Rock the Bund

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Rock Bund

You’ve never been to Shanghai unless you’ve been shanghaied by a couple of beauties at the pedestrian mall on East Nanjing Road. This is what I was told by lots of people I know who’ve been to Shanghai. Don’t get shanghaied on East Nanjing Road. I was skeptical. What could they do in broad daylight? Pick your pocket? Sell you fake Rolex watches? I had no idea and I was about to find out.

I stayed at the Astor House Hotel on the Bund. A bund is a levee, I think, although I’m not entirely sure, but this is what I was told by my East Indian friend, that a bund is of Indio-Anglo origin from the Hindi word band which means an embankment or a dike, meaning a levee. In my neck of the woods a band means a group of young people with long hair and torn Levi's playing musical instruments and singing loudly. Apparently that's not what a band means in India. There’s a big river that cuts through the heart of Shanghai, dividing the city into two. The city on the east side, the Pudong district, is a modern metropolis with shiny new iPod looking metallic buildings and ever rapidly increasing development. It is the China of the new century. It is the face of the new China that will dominate and change the world that we know and love so very much in the very near future. If you are not afraid now then maybe you should be. You should be very, very, afraid. The west side of the river is the old city, the old colonial buildings, the old foreign concessions, and the ghosts of old China. This part of Shanghai and of China you should not worry about. It will stay this way for a very, very, love you long time. Half a century ago before China became Red China and before all of this rapid modernization came along Pudong was nothing but a bunch of peasant villages and farm lands, a totally undeveloped countryside and unmodernized. The west side of the river was where all the action was. Thus, a levee was installed to prevent the river from overflowing into the development on the western side, which later on became better known as The Bund. The main drag on the Bund which runs alongside Huangpu River is East Zhongshan Road No.1. Why it’s called No.1 and not No.2 is beyond me. Up north on East Zhongshan Road No.1 is a bridge, called the Waibaidu Bridge, over Suzhou Creek, which pours itself onto the bigger Huangpu River. The cross street on the other side of the bridge is Huangpu Road and here at the corner of East Zhongshan Road No.1 and Huangpu Road is the Astor House Hotel, and right across from it is the Consulate General of Russia. If you were walking along the Esplanade on the Bund at night and heading north you will see the colonial façade of the Russian consulate illuminated by the courtyard lights, and in the shadows behind it is the Astor House Hotel. The Astor House was once the most luxurious and well known hotel in Shanghai. It is no longer as luxurious as it once was nor is it as well known as some of the bigger hotels on the Bund, like the Cathay Hotel, which now calls itself the Peace Hotel.

The Bund has lots of old colonial buildings to look at if you like that kind of stuff. I’m really not much of a sightseer. I see one tall building and I’ve seen them all. An odd colonial mansion in the middle of nowhere in Cambodia might interest me, but a hundred of them lined up in a colonnade will bore me and make me yawn and turn my attention somewhere else. Tall buildings don’t interest me, but people do. There are tons of tourists walking the Esplanade on the Bund. Ninety five percent of them, if not more, are Chinese. Occasionally you’ll see a smattering of Westerners here and there, but not very many. Chinese tourists come in large groups. If you thought the Japanese were the king of packaged tours you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet. I can guarantee you that any group of Chinese on a packaged tour will easily outnumber a Japanese one, or any nationality for that matter.

I have nothing against package tourists. I have nothing against tourists of any kind, not even the Vang Vieng tubing crowd. But there are certain types of tourists that are fun to write about. I’m not sure that I enjoy writing about the Chinese tour groups. I haven’t found anything interesting to write about them. They all come in big tour buses. They all get dropped off by these big tour buses on East Zhongshan Road No.1. You can see them milling around at the corner of East Nanjing and East Zhongshan Road No.1 by the Peace Hotel, once called the Cathay Hotel, now owned the Fairmont chain of luxurious hotels. They cross the busy boulevard of East Zhongshan Road No.1 and onto the Esplanade to get their pictures taken with the megatowers of Pudong across in the river in the background or the grand colonial buildings on the Bund as the backdrop. That's not odd. That's not interesting. It's simply human nature.

“Here grandma, look at me, I'm posing in front of the Oriental Pearl Tower. Don't I look adorable?”

“Well you sure are an adorable little devil aren't you, you little sonovagun.”

I don't know if such an exchange is typical in a Chinese multi-generational family but I know my grandma from Wichita would say something silly like that.

A long time ago a girl named Annabel Lee lived in a kingdom by the sea. She was loved by a famous American poet and author, and she loved him back just the same in return. Their love was so very, very strong that even the angels in heaven were jealous of how deep their love was for one another, which caused them to send a chilling wind out of the cloud to kill the beautiful Annabel Lee. The famous American poet and author wrote about this love so strong and deep and fatal, and it became famous when it was published after the death of the famous author, so very, very famous such that it is known world wide in so many, many languages it's been translated to. In the world of capitalism where name recognition is very much an important part of advertising and merchandizing, even here in Red Communist China, Annabel Lee has been transformed from a symbol of a love so strong and deep that even the angels in heaven were so jealous they killed her, into a department store selling lingeries. If you grab a woman at random on the Bund and ask them what Annabel Lee means to them or do they know who she is they will say absolutely, it's a department store selling women's shoes and underwear at the corner of East Zhongshan Road No.1 and Fuzhou Road. Welcome to Red Capitalist China. So much for strong, deep, and meaningful love.

The Metro

A musical group called Berlin wrote a techno new wave Euro-fag type of song called The Metro, which was somewhat of an MTV favorite back in the 80's when MTV still played music videos. They were a bona fide one hit wonder. They quickly faded like Haley's comet from the spotlight right after that one little hit. God only knows where they are now. Probably performing in county fairs like Rick Springfield. In Shanghai the Metro has got nothing to do with Euro-fag music. It is their rapid transit subway system. It is the most convenient way to get around Shanghai. The buses are too complicated. The taxi drivers are way too unscrupulous and untrustworthy. But the Metro can get you anywhere around Shanghai for as little as ¥3 or ¥4 RMB. So after taking a couple of obligatory pictures of the Esplanade and of the Pudong skyline I got off the Bund and crossed East Zhongshan Road No.1 onto East Nanjing Road (Nanjing Dong Lu) amongst the throng of the Chinese tour groups and holiday shoppers. It's Sunday at ten o'clock in the morning and already the streets are filled with tons and tons of people, and I can't stress tons enough. There are enough people here to build an army and defeat any nation in the world into submission. It's hot and humid and the skies are overcast with smog from the industrial pollution. I am sweating again as I stomp the pavement of East Nanjing Road through many, many retail stores and specialty shops. Everything here is designed for the consumption of the masses, to pry loose those disposable incomes out of the tight grips of the bourgeois class. This is Red Capitalist China at its prime. After a quarter of a mile of walking and seeing this spectacle of avid consumerism I end up at the intersection of Henan Road and East Nanjing Road. Here the traffic stops and the pedestrians take control of East Nanjing Road all the way up to People's Park and beyond until it becomes West Nanjing Road where motorized vehicles take control of the streets once again.

I go down to the Metro station at the corner of Henan Road and East Nanjing Road. I see an array of self service ticket machines which look somewhat like ATM machines and thus, easy enough to operate. The problem is it's all written in Chinese. I look at the people in front of me to see what they are doing when they operate the ticket machine so that I may have a clue of what to do when my turn comes up and not keep all the people in the long line behind me waiting for too long. I do this because I’m a thoughtful and considerate guy. That’s what I am and that’s what I do. I care a great deal about other people’s states of affair. I don’t want them standing around for too long wasting their time and being unproductive. I want them to get their ticket as fast and quickly as possible so that they can get on with their lives. So when my turn comes up I see a symbol in the upper right hand corner which says English, so I push it. Bingo! The screen in front of me is now all in English instead of Chinese. I push buttons at random and found that I need to pay ¥3 RMB for my destination; South Shaanxi Road on Line 10 which is color coded in light purple on the ticket machine. I have no freaking idea where South Shaanxi Road is or which neighborhood of Shanghai it’s located at. All I did was push a couple of buttons at random to see what happens, and the ticket machine spit back out a destination for South Shaanxi Road on the light purple line. I did this on purpose. I purposely chose a destination at random. Hell, I didn’t even look the destination I was pushing when I bought the ticket. So I inserted three ¥1 RMB coins and got on my way.

They check your backpacks, luggage, purses, and carry on bags for concealed weapons and other arms of mass destruction through an x-ray scanner before they let you enter the waiting platform of the Metro station. But the people manning the scanners are hardly ever paying attention to what’s being scanned. It’s not uncommon to see the guy, who is supposed to be watching the x-ray scans, have his attention somewhere else, like shooting the bull with a co-worker, or text messaging, or talking on his cell phone, or simply sleeping on the job. I suppose there must be some sort of alarm within the system which bleeps or turns on a continuous and sharp high pitched sound to alert security if indeed a large and heavy metallic object is detected somehow. Then these people wouldn’t have to pay attention to what they’re supposed to be doing because it’s all just a boondoggle. Then there are the uniformed guards dressed in their best military type garb who stand at the entrances of the Metro Stations in strict military posture who never move and looking very locked up, sort of like the stoic guards at Buckingham Palace who never seem to blink even if you kick them in the nuts. That too seems to be nothing but a boondoggle. I slid my ticket into a slot at the turnstile where it gets swallowed up and scanned and get spit back out again in another slot forward before disabling the turnstile lock to let you through. It appears that the majority of the people here at the Metro station are tourists and non-native Shanghainese. This I can tell from the difficulties many are having at just getting through the turnstile. They seem a little flustered or confused because they don’t know which slot to feed their ticket into or the ticket gets spit back out for those who trying to exit because there isn’t enough debit in the ticket for the destination they’ve taken or old Chinese ladies are fumbling around at the turnstiles because a piece of their clothing is caught in the wheels or what not. It is total chaos here at the Shanghai Metro station.

I get on the subway train. It’s nice, clean, modern, pleasing to the eyes of an idiot tourist like me. It’s boring. Real boring. Boring people enter the train. The train heads south and five minutes later we stop at a station called Yuyuan Garden. I’m sure it’s a lovely garden for sightseers but at this point I have no desire to go there and admire its wonderful temples and gardens. Lots of Chinese tourists get off along with a couple of Westerners. The Chinese tourists outnumber them nine to one, if not more. But more people get on the train so it’s still a standing room only crowd. Next stop is Laoximen (Lousy men). I’m not sure what the attraction is in this area and quite frankly I haven’t got the desire to find out. I don’t have a guidebook with me. I don’t normally walk around town with a guidebook in my hand. Only the Vang Vieng tubing crowd does that. They look idiotic doing it. Either they don’t care that they look like idiots walking around town looking unkempt and disorderly with that stupid guidebook open in their hands, looking up at street signs and looking down on their guidebook to see where they are, or no one has simply clued them in to how idiotic they look. It’s as idiotic as going to a job interview dressed in a three piece suite with a briefcase in one hand and a bunch of textbooks in the other hand. But never mind. I see no Vang Vieng tubing types in this crowd. The train moves again and in another five minutes another stop. This time it’s Xintiandi. I’m tempted to get off. Whether I get off here or in the next stop, South Shaanxi Road, really doesn’t matter. I have no idea what’s here either. Could be just a residential area with nothing interesting to see, which is fine with me. I like that better as a matter of fact instead of going sightseeing to some touristy spot. I stay on the train until we reached South Shaanxi Road. When I got out of the station from underground I was immediately embraced by the hot and humid climate and the skies are still covered in smog. I had thought earlier that the skies were simply overcast in light clouds. I now realize that those are not clouds above but smog from industrial pollution. The smog, the humidity, and my general disorientation has got me feeling despondent. I was expecting to be in South Shaanxi Road but the street sign says something else. It says Mayuming Road or Mayoming Road or South Mayoming Road or something ridiculous like that. When I look a little closer it becomes clear that the English translation is spelled out as South Maoming Road. It turned out that I exited the station on the other side, away from South Shaanxi. How do you like that! I got on the station and randomly selected South Shaanxi Road as my destination and I never even saw South Shaanxi Road. That’s some random wandering for your ass, itdn’t it? So I turned right and started walking in the northerly direction because I didn’t know what else to do. I figured that the worse that can happen is that I would get lost. Then I will have to find an ATM machine, withdraw some cash, and then flag a taxi to take me back to my hotel on the Bund to right my world back to normal, or at least something close to it.

After passing by construction sights and mom n’ pop shops of very little consequence to the overall scheme of things in the universe I ended up at the intersection of Central Huaihai Road and South Maoming Road and without even thinking about it I turned right and kept on walking regardless of consequence. I did not care one little bit if I get lost as long as nothing fatal happens to me, like getting run over by a Mack truck or something ridiculous like that. All I had was my wits about me and my debit card which allows me to withdraw cash from any ATM machine that has an Intralink, Plus, or STAR logo displayed on it. Armed with my bank account at my fingertips in a foreign country, I had nothing to fear but the fear of getting hit by a sports car going a hundred miles an hour while jaywalking at the French Concession in Shanghai. Yes, this is where I am at the moment, fearlessly walking the sidewalks of the French Concession. But I only realized this after the fact, not while I was at the moment, the Here and Now.

The French Concession - Reserved for the Foreign Community

I really have no idea why this here area around Xintiandi and South Shaanxi Road is called the French Concession. My guess is that the French finagled it somehow from the local government of Shanghai back in the colonial days, though China was never a colony of a foreign government, and got a place to settle for business and pleasure and forbid non Westerners from participating in both in their area of settlement. Legend has it that the sign No dogs or Chinese allowed originated somewhere here in Shanghai, but not specifically in the French Concession, I think, although I’m not entirely sure because I never bothered to look it up. I’m no history buff. I like reading history not because I’m interested in the facts of the past and what has made the world the way it is today. No! I understand that’s important but the fact of the matter is that I simply don’t care. The reason I enjoy reading history is because I’m intrigued by the people and characters of the past. I find it curious that the world has changed so very much but yet the people haven’t. We are still the same egotistical maniacal avaricious bunch of philanderers that we’ve always been since the beginning of time, all of us, you and me, without exception. That is how and why places like the French Concession came about; from the sins of your father.

The remnants of those sins are still visible to this day here in Central Huaihai Road. Old French colonial buildings, Catholic Churches, Villas, things of that sort. Central Huaihai Road is a four lane boulevard with many shops and department stores although the consumerism here doesn’t appear to be as avid or vibrant or repulsive, depending on you taste, as East Nanjing Road. It appears to be more low-key and more local. As I approach the intersection of Central Huaihai and Ruijin Road I am faced with another decision to make. Do I keep walking straight or do I do something interesting, like turn right and increase my chance of getting lost. It didn’t take long for me to decide. That’s the beauty of traveling alone. You can make quick decisions and the only person you can blame for any mistakes that you make is you, no one else but you, because it’s all about you, and that’s what I’m all about. I am about the you that is me. So I turned right on Ruijin Road and kept walking without any guides, without any guidebook, without any maps, and without a clue whatsoever of what I’m doing. I’m doing whatever I’m doing simply because I felt like it. What freedom! Not many people can claim to be free as I feel this very moment, here, now. I’m walking on air. I feel confident. I feel like the world is my Oyster. I feel like I’m high on drugs simply because I’m not thinking about what I’m doing, I’m just doing it. The power to do whatever you want to do with your life here and now is intoxicating. More people should do what I do.

The feeling of absolute freedom and natural high lasted only a few minutes after I made that random turn at the corner of Central Huaihai Road and Ruijin Road because the heat and humidity brought me back down to Earth real fast. Now I’m perspiring again. Beads of sweat are seeping out of the pores of my skin from my forehead all the way down to my toes. I can feel the wetness of my socks from the sweaty feet. Plus the scenery on Ruijin Road doesn’t inspire. I walk around randomly when traveling because I want to find something different. Not necessarily interesting, just different. I find nothing different on Ruijin Road that would cause to proclaim that this is the next Shangri-La. Far from it. What I see are more of the same things that I saw on Central Huaihai Road. The only difference is that the next intersection is about another quarter of a mile away. So I slog it through until the next intersection where I plan to go left to whatever street that is. It turns out to be Fuxing Road. I look right and left and see that this sleepy looking boulevard is lined with trees on both sides. Out of the blue I turn left and start walking on Fuxing Road in the easterly direction. This place has more of a colonial feel to it. The architecture looks and feels like its from a bygone era. After walking for about ten minutes I saw a sign in English that says former residence of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen this way, with an arrow pointing left on Sinan Road.

I knew that Sun Yat-Sen is well revered in China not because I'm an avid student of Sinology but because I once lived in Hawai'i, and I learned through scuttlebutt of the many famous people who once called Hawai'i home. Sun Yat-Sen lived in Hawai'i when he was little boy, joining his older brother who had gone there way back in the plantation days. Sun went to Iolani School for elementary and high school and then some college at what was then called Oahu College, when that institution still offered a college curricula. Now it's called Punahou and college is no longer part of their curriculum. They are strictly a prep school now. It educated such bona fide super achievers as your beloved president of the free world Barack Hussein Obama, your favorite AOL CEO Steve Case, you favorite vixen Kelly Preston (John Travolta's wife), former US Senator and Machu Picchu discoverer Hiram Bingham, and many other famous people that you've all come to know and love, like Michelle Wie and Buster Crabbe. Sun eventually went back to China before he could finish his studies at Oahu College and became a revolutionary and the father of modern day China after China went away from the dynastic Empires of the past. That's pretty much all I know about Sun Yat-Sen. So out of curiosity I visited the former residence of Sun which has now been made into a museum. Its's an interesting display of his life and his intellectual work. I saw one display of his life in Hawai'i, one measly little picture of him an his family. I wish there could have been more.

Renmin Park

After I finished my walking tour of the French Concession I got on the Line 8 Metro at the Xintiadi Station and got off at People's Park for lunch at the Food Republic on the fifth floor of Raffles City mall. The food wasn't bad but the sight of an idiot tourist trying to find something to eat was amusing. This time it wasn't me fumbling around trying to find food but another idiot tourist who was dressed accordingly; Aloha shirt, shorts, and slippers with socks on. That's just plain tacky. He pointed to some dim sum at the food stall and tried to pay with cash. Now that I'm a veteran of Chinese food courts I knew that you had to get a debit card to pay for your food. This idiot tourist who wears socks with his slippers had no clue that you had to do that, so he fumbled around for some cash, realized that they don't take cash, so he went to the cashier's booth selling debit cards and came back to the food stall only to find that his dim sum had been sold to someone else. The look of embarrassment and frustration of an idiot tourist in a strange land is a sight to behold.

I headed back to my hotel on foot, walking from People's Park on the East Nanjing Road pedestrian mall to the Bund. Along the way I was accosted by a couple of beauties, young ladies in their mid twenties who pretended to be students who wanted to practice their English on an idiot tourist like me. When you're walking alone on East Nanjing Road and you look like an idiot foreign tourist, you're hard to miss. These ladies can spot you a mile away. So they honed in on me and tried to trick me. I was lucky enough to be warned about this so I played with it for a little bit. They were quite tempting little beauties too. So I took out my camera and asked if I could get my picture taken with them. With that they vigorously refused, but when I insisted they suddenly had no interest in me anymore. They made up some lame excuse about going to see a friend at the 353 department store. They left me standing there in the middle of East Nanjing Road with my camera, ready to take a picture, but no one to take a picture of.

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Photos

Suzhou Creek
Rock the Bund

Astor House
A fabulous hotel

East Nanjing Road
A total zoo

Lotus Flower
at the lotus garden

Idiot tourist
with lotus garden and the skyline covered in smog in the background

Oriental Pearl Tower
Pudong skyline taken from the esplanade on the Bund

Pudong at night
Last obligatory pic of the Pudong skyline at night

Pudong at Night
Whizzzzzz

The Bund at night
I love the shadowy effect

The Bund at night take II
Glittering lights

Shanghai at night
Taken from the top of the World Financial Center

Pudong Circle
I skipped the expo

Comments

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[phaedrus]

Thanks for the spam
I hope it was well worth it.

[Terri Nunn]

Berlin - 2 hit wonders
Also "Take my breath away" from the movie "Top Gun"

[phaedrus]

Re: Berlin - 2 hit wonders
Good knowledge. Thanks for the input. I had forgotten about that song from Top Gun.