Crowd control

Spring is on its way...

When you live in a city that has an official population of 23,710,000, you're going to have put up with crowds every now and then. Like this afternoon, for example, when the family and I took the Metro to People's Square 人民广场 for the purpose of visiting the Shànghăi Museum of Contemporary Art 上海当代艺术馆.

Getting through People's Park 人民公园 proved to be the first of several obstacle courses we would encounter today. In this case, it was the Shanghai marriage market - every weekend, parents and grandparents converge on the public space to list marriage advertisements extolling the attributes (height, education, income etc.) of their children and grandchildren in hopes of finding suitable partners.The only information missing from most of the posters was photographs of the potential cosmic soul mates.

The point of our going to MOCA Shanghai was to see the current exhibition there, A dream I dreamed, an exhibit of some of the works of the Japanese artist and writer Yayoi Kusama 草間弥生. I figured my daughter would enjoy the pop art aspects of Kusama's work, but upon arrival we were faced with a long line of people standing outside, waiting to get in. I had hoped that with this current retrospective coming to an end in two weeks' time after a 3½-month run, and with a major Monet show having just rolled into town, it would've been easy to get into MOCA. Guess I'd figured wrong.

Seeing as we didn't have tickets for the MOCA exhibition and being unable to locate any box offices, we decided not to wait around but to try our luck somewhere else. That somewhere else turned out to be the Pŭdōng 浦东 area, where a short taxi ride from People's Park had us soon lined up, waiting to get to the top of Shanghai's fascinatingly hideous icon, the Oriental Pearl TV Tower 东方明珠广播电视塔. Did I say "wait"? It took us roughly 90 minutes from the time we purchased our exorbitantly-priced tickets to when we finally reached the highest of the three observatories inside the 468 meter (1535 feet)-high tower. 

The "Space Capsule" sightseeing floor at 351 meters (1152 feet) was a classic tourist trap. The location of the afternoon sun prevented any decent photos of Shanghai's iconic Bund 外滩 waterfront from being taken, but the views were pretty impressive despite the haze, especially of the other buildings making up the Pudong skyline. In the photo above, you can see the Shanghai World Financial Center 上海环球金融中心, looking like a giant bottle opener; the Chrysler Building-resembling Jīnmào Tower  金茂大厦; and the soon-to-be-completed Shanghai Tower  上海大厦中心, which was recently scaled by a Russian and a Ukrainian, who naturally posted their bowel-cleansing video onto YouTube.

Far down below on the Huángpŭ River 黄浦江, two tugboats made quick work of getting a large passenger liner turned around and pointed in the direction of the ocean. 

Considering the cost and the long wait it took to get to the top, I was thinking it had been a mistake to have paid to have gone to the highest observatory (the Oriental Pearl TV Tower has a byzantine ticket-pricing system based on which of the three observation floors you choose to visit, along with incidentals like a revolving restaurant), but when we ventured down the to the sightseeing floor at 263 meters (863 feet), I felt a little exonerated. True, the Bund was easier to make out at this lower height...

...and the views in the other directions weren't bad, either...

...but as the look on Amber's face attests, there were a lot more people to deal with on the lower and cheaper level. Tired families sitting down in front of the windows meant it was difficult in places to get a good look at the world on the other side of the glass.

I was leery and my daughter was afraid, but my wife at least enjoyed the Transparent Observatory, looking down from 259 meters (850 feet) above the ground.

Our admission tickets also included entry to the excellent Shanghai History Museum  上海城市历史发展陈列馆, located at ground level. I had visited on Labor Day last year, but this was the first time for Amber and Pamela. Among the many things we learned was that Communists weren't capable of turning out anything but ugly passenger cars, as the 1950's-era Shanghai and Fénghuáng (Phoenix) 风凰 Sedans pictured above so painfully make clear.

An example of a palanquin used in traditional wedding ceremonies. The most interesting exhibits, of course, were those related to Shanghai's period as a treaty port controlled by foreign powers. The captions accompanying some of the displays referred to the sense of national humiliation and semi-colonization that China underwent following its defeat at the hands of the British during the first Opium War of 1840-1842, feelings that are constantly being reinforced through officially-approved popular media (along with rabid anti-Japanese sentiment, of course). Still, while I can understand how the Chinese might feel about this period in their history, it's hard to feel sympathy for a Han Chinese-dominated empire that was created over the centuries by subjugating and dominating their neighbors in ways similar to how the Western imperialist powers imposed themselves in places like Shanghai up until the end of the Second World War. 

Official narratives aside, the Shanghai History Museum does a very good job at presenting tableaux giving an idea of what life in the city was like in the time before the city's "liberation"...

...including opium dens and houses of prostitution. 

Back at ground level, the lights of the city were starting to come on as dusk fell. 

Dinner at Yoshinoya 吉野家, located on the 8th floor of the huge Superbrand Mall. My daughter shows off a box of chocolates we purchased on our way of out of the Oriental Pearl TV Tower. We had been successful in running the gauntlet of souvenir shops as you make your way out of the tower after having visited the observatories, but our willpower had been seriously weakened by the time we reached the chocolate stand, the last shop encountered before returning to the outside world. Resistance proved to be futile.

The Oriental Pearl TV Tower - overpriced, crowded, touristy and just plain ridiculous to look at, but if you're going to be spending any time at all in Shanghai, it's hard to avoid its siren call. 

Red, I'm seeing red

My daughter frolics among some sculptures just outside the No. 4 exit from Hóngqiáo Road Station 虹桥路站. 

Red Town 红坊国际文化艺术社区 is one of those art spaces converted from former industrial sites that you can find in urban areas throughout North America, Europe and the rest of the developed world as their economies struggle to cope with the transition into a post-manufacturing era. That process is apparently underway as well in China's wealthier metropolises such as Shànghăi 上海, as the city's factories relocate to the suburbs and beyond in order to make way for condos, shopping malls and all the other trappings of affluence. Red Town is a short hop on the Metro from where we live, and the relatively clear skies made it a fun afternoon for us (and Amber, in particular) to check out the outdoor sculptures:

Catching up on the news in the Shanghai Daily with the architect of China's Reform and Opening. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, give it up for Mr. Dèng Xiăopíng  邓小平!:

The former Shanghai No. 10 Steel factory which used to operate on this site is now home to a sculpture gallery containing several interesting pieces. There's also an onsite bookstore where I ended up purchasing a book on Chinese propaganda posters, which includes such timeless classics as Long live the revolutionary and comradely friendship between the Parties and peoples of China and Albania! and Learn from Comrade Lei Feng:

The Shanghai Sculpture Space 上海城市雕塑艺术中心 is free, as are the various other galleries located in Red Town. Enclaves such as these are welcome additions to China's vast concrete conurbations, but after getting home later this afternoon, I went out for a walk and a dose of reality. Just a few blocks from the gated expatriate oases that populate our area are neighborhoods that have somehow missed out on the opening up of the Chinese economy. Housing stock there is crumbling, while laundry poles and lines protrude from and between buildings. Hand-pulled carts and electrified bikes outnumber automobiles. Businesses and people spill out onto the broken sidewalks. Piles of debris are everywhere, signs that the developers are beginning to move into these areas as well, and it's only a matter of time before the residents are bought out and sent off to the suburbs (or back to their home provinces). Some of the knocked-down homes still show signs of being occupied, and in a couple of them, people are still doing business. The class struggle is over, but the results are not what the artists and slogan writers behind the propaganda posters expected back in the 1950's and 1960's.  

Of temples, martyrs...and beggars

Has it really been three weeks since my last post? My, how the time flies when you're not having fun. For lack of a better word, I've been feeling blase about life here in Shànghăi 上海, and the weather the past few weekends hasn't been ideal for mood enhancement, unless you enjoy being outside when it's cold and drizzly. I haven't been a recluse these last few weeks - we've gone out to department stores, restaurants and such, and I've taken a few long walks around the neighborhood. It's just that  I haven't been seeing or doing anything interesting enough to generate a blog post (I have posted a few photos to Facebook). I'm not sure if today's outing to Lónghuá Temple 龙华寺 and the Martyrs Memorial 龙华烈士陵园 was anything out of the ordinary, either, but I've got to do something with all the photos I took this afternoon, so here goes...

The first thing you see as you approach the temple is the pagoda. 44 meters (144 feet) high, it dates back to CE 977.

Until the 1910's, when some of the Western-style bank buildings being put up in the International Settlement area began to overtake it, the pagoda was the tallest structure in Shanghai. 

The temple itself also has a similarly long history, going back to the 10th century and making it the city's oldest monastery. The current buildings inside the complex are of much more recent vintage, being only about a hundred years or so in age, but the temple still retains its original layout, resembling a scaled-down version of the Forbidden City in the way hall follows on from hall once you've bought your entry ticket and made your way through the front gate.

Tourists such as ourselves were outnumbered this afternoon by serious devotees. Plenty of offerings and prostrations were to be seen in front of the various religious statues. 

And there was certainly some impressive Buddhist statuary to behold in the different halls located on the temple grounds.

Despite the recent rainy weather, temperatures in Shanghai have apparently been warmer than usual this winter, and a couple of cherry trees at Longhua Temple were starting to bloom. 

The one unpleasant aspect of visiting the temple was having to deal with the beggars outside the main entrance. While you would have to be extremely cold-hearted not to feel some pity for these poor unfortunates, their aggressive panhandling and zeroing in on Westerners whom they feel must be easier targets to lay guilt trips on made me think twice about giving anyone anything. I've donated spare change to people asking for charity on the Metro and in the streets, but if I had given one beggar some "alms" today, the others would no doubt have quickly converged on me and my family and wouldn't have let us alone. And it isn't just the disabled: in front of the pagoda and before going inside the temple, my wife was conned into buying what looked a Topps Buddha bubblegum trading card from a guy dressed like a monk. Pamela offered him 20 RMB ($3.25), but the "monk" complained, saying others had paid him upwards of 300 RMB ($48.80). When she told him to take it or leave it, however, our man of the Buddha took it and quickly left. Scenes like this are virtually non-existent in Japan and fairly rare in Taiwan, but unfortunately seem to be very commonplace in China.

Lunchtime. Though Longhua Temple had an onsite vegetarian restaurant, my carnivore spouse can't bear to have even one meatless meal, so we ended up eating at a place across the street (in case you're wondering about my daughter's bandaged hand, she broke her left pinkie finger a few weeks ago by falling down while carrying a large stone for some strange reason, and somehow dropping it on her finger in the process).

Next door to Longhua Temple is the Longhua Cemetery of Martyrs, a large park which memorializes those who died in the name of Chinese Communism. Communists the world over used to commemorate fallen heroes and significant events by erecting grotesque statues and sculptures, and the Chinese Communist Party was no exception. Here, Amber poses in front of the Children's Heroes Sculpture.

The Independence Democracy Liberation Construction Sculptures. Pamela couldn't understand why the figures on these and other statues in the park resembled muscular and big-breasted Western males and females. Neither could I.

The statues of the Martyrs Memorial seemed frozen in time while outside, Shanghai continued its mad rush into the 21st century.

In the center of the grounds stands the Memorial Museum, devoted to those who gave their lives - some at the hands of the Kuomintang (KMT) 国民党 (Shanghai was the site of a notorious massacre in 1927), others killed fighting the Japanese (and, later, the Americans in Korea), and even some who were killed during engineering projects or police officers who died in the line of duty after the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949.

It was sobering how many of the idealistic martyrs commemorated in the hall were only in their twenties and thirties when their lives were snuffed out. Frustratingly, the English captions only gave their names, hometowns and positions in the party at the time of their deaths, leaving the facts of how they were killed reserved for those who could read Chinese. Too many of the English-language explanations were of the "glorious-" or "heroic deaths in battle" variety. My daughter said it best when she wished all war could be stopped.

The most sobering photos were those showing the executions

On the other hand, some of the paintings were bizarre, like this one of a group being led to the execution ground (the park housing the Martyrs Memorial was built on the site where the KMT put 800 people to death for political crimes between 1928 and 1937). It was more Christian than Communist.

My favorite painting was this one of a battle during the Korean War. American soldiers on the right are being cut down by heroically-depicted Chinese "volunteers". Most of the 250 martyrs memorialized in the hall, though, were victims at the hands of fellow Chinese, and not of Japanese devils or American imperialist paper tigers.

Somehow, I find it hard to believe that the idealistic young pioneer struck the Socialist-building pose as the flood waters engulfed him.

The Unknown Martyrs Sculpture and some actual graves

Amber demonstrates some joie de vivre (the pyramid in the background is the Memorial Museum) while the Tampa Bay Rays meet the Aggression with One Mind Sculpture.

Behind the Liberating Shanghai Sculpture was a lone tai chi practitioner