Wet weekend in Shanghai

Last week we took advantage of a cheap Cathay Pacific package to Shanghai and Expo 2010.  The night before we left, we were swapping "airport" stories (favourite expat topic) with Ronnie, Ed, and Hanora, trying to one-up each other's tales of missed flights and connections.  Of course we related Andrew's famous Edinburgh story:  At the end of his semester abroad, Andrew had GBP5 left in his pocket.  He went to the airport to catch his flights to London/Toronto.  At the ticket counter, the clerk told him his flight was for the next day.  He returned to campus penniless and emailed us that he would be home the next day.  He then luckily remembered that he had opened a bank account at the start of his semester, and had forgotten about it and the GBP10 pounds still on deposit.  He emptied the account and had enough money for a pizza and the bus back to the airport the next morning.  He also lucked out with his dorm room, since the housekeeping staff had not yet stripped his bedding or padlocked the door!
Our own mis-adventure began on Saturday morning.   When the express train arrived at  the airport, Jeff said "Where's my backpack?"  He had a minor meltdown (not quite as bad as Kyle's two-year-old meltdowns) when he realized he'd left it at the station in Hong Kong.  The priceless BlackBerry, iPod, and camera were in the bag.  Checking my watch (7:20 a.m.), I realized that we'd never make our 8:50 flight if it was on time.  I proceeded to the departure gate, while Jeff took the train back to HK to find the bag.  To make a long story short (I'm not very good at this), I sat at the window watching the plane taxi away, with no Jeff in sight.  Luckily we live in a crime-free city, and the backpack and all its contents were at the desk in HK station.  When Jeff got to the airport, Cathay told us we had two choices:  take the 2 p.m. flight (at no extra charge), or take the 10 a.m. Dragonair flight for an extra $300CDN per person.  I could see Jeff mentally calculating the fact that if he had had to replace the contents of the bag, it would probably cost about that much, so for the same price we took the 10 a.m. flight and still managed to enjoy the better part of the day touring Shanghai in the rain.

French Concession
We walked along Huaihai Lu, admiring the broad boulevards and plane trees adorning the wide sidewalks.  A definite Parisian influence!  We were surprised that there was enough room for us to walk side-by-side with open umbrellas and still have room for people to pass us (so unlike HK).  As we ventured into the older streets lined with red brick low-rise buildings, the French concession felt more like a New England college town rather than China.  I always love exploring the hidden alleys.  In the picture above, a woman is washing clothes at an outdoor sink.  Some of the apartments do not have indoor plumbing!
The traffic in Shanghai is something to behold:  there are traffic lights at most intersections, but they appear to be optional for bicycles, motor bikes, taxis, and buses.  No one wears a helmet, and very few bikes and motor bikes use headlights at night.  And Jeff says that Ho Chi Minh City and Manila are worse!

Yu Gardens
On Sunday, it was still pouring, but we took the very crowded metro to Yu Gardens and the Old City.  We were the only foreigners in the subway car, and were stared at all the time.  In HK, we are definitely the minority, but there is such a mix of people from everywhere that we don't often feel like outsiders, especially in the central part of the city.  Shanghai has been overcrowded since May when Expo 2010 opened, and the hordes of people at all of the city's tourist attractions make one claustrophobic.  Outside of the centuries-old Yu Gardens there is a bazaar filled with souvenir shops and tea houses.  An older local gentleman named Mark (a retired, middle school English teacher) adopted us at the subway exit.  He walked us to the bazaar and explained some of the history of the area.  He then led us into a tea house where he hoped we would buy some tchotchkas.  We thanked him for his help and escaped from the overpriced store.  Joining the queue, we made our way slowly along the zig zag bridge leading to the entrance to Yu Gardens.  The Gardens originated in the Ming Dynasty, 400 years ago.  There are 16th century wooden buildings, ginko trees, carp-filled ponds, and beautiful rock formations.  It is probably a restful, meditative place during the winter when the crowds are gone.

Expo 2010

Remember Expo 67?  This wasn't even close!  No music, flowers, or outside entertainment.  The venue is an enormous, drab, concrete industrial park that stretches for ever.  No "Place d'Accueil" to greet the visitors (or as the Americans used to call it - Plastic Eye).  It truly felt like Communist China.   In the photo, Jeff is at the uninviting entrance.  Even though the crowds were relatively small that day, we still had to snake through the metal gates to get to the entrance.  Once inside, we saw some interesting looking pavilions, but the more popular ones had very long (>1 hr.) lines.  We made our way to the Canada pavilion, and were very disappointed with its contents, or lack thereof.  The only attraction was a large screen projecting a montage of flashing images of Canada along with loud blaring music.  We quickly got our passport stamped and went to the restaurant to have a true Canadian lunch:  hamburger for Jeff, poutine for Dale, and two Moosehead beers. (Yes, Julie, we did chat with the chap in the Stanford sweatshirt.)

The China pavilion is beautiful, and it looms over the entire fair, enhancing the theme of China the Great and Mighty.  Jeff's opinion is that the fair is a showcase for the rest of the world, aimed at business with China.  There was very little culture (the Little Mermaid in the Denmark pavilion notwithstanding).
The African countries shared a common space, as did the Caribbean.  Jeff is pictured standing in front of a piece of the wall of faces, which we thought was very clever.  In the Trinidad pavilion, there was a young woman autographing Expo passports.  I asked her if she was a celebrity in her country, but she laughed and told me that the Chinese people have never seen anyone sign a name in English, so that became the attraction for them!



We got first-class treatment in the Slovenia pavilion.  When we told the two Slovenian girls at the entrance that we had visited their country, they got very excited!  One of them ran to the back and returned with gifts for us:  postcards, maps, and a small book of essays written by their most famous writer.  We had similar treatment in the Israel pavilion.  Emanuel (one of their security team) took us around and settled us into the very high-tech auditorium (photo) where we watched a ten-minute, 360-degree movie about Israel (concentrating on its medical and technical achievements).  In most of the other pavilions we visited, it was possible to just run through the building to the exit and the passport stamp without actually absorbing any knowledge of the country.  I appreciated the Israel pavilion in that it obliged the visitors to actually sit, watch, and learn.

The Israel pavilion was my favourite, architecturally.  I also liked the design of the Dutch, Indian, and Saudi buildings.  The American pavilion looked like an airport terminal, but outside the building there were life-sized mockups of the biggest (literally) NBA stars!  Since Yao made his entrance into the league, China has been going crazy over American basketball.
Expo 2010 definitely looks better at night once the lights go on.  The lights cover the drabness of the setting, and the venue looks impressive.  We snuck in the back door of the German pavilion restaurant and had a passable chicken schnitzel dinner.
To steal a quote from a blog we recently read "If you don't go to Expo 2010, you will regret it for the rest of your life; if you go to Expo 2010, you will regret it for the rest of your life".

Jewish Shanghai
Dvir Bar-Gal, an Israeli photo-journalist, conducts the most interesting tour of the lost Jewish community of Shanghai.  http://www.shanghai-jews.com/index.htm

Part lecture, part walking tour, Dvir gave us a history of the Jewish community of Shanghai, beginning with the Iraqi Jews (Kadoorie, Sassoon, and Hardoon), who arrived in the mid-19th century.  These families had already made fortunes in Great Britain and India, but became super-rich in Shanghai.  They built and owned much of the property on the main drag, Nanjing Road, including the art deco Peace Hotel, pictured on the right.  Russian Jews were the next wave of immigrants.  They fled the pogroms and settled in the Hongkou slums (photo on the left).  By the time the last wave of Jews arrived in the 1930s, the Russians had moved up to the nicer parts of the city.  The German and Austrian Jewish refugees, who fled Nazi Europe in the '30s, were forced into the Hongkou ghetto by the Japanese who controlled Shanghai at that time.  The community emigrated from China when the Communists took over in 1949.

Today, Hongkou is slowly being torn down to make way for chrome and glass.  In a few years, perhaps the only remnant of the Jewish community will be the Ohel Moshe synagogue, which is now the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum.  It's interesting that after 1949, the synagogue was used as a mental hospital.  It was restored as a monument to the Jewish community four years ago, in conjunction with the reunion of Shanghai refugees.





The Bund (rhymes with fund)

The Shanghai Bund, which lines the Puxi side of the Huangpu River, houses the numerous neoclassical and art deco financial institutions built between 1910-1930.  Most of these were international banks and trading houses.  Mercifully, none of them were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution.  The HSBC building (1923) has its original marble interior, and all of the frescos are still intact.  Today it is the site of the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank.





Maglev Train

We returned to the Shanghai airport on the Maglev (Magnetic Levitation) train.   The train reaches a maximum speed of 431 km/hr and covers 32 km in 8 minutes!  Everyone on the train kept snapping photos of the speedometer as it went from 0 to 431 and back to 0!

We are definitely planning to return to Shanghai - there's so much of the city we haven't seen, and we haven't done any shopping at all!  Our only souvenirs are an Expo 2010 passport and a small Expo mascot that is hanging on a wall in our dining room (can you see the resemblance to Gumby? The artist who drew Gumby certainly did, and sued the Chinese government.)