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Published: November 20th 2007
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Empire of the Smog
Our Japanese adventure was bookended by Shanghai. We had spent three nights here before heading off on the ferry and three when we returned. Shanghai is a huge city, a highrise horizon stretching for miles in each direction, endless spires lit with neon at night, fading into the chemical haze. Immediately the city felt different to Beijing, less formal, less organised, a sort of merchant border town with the sea. The streets teem with entrepreneurial vigour - a shoeshop by day becomes a makeshift cafeteria at night, extended families sharing the same shopfront re-cast as the day wears on.
From the window of our rented apartment on the 19th floor we could see all the worlds of Shanghai, old mouldering blocks, home to generations of shopkeepers, clustered like the terminal moraine of history against the towering, garish skyscrapers; layers of overpasses humming with traffic, a riot of blaring horns and risk-taking following the bend of the river. The brown and sluggish Huang-po is choking with drifts of alien weeds. Merchant freighters and pleasure boats alike churn its waters with the same grim determination.
Shanghai is more of a city to be experienced than to
be seen, there are sights, but that doesn't seem to be the point. It is a city of mad energy, reaching outward and skyward. We felt small there.
Shanghai's famous Bund, an old Indian word that more or less means 'towpath', remains, but has been concreted and retooled as a tourist attraction in the modern Chinese context, which means noise and crowds, cheap PVC banners with loud typography and lots of touts. From here you see Shanghai as it wishes the world to see it. The gleaming glass and steel towers of international commerce encircle the Oriental Pearl tower, a strange, perversely photogenic structure that juts skyward, all concrete and purple spheres like the worst excesses of cold-war Europe re-imagined for a Las Vegas theme park. Beside it, abutting a conference centre sits an enormous glass globe, China glares back at you across the river.
One day we took the Bund sightseeing tunnel beneath the river to that far side. An electric trolley took us deep below the silty river-bed through a tunnel differently coloured at intervals by neon and strip lighting. Every now and again between uncertain sound-effects a voice, sounding not unlike the narrator of 'Tubular
Bells' would intone a word like 'Hell' or 'Meteor-shower'. The whole thing approached dangerous levels of cheesiness, even by Chinese standards. We tottered back out into daylight on the far side of the river a little bewildered, wondering just what we had expected from a 'sight-seeing tunnel' in a country that celebrates both antiquity and modernity alike by sticking fairy lights on everything.
As with most Chinese cities there are traces of the older China, the one from the storybooks, to be found tucked away here and there in Shanghai. Amongst clumps of Japanese tour groups we found the bizarre Temple of the Town Gods, a Tao temple dedicted to the founder of Shanghai (who seemed to be bright red) and various other decidedly un-divine characters. The dedication of the faithful was no less than we'd seen in the Buddhist places we'd visited, and the place was thick with the smell and smoke of incense. At the feet of the more impressive Gods (some wearing jaunty bowler hats) were laid offerings of fruit, biscuits and bottles of cooking oil.
Behind the Temple lay the serene Yuyuan Gardens, which date from the 15th Century. The gardens were created by
Shanghai skyline
The view from our window a rich merchant family and so seemed less formal and more playful than some of the Buddhist and Imperial gardens seen in Beijing. We wandered amongst the almost surreal arrangement of carp-filled pools, pavillions, rockeries, alcoves and bamboo groves for a few peaceful hours before emerging into the heaving Baazaar, a sort of Disneyfied version of old China filled with antique and souvenir shops, and busy dumpling restaurants gleefully offering a bizarre variety of animal parts for eager consumption by the crowds.
Shanghai is the birthplace of JG Ballard, one of my favourite authors, who also grew up and lived here until after WW2. The city provides the setting for his quasi-autobiographical novel 'Empire of the Sun' which details the outbreak of war here and his subsequent experiences living in a Japanese detention camp. I had wondered as we approached Shanghai whether we would have time to seek out his former family home, a key feature of the novel, at 31a Amherst Avenue in what is still known as the French Concession. I had researched online some months before and learned that others had made the pilgrimage before me. The house was indeed still standing, although Amherst Avenue had
been renamed Xinhua Road, and the entrance to the house had been turned around meaning it was now accessible from Pan-Yu Street. Number 508 - it was a restaurant now.
Aoife happily agreed to devote an afternoon to the quest. We re-checked the details, X'd our maps and set off via Shanghai metro. The place was remarkably easy to find - we walked from the metro station past the shoppers and sweet-potato sellers, and intersected Pan-Yu almost before we'd realised it. A short walk later we were on Amherst Ave, and there it was. It was an upmarket restaurant, and not a McDonald's or KFC as the author himself had impishly hoped, garlanded with neon in that most tasteful Chinese fashion. We didn't venture inside as a meal there was beyond our budget (to the disappointment of the three uniformed waitresses who filed out onto the porch as we approached), but I was happy to have located the place and dutifully posed for the hunters-trophy photograph as the assembled parking attendants looked on amused. We wandered around the area for a while. Away from the main streets with their advertising hoardings and down narrow laneways overhung by trees and
wires, we found traces of the city described by the boy among smog-dark and tired European styled buildings that seemed to be sinking into a long sleep. I felt privileged to have found this, to have made a connection with Ballard's world, because as with so much else here, it may be gone tomorrow.
That evening we sought out the cafes and bars of Taikang Road, known locally as 'Art Street'. Also in the French Concession, it was only a short jaunt away. It was early evening by the time we arrived so some of the shops and galleries had shut up for the night, but what remained open was very interesting. Lots of original art, crafts and photography, and lots of quirky shops. It was a pretty cool place, contrasting with the usual junk shops, bike repair men and messy noodle kitchens that populated the surrounding area.
Desparate for some live music after ten weeks on the road, we tracked down a bar we had read about the night, and were duly rewarded with a performance by a local jazz-rock band, featuring the world's worst drummer, a terrified looking Spanish bassist, and on lead guitar, the Chinese
Incensed in Shanghai
Temple of the Town Gods Rory Gallagher. Or so he thought anyway. It's fair to say I enjoyed his impassioned twiddling a bit more than Aoife, but good times were had by all, particularly as the Tiger beer was on a two-fer!
Our ears were still ringing with the sound of wonky Chinese jazz-thrash as we packed our bags and bid the city farewell. We were heading west, into this enormous country's grubby interior, to Xi'an, in search of the armies of clay.
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Helen
non-member comment
What can I say
Sitting here in Tallaght on a cold damp Tuesday night, it all sounds a bit unbelievable and dreamlike. Another world. Another planet almost. It's not really a "small world after all" as in the bible according to Disney. There really is more to life than America!!! If you get my meaning! Hallelujiah!