Like my entry about Lembongan Island, this one is a leftover from an earlier month that somehow never made it from my tablet to facebook. I'll get back to political commentary in my next two entries (topics: China's Nine Dash Line, and why the end of the Amero-Pakistani Aliiance is a good thing for both America, and for the Indo-Pacific). In the meantime, here's one more travel-themed entry.
It was my first time on a Chinese passenger train in nearly two years, my second freely chosen time ever riding one without my ex, and my first time ever going on one alone.
I have no idea if any of that is even the slightest bit significant, if truth be known. What I am sure is significant is it was my first time back in Shanghai in nearly two years, making this the longest I have gone without seeing my beloved city since I came here for the first time in 2012, the longest "Shanghai-less" time in my "post-2-12-Shanghai-surprise-visit" life.
Ah, Shanghai, my first taste of the world beyond the U.S. (give or take a war), the strawberry wine of my expat life. In all of the black and tedious hellscape of months (which have shown that funny habit the poets and songwriters always describe of turning into years) in Beijing, this shining city has been the anchor on which I fixed my hopes that there was still a reason to stay in China other than just for the money. The memories have always been there, visions of a bustling, cosmopolitan supercity that I always described as looking more like Coruscant than it resembles anything on Earth, postmodern visions of day to day life in the midst of a realm that looks straight out of science fiction, a modern day Babylon where people from all ends of the Earth meet (and these were always the success stories, not the ones Mark always so aptly called "flotsam and jetsam that washed up on the shores of China because the West didn't want them"). Whenever the brutish, neanderthaalic nature of the parochial idiots I have to deal with in Beijing (a city filled with 22 million classic "pigs on the loose^" type Chinese provincial peasant migrants with no class, grace, breeding, manners or least of all style, who spit, snort, slobber, pea and take a dump all over the sidewalk right out in broad daylight without a thought in the world, and if anyone thinks I'm speaking in hyperbole let them come to Beijing) gets to the point where I am screaming "that's so ****ing Chinese" about everything, when I am asking out loud "how the blazes did this country ever make it out of the Dark Ages?!" and then answering myself "never mind, they didn't!" Those are the days when I would always remind myself "well, at least there is Shanghai. At least there is one place where 'Chinese Civilization' isn't an oxymoron." And I would always tell myself "you need to get back to Shanghai for a few days. That's all."
So why, in my last two trips here, has it begun to look more and more like the rest of the country, especially the idiotic Human herds that throng subways and trains where lines or queues would be back West? Could it be that even Shanghai is losing its magic?
Are the "pigs on the loose^" taking over this city as well?
Is Shanghai under some kind of pressure from the CCP to let themselves go so they will stop making Beijing look bad?
Is it just that my rosy glasses are starting to be unable to keep up with the increasingly cynical lens through which I view the whole confounded country?
...Oooooor is it just that the last two times I have come here (Chinese New Year 2016 and now Golden Week 2017) have been peak travel times when 1.5 billion of the same stupid peasants are thronging to "The Paris of the East" hoping to get their next few thousand contemptible selfies?
I have a feeling it is the last...
After writing the previous (while sitting by the Fountain in People's Park, one of my favorite places in the city), and taking a rather impressive video of the fountain's waterdance, I made my way to the Bund for my usual convalescent stint by the water. Only, it never happened. In short, the Police and the PLA have the area barricaded into pathways to try and control the crowds. After wandering 500 meters north and getting stuck in a herd, I ended up waiting in an unmoving line for forty minutes waiting on some idiot with a lieutenant's insignia on his shoulderboard to finally allow more people in. He did not. I left in disgust and this now stands a risk of being my first trip to Shanghai that will not include a trip to the Bund.
Needless to say, I remain convinced that no other country could take something as amazing as the Shanghai Bund and turn it into such a fustercluck. It seems that even in Shanghai, there is still no escaping the sick reality that "dees eez China."
And yet, even unable to reach the usual sights and sounds that made Shanghai such a turning point for me, I still managed to find a few gems that made it seem, ironically, more western; more homely. Fuzhou Road, for example, which seems to specialize in trophy shops, calligraphy shops amd bookstores, had one gem of a bookstore where I was finally able to find some old favorites at unbelievably good rates. It began to appear that I could, in fact, envision myself living here, undoubtedly haunting Xujiahui at night taking walks down memory lane.
...Memory Lane... I cannot pretend the memories are all pleasant. The specter of February 25, 2012 still sticks his head up from time to time. I have finally reached the point where I can walk around this city without feeling that old familiar pain, but I still find myself making geographic connections through the lens of "snap Now I see! This is that elevated road I could see from K---'s window" or "ah, okay. THAT'S where K--- and I..." It would not shock me so much to find myself doing that, were it not for one thing: it shows that the memories of those two weeks are so vivid, even after almost six years, that an insignificant, peripheral memory like, of all things, the view from her living room window, is still fresh and clear enough to form real-time, spatial connections. That doesn't happen often in my mind.
It shows me confirmation, though, of what I already almost knew: that it was not just the memories of that wild, ridiculous, against-all-odds whirlwind of a love story that kept me coming back to the city, but something inherently world-changing about the trip itself, and to a possibly lesser extent, the city itself, which I have come here time and time again trying to recapture.
I have never quite recaptured all of it. Bits and pieces, but never all of that wide-eyed, dumbstruck wonder, and I guess I can't. It was my first visit to China, my first visit to anywhere in Asia, my first trip outside the United States for that matter (again, war notwithstanding), and my first time ever seeing a city bigger than Dallas (except maybe Houston, which is not bigger by a huge margin). It was my first time getting on a plane by myself of my own volition. It was my first time ever even having a passport. There will never be THAT many firsts in one trip again. And yet, unlike the magic of some moments in life (magic which seems doomed to fade to such a dim memory that we wonder if it even existed), that magic remains etched clearly enough in memory to manifest something of itself, or at least to send its relatives in its stead. Indeed, while none of my tenures here (including 2013 when I lived here for three months) have had quite the impact upon me as the first trip back in 2012, each trip here seems to have an identity of its own. And for the last two trips, part of that identity has been "I hate to break it to you, Patriam, but Shanghai is still part of China." It's a deliciously bitter little irony: the city I always remember with nostalgic smiles and rosy sighs is the largest city in this country I can barely even mention nowadays without gritting my teeth and clenching my fists. The city I love is the most iconic city in the country I am learning to hate.
And so, it comes to my final day here, a day which will be a bit abbreviated because I did not get to sleep until 7 AM after dancing the night away with a young Russian bombshell (clubs were never really my scene but it was nice to feel like I was in my 20's again). The three day excursion has mostly been a success. The usual draws have been too crowded, so I have been left exploring some of the "one of these days I'll see what's down there" areas, and finally started to feel like I know a few of the city's secrets, something I could not even say when I lived here. I even found myself giving traveller's tips and "welcome to Shanghai" advice to a group of rookie expats who had only been in China a month. It was strange to realize they live here and I no longer do but I was the one giving subway directions. I actually feel (probably presumptuously) like I am a part of this city, and somehow, that brings me peace. It also brings with it a realization of just why Beijing has been so much more infuriating recently than before. I realize now that I have found myself becoming (unknowingly and quite unwillingly) part of Beijing, feeling a connection with it which, in truth, I never really wanted. But after these last few trips I realize, Shanghai is not losing its magic. Not really. It is just losing its exoticism.
Coming to Shanghai no longer feels like wandering back through the wardrobe into Narnia. Instead, it feels like returning home. Maybe not home in the sense of where I actually still lay my head, but home in the sense that one has when going back to their hometown to visit their parents. One comes into town, settles in with no "get a feel for the territory" phase, and relaxes. Yeah, I still try to see a lot of the old attractions, but they are with the air of one who is making sure to stop in and see old friends, not the hurried and frenzied air of a tourist trying to pack as much sightseeing as possible into a few short days.
Isn't that weird? In my four total years in China, I have spent more time in Zhongshan than in Shanghai, and more in Beijing than in Shanghai and Zhongshan (and all other Chinese cities combined). I never held a full time job here (when I lived here I subsisted as a freelance tutor), or even an apartment that could truly be called mine. I was never registered here. In fact, the day is approaching when I will have spent more days in Gumaca than here in Shanghai. I was not born here, and did not see it until I was 28. And yet, somehow, I have started to see it as home.
Now who can say. Is it the same kind of "you'll always be welcome" vibe that one gets from their parents, knowing all the while "you would wear out that welcome fast if you had to move back in?" Or is it the "what kept you away so long" emotion of the prodigal son's father? I don't know yet. Given the far more demanding hiring standards of international schools here, it may be that living and working in Shanghai is just not in my future, sadly. But even if this is not going to be where I hang my hat, it is still "my version of Tianjin," as I would phrase it to my ex.
Somehow, at some point, Shanghai became "My Shanghai." Yes, it is still (unfortunately) inescapably Chinese, and I can't change that. Taiwan has more likelihood of taking back the Mainland than Shanghai does of shedding its embarassing inseparability from the lands north of the Yangtze. Yes, I will always be reminded of that unpleasant reality if I come here during travel peaks. But for all that, I have no trouble thinking of the tourists in second person instead of first. I am not one of them. I am not a tourist here. It's my city. Somehow, it became home.
And yes, I did finally make it to the Bund during this trip, even if it was only in the daytime.
^"Pigs on the Loose" is a reference to the rank-and-file uncultured tourists who inspired this book https://www.amazon.com/Pigs-Loose-Chinese-Tour-Groups-ebook/dp/B00DCE6FZK, who, as anyone who lives here can attest, account for the vast majority of the working class and lower middle class in this country.