Secret Shanghai: hiding in plain sight

by Dominic Flannery (Australia)

I didn't expect to find Australia

There are big cities, and then there are big cities in China. The world’s most populous country knows a thing or two about scale. Shanghai is a city constantly on the move: a business centre, a shopping centre and a place that some may argue was set up to show that China is the centre of the world, although the city no longer has anything to prove. Towering, never-ending skyscrapers peak through thick smog like an inquisitive summer sun and intermingle with reminders of its vast past. The tree-lined avenues of the French Concession hide modern eateries and a burgeoning wine scene, and Old Shanghai's temples emerge through the frenzy of overhead electrical wires. Easterners and Westerners feel equally at home in this city: the love child of the old Silk Road. Perhaps the most fascinating part of Shanghai is the Bund – a wide pedestrian strip along the river with historical buildings from Art Deco to Gothic on its shore with splatterings of skyscrapers on the other side. While it is busy by day, the summer heat stymies its true potential. Like Sheryl Lee Ralph, it is at night when it truly shines - a colourful showcase of light with old Renaissance buildings tastefully lit-up while skyscrapers become moving billboards, painting the night sky with advertisements and amusements, reflecting off the river and penetrating the smog. The architecture mixes not just the old with the new, but the pragmatic and the extravagant - grand elevated highways of ugly efficiency provide the foreground to twisted skyscrapers of decadent architectural designs, postcards from China to the world showcasing Chinese success and prosperity. The huge pedestrian strip of East Nanjing Mall feeds into the Bund like a vast river of humanity, all camera phones and shopping bags, prams and luggage, children on leashes (even a few couples had ‘love leashes’) – a veritable horde of people, consuming and breeding, the individuals sucked into the group, a beautiful ‘people monster’ equally scary and enchanting. There were just so many people, it was like peak hour on steroids every single night – a melody of magic moments that was almost too much to fully comprehend. While there are many things to do in Shanghai, the busyness of the Bund imprints itself in your brain unlike any other. One day we saw a commotion ahead – a dozen police cars, several TV news crews, black cars with black windows – and wondered what we’d stumbled on. A friendly passer-by saw our confusion and informed us it was the entrance exam for college which is notoriously difficult to get into allegedly due to the government wanting to keep enough ‘blue collar’ workers to sustain the relentlessly-growing nation (or formerly relentless? A topic for another day…). The huge police presence was to ensure the exams ran smoothly for the students lucky enough to get into the limited college places, which explained to me why so many Chinese families (who can afford to) send their children who missed out on a place to overseas universities (at great expense). The city was slowly letting us in to some secrets of its residents just as it was time to go. Bullet train stations in Shanghai make international airports look like little ants not worthy of being stepped on. Multi-level hangar-type buildings move people up stairs, down elevators, through gates, in tremendous halls and magically keep them in chaotic and dynamic “lines” where it’s every (hu)man for itself. Queues snake everywhere like caterpillars often breaking out violently into beautiful butterflies as the lines spread through gates and disperse into the next line where it starts all over again. In waiting rooms, seats are guarded like crown jewels with your fellow passengers eyeing them off like vultures, ready to swoop as soon as someone with a seat even thinks about touching their bag to go. The rush to the platform for a train is like a mini-Olympics, hustling and bustling, suitcases wheeled and hot food brandished, clutching babies, bags and bao.