel room and her scrubbing the wall and smiling politely?
A taxi driver takes me to the Huangpu last night. It is past midnight; he is in the second half of his twenty-four hour shift. I say I wish to think near the river; I wonder what he must think of me.
The promenade by the river is beautiful, cool enough to sleep; a relaxed wind. Vendors sit and chat, the lights of Pudong dance across from us. This is the famous Bund waterfront, part of the old International Settlement. During the day, one hears the sounds of construction. Highways are being diverted and the grand banks and trading houses are being restored. A city must have history and Shanghai’s history, it seems, is here.
This city is a spectacle, and yet it is not a spectacle. Some may try to make a show, but others just don't care.
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My mother, brother, grandmother, and a family friend have arrived from Hong Kong. This morning, we all bundle over to an old friend of my father’s. The residence is about a half-hour away by subway.
We walk on a commercial street, but it is clear that this is a residential district. We turn right, into what must be a socialist housing complex. Two long and colourless apartment blocks face one another; the mediating way is a broad pedestrian lane. This neighbourhood was not meant for private automobiles, and it is likely that for most inhabitants this fact of life has not changed.
Turning left we enter. Three generations live here with their spouses and children, sharing the bathroom and the kitchen. My mother recalls growing up in Beijing: it was more crowded – there was sharing with other families – but the buildings were new then. The walls here are covered with numbers and short phrases stamped in black and red: permanent advertisements. Beneath, the walls are a white mortar scraped on a concrete frame. The touch of steel pipes and lilting ceramic at my feet – here is little division between outside and inside, between the public and the private. Here I cannot escape from the physical plane; the discomfort is real but somehow I am more alive.
We are led to the living room. A compact fluorescent lightbulb sweeps away the darkness. Things have changed. The folding futon has enabled this interior social space during the daytime. Guests are treated to an air-conditioning unit, as well as to the sight of a shiny black upright piano. Above the piano is a photo- and certificate-taped wall dedicated to the center of this household: the still shy boy of thirteen. It is not long before we are treated to his piano practice. I turn the TV off so that we can pay proper heed.
Although the hosts have been generous in their watermelon and plastic-wrapped ice cream offering we are subsequently led to a nearby restaurant. But before I go, I visit the grandmother, the reason for my father’s repeated return after so many years. Having suffered a stroke, she lies in bed. For some reason, she does not wish to let go of my hand.
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I do not know why it is so easy to drop roots here. It may be the language – even though Mandarin is in a sense an artificial language it is more particular to me than English. It may also be that there are roots here. Shanghai may be a relatively young city – a city wall was built around the seaport only in the 16th century – and its dialect a young dialect – Shanghainese has been considered China’s youngest dialect as well as an amalgam of surrounding dialects[18], but that there is a local linguistic culture, for me, gives the city place. It is not exchangeable or, like the savourous multicultural havens of North America, best defined in relation to other places and histories. I have written about feeling at home in Ryogoku, but I think China affects me at a personal level as well. Like the Chinese-American writer Fred Wah expresses, I do not know what it means to “feel Chinese”, but I do know how it feels to speak Mandarin, to speak Cantonese, to be taken as Chinese, to eat rice with vegetables every day, or to wake up frosty-eyed and hear Chinese voices soft in the kitchen. I remember leaving Tokyo and the enthusiasm I had the first night in Hong Kong – the enthusiam with which I ordered foods that were hot-colored, hot-tasting; my body must have been chilled by wet and salty noodles and raw fish and seaweed.
As I relate to this place, I am constantly exchanging my life with those of others. It is still strange to see Wei at work, knowing that this is a very large part of her life. After work, she commutes home. She tells me about the importance of working, of improving ourselves. I know that my life will be very different from hers, that I will have more time for other pursuits, and that even my work will be a privilege – in addition to being renumerative and a fulfillment of my family and societal responsibilities. It is strange to see her because I question if it is fair to value what I value, to seek what I seek. Is it fair to have First World dreams if others cannot share them? In Wei’s case, it may have been her choice, but even the choice to not study at university must be taken in the context of her familial and financial environment. But who is to say that all young and especially intelligent people should pursue higher education? Well, Chinese parents especially, actually.
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I think it is becoming evident to us why China studies have become so popular in recent years. There is simply no theoretical paradigm with which to capture its bustling diversity in form, in ideology – and this is reflected through the valuing of money, family, nation, and self all at once, one at a time, and even in contradiction. Confucian and nationalist, socialist ethical idioms are heard alongside the celebration of individual, transnational consumerism. Yet of course, this is nothing new. In the first centuries of the common era, Buddhism slowly became accepted in China – but in the guise of Taoism, forming a hybridity that persists to this day. In the nineteenth century, as European powers were carving up China’s territory and bleeding it of its national treasures, Confucian scholar-officials debated modernization strategies under the philosophy of “Western technique, Chinese foundation”. More familiar to us, a Maoism based explicitly “on contradiction” has evolved into a “socialist market economy”. On the streets, in the parks, Tai Chi practitioners circulate to the rhythm of boombox rollerbladers; a woman writes in virtual space of her sexcapades; a good-looking young man waits to gather enough of an income before beginning to date. A sick person consults a doctor trained in both Western and Chinese philosophies of the body; then again, perhaps a few mirrors in the window will do the trick. What is Chinese is whatever works! And all this one finds right here in Shanghai, where a young woman picks me off the street to converse in English – she orders but does not eat and pressures me to pay; she then pays herself and stomps off.
July 5, 2008
Today I decide to visit the finer side of life, the space in Shanghai that is already what it envisions itself to become. I take the subway east to People’s Square, deeper into the heart of Puxi. Here the roads are smooth, wide pedestrian sidewalks are neatly laid with stone and lined with trees, and one takes in the view of majestic, free-thinking architecture. It is a landscape meant to do away with the escape from the physical, for one’s imagination becomes conveniently real.
A concentration of governmental and cultural edifices, including Shanghai City Hall, Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall, Shanghai Grand Theatre, and Shanghai Art Museum, monumentalize this central location. As its name suggests, this is also the space to hold city-wide festival activities. To top it off, one will also find a fine array of shops, hotels, and café experiences within a moment’s walk, or simply at the underground level.
I look for MOCA Shanghai: the city’s museum of contemporary art. A wide river of people are exiting the Grand Theatre’s afternoon performance; a mother with a child points me in the right direction. The museum is in People’s Park. Before I get to it, I pass a restaurant floating in the middle of a large pond. I borrow a cell phone from a man leisurely speaking with his wife. This is something my father warned me never to do myself for the phone will be stolen. But this man is unsuspecting and even berates me for trying to pay him.
--
There are some meaningful works in the museum. One series, by Liu Dahong, depicts four temples: the temples of Tao, Confucius, Buddha, and Science. Each tableau depicts a view of the altar, but the scenes humorously differ in the architectural styles, the characters and idols, their activities and arrangement, and even the color tone. The Buddha temple for example is fitted with Tibetan horn-blowers, praying commoners, and what seems like a band of bandits pulling a rope around the gold head of the Buddha statue. In the center appears to be a bronze statue of a topless woman chiselled in classical Greek style. Likewise, the Confucian temple is lined with ultra-studious students, calligraphical debris, uniformed soldier-nationalists, and heavenly sunlight breaking through the earthly walls. So that Dahong is not merely depicting the presence of multiple Chinese cosmologies but rather, if only as a starting point, the way these traditions permeate the whole structure of Chinese society’s customs, aspirations, and political economy.
A second series shows two photos. One is a black-and-white shot of a farmer pulling a plow with his hands. Multiple strings extend from his hands as he tugs on the earth; a sparse line of trees of varying forms forms his background. The second is of a man in contemporary dress – the loose fit suggests either a hip-hop style or a janitorial occupation – in an interior, underground concrete space. Lines of white rope extend from his hands as he pulls a mass of boxes plastic-wrapped in indigo-blue.
The role of the artist in these cases is very evident to me. In making some sense of the cacaphony, in asking where we are headed and if it is desirable. In drawing links to the past. The exhibition is titled “The World of Others” and its curatory abstract communicates the classic theme of wandering at the crossroads of contemporary culture. It is not about the marginal “Other” of cultural studies but rather simply of you and I and who we are and what we are doing. It is about Shanghai and China too of course, as it relates to others elsewhere and here. So a third piece that I wish to feature is constructed of consolidated oil fibres. The mass of mesh piles up, intertwining and rising, but droops from the weight. A human walks very carefully with feet and hands at the tip; he is far from the base, both vertically and horizontally. For the tip has leaned so far it is now a thin thread reaching horizontally out above nothing.
--
That night, I return to MOCA Shanghai for a penthouse party. My dad comes with me, and since I do not know whether or not the party is private, he urges me to speak in a foreign tongue. We pass the guard of People’s Park without too much difficulty. But we wonder why he must ask us where we are going. The park at least should be public. A number of “public places” have so far been closed to me, such as Jiaotong University’s library, and the Grand Theatre when all the people were exiting. In any case, it turns out that this party is open to the public, but there is no need for me to switch out of French or English.
It seems that I have perforated through to the world of expats and returnees. The house music scintillates in the room where drinks are served from an improvised counter. I meet fellow voyagers in quick succession – it is as easy as at any private party. To speak the right language is like two men nodding in mutual validation.
Many here are young professionals working in multinational firms or perhaps in an embassy. A few have grown up in Shanghai, and a few others have come to further their career. I speak at some length with two musicians. They are in their mid-to-late-twenties and from Vancouver. They are a young man and a young woman, though they do not seem to be a couple, musically or otherwise. Both work in electronica; they are here for their DJ friend – every Saturday there is a party at a different venue. The young man tells me he used to work in a bank, after doing a degree in financial engineering. It is the Asian American parent’s dream, as we both know, but he would rather spend his energies on making music, even if he’d have to live more simply. We also both know this story well.
The young lady, also Chinese and a former Vancouver resident, studied film sound production as a compromise after failing economics courses. But after a menial stint in foley production, she took off for Shanghai, where the opportunity lay. Both musicians wrote off Vancouver as a desolate market for electronica while at the same time being artistically saturated. Fly west and find the greenfield that is Shanghai. Anything can happen, money is everywhere, rich people are everywhere to support you. And there is a huge and growing market of listeners open to innovation. For now, the young woman supports herself with the help of DJ gigs once a week at a nearby lounge and it pays 10 000 yuan a month.
--
I spend the rest of the evening with a large and friendly group of expatriots, most of whom are from France. While still at the penthouse party, a young woman named Anastasie sits to my right. Cheerful and full of questions, she tells me about her life here in Shanghai. She provides legal counsel for a chemicals firm based in France. It has been about six months since she was first transferred here.
Having grown up in a small town, Shanghai still seems fast-paced. We agree that the air here is too dense and it is difficult to find a place to breathe, and be away from the continuous activity. Nonetheless, she is happy here, and slowly taking lessons in Chinese, even though she has so far interacted little with the locals.
A young Shanghainese with whom I was dancing has asked me to go to Mao. I would like to remain on this elevated plane, this superstratum of Shanghai a little blind to the underside, but I am too tired to go clubbing tonight.
[1] Photo courtesy of www.flickr.com/photos/2_dogs/205021735.
[2] He, S., Wu, F. (2007). Neighborhood changes and residential differentiation in Shanghai. In F. Wu (Ed.), China’s Emerging Cities: The Making of New Urbanism (pp. 185-209). Routledege: New York.
[3] Tian, Y. Y., Wong, C. (2007). Large urban redevelopment projects and socio-spatial stratification in Shanghai. In F. Wu (Ed.), China’s Emerging Cities: The Making of New Urbanism (pp.210-232). Routledege: New York.
[4] E.g.: He & Wu 2007; Tian & Wong 2007.
[5] Map coutesy of www.likealocal.cn/shanghai-districts-explained.
[6] Wang, S., Guo, C. (2007). A tale of two cities: Restructuring of retail capital and production of new consumption spaces in Beijing and Shanghai. In F. Wu (Ed.), China’s Emerging Cities: The Making of New Urbanism (pp. 256-283). Routledege: New York.
[7] Lu, D. (2006). Remaking Chinese Urban Form: Modernity, Scarcity and Space. Routledge: London.
[9] Tian & Wong 2007.
[10] Tian & Wong 2007.
[11] He & Wu 2007.
[12] Pan, T. (2005). Historical memory, community-building and place-making in neighborhood Shanghai. In L. Ma & F. Wu (Eds.), Restructuring the Chinese City: Changing Society, Economy and Space (pp. 123-136).
[13] Photo courtesy of www.flickr.com/photos/ericfirley/532802767.
[14] Rudolph, J., Lu, H. (2008). Mirrored reflections: Place identity formation in Taipei and Shanghai. In J. Logan (Ed.), Urban China in Transition (pp. 161-178). Blackwell Publishing: Malden, MA.
[15] Photo courtesy of www.flickr.com/photos/2_dogs/144839622.
[16] Photo courtesy of www.flickr.com/photos/tannenberg/1578244266.
[17] Photo courtesy of www.flickr.com/photos/wangjue_2005/385144161.
[18] Rudolph & Lu 2008.
[19] Photo courtesy of www.flickr.com/photos/justinbrown/2595243739.
[20] Photo courtesy of www.nationalgeographic.com.
[21] Photo courtesy of www.flickr.com/photos/2_dogs/50292513.
