Shanghai: Part III.

On a local friend’s recommendation, we dine at Lost Heaven, a three-story fortress dispensing Yunnanese delicacies downtown. Something of a tourist haven, it’s still a site to behold: laid in bold stone relief and built to withstand the vagaries of most architectural trends, the outside drapes are drawn in blood-red, lit by candlelight to augment the religious experience many Canadians no doubt encounter as the peppered fare meets their virgin palate.

We enter the culinary temple through an imperial oak portal and into an open atrium.  A well-manicured photo exhibit reveals the vast and variegated beauties of Yunnan province. Two young women, no doubt unimpressed by our casual, unshaven demeanor, crudely smile from the reception desk. I go straight for the inspirational images of Yunnan village life (in but a moment’s time we shall eat the rice she’s plucking from the earth!), relishing my next voyage rather than debate the terms on which we’ll be allowed to dine. Ambra begins negotiations with the hostesses. She speaks lovely Putongua, from what I can gather, though often runs into trouble making herself understood with Chinese women. A great many of them resent her confident, if marginally flawed, efforts to speak their tongue; rightfully proud though roughly five-foot-nothing, she then openly resents their resentment, demanding they understand what they’re perfectly content not to.  An entertaining – and somewhat educative – state of affairs, though one that accrues few material benefits; alas, we’re told there’s an hour’s wait even though half the second floor is empty.

Sit we eventually do and the fare is impeccable. Our attitudinally inclined server takes a liking to Ambra’s communicative abilities, so things go our way. Rush muses over Trotsky or the Tulips and we leave contented, though not without the single most glorious sight these eyes have beheld in some time. At first there’s only one – a lone, gangly-faced adolescent with about as much sense as an unbridled Catholic in Londonderry – until the deluge.

I was on my way back from the boys’ room when I first spotted him, moseying about the top of the stairs, unsure of his demeanor though with arguably no intention of turning back. There he was, a typically pimply 15-year old European male, prancing about Shanghai in a traditional Chinese button-up tunic and topping it off with a rice-paddy hat fully atop his head. Hardly had I contained my glee when a further flood of happiness soon flowed up the stairs. An entire Caucasian tour group of middle-aged balding men, their wives and awkward adolescent offspring was decked out in faux-traditional Chinese garb – replete with dragon-patterned shiny tunic and rice-paddy hats. More than a few were sporting the straw-laced buffoonery atop their heads, though others let them rest upon their shoulders, much in the fashion of many a Saint Louis gangster in the summer of 2002 (someone tell me they recall said trend).  

More than sixty-deep, the sight of them was cause for more mirth than I’m comfortable admitting. Nonetheless, there was something utterly dystopian at play. Consider an equivalent charade in different climes. At the end of the day, it wasn’t that dissimilar from a group of Japanese tourists showing up blackface at the Apollo. As my grandfather once said, only so many spiritually deprived Frenchmen can rock the swastika-studded Hindu hippie garb before individual ridicule becomes overwhelming collective murder (Here’s to you, Herzog).

Next stop, Tianzifang, the old pedestrian Chinese quarter tucked away in the French Concession. Another (paradoxically) Western haven of sorts, the neighborhood is rightly touted for its bohemian buzz. To enter, you must pass through one of two informal archways, each a simple portal carved out of a larger European stone-and-stucco building. Once inside, you’re in a maze of red-exposed brick alleyways dotted with cafes, bars and mildly kitschy, albeit catchy, boutiques. The edifices are suddenly only 2-3 stories high, the entrance to each dwelling brimming with bamboo and other variegated verdure – not unlike the quainter quarters of Taipei. A pint in a crumbling avant-garde third-floor crawl-up and we wander the midnight streets, divining ancient from modern at every hidden dead-end. Since one can only enter this pedestrian kingdom in the midst of China’s great megapolis on bicycle or foot, you wonder whether permanent village life is as appealing as this momentary respite.

We’re next to meet Dylan at Bounty, a locale for Western privateers modeled upon their 16^th century antecedents (truth be told, Shanghai has a far more ‘diverse’ set of expats than does Hong Kong. They can even make pretense to having hipster, alternative, skater, gothic chic scenes, etc., whereas Hong Kong, lovely though it is, caters to roughly three foreign aesthetics: bankers, teachers and stroller-popping housewives). Herein flows blackcurrant rum by the bottle – and order accordingly we feel obliged. True to underground form, one must be suitably prepared before heading next door to Shelter, a former bomb-shelter from the Sino-Japanese War.

By this point people are suitably merry to make the underground descent – though the winding, cavernous and quite slippery path leading to Chinese Prentzlauerburg was not without its challenges. The dance floor is literally a bombed-out bunker, hotter and grimier than anything Westerners are willing to put up with at sea level, mais tant pis. On the floor, Dylan becomes a miraculous caricature of himself, bopping about without a care in the century, consumed by rhythmic insouciance. Throw in his magical manga-hair and blazer, and it was the happiest I’d been to see a fellow Louisian abroad in quite some time. Rush, on the hand, had chanced upon a giant Floridian belle (in the literal, not Balkan, sense) – and was rapidly making the rhetorical rounds. Only partially successful – forgive my crudity, mother – the boys were forced to finish amongst themselves, so up into the pale night we ascended.

A weather-beaten Uighur donning a dancing monkey atop his shoulder greeted us as we reemerged into the streetlight. A moment later a shirtless mensch came peddling Tibetan tea of dubious texture: we kindly declined. We hopped in a cab and made for what would be the trip’s most epic meal. Thirty meters off the moonlit intersection of a non-descript block of tower flats lay the eve’s most enticing event. A makeshift tent straddles the curb of the boulevard, giving shelter to the sweltering grills below. A neighboring stand bulged with delectable veg, raw fish and meat of every imaginable hue. You grab a basket, load it to the brim and pawn it off upon the gentleman operating the fire pit before taking your plastic seat on the refuse-ridden sidewalk. The early morning air smells of sweet injustice, an ode to acts unrequited. Scooters simmer past as the sun unfolds, revealing an endless urbanity. We’re now penniless, but Dylan negotiates an assortment of pastries from the baker just emerging down the sidewalk; it was good. We pay the bill at the sit-in street vendor, fully five US dollars for food and beer alike. The morning's fully upon us, and we amble down the road to Dylan’s bachelor abode, a singularly daunting edifice in the sky.

Shanghai: Part II.

Emerging on the other end line 10, I finally arrive in “China.” The air is sweet with ambition and monoxide, and it’s only 10pm. My friend cannot be found so I set out to locate a Chinese SIM card, perhaps a pack of smokes. To my left is a frantic construction site, to my right a major thoroughfare. Is this is a road or a sidewalk, I muse, as scooters, bikes and portable carnivals lunge toward the immediate and myself with equal enthusiasm. I glimpse a pedestrian in the distance; perhaps his name is also Evan.

Eventually I locate a legitimate sidewalk, and it was good. Altogether, the scene is manically amusing. Women sell undergarments, men skewer chicken and gizzards. Go no further than the street, young man – the West no longer beckons. I find a small cell-phone shop and inquire about the selection. Not surprisingly, the good sir and I sharen’t the same tongue, though we’re more than happy to go through the physical motions for a joyful few minutes. (We mastered charades with Jeremy on Easter in Taipei). I must admit having a very soft spot for Chinese men who smoke indoors and chatter relentlessly without removing their cigarette. Eventually we reach an agreement – that is, I consent to the first given price. Baby gotta eat, as another sage once said, and I don’t mind playing my part in seeing the circle of life take its monetary toll. 

I go next door to find cigarettes and they’ve a mint edition of 1985 Camels – the year of my birth and, incidentally, the Uighur camel. A match made in heaven. Of course, they were tealeaves spruced with tobacco shavings, though I quite enjoyed the box they came in, so continued to huff and puff, relishing le néant in all her Eastern splendor. 

After dinner we head to the French Concession, a most curious part of China. We meet an old Saint Louis friend outside the building to have a local beer on the street before mounting the guarded elevator to Sugar, our first Shanghai destination. I have not seen this particular childhood acquaintance in very many years, so the excitement is palpable. Rocking the black blazer and Manga-hairdo, he’s accompanied by his beautiful, if comically blasé, Shanghanese belle. It was at this point I understood that (early) adulthood would never fail to amaze.

We mount the elevator and emerge onto a rooftop enveloped in House-und-Trans and Moroccan divans. To my immediate displeasure there are suddenly giant Caucasians everywhere – an expectedly disconcerting sight. That said, we were coming to meet Rowdy Anna, a friend from Hong Kong currently residing in the People’s Republic and an all-around bundle of joy. Overlooking the brick-and-Oak-tree oasis of the French Concession below, we smoke, chat and chipper about the life and times of Charlie Wilson. The view is excellent, the company even better. Anna’s army of ABCs emigrates en masse to the next establishment whilst the immediate crew lingers behind. Eventually, we set sail for Geisha, our next inoffensively named locale, and wander the long, London-plane-lined streets that look more like Mendoza or Sceaux than any of the sprawling madness that is Shanghai along the way. 

The following morning we meander the elegantly wide and Westernized tree-lined boulevard along which Ambra lives. Catering to the international students of Fudan University (one of three Chinese grande écoles), it is replete with everything a young bobo in paradise could hope to hope to encounter: cafés, wine merchants, hand-crafted artisanal beer merchants, Mexican restaurants and croc depots: en gros, a Truman Show charade I’m more than happy to embrace, for the time being. (There’s also a reified Reebok outlet store, but we wouldn’t want to sully your image of Chinese consumerism that much, would we?).  Rush (my roommate) and I sit down for a latte across the way. The young men beside us discuss video games and air travel to and fro California with a feigned American accent. This is what the future sounds like!

We lunch at the Mexican café along the boulevard – a perpetual meeting ground for the American-born Chinese at Fudan who seem to work out, eat burritos and prod at their Ipads considerably more than learning Mandarin (if that’s not cultural diffusion I’m no longer sure what is). The gentleman who runs the joint speaks flawless American English but is Cantonese from Hong Kong. We discuss his array of light beers and I suggest he try a panaché (half beer, half lemonade). He enthusiastically concurs, declaring it the menu’s newest specialty cocktail.

We settle our bill and set off toward Jiangwan Stadium, merely a stone’s throw away from the manicured ménage of our airy, tree-lined avenue that reminds one more of Northwest DC than the Middle Kingdom. Bear in mind, however, its Potemkian qualities: a wayward block in any direction and you’re back in the suburban outskirts of China’s greatest commercial boomtown in history, brimming with rusted bicycles, Laundromats and disamused young men. To get to the stadium you must traverse the shit-filled canals that precede the boulevard. Whereas our waste bends its subterranean way to the sea (if not merely East St. Louis), Shanghai’s proceeds via open air. Not that there’s anything strange or historically anamolous about that: we’re all familiar with the nitrogen-filled festivities of New York City in the age of horse-and-cabby.

We’re going to the stadium to check out the Asian X-Games (you read that correctly), where Oprah Winfrey’s godson awaits us with free entry tickets (you also read that correctly). A friend of my roommate’s from college, his ‘social media’ company is working the event to generate buzz around town. Tall, dashing and terribly friendly, he proved an excellent host for exploring the city’s cluster of washed-up Californian roller-bladers.

The crowd, it should go without saying, was a fascinating bunch. On the one hand, a strange melee of 20-and-30-something Vancouverian hipsters and young, blue eyed- -blond haired-LL Bean-bearing families. What brings the former or the latter to Shanghai (much less the Asian X-Games), I’ll never know. On the other hand, you’ve your usual gamut of Chinese adolescents sporting enthusiastically ambitious trucker-hats, pink Adidas and whatever else it is the men on Madison Avenue have intemperately suggested. By far the most interesting, however, is the army of guards posted to protect the afternoon’s activities from the various human elements. For the 2,000 or so ‘spectators’ present around 2pm, there must have been 400 ageing sentinels carelessly roaming the stadium or lounging at various entry points thereto. Some of them were quite friendly – as you can witness below – though others were less inclined to see the athletic light of day as anything illuminating. Then again, as Rush was apt to note, such is the face of low employment in rapidly modernizing, albeit (theoretically) Communist, societies.

Games ingested, we catch a cab and head downtown. This is the first I’ve seen of Shanghai by day, and the 30m ride is nothing short of mind-boggling. I’m not so foolish as to think my literary powers of expression capable of describing the insanity of its scope, though try I must. Imagine a field of lilies in southern France – rolling, expansive, numberless, without aim, direction or self-awareness – and replace them with towering slabs of concrete, rubber, glass, steel, plastic, drywall, sweat, mud and metal – and you’ve an idea of what the megapolis resembles. Not that there aren’t a daring number of architectural delights that dot the bullet-ridden prairie – there are plenty. But emerge they must from an unforgiving expanse of indentured gravity, a weight so onerous as to surge as forcefully into the ground as it does into the blackened sky.

We get off at People’s Square, an oasis in an otherwise unrelenting morass of urban mayhem. It’s 4pm on Sunday, though we’re still a tad too early for the connubial conniving to begin. Come 6pm, the People’s matrons emerge, promising to match the young and restless of every stripe that come bearing a photo and something resembling a cover letter/statement of purpose/five-year plan. It’s said to be a veritable fair of sorts, everyone in their Sunday best, perusing the make shift tables set up by Madam X and Mother Y to put forth their finer traits in writing and rudimentary introductions. I do not their (potential) female companions take part in the festivities.  Nor do I know whence they emerge – only that they’ve more than their fair choice in today’s demographic conditions (need I remind you the gendercide underway since the 1980s?) Afterward, I wonder if we might’ve brought along our own CV to test the matrimonial waters: how does one line up against 110m bachelors roaming the darkened alleys of the Internet in pursuit of companionship?

We head in the direction of Nanjing Road East, the principle pedestrian thoroughfare that runs through the heart of city. Toward the edge of the park – just in front of the café where I’d thought to indulge a mild craving – I spot for the first time what every foreign observer’s witnessed without fail: the ubiquitous defecating Chinese baby – only this time they were twins (or at least dressed as such). Has their gang of guardians any intention of picking it up? It wouldn’t appear as such. In which case, shall they mosey over to the grass? Of course not; whoever think they shit don’t stink needn’t frequent the People’s Parkside Café. Indeed, most Chinese infants’ pants are reputed to come equipped with rapid-action poo-holes – at times the only solution for Bolivian street-food or Sunday afternoon saunters through the city’s public thoroughfares.

After taming my amusement, I nonetheless pop in to the same establishment to practice my Putongua. “Wo yao caafee,” I embarrassingly crow. “Sure thing,” she smiles back at me, “with sugar, milk, honey or nutmeg? Hot, cold or tepid? Perhaps I’ll splash a dash of coriander in there just to see what happens!” I coolly admit defeat and call Ambra over. Within moments, I’m handed a piping hot coffee in a massive, plastic Slurpee cup, replete with lamination lining over the top and a giant pink bubble-tea straw poking through. You can order it and we’ll serve it, but that doesn’t make you any less of a fool for doing so.

Nanjing Road East is another overwhelming delight. Tens of thousands of intrepid finger-fooding photo-snappers (ourselves included) mosey about the resplendent pedestrian avenue, musing at the caprices of somewhat-bridled Chinese capitalism. The buildings date to the concessionary period and resemble the less considerate of the Grands Boulevards department stores, whilst the side streets all give way to a heart of commercial darkness not dissimilar in sight to the night markets in Mongkok (Hong Kong). The jubilee of unrelenting neon signs peddling beauty and fried chicken offset the barrage of red-star PRC flags that slice their way down the avenue with a vengeance. Rather than stray from the path, we continue to head for the Bund, the epicenter of all that is grand and cross-generationally glorious in Shanghai.

The Bund is a series of Belle Epoque and Art Deco hotels and ambassadorial edifices that line the waterway of west Shanghai along the Yangtze River. At night, they’re lit with an imperial grandeur resembling Deauville-cum-Budapest on crack; a mystery it emerged unscathed from the Cultural Revolution (though aesthetically mirror the Qing it doesn’t). Across the river in Pudong, however, is a sight even more astounding. From the marshes of the Yangtze Delta has risen one of the world’s most impressive concentrations of phallic exuberance. What took New York in its heyday forty years (1890-1930) has taken Shanghai fifteen – a fact they seem to recognize perfectly well (it’s only 1905, bitches! Just you wait ‘til the roaring twenties). As its May Day weekend, there’s an inexplicably voracious crowd of people soaking it all in – hundreds of thousands ambling about the mile-long boardwalk, if my powers of quantifiable observation do not deceive. As you ascend the steps to the esplanade, a giant Mao emerges from the sea of humanity, smiling wistfully as if to say: I’ve survived all this, and then some (when, just when, will he cease to adorn the $1, $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 renminbi-note alike?) In any case, no one seems to pay him any heed, looming and impeccably well lit though he is. A giant pirate ship advertising pedicures was just then sailing past. The people had more pressing matters upon their mind. 

Shanghai: Part I.

Foggy recollection fades with merciless speed, so eke this out we shall before another dose of mnemonic drift. It was a radiant, mid-Saturday afternoon in Lan Kwai Fong, Hong Kong – the colony’s maddest corner – and the streets were slowly reacquainting themselves with Apollo’s gaze (as were we I suppose). It was a curious state to be in: at this point in the week I’m usually feigning to explain the benefits of the first five-year-plan to my Cantonese students. Not so today. It’s Buddha’s babymamma’s birthday – or some other politicorrestival we kongians are wont to observe – and an extended weekend is upon us.  So out we were ‘til the wee hours of the morn, gallivanting with a regal Rhodesian and his dashing Madonna, none other than the city’s premier meteorologist (say, it’s a small town).

For once, however, we’ve decided to jettison the chichi teahouse and expat beaches that dot the southern stretches of the bizarrely serendipitous island we inhabit and head for stranger climes. When the Middle Kingdom beckons, a sage once said, you ride that dodie-train all the way to Chattanooga. So stumble to the airport we did – Coetzee, coffee and calamitous-state-of-mind-in-hand – whilst relishing another weekend of illumination.

The flight was suitably strange – as most chemically altered air-sailing is wont to be – but descend upon Shanghlandia we finally did. Not, it will be said, without more turbulence than a Menshevik in Minsk (circa 1919). For starters, the city lights spread beneath you for the entire span of Tristan und Isolde: a mass of electricity – not to mention humanity – entirely incomprehensible to the virgin soul who’s yet to traverse San Paulo on foot (if you must know, I haven’t). But wobble we did with an Armenian vengeance as we lowered our tepid wings and made for the tarmac. Below, the proletarian edifice flickered with light and menace from every angle, tempting our bird into its concrete and rubber entrails. For once I reconsidered my eerie Fight Club fascination with downwardly mobile planes: so this is what it feels like? I suppose I would have liked my final supper (or at least cigarette).

Land we do, as we must, and into the kingdom I prod. My lovely host, Ambra, lives on the same metro line as the old provincial airport – merely 30 odd stops away. The airport is barren but clean, customs merely for show (leading one to believe they’re less concerned with what gets in than what gets out; not unlike Tel Aviv, I suppose). Bag in hand, I levitate from the plane to the sidewalk in less than three minutes. Once outside, taint a cab in site, though the Metro’s meant to be around the corner. Men in short-sleeved shirts and ties smoke bogies atop bicycles outside the immaculate McDonalds to the right of Arrivals. A wayward sign for the Metro beckons around the corner, luring you into a poorly lit, cordoned-off passageway, somewhat deeper into the airy Shanghai night than you’re prepared to go. Loop after loop, the walk is endless – a series of tapered arteries leading one further down a disinfected vault of industrial indolence. Manicured shrubs on one side, parking lots replete with unmarked sedans on the other; the endless open-air tunnel continues without a soul in sight.  

In all, the maze to the Metro must be 500 meters. Once outside, a couple in matching pink polos lingers at each side of the entrance – a man to the left, his sweetheart to the right. I pause to let him finish his instagram, but he urges me to proceed – grinning as though to say, “Fret not – we’ll be at this a while.”  A lone bicyclist peddles by - otherwise not a person to be seen in this metropolis of 23 million. It was a strange, if fleeting, predicament. I take the spotless escalator deep into the trenches of the Shanghanese earth, pass my manbag through the mandatory x-ray, set off the alarm without being patted down, and proceed. I am running 45m late, so I ask the young man next to me if I can borrow his phone to alert my awaiting host. He consents. Upon finishing my brief but buoyant conversation with my host I haven’t seen since Paris, he turns to me and smiles. “You name is Evan?” “Why yes,” I reply, somewhat taken aback. “I am also Evan,” he confesses. We exchange a heartfelt (visual) embrace and return to our respective book and smartphone. I pretend to read whilst he pretends to text. The train arrives; we board at separate doors.