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Traveling in a foreign country can be a crapshoot in that you never know when you’ll be able to find someone who speaks your language. (Ralph Waldo Emerson said that no man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits, though I doubt Emerson ever made it to China.) Upon arrival at Shanghai’s Pudong Airport I found someone I could talk to about the way our bicycle had been mishandled – though our conversation didn’t result in much more than getting some disinterested assistance with forms to fill out for insurance purposes. The kid at the baggage storage counter spoke some English but he turned out to be a deceiving little bastard. On the bus into town the guy next to me spoke no English at all, but I was able to ask in Chinese where to get off for where we wanted to get to. The problem there was that I gave him the impression I actually spoke Chinese and he rambled on for a solid minute before I begged him off. The girl at the reception desk in our hostel was fantastic – she could answer all our questions and point us toward the kind of neighborhood we were looking for in order to get something to eat, and even had it in her to genuinely joke around a bit with us. Along the market street we got the predictable two-word come-ons: ‘Hey you!’ ‘Hey, chicken!’ ‘You eat!’ ‘You chicken!’ and such. Then, for reasons that still elude me, we chose a place where the woman spoke two words of English total – No and Chicken. The menu didn’t have any pictures, and the characters that resembled those found in Japanese were few and far between and not particularly useful so ordering dinner was a gamble. But it all worked out. At least it seemed so at the time…
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Having come into town after dark we only saw the basic shapes and shadows of the city – plus the assault of dire lighting in certain areas that gave the impression of a prostitute in a sparkling wedding dress. (Not that Phnom Penh or Lima, Peru weren’t without their cracks in the sidewalks, but neither did those places seem to be trying to appear as something it wasn’t.) It took until 6 the next morning for me to see evidence of a city trying to fix itself up – albeit having only bamboo and string to lend to those living beyond the needful influence of the skyscrapers going up along the river.
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When I see old men and women I sometimes wonder about the things I can never know unless I ask. Things like were they born here, have they always lived here, do they like it here, do they think they will live out the rest of their lives here, however much longer they have? And do they really want to be here? Questions like this can apply to pretty much anyone, anywhere. But for old folks they seem to take on a certain weight, because, from the appearances of many, their answers will spell out a story of a life of resignation. Who knows? Perhaps this woman has had a rich, colorful life encompassing a venerable encyclopedia of experience most of us would soak in with childlike wonder or turn sick with envy upon hearing. But for too many, I fear, life has been spent standing in doorways, looking out at a greater world that, due to inner conflict or outer circumstance, has never appeared within reach. Dreams of the elderly will most likely remain just that.
When I see old men and women, I remind myself there’s no time for standing in doorways.
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The broad cloth of stereotype is usually laced with truth, and Shanghai presented no exception. My early morning walk through the huge public park was like strolling through a rehearsal for a geriatric Bruce Lee movie. Groups of seniors had commandeered scattered chunks of brick walkway, each following the propaganda-toned instructions screeching above the shrill music pouring out of the boom box placed like a modern-day idol in front of them. I would have actually liked to join in, just to see if I could get a sense of what they got from doing this creaky-door Karate Kid line dance. But I figured they’d just think I was making fun of them. Which, of course, I would never do until I was safe at home in front of my computer.
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Not everyone was up doing the slow-step. But it seemed just about everyone was up.
Long before I knew I would be taking this one-day detour through China’s largest city – or any Chinese city for that matter – I’d decided on a whim to try to learn to speak a little Chinese. I picked out a book at the bookstore, complete with CD, paid for it after enduring the cashier’s broken-English news flash (‘This book learn Chinese, no Japanese, white boy.’) (Okay, so she didn’t call me white boy – to my face.) and began in the privacy of my apartment learning how to say stuff like ‘I want to rent a bicycle’ and ‘Can I take pictures here?’ Plus less useful phrases like ‘Your sleeping compartment is on the right, on top.’ The big surprise, of course, was that I not only remembered how to say a bunch of different things, but I had enough vocabulary to string together a few original outbursts. ‘Do you eat these??’
And I even understood the answer, though that didn’t help settle my stomach after still not knowing exactly what we had ordered and eaten the night before.
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Chinese writer Lin Yutang once wrote ‘If one comes to China, one feels engulfed and soon stops thinking…’ And this from someone who lives there. We didn’t have enough time, perhaps, to feel we were being swallowed up by this city and this country, but I think I can understand the idea. Places and moments can strike as quite forbidding – I think back to my first couple hours in Cambodia – but in Shanghai the feeling, moreso than anywhere else I’ve been, was that the people were not only inclined to get on with their routine as if you were not there, but would manage to ignore your presence so adeptly that if you suddenly died in an alley or disappeared, in this place, it would be as if you never existed. This is not to say people were intentionally rude, unfriendly or unwelcoming. It’s just that, in China, you are very, very small.
In Shanghai, bicycles seem not to merely outnumber cars but to outweigh them. The sheer mass of people and the metal machines they are pedaling with borderline mad desperation is pretty impressive. Watching them vie for the road with the vehicular traffic, it ‘s hard to say who has the right of way. Probably everyone. And no one.
Based on my knowledge of Japanese, I read the two items on the large green menu board on the left as ‘cold powder’ and ‘cold skin’. Suddenly I wasn’t hungry. Then I remembered that this was Shanghai, China, not North Korea. Or central or western China. Here your powder or skin would be served in a soup of some kind, perhaps with a few random vegetables strewn across the top as well. But what is travel without a little (more) culinary adventuring? The small blackboard to the right of the door spelled out what seemed to be recognizable if not world-renowned offerings, and we did enough gesturing, pointing and smiling to get ourselves a little grub on the cusp of palatable.
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I was dying to sit down and take a look through the one empty window, thinking there was a chance the guy slipped up and had started playing one of his adult peep shows by mistake instead of the MingLi Mouse rip-off carton these kids were probably expecting.
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One day in the city, and we just couldn’t avoid getting sucked into tourist central. Then again, a whole day of nothing but rickety scaffolding and sketchy fruit stands doesn’t make for the perfect stopover either. Yuyuan Garden dates back several centuries to when a man by the name of Pan Yunduan decided to blow his life savings on a place his parents could enjoy in their old age. (I’m going to take my kids when they are older and start talking about how wonderful it would be to have such ambitious, grateful and generous children…) After some time the grounds, ponds, buildings and bridges fell into disarray until the Chinese government restored (quite beautifully) the gardens in 1956. Whether it was their intention to turn it into the tourist circus it has become is up for debate.
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Paying the extra 3 bucks or whatever to gain entrance into the inner garden of Yuyuan is a wise expenditure, not only because it really is quite attractive but even meditative in a way since so many tourists cant seem to shake that ironic aversion to shelling out a few quarters for a walk through the best part of a place they paid hundreds and hundreds of dollars to travel to. While we didn’t have the place to ourselves, we felt like we had snuck our way into the VIP lounge of the Viper Room – minus anyone dying from any River Phoenix-esque drug overdoses.
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Facing the main entrance to Yuyuan is a three-story vortex of glazed tourism. Plastic crap disguised as souvenirs, restaurants with names that made sense so you knew they couldn’t possibly be authentic, and of course locals who knew all the English they needed to get into your pocket. But just as it seems with so many other places I’ve seen, there is an invisible yet brutally clear line of demarcation between where the tourists ‘belong’ and where the locals get on with their ordinary lives. It’s kind of like those electric fences people have buried underground along the edge of their property that sense when the family dog’s new collar crosses that line and sends a shock through Fido’s fur, keeping him safely out of the street or the begonias. The tourist hordes seem to swim in their safe guidebook currents, repelled instinctively by any street not endorsed by Lonely Planet (and anyone who has ever lugged one of those bloated babysitters around knows they don’t hold back much information). Tourists traps and shopping malls give me the same kind of headache, and we ducked down the first quiet side street we could find – which, thankfully, took mere seconds. We made it through the electric fence and, as if we’d just gotten directions from Rod Serling, found ourselves on this quiet strip of food shacks interspersed with closed garage doors. It was, for us, the perfect escape.
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To get a finger on the pulse of the city you are in, head for the public transportation system. We navigated our tripping, stumbling, dumb puppy way through the subways and made it to Shanghai Train Station without pissing off too many people who would probably rather we catch a cab or, better yet, a tour bus. The station itself, perhaps obviously, is nothing to marvel at, but moving in closer gets you the real show. Crowds of people with bags or tickets or just scowls were pushing up against the chintzy metal barriers trying to squeeze their way inside the building, which was apparently closed off to everyone except those with actual tickets. Strange, I thought. Anywhere you go, the train stations are usually a bit more open and accessible than my date for the freshman Christmas dance (though that’s neither here nor there). But not Shanghai Central. Fair enough, though, if the Party wants to act like their train station is the VIP lounge at the Viper Room (That place again? I’ve never even been there for pete’s sake…), well, that’s their business. The spectacle, though, was watching these people pushing each other like the guards were handing out the last of the year’s toilet paper, those wielding tickets being let through the cattle gates while the rest seemed bent on trying to argue their way in, seemingly knowing they didn’t have any right or reason for even being there but resisting reality and the poor woman in the ratty gray uniform nonetheless. After a while the circus got old and it was time to call Akiyoshi, a friend and former student of mine who was on a three-year transfer there in the city. We looked around for a working public phone – I say working because that seems to immediately exclude 99% of the phones sticking up out of the concrete all over the plaza. At one point this little old man who looked like a hobbit (of Chinese descent) comes up to me and my impatience and motions for me to follow him. ‘Wow, all right, a bit of civility…’ He led us through loose crowds of people and around lilting trees standing in wooden boxes, across a taxi lane and over to a row of yellow phones that looked like all the other phones that weren’t working. Then, predictably, he holds out his hand. I gave him a high five, horizontal version, but that wasn’t going to do it for him. He shakes his hand and points at his palm as if that’s going to get the message across if I haven’t gotten it already. I pointed at the sky, put my hands together like I was praying and made a cross sign in the air in front of his face or something equally asinine. He wasn’t amused. Forget that we were no closer to getting in touch with Akiyoshi.
Ten points if you can guess who the guy in the green shirt is? We ended up going into a hotel near the train station and asking where their pay phone was. The guy at the front desk spoke very nice English and let us use his phone instead of having to throw odd coins into the public phone – which was probably working intermittently at best anyway. Finally getting through to Akiyoshi, he told us to meet him down in the popular expat area of town – in front of the Starbuck’s, of course. (The hotel guy then asked us if we needed anything else and drew us a map to help us further navigate. I think he was under the impression we were guests of the hotel.) Then, with our newfound agility using the subway system we made our way back across town.
I hadn’t seen Akiyoshi in a few years and, although I remembered quite clearly what he had looked like, I wasn’t sure if I’d recognize him. One man who seemed too tall to be the spectacled guy I was expecting was hanging around nearby, and I figured what the heck and started saying ‘Akiyoshi…Akiyoshi…’ loud enough for him to hear me but not so loud he’d turn his head to see who the lunatic was. He didn’t so much as twitch. Eventually Akiyoshi did show, looking exactly as I recalled – which made me feel pretty stupid for thinking anyone would change that much in three years.
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Dinner was a gorging affair, during which Akiyoshi ordered plate after plate of whatever he could pronounce while Mayumi and I put away as much of each as we could before it was whisked away to make room for the next dish. Then, since we had a little time to spare before having to head back to the airport for our red-eye to Frankfurt, Akiyoshi took us on a whirlwind tour of Shanghai by taxi. After a series of blurry street lights and twisting tunnels that would have disoriented an Eagle Scout, we suddenly emerged into the sort-of starry night in front of the famous Oriental Pearl TV Tower, lit up in all its ‘look-what-the-party-oops-we-mean-what-our-country-has-accomplished’ glory. ‘Hurry up, stand here!’ Akiyoshi waved us into position and snapped a couple photos for us, then ushered us back into the cab. ‘The last MagLev leaves at nine!’ Our driver stepped on it, then stepped on it again and we skidded to a stop in front of the MagLev terminal. We sprinted for the gates but alas, we missed our chance to ride on one of the world’s only operating magnetic levitation trains. ‘Okay, sorry, let’s take a cab then.’ The airport was an hour away. ‘Don’t worry, it’s cheap.’ So we all rode together in the back seat of a beat-up taxi, flying down a dark highway for Pudong International, where a different kid behind the baggage storage desk demanded we pay for an additional 24 hours of storage because fees were based on a strict 24-hour limit, not simply ‘drop it off today, pick it up tomorrow’ as the weasel from the day before said.
We left Shanghai behind, happy for having had such an interesting experience yet not really knowing for sure how we felt about going back someday.
Mayumi felt vaguely ill for the next two days.
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