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Shanghai

Posted at: 2008-12-9; By chinawander; Clicks:1055

It is often said that a person can find just about anything in Shanghai , so I went looking for the truth. Shanghai is something of an enigma in China and has been for decades since it's a city that often seemed decades ahead of its time, waiting resolutely for the rest of Chin and of Asia to catch up with it. In the decades leading up to the Communist takeover of China the city was a bustling place that served as an isolationist China's one line to the outside world. After the revolution and communism was the norm, Shanghai was like a dancer with broken ankles, its one ability taken away from it since capitalism is what makes all port towns thrive. In the middle 1980's the buying and selling returned and Shanghai dusted off its dancing shoes and has not stopped since.

Walking through downtown Shanghai one gets the feeling of being part of a show. Walking to The Bund , an unavoidable destination should you wish to get to know something about the city, you must first go through one of half a dozen shopping streets that are literally packed with people nearly all the time. The idea of a crowd to a westerner is often more than a dozen people standing in an open space, the person not being able to look at every single thing around him. The idea of a crowd to an expat in China is a situation where a person is allotted the small space on which he's standing and he does not move through the crowd but is moved along at the crowd's will. So, when I call the Shanghai shopping streets of Nanjing Road, Dongtai Antique Market, and the Hong Giao New World Pearl Market “crowded” places, I mean it. But there is something in the Shanghai crowd, an energy that you won't find in the Silk Market in Beijing or the high end shopping of Park Avenue in New York. It's a feeling that we're all here to take a piece of the place home with us, and we must also work for it through negotiations.

Should the traveler make it to the bund without being saddled by a Persian rug bought for one tenth the usual price or an antique pot with “Made in China” stamped somewhere you can't see, they will then have to make it to the Bund. According to popular myth, the Bund got its name from Victor Sassoon, a Lebanese Jew who made a fortune in Shanghai off the opium trade in the late 1800's after Hong Kong had been taken by the British. Sadly, the Bund was at first the center of opium trade in the region, a place where the drug money could be counted. Later on when the trade routes had been established and piracy had been put down for the most part, other things became the center of trade, but for the most part the foreign establishment in Shanghai that centered around the Bund was built mainly on opium. The most striking thing about the Bund today is the fact that the Pudong District sits directly across the river with the Oriental Pearl Tower, 480 meters tell and makes you think of something from The Jetsons, showing that on one side of the river history remains while on the other a modern world awaits.

The one thing I wanted from my first trip to Shanghai was to clear up a sort of historical question. As an expat in China I've often dealt with a strange impression on the part of the Chinese people when it comes to foreigners, and one question has always remained. Was there in fact a sign that read, “No Dogs or Chinese Allowed” at the entrance of Huang Pu Park in Shanghai?

The debate about this sign is widespread and is oddly kept alive by both patriotic Chinese people who saw it as a massive insult to their country and also historians who question its authenticity. The debate is not whether the sign existed since British concessions all over the world always had such signs, but whether or not it actually listed Chinese people along with dogs. Did the sign only forbid Chinese people and dogs or, like all park signs the world over, did it forbid running on the grass and sporadic football games and kite flying and littering? So far there has been absolutely no irrefutable evidence of the sign such as a photo or historical account of the time. The sign was much publicized in the 1950's as an example of foreign aggression, yet to this day there remains no photograph or first hand account. The actual sign at Huangpu Park that was photographed in 1917 did in fact read, “The gardens are reserved for the foreign community”, meaning that no Chinese people were actually allowed into the park along with dogs and bicycles unless they were a Chinese “Ahmah” accompanying a family. Unfortunately when I visited the Huang Pu Park, the sign wasn't mentioned or talked about historically at all.

The final destination for the traveler must be Shanghai's final destination in history which is the site of the First National Congress of the Communist Party of China located at 76 Xingye Street in the French Concession. Shanghai of course is the birthplace of modernity in China, producing the first cars, Train track, and movies in the country and so it's no surprise that a revolutionary way of thinking would emerge here. In July of 1921, twelve delegates and fifty party members met in what was then a small office in the French Concession to choose Chen Duxiu as their leader. The group heard many speeches that day, yet the most important member there was a young man from Hunan who would later remark that he hadn't understood a single word of what was said that day since he only spoke his local Hunan dialect. This young man would later go on to take over China, and here at this site was where the leading figures of what would be the latest chapter in Chinese History all met for the first time under a single banner.

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