Cutting Corners

Old Shanghai

[rgucci @ Saturday, October 02, 2004]

We just got back from our trip to Shanghai. I formed a mixed bag of impressions about Shanghai. It is a real modern city, filled with all the hustle, bustle and exhaust fumes that one expects, but I can't help seeing a certain sense of backwardness to it all, both from the city itself and the people who live in it.

I know this may be a case of the pot calling the kettle black-- Manila is after all arguably one of the worst places in the world. But then again, that may lend more weight to my observations. If a person from Manila is shocked by what he sees in Shanghai, then you can just imagine how it must have been.

Take traffic, for example. In Shanghai, traffic lights are purely cosmetic. It is much simpler, in a sense, since a green light means go, for both vehicles and pedestrians. There are bicycles, and other unidentified vehicles with two wheels sharing the same road with taxis, cars, trucks, and people. In one street corner, there are usually 5 traffic assistants, whose jobs are to blow their whistles to remind you that you are running for your life while trying to cross the road. Traffic enforcers have no authority whatsoever. They signal vehicles to stop. No one pays attention. They don't pay attention that no one pays attention. It's all a convenient setup for everyone.

We had the sublime honor of being there for the National Day celebrations. You can see the big red Chinese flag in the picture above. It was actually quite nice, seeing all those people out and having a good time. Policemen were stationed all along the Bund, one of the main tourist areas, exactly 6 feet away from each other. It was an imposing sight, having the whole street lined up with policemen, like Christmas trees. Nothing says "I'm watching all of you" so effectively.

I may just be culturally ignorant, but it seems that in China, or in Shanghai at least, National Day is celebrated by young people by hitting each other with inflatable hammers of every kind. Spiderman hammers, Powerpuff Girls hammers, Teletubbies hammers. And these hammers were huge, and some where quite phallic in shape. There were also other inflatables in the shape of baseball bats, angel wings, boxing gloves and what have you, but most of them were hammers. My friend and I were trying to rationalize it by alluding to the hammer and sickle in the flag but then we remembered this was China, not the former USSR.

The best bit was the inflatable hat with the American flag design, stars and stripes and everything on it. National Day in China, and people were waving small Chinese flags while wearing the American flag on their head. I think every single one of them failed to notice just how ridiculous that looked.

One last thing, not that this is the most important-- just the most memorable: when you are staying at a hotel in China and you bring a guest in your hotel room, the guest has to leave by 11:00 pm. If you want someone to spend the night, you have to ask for permission from the hotel. This is apparently the law. I wonder how they enforce it.