Socialism with Chinese Characteristics on parade

Just another building along Nanjing West Road 

I dragged my eager daughter and less-than-impressed wife today on a walk along Shàng​hǎi's 上海 Nán​jīng West Road 南京西路, the area where my workplace is located, and where the city's nouveau riche (which basically means almost everybody who has been doing business here since 1990) go to see and be seen. We started out around noon on the coolest day by far since we've been in Shanghai by exiting the People's Square Metro station 人民广场站 and looking for somewhere to have lunch. I'd hoped to introduce Pamela to a restaurant called Yīchá Yīzuò 一茶一坐 that served Taiwanese-style dishes, but as soon as she discovered there was a branch of the Taiwanese steak chain Tasty two floors higher, I knew I had lost the lunch battle (so much for saving money).

Several hundred kuài 块 lighter and several pounds heavier, we began our walk along Nanjing West Road. Between People's Square and Jìng'ān Temple Metro stations 静安寺站 there is little of interest for the sightseer, but plenty to get the shopper salivating. And what better place to engage in some Chinese-style  retail therapy than by visiting this place:

Han City Fashion & Accessories Plaza is four floors of violations of intellectual property rights. Bags, clothes, electronics, shoes and watches can all be had there, and not a single item is the real thing. Walking through the narrow corridors on each floor meant running a gauntlet of fake goods hawkers tossing out the only English words they knew - "Armani", "watches", "Lacoste", "luggage", "Ralph Lauren", "souvenirs", "Hello Kitty", "jerseys" and so on. 

I wanted to document the whole experience on film and in pictures, but I got the feeling the vendors would not have appreciated my need to record all of this. The best I could do was this pic of Amber standing next to some colorful lights moving around on the wall, and in the background you can see the shop workers eying us warily. It was time to move on, especially as my wife didn't particularly like seeing this side of China's economy (she couldn't understand, either, why there were so many foreign shoppers there).

As we continued westward along Nanjing Road, things became progressively more upscale, and we soon encountered a series of shopping malls. First up was the Westgate Mall 梅龙镇广场:

Like all the shopping centers along Nanjing West Road, the Westgate isn't exactly a "mall" in the American sense of the term - Chinese malls in this part of town are dominated by luxury brand names such as Chanel, Gucci and Louis Vuitton. And while the adjoining Isetan Department Store 伊勢丹 was filled with Saturday afternoon shoppers, the stores in the mall itself were largely devoid of customers. This is a scene replicated in virtually all of China's high-end shopping plazas - outlets for name-brand goods where the staff outnumber the shoppers. It seems the more well-off among the population save their rénmínbì 人民币 for shopping vacations overseas (welcome to America!), while the less well-heeled bargain hard for the fakes at places like the above-mentioned Han City.

The benefit of there being an Isetan at Westgate meant there was a decent food court in the basement, ideal for sitting down for a spell while enjoying that special sugar rush that only be brought on by a custard-filled taiyaki 鯛焼き.

The next mall along Nanjing Road was CITIC Square 中信泰富广场, smaller than Westgate but filled with the same sort of retail outlets...and the same lack of consumers.

Actually, that last statement should be qualified: there were plenty of people inside, but not many of them spent much time inside the stores, buying the merchandise. There were, however, plenty of security guards to keep the proletariat out (Nanjing Road has a surprising number of beggars and trinket sellers). China, in fact, has a disturbingly high number of private uniformed goons to keep an eye on things, which is why I ended up taking this picture of the inside of CITIC Square as surreptitiously as possible.

Amber poses in front of the next mall, Plaza 66 恒隆广场. More of the same...

Last up in the tetralogy of high-end commerce was Shanghai Centre 上海商城 and arguably the most interesting of the four. Inside there are cafes, restaurants, a five-star hotel, luxury apartments for expatriates, an imported foods supermarket and the Shanghai Centre Theatre, home to nightly acrobatics shows that sound like something worth seeing sometime in the near future. 

I can't speak for the rest of China's booming coastal cities, but in Shanghai, at least, there is no better place to witness China's abandonment of the Communist Party's core principles...er, I mean "socialism with Chinese characteristics" than the section of Nanjing West Road that the three of us walked along today. And yet just across the street from Shanghai Centre is a relic of that recent Marxist past holding its ground against the high-rises springing up all around it: the Shanghai Friendship Exhibition Hall 展览馆. It was built by the Russians in 1954 in glorious Stalinist architecture, and was originally called the Palace of Sino-Soviet Friendship. The building has managed to survive the Sino-Soviet split, the border conflict of 1969, the collapse of the Soviet Union and Dèng​ Xiǎo​píng's 邓小平 determination that getting rich was somehow the "glorious" way to bring about a worker's paradise, and is now used as a venue for trade shows, including a recently-held book fair.

It's hideous, monstrous and oppressive. And I wish Shanghai had more examples of structures like this one.

This heroic constructor of socialism looks out across a largely empty square to an elevated road clogged with BMW's and Mercedes', and high-rise apartment buildings and bank towers. What would Chairman Mao make of it all?

Red stars like the one in the picture above are in short supply in Shanghai. The East is red, but only because that's the color of the 100 RMB banknote.

The dusty and moldy rooms of the Friendship Exhibition Hall were largely empty today, much like the ideology underpinning the Chinese Communist Party's political legitimacy. 

Sunset over Shanghai, from the platform of the Zhōng​shān​ Park Metro station 中山公园站

Terminally hip stone gates

As hú​tòngs 胡同 are to Běi​jīng 北京, so shí​kù​mén 石库门 are to Shàng​hǎi 上海. Or perhaps I should say "were", for when it comes to Shanghai's traditional architectural style, genuine examples are apparently getting harder and harder to find in China's ongoing rush to knock old things down and put up new stuff in their place. The future of old buildings in Shanghai (if not for all of China) may depend on the success of developments such as the place we visited today, Xīn​tiān​dì 新天地. In Xintiandi, shikumen have been renovated, rebuilt and redeveloped into a pedestrian-only shopping zone full of expensive restaurants and designer boutiques. This particular development appears to be a smashing success, but it's still too early to tell what effect Chinese-style gentrification will have on the country's urban landscape. For a family such as ours, Xintiandi makes for an enjoyable, if somewhat pricey, weekend excursion.

Our Sunday outing began in Xintiandi's less impressive South Block, which is dominated by a modern shopping mall. Inside, we had an early lunch at a Chinese/Western fusion restaurant called Michael. As in the given name only, and without a possessive.

We didn't spend much time in this part of Xintiandi other than to eat. Here, Amber poses at the end of the South Block, before we walked under the arch and across a small street into the more atmospheric North Block.

But not before stopping in at the local post office, where my daughter had a postcard made with her photo resembling a postage stamp. It was immediately mailed to a certain grandparent back in the U.S.

Though primarily aimed at shoppers, Xintiandi does boast a couple of sightseeing attractions. One is the Site of the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party 中国一大会址纪念馆. It was in the building above that the first meeting of the CCP took place on July 23, 1921. Inside are photographic exhibitions on the history of the party and a few relics from Shanghai's days as an International Settlement, while upstairs there's a diorama consisting of wax figures of the delegates at their historic get-together, all tied together with the kind of Communist propaganda (numerous references to the proletariat and bourgeoisie) that you seldom see or hear these days in the era of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. It's too bad photography wasn't permitted.

Shanghai played an important role in the early history of the Chinese Communist Party. The communists were very active in the city throughout the 1920's, until Chiang Kai-shek  将介石 and the ruling Kuomintang 国民党 one day in 1927 decided to arm the city's gangsters with guns and KMT uniforms. The resulting massacre drove the party underground, while the decapitation of the party's leadership helped Máo​ Zé​dōng 毛泽东 in his quest to take over the CCP. Mao, in turn, would eventually abandon the party's urban campaigns and instead focus his attention on building a base of support among the oppressed peasantry, which in turn would eventually lead to the Communists' victory in the Chinese Civil War 国共内战. All this has little to do with the souvenir I bought today at the Maoist shrine, and which I probably won't be wearing to work anytime soon.

Xintiandi's other attraction is the Shikumen Open House Museum 石库门民居陈列馆. It was really a pity that photography wasn't allowed here, either, as the museum makes for a worthwhile visit. This reconstruction of an upper-class family shikumen is filled with the kind of everyday objects such a family would have used in the early 20th-century. As a result, the displays are brought to life in a way that more drier (and emptier) museums could never hope to achieve.

You can't prohibit picture-taking on the balcony, even if we are living in an authoritarian state

The North Block does a much better job of incorporating the shikumen architecture. The Häagen-Dazs in the background came in handy as an expensive coffee break when a thunderstorm suddenly rolled through the area.

The side alleys are known in Chinese as lòng​táng 弄堂. They're ideal for standing around in, trying to look cool.

This impressive structure isn't a shikumen. It's the private club of the Hong Kong developers who created Xintiandi. No doubt they stand out on the balcony at times and watch the money come rolling in.

This cafe was located across the street from the entrance to Xintiandi's North Block. The reason I've posted this picture is because of the name. Not "Kafe Laku" - 猫屎咖啡, or māo​shǐ kā​fēi, literally translates as "Cat shit coffee". Fancy a cup of their joe?

The last thing we did this afternoon before heading home was to take a stroll along a street filled with shops selling qí​páo 旗袍. My wife is in the market for one of these traditional Chinese dresses, and hopefully picked up some ideas while we were.

 

Gardening on a Sunday? How Bazaar!

Today was as good a day as any to do the tourist thing, so the three of us spent the morning and much of the afternoon checking out the Yù Gardens 豫园. The gardens were first laid out in the 16th century by a high-ranking court official, and have continued more or less intact into the modern age, even managing to survive the Cultural Revolution 文化大革命 because an anti-imperialist group used them as its headquarters during the colossally bloody and destructive Tàipíng Rebellion 太平天国. Foreign visitors looking for that unsullied-by-Western-influences, superficial "real China" within the city limits of Shànghăi 上海 would do well to pay the Yu Gardens a visit. In fact, many seemed to have done just that today, as I heard tour groups being conducted in German and Spanish, among other languages. But the gardens also appear to be high on the itinerary for domestic tourists as well, and it was no surprise that the place was busy - I was constantly having to step around people taking pictures. Nevertheless, except for minor annoyances such as the lack of maps on the grounds to indicate where particular buildings could be found, a visit to Yu Gardens and the classic Chinese architecture and landscaping within, should be high on anyone's list of places to see in Shanghai. 

I apologize for the lack of clarity and quality of the photographs below. In my defense, today was overcast (and humid, though that had nothing to do with the poor colors):

Almost as soon as you enter the gardens, the first hall directly in front of you leads to an impressive view of a rockery. Be prepared to be patient while waiting for a good spot to view the scene to become available.

Looking back toward that first hall

Numerous ponds filled with goldfish and turtles were placed throughout the gardens, giving the center of Shanghai that classical Chinese touch.

The inside of one of the few halls the name of which I was able to take note of. The Hall of Heralding Spring 点春堂 was the headquarters for the Small Swords Society 小刀会, a revolutionary group that controlled Shanghai during the aforementioned Taiping Rebellion, much to the admiration of the Red Guards 红卫兵 in the 1960's.

This stage sitting directly across the Hall of Heralding Spring dates from 1888

I took this shot of the above-mentioned hall (L) and stage (R) because in the background could be glimpsed a view of the Shanghai Tower 上海中心大厦. When completed next year, the building will stand 632 meters (2073 feet) tall and will be the second-highest in the world.

Despite the Sunday hordes, it wasn't difficult to admire the beauty of the landscaping

My normally camera-adverse wife allowed herself to be photographed several times today.

Another minor quibble I had with Yu Gardens was over the number of so-called "exhibitions" that turned out to be plain old souvenir shops. At least one gallery, however, turned out to be the genuine article.

I've never been able to understand why the Chinese love to put sculptures like this one in the middle of rooms. Pamela couldn't explain it, either.

This impressive stage was the centerpiece of a large courtyard

One final shot before exiting the Yu Gardens. Surrounding them is an area known as Yùyuán Bazaar 豫园商城, filled with souvenir shops, restaurants, touts...and people.

The mammoth buildings of the Yuyuan Bazaar look stereotypically Chinese, but they're all modern structures, giving the area a Disneyesque air. The one above was filled with four floors of souvenirs. Welcome to Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.

Pictured above is the Húxīn Tíng Teahouse 湖心亭茶馆, Shanghai's No. 1 teahouse, at least according to the yellow banner hanging from the side of the building. Queen Elizabeth and Bill Clinton are among the foreign dignitaries who have relaxed for a cuppa here, which explains why we had to fight through the throngs to get across the zigzagging bridge.

Another view of the Huxin Ting Teahouse, taken from the second floor of the restaurant where had lunch. This gives you a better idea of the crowd.

Our lunch. Because we chose not to eat at one of the "famous" dumpling restaurants, we didn't need to wait in a ridiculously long line to get inside.

"People mountain, people sea" 人山人海

Yuyuan Bazaar was filled with the kind of businesses guaranteed to annoy the crap out of those Western tourists seeking an "authentic Asian (or Chinese, in this case) experience" - Dairy Queen, KFC, McDonald's and Starbucks all have outlets there. My Taiwan-based and Taiwanese friends and acquaintances might be surprised to note the presence of Kobayashi 小林, which sells "bell-shaped Japanese pancakes", as one blog puts it. 

When in Rome, do as the Romans. When in Yuyuan Bazaar, buy souvenirs. I purchased a name chop with my Chinese name engraved on it, while the girls picked up a couple of decorative fans with which to keep themselves cool.

Oh, the humanity

Break time. This "Taiwan Special Snack" started off well, but soon became too oily to finish. At least the milk tea went down without any problems.

Just the small matter of finding your way out and back to the Metro station before you can declare this day successfully closed.