Life at the end of the lane

Old Zhang is sitting in his home, at the end of the lane, looking at the cranes tearing down the street. “I was born in this street, and now they break it down. It does not look so good but I am used to it and to this neighborhood. ‘Your house is not just a shag, it’s a jewel of XIXth century colonial architecture.’ I’m not sure what it means, but it’s what a passing by foreigner told me with his terrible Chinese. He also told me that the cube of a house next door was a jewel of Art Deco. I am not sure what he meant about either but this all seamed pretty important for him. It does not matter anymore, he has gone away and they torn down this house last week.
They told me that it’s for the best, that our life in a far away suburb, in a new high rise building will be so much comfortable. It’s surely true, but I don’t want to go. It’s not the little money they want to give us to move away, that will be enough in any case. I can’t remember the name of this new place and I don’t even want to learn it. All my friends will be lost, spread into various districts, and I will loose all my life with it. It’s maybe the future, but I’m not sure I want to be part of it. The past was tough some times, but not always so bad. I am so sad for Shanghai and my home that the skyscrapers are rapidly eating.
My son already moved to this new apartment and loves it. He often comes by to take me there, but I still refuse to go. Old Ma, my old neighbor, moved into one of this new tower about a year ago. He was the first ones to go, moving with a smile on his face, realizing the long life dream to have a place of his own. He had been promised long time ago to get an apartment and it finally came. He disappeared for a while, and then started to come back. He comes here everyday now. It takes him hours to cross the whole city, just to enjoy old friends and familiar places. He says life is comfortable there, but there is nobody to talk to. My life has always been at the end of this lane and I can’t imagine it differently. Seeing it disappear makes me feel that I am also going to die soon.

Budapest old and new

As much as a I love Shanghai, it was not the first city I fell in love with. Getting used to the Chinese megalopolis was actually not easy coming from the charming Central European City of Budapest. I have spent more than 5 years walking the paved streets of this XIXth century beauty. I knew about every corner of several districts, in particular the 6^th district, home of numerous theatres and cafés.
Though I left the city about 4 years ago, I have managed to come back regularly, being able to keep a strong link with my old community of friends. The city still feels like home, though the more time passes the more my memories separate from reality. The pioneer spirit that pushed a lot of foreigners to come to Hungary10 years ago seems to have somehow vanished... they are all in China now. The community of pioneers who arrived in the early – mid 90’s in Budapest is getting smaller and smaller. We had a real group of friends, most of us are gone away… just like me. The remaining ones are busy climbing the corporate ladder or heavily involved in raising their kids. Their daily life is far remote from the group of bachelors and young couples that we used to be. To my surprise, some of my friends now only meet when I am in town… passing by from China. After a few days, I miss the speed and energy of today’s Shanghai. The Budapest when I lived in was full of hopes and new energy, most of it seems to have vanished.
The city is getting more beautiful, transforming from a dark intriguing labyrinth to a colorful tourist paradise. Thanks to a current real estate boom, old buildings are being renovated into former glory, or torn down to be replaced by new. The mix creates a nice atmosphere that is catching up with Vienna or Munich. It has become a nice Central Europe city within the European Union, as opposed to this mysterious city so attractive because of its mystery. I am sure new people still arrive and create there own little world here… but it’s just not the same for me. Budapest is still a great place to visit and I always invite my overseas friends to go there. Shanghai is where my life is.

So many things to do... so little time

In an age of light speed communication, I did not take the time for month to write a post on this blog. It’s always the same spiral, when one loses the habit, try to catch up and ends up forgetting about at the end. It’s not that I did not want any more, time seems to have just fly these last months. Work has been intense in the first half of the year, and two major changes have been swallowing most of my free time including the one dedicated to blog writing.

First of all I have to introduce my girlfriend Jiajia to my readers. We have been together since late last year and our relationship is going strong. Although she does not write it, Jiajia has a major influence on this blog. She is one of the very few Chinese people that I know who is actually interested in Shanghai’s history. We go to markets together, bargaining with sellers and discovering even more interesting things. As a matter of fact, my research into the old Shanghai has become a lot of our research into the old Shanghai. I have also become the president of the French Speaking association of Shanghai
(www.cerclefrancophonedeshanghai.com). Although I am highly honored to be elected at this post, it swallows an enormous lot of my time, again competing with other activities such as reading books and writing this blog. I have been kind of submerged by it and it’s now only that I am on vacation that I finally find time to actually write. It’s not that I missed ideas, as the stack of my old documents related to Shanghai has increased a lot since the time I stopped writing… but other priorities came along. I also had to stop my Chinese lessons and I am not sure that I will be able to restart them anytime soon. I will try to be more thorough about this from now and catch back with writing this blog.

The Master of rain

Field is a young English officer in the Shanghai Municipal Police, freshly arrived from Yorkshire. Through his uncle high in the Shanghai establishment, he is very quickly introduced to both the high Shanghai society, and the less glamorous parts of the megalopolis. The master of Rain is a crime novel based in Shanghai 1927, centered around the resolution of furious murders of Russian prostitutes. Field tries is best to solve the murder, along with his newly found friend, the American detective Capresi. They are surrounded by a fallen White Russian noble turned into serving men (Natasha Medvedev) and the Taipan of one of the largest trade house (Charles Lewis), all of it under the shadow of the king of Shanghai's mafia.

Although I bought this book without knowing anything about it, I have loved every page. Tom Bradby was the foreign correspondent for a British TV. Based in Hong Kong, he clearly used a lot of time and efforts to research and recreate the old Shanghai in his novel. Characters have the right tone and locations in the city have been thoroughly researched. Only Shanghai experts will notice a few omissions, or inventions but they never deviate too far from documented history. Action flows at a fast pace making this book a real page turner.

Though enjoying the book tremendously, I have to admit that the universe created by Tom Bradby has a lot of sight, but very few sounds, smell or taste. It fails a little to immerse us in the (noisy) streets of Shanghai. There is a also a little too much indulgence in making the characters meet various historical figure (such a Borodin) without any need for the actual story. The actual plot is sometimes bizarre and the book leaves many questions unanswered, which is a bit disappointing for a crime novel. Finally, the sexual serial crime at the center of the novel seems a little odd in the 1930's.

Nevertheless, The Master of Rain is a great introduction to the old Shanghai, recreating the Paris of the East and illustrating the high life of a few as well as the hard life of many. As a quick introduction to the Old Shanghai, it comes highly recommended.

Quelques grammes de culture dans un monde de brutes

The above title refers to a famous French TV 1980's advertising. Lindt chocolate was described as "Quelques grammes de finesse dans un monde de brute" (that could be translated as "a few moments of light in a very dark world"). This really applies to the Shanghai International Literary Festival. As much as I like Shanghai, this city is not a cultural center, but the festival brings a lot of it to us.

Shanghai International Literary Festival was taking place this month. As a literature fan and heavy reader, I spent most of my weekends at the conferences.Events take place in the wonderful atmosphere of Glamour Bar, giving it a real touch of the old Shanghai. The old building of Bund #5, renovated by lovers of Old Shanghai with a touch of modernity is the perfect cradle for the event. In the city of modern skyscrapers, electronic billboard advertising and constant marketing noisy aggression taking about a "old" media like book was a blessing. The weather was foggy, modern towers in the other side of the river were disappearing through the mist. Looking at the next door building (3 on the Bund), it felt like we were back in the days of old Shanghai. We were listening to a single person talking about their love of writing and books, just like our predecessors must have done decades ago. I enjoyed the conferences tremendously, as well as the highly cultural atmosphere.

I have to admit that I did not read most of the books that were discussed before the sessions, but I left with a massive stack of reading to do. Conferences I enjoyed including Qiu Xialong (writer of the chief inspector Chen), Amy Tan ("The Joy Luck Club"), Arlette Shleifer ("Le Bar Rouge" which ends on the Bund), Xiaolu Guo ("A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for lovers") and many others. The closing session of the festival was the launching of the new guide to the Bund by Peter Hibbard.

Shanghai is not the city of culture, but the literary festival definitely brings a lot on that field. Thanks to this great event, Shanghai is becoming a little bit more of a world cultural city.

City of the flat world

"The World is flat" is a book from Thomas Friedman about globalization and the changes it is bringing to the world, companies and individuals. The main point is that the World has become a level playing field on a worldwide basis.
The collapse of Marxist Leninist style of regimes has allowed 3 billions of people (Russia, China, India and others) to join the capitalist system. The Internet and other technologies have made communicating with the whole word something easy. Work flow software allows to cut service work into pieces that can be separated and done anywhere in the world, before being put together. This was previously only possible with production of goods. Manufacturing is now "off-shored" to places like China. Services can be "outsourced offshore". Most people connected to the Internet can "upload" their creations or point of view in such things as this blog, or wikipedia (that is very difficult to access in China because it's banned). All data and information created by humans can be accessed and searched via search engines and the Internet.
I read this book within a few days mostly in the plane as I was traveling between Asia and Europe. For most people involved in international business, it's very clear that the world has actually gone flat. Although, the book did not bring much news to me, it's still enjoyable to read an analysis of this phenomenon that is influencing our lives so greatly. The version I read was the one from 2006, that was already revised, though I think one point was missing. Friedman explain clearly that the information is becoming much more diverse, with a very large share of the Internet being in other languages than English... but the reasoning does not go to the logical conclusion, i.e. that native English speakers should also learn foreign languages instead of waiting for others to learn there, being able to master it along with their own.
During the whole reading, I could not stop thinking about Shanghai today. This city is the center of the business battlefield for the largest market in the world. Any company of a respectable size has to be in China and most multinational companies make it the center of their growth for the next decades. As a consequence, the city is full with foreigners from any nationality you can think of. Shanghai today is one of the metropolis of the flat world... and will maybe become it's capital though there is still a long way to go. Thanks to Friedman's "flattening factors" Shanghai is everyday becoming more of a world city.

Qian Xiang Fang

Walking around Wing On I have tried to find the restaurant on 4th and 5th floor of the Wing On department store that I mentioned in a previous posting. The old Wing On has only restaurants on 6th and 7th floor, that are not inspiring at all. The New Wing On has a restaurant on the 7th Floor that is called 7th Heaven. This place seems to have been really famous in the old Shanghai, but the renovation has not left much of the old atmosphere. Going around the old building for a last look, I was attracted by a groups of tourists going through a back door with a restaurant sign above it. Because of the long queue to get into the lift, I climbed the 5 floors of stairs noticing that they were very well renovated... This was little compared to the beauty of the restaurant itself, Xian Qiang Fang.

The wonderful renovation of what used to be the restaurant and ballroom of the Wing On was a wonderful surprise. It has been done with a lot of taste, a lot of attention to details and great preservation of history of this building. Most of the original flooring has been preserved, as well as the radiators, doors and other equipment. Some modern touch has been added without changing the grandeur feeling of the place. The main restaurant room features a high ceiling and old style furniture, giving a real classic touch. Food is great and well served by an effective staff. Many tourists are dining in the private room, but they don't really invade the main space.

Xian Qiang Fang was made by the same group than Yong Fu Elite and The Door, others famous restaurants in Shanghai. This restaurant is perfectly re-creating the 1920's and 1930's Shanghai atmosphere. This is by far the best part of the visit of Wing On and a great addition to it. It also proves that the grandeur of Shanghai's history can be brought back with a modern touch.

Xian Qiang Fang, 4h & 5th Fl, 600 JuiJiang Rd, Shanghai - Tel:021-63515757