Note: There is not much here about fish!
A Tour of China in Winter By Howard Norfolk Why do I call Shanghai a "space-age city?" Here's why! -
Click on photos for enlargements, then go 'BACK' But let's come back to this later, and start with some older sights.... The Yuyuan Garden, in a corner of the old Chinese City, was built by a Ming Dynasty merchant and finished in 1577. It is said to be the best classic garden in China.
Nearby Lao Je bazaar represents a fanciful version of an old shopping centre.
The Jade Buddha Temple is Shanghai's leading Buddhist site, but is not old - it was completed in 1918. Generally speaking, Chinese people do not practise organised religion, since Mao discouraged this, and even demolished many places of worship. (This temple was saved only because the monks plastered portraits of Mao on the walls so the Red Guards couldn't tear them down without destroying Mao's face as well!). Of my four guides, three candidly said that they had "no religion" (one was a Buddhist). They had never been taught to believe in any of the gods. But on further questioning I discovered that they did accept some superstitions; those relating to feng shui, which essentially says that by taking certain actions one can influence one's 'luck.' Feng shui is practised privately in one's own home and life, and does not involve group worship, so it survived Mao's purges.
On a 'free' day (when our private guide was off duty), my friend and I wanted to visit the Shanghai Museum. We enquired about a private car and driver for the day, as we had in Xi'an, but compared to Xi'an's US$24 for the day, in Shanghai it would have cost US$48. We only really needed two $3 rides (we walked to some other places) so we made do with taxis. Shanghai is considered a rich city in China, and incomes and costs are higher than in other regions. The Shanghai Museum was opened in 1996, in a rebuilt part of the old city. It is said to be the best museum in China.
Shanghai is a booming city. The view from the courtyard of the museum, although in the older part of the city, gives a glimpse of how it is developing.
We walked through the city towards the river, and noticed the contrast between the older buildings and the new skyscrapers that poke up amongst them.
We came to The Bund - what was once the European part of Shanghai. 'Bund' is an Anglo-Indian word meaning 'embankment on a muddy shore.' Shanghai was always a port, but it really came into prominence after the first Opium War in 1842, when British gunboats forced its surrender as one of five ports open to foreign trade. Foreigners, particularly British, Americans, French and Germans moved in and built impressive buildings along the waterfront and some residential districts behind, which are still there. It became the 'whore of the Orient', where fortunes were made and lost, and was the home of swindlers, gamblers, tycoons, dandies, entertainers and missionaries. My guide ('Kevin') was amused when I told him of the English verb (popular in the 19th Century) 'to shanghai,' which means 'to kidnap, usually by drugging, for service aboard ship' or 'to induce another to do something through force or underhanded methods.'
Kipling might have considered this to be one of the places where "East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet." Chinese people were excluded from European affluence, which is one reason why the Communist Party was founded in Shanghai in 1921. It was occupied by the Japanese in WWII. In 1949 the city was 'liberated' from foreign influences, and organised crime, drugs, slavery, child labour and other vices wiped out. Progress was made in industrialising the area, but the main rebuilding has all taken place since the 1990s, when the Chinese government made a big change in direction. On the other side of the Huangpu River is the space-age skyline of Pudong! This New Development Area has been developed as the financial centre of China, with the stock exchange, banks, corporate headquarters, hotels and high-rise apartments. It was boggy vegetable farming land until the 1990s, and it is hard to believe the progress that has been made since then.
We wanted to cross over into 'the future' and we found just the way to do it - a tunnel under the river with individual fold-down four-seat rail cars (like skiing gondolas on wheels). But a tunnel with a difference - as the car trundles through, there is a fantastic light show with loud sound effects!
The Pearl of the Orient TV Tower is 480m (1535 ft.) high and was completed in 1994. It was built for TV transmission, but our guide told us that Shanghai now uses cable, so it is now mainly just a tourist attraction.
The parts of China that I saw are developing at breakneck speed. There are new highways, trains, airports, bridges, buildings, factories and public facilities going up everywhere. The economy is expanding at a very much faster rate than those of the developed world. I thought it must have been like this in Britain during the Industrial Revolution 200 years or so ago. China has a one-party system of government that is often criticised as 'non-democratic.' They have definitely made some big mistakes in the past with their Communist experiments (although the Chinese still revere Mao, saying he was '70% right and 30% wrong'), but ideas have changed now, and as long as the leaders have the best interests of the country in mind, they have the capability of getting things done fast. I would compare China's leadership to that of a private company, where the 'boss' can make decisions for the good of the company as a whole, without begging permission from committeees or from every individual worker. In the democratic West we may take years to decide whether a bridge or subway should be built, during which time politicians come and go and policies change - whereas in China they would have half a dozen finished by then! Our politicians tend to make popular decisions for the sake of their own short term interests in getting re-elected, whereas China's one-party system allows for unpopular projects that are expected to pay off in the long run. Could China's system be more appropriate for a developing economy than our 'democratic' model that we are trying to impose on the rest of the world? What will we think in twenty or thirty years' time when China may well catch up and overtake us?
The Shanghai Ocean Aquarium has a prime position right at the base of the Pearl Tower. It couldn't be any easier to find. We walked over to it.... Go to the next in this series: The whole Tour of China in Winter series: Or, back to:
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