chapter 7 - shanghai'd

I don't know quite what I expected to see on this first anniversary of the Tiananmen Square incident or massacre (depending on who you are and what your viewpooint is), but I didn't expect nothing. Absolutely nothing. In fact, the only thing we can tell is perhaps different is that that there are fewer Westerners here and, as a result, queues at customs points are shorter and less stringent than we'd been expecting. We've also been able to find rooms quite easily.


Tourism was just budding here and the country is now feeling an economic change in numbers. We are told to tell our friends how friendly China is and to encourage them to come visit. We are also inundated by young students who are desperate to practice English and find out about where we come from and where we went to school and what our lives are like. Conversation sometimes bends towards the political, but there is little real knowledge or information as the state media has severaly limited details of last year's activity. We hesitate to inform them, as no doubt our own knowledge is gained through Western media, which does its own form of limiting. Crowds gather to hear us converse, and police officials join in, no doubt suspicious of what we are saying. Occasionally they will break up our group and impatiently gesture to us to move along, but it's never serious, as they no doubt are also under orders to be nice to foreigners who are visiting and have money to spend here. We worry more about how the students we talk to may be treated. We want to take their photos, but know it might put them in danger so refrain.


We arrived in Shanghai this morning, and felt so achy from days on a train that we splurged on a taxi to the Pujiang hotel, which ended up being a harrowing drive narrowly missing several local pedestrians and cyclists who didn’t turn a hair. Throughout the ride I wondered if we survived the train only to die in a taxi.

After we checked into our respective dorm rooms we tackled the travel office, located along the Bund. Along the way, we were stopped many times to "practice English", so we arrived a lot later than planned and hoped the office would still be open. Office hours are hard to predict in China - sometimes they are absurdly short and other times people seem to work 24 hours without a break. We see blankets behind desks for occupants to sleep upon, and always, always, the ubiquitous thermos nearby full of piping hot water.


With only one smallish boat leaving the city every week, we knew we needed to get our tickets back to Hong Kong for next week as soon as possible. We eventually arrived at the shabby ‘international travel office’ with one man working who knew absolutely no English and who ignored our Chinese, which we know is at least understandable by now. We mimed our needs. He sat and stared. We pointed at the schedule on his wall. Nothing. After getting nowhere we sat and stared right back at him which he obviously didn’t like a lot because we ended up with our two tickets on a boat that leaves next Thursday.

Normally we prefer to take a different route back to see other streets and buildings but in Shanghai the Bund is the sort of road you want to walk along again and again. We sauntered along it, attracting groups of students again and again. Shanghai is a real port city. Ships’ horns shudder and hoot all the time. Cranes and barges litter both sides of the river. It’s windy, probably a saving grace, for the smog is terrible and the smell of brine mingles unpleasantly with the smell of sewage. But there is a certain style of architecture we haven’t seen elsewhere in China. Of another time. More Western in appearance. Graceful and familiar. And there’s an undercurrent of optimism here. It feels like it’s a city on the brink of big change.