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Published: November 17th 2009
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A bit about the city. For starters,
Changzhou's prefecture-level population is around 3.5 million and
its urban population is about 825,000, making it a pretty small city
by Chinese standards. Changzhou is conveniently located for transportation to other places, but is no tourist destination itself. The first three times I went to the downtown area, I did not see a single foreigner. Since then, though, I have met several expats and the who-knows-who web of this relatively small community has become a bit clearer.
As for the nightlife...let's just say this is a city that seems to love to sleep on Friday and Saturday nights. That's a bit harsh, but I've found the pickings to be pretty slim so far: three nightclubs with skeleton-quaking subwoofers that can be fun if you're with an enthusiastic group of friends; a popular expat pub called Europe Bar (there are a remarkable number of Danes, for some reason, teaching English in China); and beyond that, you're talking KTV (karaoke), billiards, or bowling. I'm sure there's more to be found, but I'm hoping to find it soon with my birthday fast approaching!
In terms of layout and architecture, Changzhou is unlike anything I've seen. It's incredibly sprawling and built for cars: all the roads and streets, even
in the most urban of areas, have far more lanes than necessary, and there are elevated expressways galore. The downtown area (Nándà Jiē, literally "South Big Street") is particularly baffling: at the typical intersection there are two to four shopping malls and a high-rise apartment building or two, and there's no evidence of any buildings built over 25 years ago. I have yet to find an area that's "urban" by my standards, meaning parents pushing strollers and businesspeople carrying briefcases and employees leaving offices to get lunch downstairs.
It seems that all of my destinations are spread out, 30+ minutes by bus or 20 by taxi. The worst is the hourlong crowded bus ride to the train station, which offsets an otherwise short (one hour once you're on the train) trip to Shanghai. All that automobile riding has allowed me to see a lot of Changzhou though, which I describe as half industrial and half like American suburbia but with everything taller and bigger and side by side and apartment buildings instead of houses. The view from the elevated highways is a lot like the view in northern industrial New Jersey from the Turnpike, but with fewer power plants
and a greater density of housing. My third and final analogy to the U.S. is that what I've been told about Los Angeles -- that it's so sprawling that you have to drive everywhere -- fits quite accurately when applied to Changzhou.
And there is construction absolutely everywhere. In part, that's the case for much if not most of China (visual evidence of China's economic recovery, especially when contrasted to the construction-sites-turned-ghost-towns abundant in America). But Changzhou is going through particularly rapid development. I've been told that the city is unrecognizable from just five years ago, and by all indications the same will be true five years from now.
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