Shanghaied!
Shanghai, in central-eastern China, is touted as the economic center of China. It is a city with an area of 9,326,410 square kilometers and a population of 19 million, so said our guide Alan. Figures differ when I checked other sources later.
It was the second city my tour group of 19 visited during our six-day romp around China and its well-known attractions which included some sections of Old and New Shanghai and the Chinese Venice. My tour group arrived in Shanghai on the night of August 24 and were met by Alan at the airport. Well, we actually found him as he wasn't looking for us.
The first impression Alan made upon me was on the bus to our hotel when he insisted (with some vehemence) that there was no such thing as "lumpia Shanghai" in Shanghai. If we wanted that, we should say "spring rolls". In the days that followed, Alan would suddenly depart from his tour guide spiel and touched on topics that made us feel uncomfortable. I should say though that of all the guides we had in China, he was the one we liked most.
Shanghai is very big, even after you have left the city proper where traffic is heavy and the buildings huge. You travel on wide highways cutting across fields and you are technically still in the city. Just when you think you have entered the countryside you pass by busy intersections, factories or other commercial buildings in the middle of nowhere.
Phone booths can be found at regular intervals right beside the road even when no other structure is visible for miles around.
Then there is the ever-present bicycle lane. If every Chinese family had a car, traffic would ground to a halt in all the major cities. Hence, the government built bicycle lanes and encourage people to travel around in bikes. It's not unusual to see people heading to work on a bicycle. It tickled us to see a man looking spry in a coat and tie pedaling off to work, also that pretty girl in a short skirt. Alan said you have to be 13 years old to commute on a bicycle.
Like in Shenzhen, there are socialized housing for the city's residents, but richer ones can opt to purchase the more decent single houses (like cookie cutters and of uniform color and dimensions) which Alan called "villas". These can be found outside the city proper.
The Bund was the center of Shanghai's culture, economy and politics years ago, which explains countless monuments in the area dedicated to "the people".
The most famous and attractive sights here are the 52 various buildings of different architectural styles, mostly European since they were built by the Germans in the 1930's. Some go back as far as the 1920's. All the old buildings are facing the river and the Philippine Consulate is one of them.
There is a ferry service that takes you some distance along the Huangpu River to see The Bund and New Shanghai in their full glory at night. It's just about an hour long but enough to let you appreciate the well-lit buildings on both sides of the Huangpu.
The French Concession once covered an extensive area but now it is much smaller.
The fort has definitive French architecture with a maze of narrow passageways, arches and brick roads. You can find restaurants, ice cream parlors, boutiques and shops nestled in the gray walls, an ingenious mix of the old and new. Note to the traveler: Shopping here can be expensive since it is considered a high-class area. There's a mall next to the "fort" should you decide nothing interests you in the French concession.
Leaving the French concession, we passed by Fuxing Park that has a spacious picnic place and the huge Peace Lake. As I made my way to the bus I saw a group of old and young people having a picnic around a willow tree. As others ate sandwiches an old man proudly tied a communist hammer and sickle banner to one of the tree's boughs. I wanted to take a picture of the group but a police assistant standing by them was making me nervous.
I later learned that this district was home to the city's radicals and the base of the Chinese Communist Party. This would be the only time I would ever see a communist banner in my visit to China.
We had lunch in this quaint two-story restaurant that had old porcelain crockery and polished wooden chopsticks that must have gone back generations. We were told the shrimp and fish served to us were just fished out from the river we were going to visit later on (which explained the 20-minute wait for the food). It had rained heavily earlier as we came in and the cold was just dampening everyone's mood. A street hawker sold umbrellas to our party at 10 Yuan each. Luckily, I had mine.
From the restaurant, Allan led us through the backdoor. We made our way under the rain through narrow cobbled streets, lined by antique shops (right next to ones selling modern goods) and other restaurants.
Some sections of the cobbled streets were really bad, several times we had to walk on wooden planks spanning puddles of mud and rainwater on the street, at other times there was no street at all and we had to walk deep in the mud.
Most of my companions had not expected it to rain or to be walking on muddy streets. They wore light, open-toed footwear (lucky I was wearing my steel-toe boots). They were grumbling now even though the rain had stopped.
I was convinced there was nothing in this sorry little town that would impress me. That was when I came across the first bridge spanning the canal.
It was as if a China of another era awaited us on the other side of the bridge. From where I was, I could see a towering temple and old houses along narrow cobbled streets on both sides of the canal.
Small wooden boats with thatched roofs and decorated with red Chinese lamps passed lazily under the bridge. These were manned by well-dressed boatmen who did not see the need to hurry as they guided their boats along the narrow canal.
The water was green but it was not dirty and had no odor. There was no trash whatsoever in the water and I saw people leaving their houses or shops to dip basins or pails into the canal. As to their use I can only guess, but it showed how much the people trusted the water.
We headed for the main tributary of the canal passing under stone and wooden bridges both ancient and modern. We also passed under balconies of noodle restaurants and teashops close enough to inhale the aromatic smells of food.
Two blocks ahead in the street on the right side of the canal a blind man was playing an erhu, a Chinese instrument resembling a violin. The instrument was so small but the sound and music it produced was enough to eclipse everything else in the area and fill it with a certain ancient mystique.
As soon as we got to the main tributary Alan pointed out a distant bridge that looked like an inverted V supported by five arches. It was reportedly built in the 1500s and is still being used until now.
On the way back to the pier, we saw two men on a boat harvesting seaweed from the river. The weeds would later be cleaned and served as food in one of the restaurants of the town.
I requested one of our companions, Amy Ng, who spoke fluent Chinese, to ask the boatman about the origin of the village.
Amy translated that the village was built in 1327 when a feudal lord developed the area and people started coming over to work for him.
Islands were strengthened and canals were also built in the water running between the islands. Things got better as the feudal lord watched over his land and his constituents, as well. The fact that the area was accessible to many places by water served to make it a major trading area in the old days. The boatman also said that the feudal lord's house still stands, as well as a five-start hotel in Zhu Jia Jiao.
Then the man invited me to shoot arrows. For 10 Yuan I could have twenty arrows to shoot at a target made of coiled rope with a red circle of paper at the center around 25 feet away.
I jumped at the chance, wanting for years to "loose a shaft from the bow" and test my (non-existent) skill with this archaic weapon. There were several bows on the weapons rack, some small ones for the kids, then the curved bows and double-curved bows for older ones, there were also three big longbows almost as tall as I was.
I chose a double-curved bow. They gave me some "firing tips", then I was on my own. For me it was a thrill as I recalled Mongols favored double-curved bows as their primary weapons. Did their influence extend to the ancient Chinese, as well?
Since I was the only one using the range at the time I picked among the four targets freely, eventually hitting the bull's-eye on two targets.
As soon as I turned to leave, they led me to another rack. I later realized they noticed my two (pathetic) bull's-eyes and were asking me to choose a prize. I was happy enough to just try the weapon, the fact that I was getting something for it made it even better.
Now this was not a bustling shop crowded with people. This was a quiet little store with dust in some corners. Weapons and the skins of at least two different animals hung on the left wall, their beady eyes seemingly begging passersby to buy them or look at the display case below them and buy something.
I looked at the display case and saw something I really wanted -an ancient Chinese coin among a sprinkle of coins from different places and times. It was about over an inch in diameter, coarse brown and with a square hole in the center. Chinese characters could be found at each side of the square.
Being a coin collector, my heart did a flip and I stared at that coin under the glass for some time. A woman in her late teens finally approached me from inside the shop and I asked her if it was for sale or display, Chinese law banning the purchase of some artifacts. As usual she did not understand a word of English.
I finally got her to understand that I wanted to buy the coin and we haggled for the price, finally setting it at 90 Yuan (roughly P720). For me, that was a small price to pay for such a coin, but when I asked her and her father about its history they could not tell me anything about it.
When they saw I was disheartened, the woman took it out of the case and showed it to me to reel me in. I held it in my hand. I wanted it badly. But then what if I had it? No one could tell me if it was just a cheap reproduction or something really old.
In the end I placed the coin down and walked away with my head low. If only I could speak Chinese. I would later learn that Zhu Jia Jiao has a lot of genuine items from the Ming and Qing dynasties as well as fakes. Whether the coin was a cheap reproduction or the centuries-old real McCoy I shall never know…and this continues to bother me until now.