Thursday, May 12, 2005

 

Shanghai



Ni hao from Beijing!

I am now sitting in an Internet cafe that took me more than an hour to find. As I searched, I became more and more determined to find the place. It became my personal treasure hunt!

I had asked someone at my hotel to write the cafe's address on a card in Chinese for the taxi driver to follow. The driver dropped me off in the general vicinity of the cafe, but not specifically at the address indicated on the card, which is understandable, given that the buildings in this area do not have addresses posted on the outside and also given that it turns out that the cafe is located at the rear of the building, meaning that it is not even located on the street where its address indicates that it should be. I asked numerous merchants in the area for directions, which they gladly gave me in a combination of Mandarin and sign language (Unfortunately, I only understood the latter).

In addition, the cafe is located on the third floor of this darkened five-floor office building, which was impossible for me to know, since there is no English or even semi-English sign anywhere to tell me so. Fortunately, the one Chinese symbol that I have learned to recognize is the sign for Internet cafe (it is an upside down U with two small x's inside), so after finding a Chinese-only advertisement for this Internet cafe in the lobby downstairs, I knew that I was in the correct building. However, that still left the matter of finding the appropriate floor. I therefore ran up the fire escape checking each floor, and finally found the elusive Internet cafe, one of the few such places in Beijing.

To my great surprise, this is a great Internet cafe, filled with hundreds of modern flat-screened monitors with high-speed connection grouped together in pod-shaped booths, with music piped into each booth (In my pod, they are paying what sounds like a Chinese version of Celine Dion MUSAK).

Unfortunately, my adventure was not over. Only a few choice computers out of the hundreds in this place actually have Microsoft Word in them. (Most of the other customers are only here to play video-games). Anyhow, once I found an appropriate computer, there was still the matter of having the English letters on the keyboard switched on, which I was able to arrange with the helpful staff (who do not speak a single word of English; I imagine that they figured out that I wanted to type in English by looking at my Caucasian face).

So now that I have found myself a properly equipped computer, I will continue to tell you about my trip.

Shanghai

Yesterday, I left Shanghai after a very enjoyable stay. Shanghai is China's business capital. It is, for the most part, an ultra-modern city that looks like something out of a science fiction movie. In some respects, it may be a vision of what cities of the future will look like elsewhere in the world, including in North America. Most vestiges of the past have been replaced by glass and steel towers, usually with strange-shaped tops and flashing lights that illuminate the city's skyline after sunset. The side of one skyscraper even turns into a 40-storey high television at night!

Shanghai takes its urban planning seriously, with a distinctive modern five-storey museum dedicated to precisely that topic located in the Peoples' Square in the centre of town. The museum contains a detailed three-dimensional scale-model of the city that is larger than a tennis court.

Despite being a city of 20 million, Shanghai is very liveable. Its numerous skyscrapers are separated by parks and pedestrian malls. All the sights that a visitor would want to see are found within a five-kilometre radius. You can walk anywhere, take public transportation or enjoy an inexpensive ride in one of the multitude of taxicabs, whose white-gloved drivers are bound by law to wish you a good day … or you don't pay (... at least that is what the signs in the taxicabs say; they also say that "Drunkards and imbeciles must be accompanied by other passenger").

(The polite taxi drivers of Shanghai contrast with the animals who drive cabs in Beijing: Upon arrival at the Beijing airport, I had three cab drivers fighting over me - two quoting me outrageous prices as a flat fare to the city and another telling me that the meter in his cab was broken so he "make-a me goot price." I told all three to go to hell, grabbed my luggage from the one who had taken it from me and I flagged down a fourth cabdriver, whose meter worked just fine - although his Citroen could have used a few more horsepower. Traveling is always an adventure!)

Shanghai is a very international city that attracts visitors from all over the world. If you are a Westerner, you are not a source of curiosity as you would be in Chengdu or Chongqing, which I had visited previously. Instead, you attract attention of a different sort. Since Shanghai is China's wealthiest city, it attracts people from all levels of society who are out to make a buck. Some are businesspeople from abroad or well-educated Chinese, while others are poor people from the provinces. As a white male, whenever I walked in any area frequented by foreigners, I had to put up with a barrage of offers such as, "You want Rolex?" "You want handbag? I make-a you goot price" or "I bring you beautiful Chinese lady?" (... all three offers would often come from the same guy!). It is frankly no different than what I have had to put up with in the cities of other developing nations that I have visited in the past, but when contrasted with the charming innocence of Chengdu and Chongqing, it was somewhat disappointing.

Shanghai is increasingly a conference and convention destination. While in Shanghai, I could have attended both the World Ping-pong Championships and the International Conference on Public Toilets (seriously!), but I chose to pass on both.

When I arrived at Pudong Airport in Shanghai, I took the Maglev (magnetic levitation) train from the airport. The Maglev is the world's fastest train, reaching speeds of as high as 430 kilometres per hour. It accelerates so smoothly that you barely notice the speed. However, when the cars doing 130 kilometres per hour on the expressway adjacent to the track look like they are standing still and you notice that the train track banks sharply on the curves to prevent the train from derailing, you realize that this is more than just your typical train!

After checking into my hotel, I got together with my friend Jake from Bangkok, who coincidentally was visiting his father in Shanghai at the same time as I was there. Jake's father, a Montrealer, is often in Shanghai on business and even speaks some Mandarin. The three of us went to an excellent Italian restaurant on the ritzy Xintiandi pedestrian mall. We were joined by a fourth man that Jake's father knows. This fourth gentleman is a Moroccan Jew from Montreal who now lives permanently in Shanghai.

The Italian restaurant could have been anywhere in the world. The chef was an Italian who spoke to us in French. The only reminder that we were in China was the heavy Chinese accents of the waiters, as they greeted us with "Buena sera" and "Grazie." The meal was very pleasant. In a way, it was like being back home in Montreal - with a multi-cultural touch: The dinner conversation was mainly in French, along with some English, Hebrew, Mandarin, Thai and Italian.

That night, Jake and I checked out the Shanghai nightlife. Among other places, we visited the current trendiest club in town, Park 97 - situated, funny enough, in the middle of a park. It was like any other club back home, except that the bouncers were elderly members of the Chinese Red Army wearing their uniforms (They looked like they should be marching through Tiananmen Square, rather than checking the ID's of underage drinkers) and the clientele consisted of a mixture of Caucasian expatriates and what looked to be Chinese "professional girlfriends."

The next morning, Jake's father had his driver take us to the Xian Yang market. Let's just say that the merchants at this market don't exactly seem to respect intellectual property rights. Just don't tell Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Rolex, Mont Blanc, Nike et al.

Bargaining is fierce at this market. Basically, after the merchant asks for a given amount, you must respond with a counter-offer of 70 to 90 percent less and then you must stick to your price, say "take it or leave it" and then walk away. Invariably, the merchant will come running after you and say, "Okay, okay" while feigning tears as though you have made his or her life so miserable by paying so little. The "tears" invariably dry up as soon as you pay.

Most older neighbourhoods in Shanghai have been demolished or are slated for demolition in the near future, with the notable exception of the heritage buildings on the Bund. The Bund is the area on the west bank of the Huangpu River, which bisects the city.

On the Bund, one finds many magnificent European-style buildings built between 1900 and 1930, or so. In many cases, these buildings originally housed banks. Interestingly, now that China is open once again to business, they have reverted to serving as the local headquarters of several banks. The outsides of the buildings look quite out of place in comparison to other Asian architecture, but would look perfectly at home in Old Montreal, with their columns, stained glass and thick walls. The interiors have been renovated, in many cases. I visited one bank where the floor and columns in the lobby are covered in gleaming marble and the frescos on the ceiling above the bank tellers are worthy of the Sistine Chapel.

Facing the Bund across the Huangpu River is an area known as Pudong, which is to Shanghai as Canary Wharf is to London or La Defense is to Paris: In other words, it is an area being built up from scratch with ultra-modern office towers, hotels, residential complexes and shopping centres. The best-known edifice on the Pudong skyline is the Oriental Pearl Tower, a 1500-foot TV and radio transmission tower that looks like what would result if the CN Tower in Toronto and the Atomium in Brussels had a child: The tower has numerous spheres protruding from it at various levels and the tower stands on a three-pronged pedestal, which in turn has small spheres protruding from it. It truly looks science-fiction-like.

Next to the Oriental Pearl Tower is an 88-floor skyscraper housing the Grand Hyatt Hotel, the highest hotel in the world, which I had the opportunity to visit. The hotel is located between the 54th and 88th floors. There are spectacular views from the reception lobby (55 floors up) and, of course, from the 88th floor restaurant. The rooms are located around the perimeter of the building and inside, except for some glass elevator shafts, the tower is hollow, creating a 33-floor high atrium. The hotel's piano bar is located at the bottom of this spectacular atrium and the music during Happy Hour wafts up through the atrium from the piano to all of the guest rooms. It was probably the nicest - and certainly the most spectacular - hotel that I have seen.

Unfortunately, I was not staying at the Grand Hyatt, but I did not do too badly, nonetheless. I stayed on the Bund at the Peace Hotel, which bills itself as the most famous hotel in Asia. That may once have been the case, but is probably not accurate anymore. The Peace Hotel was built in 1926 by the Sassoon family. It is a grand hotel in the style of Montreal's Ritz-Carlton. Despite its age, the Peace has been renovated, so the carvings, marble and chandeliers in the lobby look nearly as good as they did in Shanghai's heyday, when visitors from all over the world gave Shanghai a very international flavour (which, come to think of it, the city has now regained, but in a new historical context). My room had all the modern amenities, along with old-style wood carvings on the walls and 15-foot ceilings. Walking down the hallway from my room was like going for a stroll into the past, but then when I stepped out onto the street and looked at the skyline of Pudong across the river, it was like looking into the future.

The Sassoon family (that built the Peace Hotel) was the most prominent of a number of Iraqi Jewish families that had a profound impact on the development of old Shanghai. They, along with the Khadoory family, built most of the city's most beautiful hotels, mansions and office buildings, many of which are still standing.

Jews have been present in Shanghai since the 1840's. From that time until about 1917, there were typically only maybe 800 Jews in Shanghai, but despite their small number, they were among the city's most prominent and influential residents. The Sassoons, for example, were traders of spices, textiles and opium, as well as investors in real estate. They made their way over to Shanghai from Baghdad via India, where they also had interests.

After 1917 and especially after 1933, the number of Jews in Shanghai increased dramatically, as Shanghai became a place of refuge for Jews escaping Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution and then for those escaping Germany and other European countries, during the rise of Nazism. It is estimated that the Jewish population of Shanghai may have reached as high as 30,000 in the early 1940's.

During the time leading up to World War II, Shanghai was one of the few places where Jews were accepted as immigrants (Canada and the USA, along with many other countries, had shut their doors to Jewish immigration). At the time, the Japanese controlled the part of China where Shanghai is located. Certain Japanese and Chinese diplomats in Europe issued numerous visas to save Jews by allowing them to immigrate to Shanghai. Eventually, the Nazis asked the Japanese to round up the Jews of Shanghai for extermination, but the Japanese refused, although they did order the Jews to move into a ghetto in a neighbourhood called Hongkou, which I visited.

Hongkou is an old area of Shanghai, generally not part of the typical tourist's itinerary. Much of the area will soon be demolished, as Shanghai prepares to host Expo 2010. The residents of Hongkou are poor or working class. They live in the same buildings where many Jews found shelter from the Holocaust.

In Hongkou, I visited the Ohel Moishe synagogue, which is no longer actually used as a synagogue, but which houses a small museum dedicated to the history of the Jews of Shanghai. The museum's curator is Mr. Wang, a short and sprightly 86-year-old Chinese man with thick square-rimmed glasses, slicked-back hair and an old-fashioned hearing aid that extends from his ear by a wire to a device in his shirt pocket. He looks somewhat like Deng Xiaoping. Mr. Wang, who speaks excellent English (and supposedly excellent Japanese as well), insisted on giving me a personal tour of his museum (as he has several visiting Israeli presidents and prime ministers in the past). Mr. Wang is not Jewish, but worked for and with many Jews in Hongkou.

I learned from Mr. Wang that the common language of the ghetto was English (residents' mother tongues included German, Russian and Yiddish, among others). Communication with the Chinese was in very basic Mandarin and good ole sign language. Since the Japanese ran the place, all children had to study Japanese in school (I must admit that I have yet to meet a Japanese-speaking Jew, but there may still be some out there). During the Second World War, times were tough in the ghetto, with tea leaves being rationed and the like. Afterwards, though, the Jews of Shanghai enjoyed relative prosperity. However, once the Communists took over China in 1949 (and with the founding of the State of Israel in 1948), the Jews left Shanghai. Today, there are several hundred Jews in Shanghai, but they are here as expatriate business people and not because they are Jews.

Now I am in Beijing. Today, I visited the Great Wall of China. I will tell you more in my next e-mail.

Until then, take care.

--Larry

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