{"id":145,"date":"2014-05-04T03:53:53","date_gmt":"2014-05-04T03:53:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rashdecision.net\/?p=145"},"modified":"2014-05-04T03:53:53","modified_gmt":"2014-05-04T03:53:53","slug":"shanghai-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rashdecision.net\/?p=145","title":{"rendered":"Shanghai Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Futuristic<\/a>
The futuristic Shanghai skyline<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Deng Xiaping, the historical leader of China responsible for many of the economic reforms that have led to the explosion in the country\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s growth famously said:<\/p>\n

“Not only should we push up the economy, we should also create a good social order and a good social mood.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Well, one out of three isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bad right?<\/p>\n

Before I describe what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wrong with Shanghai and risk accusations of blatant racism, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going unashamedly trot out a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153some of my best friends are black\u00e2\u20ac\u009d type mitigation:\u00c2\u00a0 I am happily married to a Chinese girl whose family all seemed (as well as anyone can when they speak even less English than I do Mandarin) pleasant, friendly and generous<\/p>\n

Now that caveat is out the way, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s get to it.<\/p>\n

Not to put too fine a point on it, the problem with Shanghai is the people.\u00c2\u00a0 There, I said it.\u00c2\u00a0 In many ways Shanghai is the epitome of a 21st<\/sup> century city \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a skyline to die for (the highlight being the brilliantly alienesque Oriental Pearl TV Tower), an excellent public transport system, fantastic shopping, buzzing nightlife, superb food (although I would personally recommend staying clear of the duck feet which taste as vile as you would expect them too and the pork ligaments which manage to be both stringy and fatty) and, obviously, a thriving economy.<\/p>\n

All this is fatally undermined, however, when much of the population are still \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pig farming peasants from the village\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as memorably described to me by an (Asian) friend.\u00c2\u00a0 Let me give you an example:\u00c2\u00a0 The Huangpu River is a huge waterway cutting majestically through downtown Shanghai but, unfortunately, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m firmly convinced that the majority of its great flow can be attributed to the saliva that is continually gobbed out by the populace of the city.\u00c2\u00a0 There are two dominant noises in Shanghai \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the beeping of car horns (more on the traffic later) and the continual sound of energetic nasal hawking followed by spitting.\u00c2\u00a0 Sarah assured me that the fact that most of the culprits at least make a cursory effort to aim their spit at a bin (if there happens to be one nearby) represents considerable progress.<\/p>\n

Another example:\u00c2\u00a0 The Shanghai subway has sprung up in the past fifteen years and now provides comprehensive coverage across the vast city.\u00c2\u00a0 It is frequent, reliable, cheap and clean.\u00c2\u00a0 Again this is all to naught when every attempt to board a train degenerates into an orgy of pushing, shoving and elbowing.\u00c2\u00a0 The concept of standing aside to let other passengers off clearly hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t reached Shanghai whereas the concept of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcevery man for himself\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 seems to be the default position.\u00c2\u00a0 It is rudeness on a staggering scale and the only real option is to laugh at it.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not quite sure how funny it would be if you had to endure it every day though.<\/p>\n

Third exhibit for the prosecution:\u00c2\u00a0 Staring.\u00c2\u00a0 If you happen to be white and want to experience life as a celebrity \u00e2\u20ac\u201c not an A-Lister such as a Beckham or a Clooney, you understand, more a C-grader: the sort of celebrity who attract unwanted stares rather than positive attention; a Chegwin, a Blackburn, a Davro, if you will \u00e2\u20ac\u201c then venture fifteen minutes from the centre of Shanghai.\u00c2\u00a0 I could probably cartwheel naked down the middle of Regent Street and not receive so much as a second glance but my Caucasian features drew gawking across Shanghai.\u00c2\u00a0 And I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not even talking about furtive, fleeting looks – people would literally stop what they were doing to inspect me as you would an artefact in a museum.\u00c2\u00a0 Like the pushing and spitting you become used to it after a while but it remains unsettling.<\/p>\n

Fourth and final exhibit:\u00c2\u00a0 Shanghai traffic.\u00c2\u00a0 I have lived and worked in London and spent a reasonable amount of time in Asian cities so I am relatively immune to erratic driving and constant noise.\u00c2\u00a0 However, the taxi ride from Pudong airport to downtown Shanghai taxi goes straight in to my top five most terrifying journeys of all time.\u00c2\u00a0 The weaving in and out of traffic, cutting up of other vehicles and excessive speed would be bad enough normally but, bizarrely, the cabbie seemed to be convinced that she was a dab-hand behind the wheel.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I am an excellent driver\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she declared, whilst simultaneously cutting across three lanes of traffic and nearly into a head-on collision with a bus.\u00c2\u00a0 The instinct was to hold on for dear life but the cab was so filthy (like much of Shanghai; I saw several dogs wearing shoes) that to touch anything within it was probably to risk a dose of the bubonic plague.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Foreigners behave disgustingly\u00e2\u20ac\u009d came another pearl of wisdom as she nonchalantly threw an empty Coke can out the window.\u00c2\u00a0 A little light relief came when she congratulated Sarah on marrying an Englishman as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153they are all very rich\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.\u00c2\u00a0 How little she knows.<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s said that crossing the road in Hanoi in Vietnam is a life-changing experience \u00e2\u20ac\u201c thousands of motorbikes throng the streets and the only way to get across is to steadily walk out into them whilst, like a sea of Kawasakis parting for Moses, they drive around you as you make it safely to the other side.\u00c2\u00a0 The situation in Shanghai is similar in that there is no point in waiting for cars to stop as nobody obeys traffic lights anyway.\u00c2\u00a0 The difference is that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m convinced that most Shanghai drivers wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think twice about mowing you down.\u00c2\u00a0 A life-ending, rather than life-changing experience.<\/p>\n

If life is cheap in Shanghai, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one of the few things that is.\u00c2\u00a0 For a country that has really only started developing towards western standards in the past twenty years, they seem to have got the hang of capitalism pretty quickly.\u00c2\u00a0 Coffee, for some reason, is absurdly expensive – $9 seemed to be a common price and we even saw one caf\u00c3\u00a9 charging $25 for two ice creams.\u00c2\u00a0 That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not to say that there aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bargains to be had – taxis are very cheap (possibly because they kill so many of their passengers) and you can eat for next to nothing but some of the ludicrous prices on display are quite jarring when you see the abject poverty that many Chinese live in.<\/p>\n

Nowhere is this huge inequality more evident than on one of the main roads in downtown Shanghai – The Bund.\u00c2\u00a0 At street level witness people living on the very edge of existence, collecting rubbish or begging, but take a lift up ten floors and you enter Bar Rouge where cocktails are $25 and attitude comes for free.\u00c2\u00a0 The bar\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s main selling point is the fantastic view it affords across the Huangpu to the stunning skyline but it is primarily a place to show off.\u00c2\u00a0 The main bar is surrounded by roped off table service areas where ex-pats and rich Chinese sit, looking miserable and playing on their iPhones with untouched bottles of Grey Goose in front of them. \u00c2\u00a0Fortunately the horrendous sound track of R&B and commercial house music is played at such a high volume that it drowns out the distant sound of Chairman Mao spinning furiously in his grave.\u00c2\u00a0 Communism this ain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t.<\/p>\n

The embrace of turbo-charged capitalism to escape to an impoverished past and pursue higher standards of living is understandable.\u00c2\u00a0 What is more depressing is that this process seems to have led to a wholesale junking of Shanghai\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s past, architecturally and culturally.\u00c2\u00a0 This is evident in the French Concession area of the city where many of the traditional Shikumen dwellings have been bulldozed and replaced with a soulless Canary Wharf-style development complete with high-end shops and the aforementioned $25 ice creams.\u00c2\u00a0 Bizarrely they have attempted to model the area on the Shikumen style but the result is a total loss of the original character.\u00c2\u00a0 According to Sarah the area is a suitable metaphor for the Chinese character now \u00e2\u20ac\u201c superficial, money-obsessed and with absolutely no regard for their history.<\/p>\n

Despite all<\/em> this I would still recommend a visit to Shanghai \u00e2\u20ac\u201c although it would probably be more accurately described as an \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcexperience\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 rather than a holiday; it certainly isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t one for Asia virgins. \u00c2\u00a0I found it to be a bit like a cross between Hong Kong (the downtown area itself) and Bangkok or Saigon (the chaos) but populated by, to western eyes at least, an essentially alien life form with few redeeming features.\u00c2\u00a0 The native Shanghaiese will tell you that many of the behavioural problems lay with migrant workers (Xiang Wo Nin, pronounced Shao-wen-ee \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which roughly translates as peasant) who travel to Shanghai from across China in search of a better life (the mind boggles at what they must be leaving behind) but are basically treated as foreigners with few rights.<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a shame as Shanghai has many plus points as I mentioned at the start of what has turned into a rather unsavoury rant but the truth is that you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t divorce a place from its people.\u00c2\u00a0 Londoners can be rude, miserable and cynical (or maybe that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just me) but they generally have a sense of humour that redeems many of these faults.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe in a generation or two, the social behaviour of Shanghai\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s residents will have caught up with its rapid economic development and the city wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be such an ordeal but, until then, it will always largely be a place to endure rather than enjoy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Deng Xiaping, the historical leader of China responsible for many of the economic reforms that have led to the explosion in the country\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s growth famously said: “Not only should we push up the economy, we should also create a good social order and a good social mood.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Well, one out of three isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bad right? … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Shanghai Stories”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[43],"class_list":["post-145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia","tag-shanghai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rashdecision.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rashdecision.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rashdecision.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rashdecision.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rashdecision.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rashdecision.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rashdecision.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rashdecision.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rashdecision.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}