Shanghai and Xi'an

Rain-soaked with Shanghai’s futuristic Pudong looming in backdrop. The tallest building in the world is obscured in clouds. We had snowy, rainy, and sleety weather our entire week in Shanghai.

For the best overview of our travels to Xian and Shanghai, see Arienne's blog at www.arnoldsinchina.blogspot.com

I offer my own commentary below without trying to provide a blow-by-blow account of our activities in both places. Let me just say that we had a great time in both Xi'an and Shanghai (primarily because of the friends we met in each place), and that we are extremely thankful that we had the resources to fly from place to place during one of the largest winter storms in Chinese recent history--a storm that, as you probably already know, stranded hundreds of millions of people. Except for a 13 hour delay in Hohhot, our travel plans were largely unaffected by the storm. As we saw during hurricane Katrina, natural disasters usually weigh most heavily upon the poor. That was certainly the case here as well.

Shanghai

It is a long, long way from Shanghai to Hohhot--and I don't mean just physical distance. I mean that Shanghai is much nearer Paris or New York than it is to Hohhot. While Hohhot is a thriving, if somewhat drab, provincial capital, Shanghai is a world city with dazzling architecture, amazing energy, tons of Western expatriates, and more Starbucks, it seems, than Seattle. It's so cultured and chic here, compared to everywhere else we've been in China, that it is really hard to reconcile Shanghai with the China that we've known so far--even including Beijing, which is colorless by comparison.

Nanjing Road: Shanghai’s big shopping street.

Rob Gifford says "Shanghai is not China" and I resist that statement philosophically. As I've said before, it's all "the real China." And yet, after going to Shanghai, I agree with his statement implicitly. It just doesn't "feel" like China to me. Sitting in Starbucks on tree-lined Hengshen Road in the upscale "French Concession" district of Shanghai, sipping a green tea latte and listening to jazz and the rumble of the red line beneath my feet, I don't feel like I'm in China anymore. The Green Tea Lattes are just as gross here as in the U.S. (but I still had to try one to find out). Cashiers won't let me fumble through my Chinese phrases--"Hello, that will be 55 yuan," they say, "Thank you, bye-bye." Everywhere there are hip, trendy Westerners and Chinese elites wrapped in their stylish black winter coats and funky glasses.

Of course, there are still poor people, vendors, bikes and scooters in Shanghai (although no visible donkey-carts). After all, who would service the wealthy elite? The Chinese poor are needed to work at the upscale hotels, restaurants, and retail stores, just like in every other major city in the world. For a week, we were the wealthy elite being serviced. We stayed at a lovely hotel (thanks to Zach and Pan Yu). We ate at lovely restaurants (thanks to Zach and Pan Yu). We had a great time. (But we paid the price in guilt!)

Zach, Pan Yu, Arienne, Grace and me at the conclusion of a fantastic hot-pot dinner. Zach, who has been living in Shanghai (the real Shanghai in the real China, by the way) for years and is fluent in Chinese, is applying to American graduate schools in Anthropology and Asian studies. We know Zach through Lee Caulkins, a former student at CBC who is now a U.S. State Department official in Baghdad and a world traveler extraordinaire. It was great to spend time with these guys, which made our time in Shanghai so special. Photo Credit: Samuel.

So what did we think of Shanghai? We loved it (what we saw of it in just a week spent mainly in the old French Concession and the Bund, neighborhoods with considerable Western influence--historically and also today).

Why did we like it so much?

One reason is that we were able to hang out with Zach and Pan Yu.

Another reason is that it provided a much needed break from the lack of "charm" in Inner Mongolia. And yet, I can't evade the fact that I liked it--we liked it--because of its Western influence. We thought the Bund and the French Concession, where we spent most of our time, were "charming" because they look like Europe. We unwittingly conveyed this ethnocentrism to our children. During our first day in Shanghai, we couldn't help but marvel at the charming streets that surrounded our hotel in the French Concession: "Oh my gosh, this is so lovely, it looks like a European city, it doesn't even feel like China." Our kids picked right up on unintended theme of Western superiority. Samuel wanted to eat "Western food" all the time (although thankfully we didn't--except for two nights of take-out pizza and couple trips to some nice western cafes). He began to take notice of the architecture. "Is that building European?" "Are we still the French Concession?" "I like the French Concession." So apparently our trip to China--intended to open our children's minds to cultures and peoples beyond our own--has worked in the opposite direction. We've made our children into little Western ethnocentrists. We've also had to come to terms with our own cultural prejudices. I love Chinese culture: I love the food, the people, the history, and even classical architectural forms. But modern Chinese cities tend to be artless conglomerations of concrete block high-rises and flat neon storefronts--nothing to write home about. Chinese planners and engineers have set about obliterating everything that Westerners might consider charming--small cobble-stoned alleyways and courtyard houses--and replacing them with featureless modern buildings. So yes, Shanghai IS lovely to our Western eyes. Suffice it to say, I felt a little guilty enjoying our time here so much because it felt so much like an escape from China rather than a vacation in China.

Me trying to look trendy and hip in the French Concession neighborhood near our hotel (and a wonderful French bakery—black doors immediately to my left). If you want to look fashionable in Shanghai, a black coat like this is de rigeur. I bought mine (wool and cashmere) for 250 RMB, or about $35. Photo Credit: Grace

Xi'an

Our first day in Xi’an, with the Bell Tower behind us. Because of snow delays, we arrived at our hotel at 2:30am. Here we are bleary-eyed but happy.

Except for Starbucks, McDonalds, and western tourists, Xi'an poses a stark opposition to Shanghai. Shanghai is all about the future: bullet trains, space-age buildings, and cutting-edge urban hipsters. Xi'an is all about the past: terracotta warriors, old city walls, and the Silk Road. I'm not sure that anything from the ancient Chinese past still exists in Shanghai, whereas Xi'an tries to preserve its ancient heritage, at least for the sake of tourism. For example, in the old city, which is still contained within ancient city walls, local ordinances prohibit the construction of skyscrapers that would dwarf the Bell Tower which stands in the center of the city. This is a striking contrast to Shanghai, which is defined by its futuristic skyline, and even Beijing, which has been destroying its charming hutong neighborhoods and replacing them with bleak modernistic monoliths. It is even dramatically different from the new Xi'an which is growing up outside the old city walls. The new Xi'an is indistinguishable from anywhere else in China, but the old Xi'an still has some old world charms, especially in the touristy Muslim quarter, where narrow cobblestone streets wind their way through old neighborhoods.

Looking beyond the ancient city walls of Xi’an towards the new Xi’an that surrounds the central city.

So it was nice to see a city that has a distinctively non-western charm and that still reveres its past, even if the past is continually bucking up against the neon present. On our second day in Xi'an, we took a tour to see the terra cotta warriors. Mary, our English-speaking tour guide, was saying "Xi'an is an ancient city" at the very moment our van was passing a multistory mall plastered with gigantic pictures of Chinese women posing provocatively in scantily clad undergarments, a la Victoria's Secret. Sometimes you have to look hard for the past in China because there might just be a billboard blocking your view.

We certainly had to look hard for the past on our tour. Over the course of an eight-hour tour, we spent a grand total of one hour at the museum of the terracotta soldiers (the supposed main attraction of the tour). The other six hours were taken up as follows: 3 hours in gift shops--including the "official government" terracotta soldier factory where they manufacture authentic fake soldiers, as opposed to the unofficial shops were they make fake fakes; 2 hours traveling; 1 hour eating (above a gift shop!) and 1/2 hour each at Banpo Village (a partially excavated Neolithic town site) and Emperor Qin's tomb (a non-excavated site that therefore amounts to nothing more than a large mound of earth with some nice pathways and trees on top). I'm not complaining about the lack of time at Banpo Village or Emperor Qin's mound, not that those stops were meaningless. We learned from Mary, for instance, that Banpo Village was "the first communist society." While pointing out the food cellars (dirt pits), she noted that "Everyone was equal. Everyone shared food equally." Later, however, she said that Banpo was a "matriarchal society" where "women looked down on men." At Emperor Qin's tomb, we saw a glass case with ancient sewer pipes. Both places were interesting--but they were essentially tourist traps. And given that it was off-season, and in the midst of a severe stretch of winter weather, there were very few tourists about, making us the central target of every vendor's pitch. It took will power and a fixed blank gaze on the horizon to navigate our way through the souvenir stalls.

At the “Official Government Terracotta Warrior Factory” waiting for someone to stick a can of Tsing-Tao in one of my clenched fists.

The best thing about Xi'an was seeing Howard (right) and Thomas (left), professors at Shaanxi Normal University in Xi’an. Photo Credit: Samuel

I met Howard at a history conference in Ellensberg last spring and invited him and Thomas to come visit us in the Tri-Cities. In May I drove them from Ellensberg to CBC where they met with some of my colleagues at CBC. We then went to lunch at an “authentic” and cheap American greasy spoon, which I now cringe at the thought of, especially after they took us to a multi-course lunch at an incredible restaurant in the Muslim quarter. We spent our first day in Xi’an with Howard and Thomas. We walked on the city wall, had snowball fights with the kids, and finished our evening at another excellent restaurant in a different part of town. It was great seeing them in Xi’an—the only people we know in China who have actually been to our house in Richland, Washington!

On the old city walls with Howard and Thomas.

Another nice thing about Xi'an was the Starbucks that we spied from our hotel balcony. Arienne has been without coffee for six months now (there are no Starbucks in Hohhot although you can buy Nescafe here). There it sat, just beyond the ancient Bell Tower, emanating warm yellow light into the cold grey atmosphere, like a beacon calling foreign travelers who have been cast adrift in the world. We heard the siren calls--fresh aromatic coffee, hot chocolate, carrot muffins--and found ourselves drawn inexorably into this warm island of contentment, only to be damned thereafter into paying an astronomical price for our daily breakfast. We were also thereafter damned to experience the dilemma of bleeding heart consumers everywhere: Is this behemoth of the coffee kingdom an evil tyrant or a benevolent patron? Does it simply provide weary bourgeois travelers a bit of warmth and comfort, or is it the front line of American cultural imperialism, destroying local traditions in its wake?

Fortunately, these thorny questions lost their sting after a couple sips of coffee and a bite of a chocolate muffin. "Definitely cultural imperialism" I thought to myself as I sunk contentedly into my velour chair. At least, we reassured ourselves, local coffee vendors are probably not going out of business in tea-crazy China. Anything to rationalize another breakfast visit for an overpriced latte with a side of muffins and jazz.

American consumers at the Bell Tower Starbucks in Xi’an.

We have Starbucks to thank for making our kids into cafe connoisseurs....who actually now like to sip their hot chocolates and read! It wasn't long ago when Arienne only dreamed about the day when we could once again sit in a café and quietly read our books.

We’re back in Hohhot now, trying to recover from all the luxuries of our vacation. We went to a Spring Festival banquet yesterday with Clyde, Wu Yunna, and a handful of foreign teachers and students who are still in town over the holidays. We will be spending Chinese New Year’s Eve with Clyde and his family making jiaozi and celebrating.

Happy Spring Festival!