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4th May
Shanghai is hot but still relaxing to visit even though I only had 3 hours sleep the night before. I still cannot sleep sometimes.
I saunter up Haui Hai Lu in search of Snaps - a place I know will process and print 120 roll film. As I lazily take in the buildings, I miss the shop and have to backtrack. It's behind an insignificant door with a key pad and buzzer. Unless you know about it, you won’t ever find it, there are no signs or indication of it being there.
I press in the numbers over and over but nothing happens so I wait - what else is there to do? After about 10minutes people exit the building and I let myself in. I’m immediately faced with an endless spiraling staircase and a totally mosaic tiled floor. The stairs curve squarely around with an old solid wooden hand rail and wrought iron railings. As I place my hand on hand rail, the wood feels alive with many lost imprints. It’s instantly a captivating building. I don’t know the floor I need so I start walking. Although I find Snaps is close to the
bottom I keep walking to see the rest.
Half way up the front stairs, there is an opening to the back of the building and I can see a second set of stairs - not elegant like the front - probably functional in case of fire, maybe not but in any case the back stairs give me a clear view of behind the building. It’s France merges with China in some harmonious evolution - very exciting. At the top of the stairs, my old vertigo returns when I look down so I skirt the wall on the descent. I don’t understand this fear.
There’s a young man sitting on a piece of paper waiting outside the Snaps
He also has 120 roll film to develop and we talk a little. He’s called Ryan and is majoring in playing the violin. What? Really? Cool.
In Snaps, Conan (a girl) very responsibly in fluent English organizes the developing of my film whilst I wide eyed and bushy tailed poke around the cute Snappy shop. I buy roll films - the first thing I do is smell them - old habits die hard.
I live my life in short
which bell?
Shanghai French Concessiontime frames - today’s frame contains looking at the houses.
Everywhere is littered with old Shanghaineze French houses clustered behind the façades of shops on the main streets - all soaked in the character of now and the past.
Mainly old people and very young children go about their business. One set of houses is Dickensian in character. Tiny houses that if you stand in the lane inbetween the rows and stretch your arms out, you can touch the front doors on either side at the same time. All of the woodwork is painted in a dark maroon colour, the walls are old brick, inside they’re very dark and everywhere there’s washing strung across above our heads. Old men nod off, children play and women chat or knit or wash. The scene can honestly be straight out of a novel but it’s living and breathing right here in Shanghai. Some other old houses are painted a creamy colour and I realise that someone somewhere has found the value of these amazingly structured buildings and they seem to have escaped the bulldozers and the demolisher’s ball. Not so for them all though and I witness partly demolished houses still
being lived in by the old.
Every real estate agent has windows full of rentals and sales. The old lane houses can demand 7million RMB and the beautiful colonial style rambling places and the original deco houses can command 28million RMB - about 2.8million pounds. As I gaze longingly at the house pictures, the estate agent comes out to ask my budget. “Hmm, that would be zero but I’m only looking - is that okay?”
As I enter Shanghai train station to return home, I witness the oddest thing I think I’ve seen in China. There’s a man walking very slowly, I’m directly behind him and see his ankles have chains and pad locks on. I notice from his body position that he’s wearing hand cuffs. A chain holding his wrists together links a chain to each ankle with padlocks fastening them. I can hear the chinking. A man who has his hand on the man in chain’s back and is guiding him has no thumb. It’s the oddest sight but no one else in this crowd of about 20,000 seems to notice. I’m fascinated and walk alongside them to check out the view at the front and
then think that I’m maybe asking for it and he might strangle me with the wrist chains and that’d be the end of it so I take to walking behind again. They can’t manage the stairs so take the escalator and I keep parallel and walk the stairs. I wonder if they’re transporting criminals on the trains now?
Tuesday morning 5th May - return scheduled visit to Lao Wang’s
On Sunday evening, we found fairyland in Pingjiang. It’s owned and lived in by Lao Wang - a man who has spilled his thoughts and loves into the tiny yard that he shares with 4 other families. All around are hanging plants and tiny trees in pots, tiny bonsai holly trees, larger bonsais, lanterns, fairy lights and a crazy glass cabinet with mad ornaments in and I instantly fell in love with the place. Whilst we were looking and poking, Lao Wang returned with his two bad tempered, mismatched dogs and explained a little to Amanda. He’s lived here for over 20 years. He’s a calligrapher and practices Kung Fu. His love of life shows on his face and then we found out that he also owns the house
next door but has rented it already - At last, I found my dream house in Suzhou but it is already gone.
We returned this morning to find him waiting. He‘d laid out 3 seats and hung his birds in the yard and bought tea but instead he invited us inside his home. Fairy land is inside his house as well as outside. His house is one long narrow room containing a large curtained old wooden bed and many many things. A lifetime crammed inside including animal skins, photos, tibetan things, boxes, dogs, fans and papers. There was cute bathroom at the end too which means no night time bucket or going to the well for water - a luxury here. He told us so many things and I enjoyed his company very much even though Amanda translated everything, I know I can communicate with him on my own. I must learn to stop touching and pointing at beautiful things because they become mine and it’s both heartwarming and wrong.. Next time, I buy him presents, tea and fruit. He’s going to teach me Kung Fu in the evenings, I’ll try but he has his work cut out. I
can maybe read to him in English and he’ll understand nothing but still enjoy it. I can’t live in the house next door to his because it’s taken but I can visit and that will have to be enough for now.
On the way home, I show him my bonsai gift. I touch its tiny leaves and he gently touches my fingers with his “don’t touch him, he is only a baby” and I obey because he moved my fingers away and I laugh but find it too close.
7 May
Lao Wang waits for me but he has gone out so I leave the flowers in an old plastic bottle by his door. Within 20 minutes, Amanda texts me to say that he has called to say he's back. When I round the corner of his lane to visit, he and his dogs are waiting, the tea is in the cup waiting on a table with a cloth and he's bought strawberries. We talk, he writes and I get it little by little he cooks lunch for me - green beans and so, we have lunch together in the lanes of green beans, strawberries
and tea and quite honestly, it's one of the best meals I've ever had. I show him the photographs of Tibet and China. He's just happy to have company. I copy his pronunciation and learn the difference between his ink pen and mine and how he can skillfully make his sing whereas mine just writes. I asked if we could set his birds free even though it is tradition - he knows they are sad but it takes time to allow freedom sometimes. One day, I know we'll set them free together.
Happy Birthday, Jess.
Thank you, Grant, for my book
and, Gwenny for the Guardian's
and PJ for my ribbon.
x
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