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Published: December 18th 2010
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When you arrive at floor 7, number 5 on The Bund, it doesn’t matter that you are wearing a very old Rab feather coat, are dragging a huge suitcase and carrying two bags and carrying a flask because everything is whisked away from you and you are handed a coat key and taken to your seat at a table for two which is promply turned into a table for one with a view from the Bund across the river to the pearl which is glittering in the winter afternoon sunshine. A newspaper is placed in front of you incase you need a prop (being a single person – the only single person aswell) the menu arrives and you are transformed into someone and something acceptable in this very elegant, timeless establishment.
Actually, it’s one of my favourite places on earth – and my range is Wide.
I don’t need a prop, I need to wash my hands and when I arrive back at my seat, tea has arrived and the appropriate cutlery setting is on the table. Oh, bliss.
Everyone else in M, is unencumbered and most certainly elegant, I’m not but I am as much at home
here at I am in the ancient old falling down houses in Suzhou with 3 generations of one family still living under the same roof.
A cocktail is included with lunch, something I’ve never ordered so I order the one with the pretty name – something mimosa, bread arrives, real bread and my starter - Chestnut soup with chorizo hmmmm. You may think that I’m making a big deal of bread and soup but unless you have lived here, you won’t ever fully understand. Course, as well as the soup, I’m taken with the ladle of a spoon with an M engraved curlingly into it. I hardly eat meat and for some unknown reason order the grilled meat mountain with mash and a fried egg. It’s more meat than I have eaten in the past six months. As I eat lunch, the Pearl tower glitters over the river and the table is laden with a mixture of my own past and a beautiful captured elegance. I’m envious of the fine cutlery and crockery when I haven’t cared at all for the past 2 and half years and I’m traveling with 3 spoons and an old fork from Sheffield in
my bag.
I hear the lady next to me telling her daughter that they will go and buy shoes after lunch for her and I seem to be lost in this past warm feeling that they exude. I want someone to take me and buy me shoes with honest kindness, without wanting anything in return and I know this time only comes truly from your mother. I feel like the years have peeled away and I want that warm looked after feeling that we only know exists in retrospect - it exists in our experiences but we never fully understand it then so we reap this again from seeing it in others, or giving it to our own children. Though of course, I went to Bakewell to buy shoes for JD and PJ and not The Bund. Time seems to be slipping into timelessness but within it is experience of teas from Asia and Austria and London, crockery from an old provost and Chatsworth, damask cloths from England and of course the Sheffield steel bone handled knives are once again in front of me. The whole table holds time and experiences. Most people only see the food and drink
– for me it is a story. But then again, I have time to read the story because I am here on my own to read everything all of the time.
Everyone else is in groups or couples but me, I’m the only lone person here. The place is bursting to the rafters. I love it all and then I realise that it’s as if I chose the seat, the place, the time to dot the I’s and sign the contract of a fully fledged lone traveler.
Today, China is glittering. I boarded the extra fast G train from Suzhou which topped a speed of over 300km an hour and arrived in Shanghai in less than 30 minutes. The new station in Suzhou wasn’t there 7 months ago. Today, it’s a huge 2 floored, fully automated, escallatored, glittering affair that has been built in a mere 6 months, the subway from Shanghai to the Bund, across this huge city took about 9 minutes and cost 3kwai, that's 30pence to you. And here, The Bund is a beacon of prosperity, past, present and future but I have seen secret places that also glitter within the oldest of houses which
are yi bai dou nian old. China is so vast that in the time of a 30 minute train ride it cannot be even touched upon in an explanation, you need to see and feel it for yourself and let it unfold in time and in return journeys again and again but if you are in the neighbourhood and I’m around, contact me and I can meet you and show you some of these amazing things BUT only if you carry a lone traveler card. Not alone but A Lone.
I’ve been here so long that I ask to take my tea outside, they can’t believe me easily because it’s so cold but they bring me my coat, help me to put it on, open the door and carry all my things outside for me and this is where I am sitting right now – on the roof of Number 5, The Bund – come and see it, find it for yourself, the food is awesome, the place is timeless and it sits on the fastest moving country on earth...
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Rebecca Sario
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You are not A Lone
I savored every moment of your adventure today from miles away as did many of your other followers, I'm sure. Sippping tea from your lofty perch is truly a blessing for its calm celebration of all things magical. Thank you for this wonderful holiday gift. Rebecca