China 2009, Part 10

Part 10 of our June 2009 trip to China with the Speizmans.

Saturday, June 20 – Shanghai and Pudong

For our final full day in China, Rick and I rose early and headed out to explore some of my old stomping grounds and other parts of Shanghai. The ladies slept in and indulged in the delights of the Four Seasons breakfast buffet and possibly the pool and spa.

Our first stop was the Jinjiang Hotel and the nearby Jinjiang Club, also known as the Cercle Sportif Francais or French Club. I had stayed in the 1930s-era Jinjiang Hotel several times including for about three weeks when I was on my own in Shanghai in 1982. It was an odd, exciting, educational but ultimately frustrating and lonely experience. On many evenings, I would hang out at the Club, partaking of dumplings, beer and games of snooker with other lonely, somewhat lost expats. It was a place of ghosts.

The hotel grounds were vaguely recognizable, particularly the main hotel tower and the green courtyards, still some of the few lawns and green spaces we found in Shanghai. The Club and surrounding grounds were nearly unrecognizable, having been converted into part of the Shanghai Okura Garden Hotel. The bar and snooker rooms as well as the ballroom with sprung dance floor were long gone. Rick was patient with me as I reminisced and tried to recount what times used to be like. I tried poking into a few of the buildings but didn’t have much luck finding open doors or recognizable features.

That was about as far down memory lane that we could manage. For more of the modern Shanghai story we headed to the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center, a terrible name for an impressive new building and exhibit. The highlight was a large scale model of Shanghai that took up the floor of a large room. There were elevated walkways that simulated a low-level flyover of the city without any smog or clouds.

From the Planning Center we braved the Shanghai Metro to take us across the river to Pudong. It was an easy ride and put us within meters of the Oriental Pearl Tower. We were amused by the entirely reasonable “Notes for Entering the tower” which I can’t help but replicate below. I’m confident that my 1982 translations of sales literature into Chinese were not even this coherent.

Notes for Entering the tower

1. The ragamuffin,drunken people and psychotics are forbidden to enter the Tower.
2. No smoking at non-appointed spot.
3. Prohibit carrying tinder and exploder( banger,match,lighter ),restricted cutter(kitchen knife,scissors,fruit knife,sword and so on)and metal-made electric appliance.
4. Prohibit carrying animals and the articles which disturb common sanitation(including the peculiar smell of effluvium).
5. Prohibit carrying the articles which can destroy and pollute inner environment of the tower.
6. Prohibit carrying dangerous germs,pests and other baleful biology. Forbid any articles from epidemic areas.
7. Prohibit hanging streamer,slogan and any other prints in the tower, including commerce,politics, religion and so on.
8. The cubage of liquid article which the tourist carries can’t exceed 100 milliliter.And the liquid article must be put at the appointed spot to accept examination.After confirmed,it can be carried into the tower.The interloper carrying contraband will be punished seriously by police.

We made sure to fully abide by the notes, got tickets and went up to the observation deck level.

The views from the observation were good, if a little hazy. It was a great vantage point to see the other towers sprouting up in Pudong, including the Shanghai World Financial Center and the Jinmao Tower. It would also have been an ideal spot to see buildings across the river along The Bund if it was just a little less hazy.

I know my exploring session with Rick ran into the afternoon, but I don’t recall what we did for lunch or the rest of the afternoon. And did the girls stay in the hotel and spa the whole day? We have no photographic evidence.

We went to a final dinner that night at a trendy Chinese restaurant in Xintiandi, an upscale shopping and dining area near Nanjing Road that had been redeveloped to have some feel of a 19th century village. It was fun wandering around the district and the meal was good, but it was another slightly jarring experience of seeing China’s culture Disneyfied for Western and wannabe Western tastes. We were happier exploring this cleaned up westernized version than seeking out the real thing. And evidently many upscale Chinese were happier with it too.

We took a final stroll along the neon-lit Nanjing Road on the way back to our hotel. It was time to pack up all our belongings and experiences to get ready for the flight home.

Sunday, June 21 – Return Home

I have no special notes of our final day or the flights home, I’m not even sure where we stopped, but I know that we made it. I seem to recall that Rick and Faith upgraded to Business Class while the three of us and Sydney were left in Economy Plus.

---

In sum, this was an excellent trip to China and Hong Kong. It had been a little stressful but generally fun planning the journey with Rick and traveling with him, Faith and Sydney. We got along well, but it was also nice to build in a little break while they went to Guilin and we went to Hong Kong. It’s a little unfortunate that after this trip Sydney switched schools to Good Counsel and drifted somewhat apart from Allie. Likewise, Barb and I stayed infrequent dining buddies with Faith and Rick until they moved to Philadelphia. We’ve mostly lost touch since then and there was no discussion of further travels together. But we had a good time on this trip.

I was delighted for Allie to get her first taste of China and Hong Kong. She was a good traveler and seemed to take a lot in. I think it was a plus to travel with her buddy Sydney; they both stayed on good terms with each other and with us, as far as I could tell. I’m sure the trip made a memorable impression on her, and I hope she is able to make it back at least a few times in her life to see what becomes of both China and Hong Kong (or is it all China at this point?).

The transformation of China from the 1980s to 2009 was absolutely astonishing. I had read about it and seen TV shows, but seeing the changes in person made much more impact. The massive investments in transportation infrastructure and cutting-edge architecture were jaw-dropping and put the U.S. to shame. In the U.S., very little of the physical world of our cities had changed in 30 years, though granted there had been revolutions in electronics, computers and telecommunications. China showed that it was possible to largely remake cities and societies within a generation, though the cost of wiping out the old in favor of the new was hidden and not discussed.

The self-evident improvement in living standards and growth of consumer markets for millions of people was also quite amazing. There was a vibrancy in the streets that simply didn’t exist in the 1980s. Many Chinese people quickly adapted to a consumer culture and developed a taste for status goods. There is an undeniable appeal for creature comforts and it’s hard to begrudge anyone a desire for modern conveniences even if it comes at unspoken or unknowable costs to the environment and cultural legacies.

We never had a political conversation with anyone, either about China or the West. We had few non-transactional or strictly touristic interactions with any Chinese people — Barb’s impromptu dance with ladies in the Temple of Heaven park is one of the only ones that come to mind, and that was not conversational. In truth, we didn’t seek out such conversations but nor did any Chinese counterparts. In the 1980s, you would find children and adults wanting to at least try out their conversational English, even if the topics never got very deep. That didn’t happen in 2009. China seemed to have thrown itself headlong into this social experiment of modernizing economically while silencing itself politically. It seemed a tenuous balance in 2009; it seems even more so as I write this in 2024 but the experiment goes on.