Shanghai revisited

Shanghai, China: The last time I was in Shanghai was 21 years ago, when a few Filipino journalists (Conrad Banal, Nona Ocampo and Noel Velasco and this writer) entered China as one of the first foreign journalists allowed to do so right after the infamous Tiananmen Square incident. Back then, the All-China Journalists Association hosted our month-long stay in China. Although I was back in Beijing three times more after that visit, I have not returned to Shanghai until now.

One of the reasons of course is the World Expo 2010 Shanghai. No one can beat the cheap fares that Cebu Pacific had offered, which we secured more than a month ago. I was with my wife, Jessica, Mr. Pacquito and Marissa Unchuan and Engr. Rex and Liza Carampatana. What made our trip doubly exciting was that Rex (he lead the Green Team-Cebu during the election campaign) was recently in Shanghai for a business trip so he already had a hotel booked for us, not to mention that he knew how to move around Shanghai by Metro Transit.

It was doubly convenient that the Nanjing Hotel was a stone’s throw from Nanjing Road, a long stretch of wide main road that Shanghai closed for pedestrian and tourist traffic, which is one of the main attractions in Shanghai. They have train trolleys that go around for tourists to view sites in the city. One such train trolley still bears advertisements about Wow Philippines, which gives you an idea of how thorough was the tourism campaign of then DOT Sec. Ace Durano. From the main entrance of the subway going to the World Expo was a cheap RMB 4 Yuan or around P28. It’s just one stop to the Pudong District.

As we didn’t use any travel agency, we were literally on our own. No early wake-up calls. We went around on our own time. As we got in last Sunday we were surprised that the banks were open; it was business as usual in Shanghai. One thing that immediately gets your attention is Shanghai’s slogan “Better City, Better Life.” This got me into thinking that we don’t even have a slogan yet in Cebu!

One of the first things we visited was the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center, which featured a John Portman Art and Architecture exhibition. We found this facility quite amazing because you could see the growth and development of Shanghai from days past. Shanghai back in the 30’s was already one of the great cities of the world, where I was told that my grandfather Don Jose Avila would come to visit.

Even more remarkable was a photo presentation by famed Shanghai photographer Mr. Xu Xixian who took many black and white photos in the 70s and now his son, Mr. Xu Jianrong, revisited where his father took those photos. This was placed on a TV screen on a “before” and “after” scene. What pains us most is that, Shanghai grew exponentially in the last 20 years. If you considered that this was just around the time Cebu was hit by Super Typhoon “Ruping” you would see how much we have stagnated. Thanks to stupid and ugly politics of greed and hate.

What was the biggest surprise in this edifice was they presented a huge model of Shanghai City in a scale of 1:500 depicting 110-square kilometer of Shanghai, including the Expo area, including Pudong International Airport, which shows all the buildings and the streets, with the night lights then a few minutes later, the lights dim into darkness.

Just across this facility was the Shanghai Museum, which boasts some 1 million collection of ancient Chinese Art, including 130,000 pieces of national treasures, from ceramics, bronze and several carvings of a special exhibit from Russia of Catherine the Great, which was an unexpected treat. It was like seeing it in the Louvre in Paris.

One of the many notable things to see is that Shanghai has an army of street cleaners that use battery powered vehicles in the tourist areas. They clean each street with hot water. For a city as big as Shanghai, it is a very clean city as we saw this not only in the tourist areas, but in the interior streets as well.

There are so many TV channels in China; however, there’s only one English language channel CCTV (no CNN and BBC) and the news that the official Incident Investigation and Review Committee’s (IIRC) report of the Aug.23rd incident was headline news on TV. It appeared as the headline report of China Daily’s Sept. 21st issue. That Pres. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III has yet to decide on the outcome of this report meant that the Chinese government have decided to wait for this. Candace Giron, CCTV reporter in RP mentioned that 12 names have been tagged led by Manila City Mayor Alfredo Lim. But there is yet no accountability report.

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