Horsing around

My daughter models her finest Spring Festival 春节 duds

A Happy Lunar New Year (I hesitate to use the word "Chinese" in deference to our Korean and Vietnamese friends) to you all as today marks the beginning of the Year of the Horse. It sounded like a war zone outside our home yesterday evening with all the firecrackers and fireworks going off, and the detritus was everywhere to be seen on the ground today. As this will be our first Spring Festival in China, over the next few days it will be interesting to see how the holiday is observed here compared to Taiwan. 

One thing both places have in common is that the sightseeing spots will be extremely crowded, aka  人山人海. The photo above was taken in Qībăo 七宝, a so-called "water town" that lies within the Shànghăi 上海 city limits. I had already visited the area last year on Columbus Day, but my wife suggested going again this afternoon. The most direct way for the us to get there was by bus, a short but jarring ride (the driver was apparently never taught how to gradually accelerate and decelerate) highlighted by a shouting match between a middle-aged woman who had tried to hold a vacant seat for her elderly father and another elderly gentleman who managed to get to it first. Never a dull moment in China.

Amber displays a sweet confection known as huàtáng 画糖, which you may notice has been formed into the shape of a rabbit (at my daughter's request). The look on the old woman's face probably sums up how it feels to have to battle the hordes everywhere you go during the holidays. As an outsider, it's easy to stand to the side and be amused by the situation, knowing you only have to put up with this for the relatively short time you're going to be in the country (plus it's easier to just go abroad during peak Chinese travel periods). But until the average Chinese worker can be assured that he/she will be able to take their allotted vacation time at their jobs without fear of retribution, most people will have no choice but to utilize the three long holiday periods (the Lunar New Year, May Day and the national day holiday on Oct. 1) to hit the road and see the sights of their vast country.

Places like Qibao are no more than glorified excuses to buy cheap souvenirs and gorge on snack foods.

Speaking of which, my wife decided that she absolutely had to have a wooden back scratcher.

This small stretch of canal is why Qibao is known as a "water town". A number of such settlements that have learned how to rake in the tourist 元 can be found in the greater Shanghai area.

Pamela encouraged me to take a picture of this teahouse because of the architectural style of its roof, but barbarian that I am, I couldn't really appreciate the significance of it. 

The quest for snacks is a never-ending one

My daughter loves quail eggs. Stacked behind her are piles of chicken meat wrapped in "dirt", as my wife describes it.

Pamela purchased some chicken stomachs from this food stand (they weren't bad, actually).

茄子!

A closer look at what you can see in the background in the above photo of Amber and me.

A quieter side entrance. Something to remember the next time we visit Qibao.

Banging the drum slowly. I'm not sure why there is a dated reference to the 2010 World Expo, which was held in Shanghai that year.

New Year decorations outside one of Shanghai's many huge shopping malls. Pamela wonders why there aren't any such temples of consumption in our neighborhood, but I doubt our wealthy neighbors would want the proletariat rabble such places no doubt attract.

The first day of our Lunar New Year holiday finished with my wife's favorite choice for dinner - hotpot 火锅. The bus ride home was a lot less dramatic, though we still had to hold on for dear life so as not to go sprawling in the aisle.

新年快乐!

Here Comes Dr. Sun

It's supposed to be the world's largest annual migration: the hundreds of millions of Chinese migrant workers who return to their hometowns before the onset of the Lunar New Year, aka the Spring Festival 春节, which this year begins on January 31. Things are supposedly peaking right about this time, but you wouldn't have known it judging the relative lack of crowds this Sunday afternoon at Shànghăi's 上海 main railway station  上海火车站.

I went there hoping to see and photograph the immense numbers of people I was expecting to find lined up outside the station. Instead, the expansive plazas (Chinese city planners love huge, open spaces) on both the northern and southern sides of the train station were relatively empty. Even the lines at the ticket window were not very long. Sure, there were plenty of people pushing themselves and their belongings through the ticket gates, but the scene wasn't even remotely like the news images I had seen in recent years of the sea of humanity attempting to return home in what for many is the only chance they'll have all year to see the families and hometowns. Either I was too early or too late, or the authorities have gotten better about scheduling additional trains to handle the passenger loads.

From the Shanghai Railway Station, I made my way (alone, as my daughter was at home recovering from a cold and my wife wanted to rest) via the Metro to the French Concession area 法租界, one of Shanghai's nicer districts. From the Xīntiāndì Metro station 新天地站, it was a ten-minute walk to Fùxīng Park 复兴公园. Laid out by the French in 1909, it's one of the city's more pleasant green spaces.

Throughout the park, groups of old men could be seen playing card and board games...

...while a handful of elderly people were still doing tai chi exercises 太極拳, even in the middle of the afternoon.

The Chinese parasol trees 梧桐 were looking barren in the winter air, but in the heat of a sweltering Shanghai summer, they're no doubt a welcome sight.

Today was an ideal day for kite-flying, a popular activity in China

Nobody was paying any attention to the fathers of Communism

I'd assumed these groups of men were intent on watching some sort of Chinese version of chess, but in fact they were engaged in discussion amongst each other. A bystander told me they were "complaining about the Communist Party."

Reading newspapers posted on reading boards, in a scene that probably was a lot more common in the past than in this day and age of the Internet (even one that is heavily censored behind the Great Chinese Firewall).

The 1933 St. Nicholas Church 圣尼古拉斯教堂 is a short walk from the west gate of Fuxing Park. It started out as a Russian Orthodox house of worship, before morphing into a washing machine factory and then a French restaurant. It now houses Kinloch, a "Scottish cafe". 

Also close to Fuxing Park is the Former Residence of Sun Yatsen 孙中山故居, consisting of the Shanghai home of the "Father of the Country" and "forerunner of democratic revolution" (top) and a museum dedicated to the time he spent in the city and as the president of the Republic of China 中华民国 (bottom).

Dr. Sun Yat-sen 孙中山. Considered a great hero in both China and Taiwan, he was the first president and founding father of the R.O.C., and author of The Three Principles of the People 民族主义, a work of political philosophy as much fun to read as Das Kapital. Truth be told, although he had long worked toward the overthrow of China's imperial system, the 1911 Wŭchāng Uprising 武昌起义 caught him unprepared. His tenure as the country's first republican president was less-than-successful, as he was soon pushed aside by Yuán Shìkăi 袁世凱, who briefly made himself emperor before dying in 1916. Even with Yuan out of the way, Sun was never able to see his vision of a modern Chinese state realized, due to in large part to opposition from warlords. Following his death in 1925, Sun's Kuomintang party 国民党 was taken over by Chiang Kai-shek 将中正, who led it down an increasingly authoritarian, corrupt path that resulted in defeat at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party 中国共产党 forces and a hasty retreat to Taiwan.

Photography wasn't allowed in this national shrine. Sun's home, especially, is considered sacred ground where plastic covers have to be placed over your shoes before you're allowed to venture inside and have a look at what is a fine example of an affluent family's house in Shanghai in the early years of the 20th century. The museum next-door has some interesting displays, including Sun's uniform as well as a mini-revolver that he carried on his person. The English captions, however, assume that Western visitors are already familiar with this period in Chinese history and that there's no need to go into any background or give the items and photographs any sort of context.

From the Nationalists to the Communists: down Sīnán Road 思南路 from the Sun residence is a house that was briefly occupied back in 1946 by none other than Zhōu Ēnlái. Photography isn't allowed inside here, either, though the bare room decorations ensure that you aren't missing much by not being able to do so. The house has a terrace in the back with rattan chairs that gives it some colonial atmosphere, somewhat ironic considering the former occupant.

Next door, there's a small but pleasant garden, and an adjoining building that manages to overcome the dull (Communist) party-themed displays on the ground floor.

Zhou is still looked upon favorably by many Chinese, as he was seen as being more moderate and pragmatic than Máo Zédōng 毛泽东. That being the case, you don't survive as long as Zhou did in the eat-your-young world of internal CCP political machinations without making a number of morally questionable compromises, and Zhou shares at least some of the blame for the tens of millions of Chinese who perished under the idiocies that were the Great Leap Forward 大跃进 and the Cultural Revolution 文化大革命.

The neighborhood where Sun and Zhou lived is still filled with Western-style buildings from that era, including the house across the street from Zhou's that was used as a KMT outpost to spy on him. It's great to see the houses being lived in, though at least one had poles sticking out from the side with laundry hanging from it. This being Shanghai, there has to be at least one horribly-pretentious commercial/residential district, patronized by the city's nouveau riche and homesick expats. In this case, it's called Sinan Mansions, located halfway between the Nationalists (the Sun residence) and the Communists (the Zhou residence). Much like modern-day China, you might say...

Get we to a nunnery

The Year of the Horse is almost upon us as we prepare to spend our first Lunar New Year 春节 here in Shànghăi 上海. It's a festive time of the year that I've never looked forward to celebrating, because while it's of great importance for Chinese reuniting with their families, it's also likely to be (based on past Taiwan experience) a cacophonous din of exploding firecrackers, not to mention densely packed roads, trains and subways, sightseeing spots overrun with pushing, shoving hordes and price-gouging on the part of hotels and restaurants. The hotel part I can only assume because we have no choice this year but to stay within in the city as I will have the "pleasure" of being the duty officer during the Spring Festival - if you know of any American citizen friends, relatives or acquaintances living within the greater Shanghai metropolitan area, please be sure to remind them that this will be a great time of year to leave the city (the further away from Shanghai, the better!).

Here at our home, we're trying to get into the spirit of things. The Christmas tree has been taken down, and in its place stands a wintersweet, known in Chinese as a làméi 腊梅, which blooms at this time of year and therefore holds some sort of significance the meaning of which my spouse is utterly unable to get across to her barbarian husband (because she herself doesn't know the reason why). The lunar new year's eve falls on January 30 this year, and our holiday break will stretch from the 31st to February 4.

Speaking of holidays, tomorrow is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, which means I get the day off from work (though my daughter still has to go to school). Today, the three of us stepped out into the cold to do some sightseeing, an activity we haven't done as a family unit in quite some time (though Pamela has been busy the past few weeks entertaining visitors from Taiwan). We headed this afternoon to the Old City 老成 area, always busy on the weekends but especially so at this time of year, with the Lantern Festival 元宵节 as well as the new year fast approaching. Lunch was had in a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant located down a short, narrow alley and consisted of beef noodles, green vegetables and the above-pictured niángāo 年糕, aka "New Year cake". Made of steamed glutinous rice, it had a texture similar to that of mochi 餅.

Amber poses with a giant gourd outside the restaurant. We were in the vicinity of Yù Garden 豫园, one of Shanghai's most popular tourist attractions (especially the surrounding bazaar), but today our destination was somewhere a little different. 

A short walk to the west of the gardens lies the Chénxiānggé Nunnery 沉香阁. Temples are plentiful in Taiwan, but houses of worship are comparatively fewer and far between in Shanghai. 

Photography wasn't allowed inside the buildings, but we did visit the Hall of Heavenly Kings 天王殿, the Great Treasure Hall (pictured above) 大雄宝殿 and the Guānyīn Tower, which contained an androgynous image of the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy (and where one of the resident nuns gave my daughter an apple). 

Among the items for sale on the street outside the nunnery, you could purchase a small figurine of Máo Zédōng 毛泽东, in which the Great Helmsman comes off looking more like the Great Gardener.

A shop stocked with items related to the Lunar New Year

An establishment selling kites and various other bric-à-brac

My wife insisted on us plunging into the chaos of the Yùyuán Bazaar, a maze of narrow lanes cluttered with souvenir shops and food stands (including such traditional Chinese fare as KFC and DQ). Pamela was in search of stinky tofu 臭豆腐, which she unfortunately found.

Spring festival decorations were in abundance. The bazaar will no doubt be even more of a zoo come the holiday period.

Leaving the Yu Gardens behind, we walked over to Dàjìng Lù 大镜路, one of those odoriferous, jumbled little streets that were no doubt ubiquitous in Shanghai not all that long ago. My wife hates walking down streets like this one, because it forces her to come face-to-face with a China she knows is still quite common, but which she would prefer to ignore, especially in a city like Shanghai, where China's new-found prosperity is so much in evidence.

Pamela did take an interest in the jars filled with traditional alcohol, but she chose to ignore all that laundry hanging overhead. 

Time is running out for streets like Dajing Lu. Looming in the distance is the Shanghai Tower 上海中心大厦, due to be finished sometime this year, when it will stand 632 meters (2073 feet) high. The residents don't need to look so far, however - at the opposite end of the street, construction is nearing completion on what appears to be another high-priced condo complex.

Past the condos stands Báiyúnguān Temple 白云观

Unlike the nunnery, this Taoist temple was very active, with worshipers burning incense and colorfully-clad Taoist priests holding a noisy ceremony in the main hall while we were there.

"I see ya, you camera-toting foreign devil"

Bowing before a large statue of the Jade Emperor in the main hall

Big ass joss sticks

Like most old Chinese cities, Shanghai was once surrounded by a wall, one that stretched for five kilometers (3.1 miles) in length. Torn down in 1912, the only surviving section of the wall (erected in 1553) is found in the Dàjìng Pavilion 大镜阁, which dates from 1815. It sits next door to the Baiyunguan Temple. 

This dog taking a nap on Dajing Lu probably had no idea that just around the corner and a few hundred meters down the road, this sight (though, hopefully, not fate) would await him...

There, hanging among the sausage, the fish and other meats was hanging what the Taiwanese used to refer to as xiāngròu 香肉 "fragrant meat", a euphemism for when dining on man's best friend. Bon appétit!