A day in the metropolis by the Huangpu

The Russian émigrés of the 1920s did not sing By the Rivers of Babylon, for the city by the Huangpu would earn the reputation of being the playground of the rich and famous after the decline of Tsarist Russia and anti-Semitism plagued the English parlors. Shanghai’s Bund, however, faded with the triumph of the Communist Party, but even post-1949 Chou En Lai ascendancy, Shanghai remained the bastion of Mandarin literati.

I visited Shanghai after the Tiananmen Square uprising of ’89 with a tour group organized for the diplomatic corps out of Manila. Deng Xiao Peng was eager to placate the critical West, so we were treated regally to the refined offerings of Beijing, Shanghai, Xi’an, Suzhou and Hanzhou.

Po Dong (east of the river) was then but a swath of rice paddies, someone’s Field-of-Dreams foresight that if you built the new airport, “they would come.” Twenty years later, the world came, and then some. Shanghai now supersedes Manhattan’s cost expensiveness, skyline expansiveness, and the volume of commercial transactions. It has become the most exciting trade center in the world, presiding over the most vibrant economy this side of the capitalist West and the socialist East.

We landed in ’89 at Hong Qiao Airport, was billeted at Hilton in Po Xi (west of the river). The Huangpu district, where the famous Yu Gardens and its five dragon walls was then a must-see for visitors, was also in a seedy district catering to any taste from the bizarre to the exotic, the depraved and the celebrative, the traditional and the modern. But the Shanghai of that visit consisted of museum trips and Sun Yat Sen’s leavings, Chinese opera and acrobatics, silk factories and products, and trips to the neighboring agricultural communes if only to witness acupuncture at the village—the proscribed guided tour.

I returned to the city a decade later, and if the first perspective was from the penthouse, this time it was from the revolutionary one-child family view. My siao lao po (little woman) who would sojourn in my care on Saipan in 2002, belonged to the protected and pampered one-child-family generation, describing herself without apology as a self-centered though not selfish individual. She had not known any life other than as the singular recipient of her parents’ care. She sees the world as owing her a care!

Her view was of the vibrant commercial world of Nanjing Road, the boutiques and discotheques of the young, with their champagne tastes on Tsingdao beer budgets, their quiet rebellion and their indifference to formality and ritual, even those practices of filial piety. They traveled cyberspace, explored the new digital geography; they were consumers and purveyors of Hollywood, glitteratis gone Mandarin. They embraced the new Metro and its magnetic levitator, still a prototype in Germany where it originated, but already commercially applied in the city by the Huangpu. They coveted the privileges of the U.S. green card, were relentless in their pursuit. The Shanghai of my siao lao po is reported by CNN and MTV, and for whom the new high-rise apartments, condominiums, suburban homes and its requisite superhighways and malls are being built.

This trip, my fourth, afforded me a different perspective. I was met at Pudong and whisked into a taxi all the way to the city’s Westside, taken to a hotel abutting a bustling elevated highway. I knew I was into something less mainstream when I was told to leave my luggage with my friends, to walk straight into the elevator and proceed directly to the designated room on the fifth floor. My colleagues giggled when they followed later. The hotel was only for locals, foreigners are charged double the rate. They were thrilled at the adrenalin rush resulting in having put one over their own local establishment!

Heavy fog/smog wrapped the city this time; the morning mist fared no better. The area where we were is not frequented by foreigners, the signage being exclusively Chinese. The dampness revealed sooty dust that clung to everything, but the mist did not faze the early morning traffic as ladies made up and coiffed like they are about to shoot a fashion spread, toot-tooted it along the crowded lanes of motorized and pedaled two-wheelers, the latter about to be rendered obsolete by the city’s new romance with oil.

The group later moved to another hotel in the downtown Huangpu district. Again, I was told to be inconspicuous to management, obviously for the same reason as the previous hotel. The narrow streets that marked the district had been replaced by wide and straight roads, with the Fuxing and Henan Roads quadrangulating the city of old. The alleys that once exuded diverse aroma wafting off many a hot wok are gone. A new clothing mall for the hoi polloi is in place.

The Haopu Apparel City claims that the brands normally available at boutiques (e.g., Christian Dior, et al) are no longer on sale on the premises, a concession to copyright infringement previously taken lightly before China joined the WTO. The products on display, however, showed that the items come from the same production line, albeit, with different tags. Even Haband of my Man’amko circuit cannot compete with the quality and prices of the any of the sartorial offerings. The view from this level of the economic class was quite different. The old yi mao qian (coin denominated below a Yuan) still counts and kept. Affluent China who thinks in euros and dollars remains an elusive vision for this class.

Our meals were at open stalls where customers were oblivious of the cold; the ladies had more than their share of rosy cheeks. The steaming food may not have been to the absolute liking of the health department, but my Ilocano stomach, I felt, was more than adequate for the challenge. Besides, the corn on the cob and steamed dumplings are served fresh, the varied noodles and numerous soup bases a challenge and a delight to the taste buds. Common folks do not hesitate to clear their throats loudly in public, and even ladies spit habitually if not defiantly directly onto the floor. (This is one area where I wish the Singapore Development Corporation, active in the China market, may exert its influence in shifting patterns of behavior like the miracle that occurred in the Sino-Malay city by the Malay peninsula!)

Then there is the ultimate sign of personal satisfaction, the unrestrained belching after a meal, practiced by all genders and by all age levels. After lunch, I was ready to scratch my tummy and go to sleep in the bus headed towards the Shanghai-Nanjing expressway. And yes, I gave out a Marianas-deep Fujian-loud belch!