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| scale model of Shanghai at the Urban Planning Museum |
Shanghai is an unbelievable city. Sophisticated, high style, lots of neon, huge
manufacturing center, 25 million inhabitants, 24 hour traffic jams, mighty
infrastructure, hotbed of consumerism, expensive. It has excellent restaurants, enormous
shopping malls, more skyscrapers than New York and beautiful hotels serving the
large numbers of foreigners who come to tour and do business in this vital
city. It also has the Bund, the wide
boardwalk along the Hangpo River which divides the eastern and western parts of
the city, the new financial district from the old, traditional center.
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| Pudong (Shanghai's financial center) at night |
Our first visit was in 1989 when there were 11 million
bicycles, almost no cars except a few owned by high officials and the military,
and farms across the river from the old part of the city in the area that is
now Pudong, the business and financial heart of China. The population was half what it is
today. Shanghai is perhaps the most
significant example of what China has accomplished in the last 30 years.
Shanghai also shows the opportunities and the perils of the
Chinese economy. Many of the office and
apartment towers still have too much empty space. Yet, housing is so expensive that many young
people can’t afford to live in the city, choosing to rent or buy their homes a
long commute from their jobs. They must
rely on their parents to raise their children, something many grandparents are
beginning to feel is a burden at a time when they have some extra money of
their own and would like the freedom to travel or pursue their own interests.
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| acrylic Mao jacket--Long Museum |
At the same time, Shanghai has wonderful cultural
institutions, good universities for those who qualify to attend them and an
exciting life for those who can afford it.
For the first time, we visited the Long Museum at its Pudong location (one
of its 3 buildings—another in Shanghai and one in Chongqing). We loved it.
Its exhibition of modern Chinese art was stunning while its large
exhibit of revolutionary art from the Mao era was eye-opening. The top floor displayed some of the most beautiful
ancient Chinese scrolls I’ve ever seen.
The revolutionary art glorifies workers and peasants. Children and adults are all smiling, working
together to build the new China or looking with adoration at Chairman Mao. Mao is grand, looking off to the great
future, mixing it up with the smiling peasants, leading his army, planning his
strategies to win China’s freedom from both the Japanese and the rapacious
Westerners who tried to dominate the country.
It’s a glorious accounting of the time in which China was transformed
from a landlord/peasant society ruled by emperors into a workers’ “paradise”
ruled by Chairman Mao. It wasn’t quite
like that in reality as millions of people starved to death or were ground down
by Mao’s repression before, during and after the Cultural Revolution. But it was, indeed, a massive political,
economic and social transformation.
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| 2000 year old bronze bowl at Shanghai Museum |
The Shanghai Museum remains one of my favorites in the world
with its beautiful collections that include Chinese jade, bronze, porcelain and
painting. My favorite floor is the 4th,
where costumes of the many minority groups are displayed. I particularly love the embroidery that
defines so many of the minority groups.
It is beautiful and intricate and so finely done.
A short walk away is the Urban Planning Museum with a huge
model of Shanghai that you can walk around.
This model has grown over the many years I’ve been visiting Shanghai and
now takes up most of the floor space. It
documents the astonishing growth and building boom of the city. Across the way is People’s Park where you can
see desperate parents of unwed young women (most of whom aren’t interested in
marriage at this point in their lives) trying to lure suitable men for their
daughters by displaying their looks and accomplishments.
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| bride getting photographed on the Bund |
At night, both sides of the river are lit up, Pudong on the
east side in brilliant neon with laser patterns running up and down the tall
buildings and Puxi, on the west side, more sedate, showing off its graceful
classical buildings from the era of European domination. Brides in bright red wedding dresses pose
against the backdrop of the lights for wedding photos. Tens of thousands of people walk the broad
Bund enjoying the evening. It’s a “must
do” part of any visit to Shanghai.
In an effort to control the size of its huge cities, China
has made it difficult to move to them.
In Shanghai and other cities, you must have been born in the city to buy
a home. If you move to Shanghai from
somewhere else, you can’t send your children to school there. Even if you’re Shanghainese, you have to send
your child to the school in the district where you live or pay a premium to
send her to a public school outside your district. Private schools are very expensive.
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| British colonial custom's house in Puxi (west side of the river) |
While China is beginning to provide a social safety net in
terms of health care and pensions, people still rely heavily on their families
to pay for and provide care. Different
cities have different systems and rules.
As a Shanghai worker, you pay taxes into the social security system to
have health insurance and a pension.
But, those benefits are not portable.
If you want to move to Beijing or Chengdu for a better job, you will
have neither health insurance nor a pension.
Your money and your benefits stay in Shanghai. So the free movement of labor is very
constricted. You really can’t afford to
leave your registered home because you can’t afford health care or retirement
or your child’s education anywhere else.
At some point, China will need to reform its benefits systems in order to
encourage the freer flow of labor.
About a 2 hour drive from Shanghai is Suzhou, once the
literary and cultural center of China.
It still has the canals and charm in its center that reminded earlier
travelers of Venice. On my first visit
30 years ago, the canals were clogged with trash, but on this visit, we watched
boatmen with nets scooping up debris in the canals to keep them relatively
clean.
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| street food in Suzhou |
I.M. Pei spent part of his youth in Suzhou. Even though he was 85 when the city asked him
to design the Suzhou Museum, he took on the project with wonderful
results. The building reflects the
traditional architectural style of Suzhou.
Its spaces and displays are perfectly designed for the thousands of
small treasures from Suzhou’s past, in jade, porcelain and bronze. A section devoted to contemporary art is much
more open as the pieces are larger. One
of our favorites is a laser work where the art looks like it is being engulfed
in a snowstorm. In fact, the snowflakes
are white letters falling from a paragraph philosophizing about life and art.
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| canal in Suzhou |
It’s a long drive in heavy traffic from Shanghai to Suzhou,
worth it if you have an extra day just to see the Suzhou Museum. But, don’t go on a weekend. The lines to get in were 1 ½ hours long. Better to visit during the week.
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| Suzhou Museum designed by IM Pei |
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| ancient Suzhou sculpture, Suzhou Museum |
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