Walking through the streets of Shanghai, looking around, feeling the breath of fresh air – yes fresh air, – the cool breeze by the rivers, looking up at the buildings, watching the Huangpu river slowly crawl by, droves of people smartly dressed pass by, the vendors, the beautiful stores, and the huge ships come and go feels nothing like any other place in China. If Beijing were a man, Shanghai would be his cute sister. While the beauty of Beijing comes from its imperial past, Shanghai’s charm comes from her ancient struggles, brush with colonialists, and embrace of modernity. The city exuberates a sense of familiarity yet distant. If New York and Paris were to have a baby, the baby would look like Shanghai. Moreover, Shanghai’s skyline at night looks like an artistic impression of what cities would look like forty years in the future.
The name Shanghai means “City of Seas,” and visiting Shanghai brings literal meaning to that name. I mean how often does one see cargo ships floating down past great Metropolis architecture, maybe its because the Huangpu River makes the Hudson River look like a stream. Shanghai’s accessibility has tremendously contributed to its rapid development and wealth. Two navigable rivers flow through the city, supported by numerous ports. To the east, the Huangpu relieves its burden to the Yangtze River, which vomits it out into the East China Sea, marking an end to its 6300-kilometer journey. The Wusongkou lighthouse stretches several hundred meters into the Sea; watching it standing there all alone, staring deep past the East China Sea into the Pacific Ocean is melancholic, made me realize how ambitious, lost, lonely, and far from home it might have felt for the first European merchants who set foot in Shanghai. It felt like I was standing at the edge of the world, and if I continued further east, it would have been right to fall out of the world.
The Bund
One of the most captivating places in Shanghai was the Bund. In the vast metropolis that is Shanghai, the Bund looks misplaced. The Bund looks like little Europe in the middle of East Asia. It lies along the Huangpu River, and one has to cross the river to have a full view of the place. It consists of more than twenty buildings built in the like of Western European architecture. In fact, if a British man were to wake up and find himself in the Bund, he would imagine that he had transcended into an alternate universe where England was occupied by the Chinese. Most of the buildings in the Bund face the Huangpu River. In front of the Bund’s waterfront is a roadway stretching several kilometers and runs along the river. The road is aligned by shade trees and park benches, a characteristic that contributes to the authentic French or British feel of the place. I believe that anyone from western Europe who works in Shanghai and occasionally gets homesick would benefit from taking midnight walks along the Bund’s waterfront while picturing Huangpu as the Thames.
One would naturally have an interest in knowing how some parts of Shanghai came to resemble London. After a little digging, I learned that the Bund has some of the oldest buildings in Shanghai. At one point in China’s history, half of China’s wealth was concentrated along with the one and a half kilometer stretch that that is the Bund. Before its rise, the Bund was all but a muddy shore along the Huangpu river, however, after the opium wars of the mid-nineteenth century, British merchants started to take an interest in the muddy shore, and soon after, the shore’s fate was transformed as the British made it their preferred settlement. Next to the river along the Bund is an old metrological tower. I heard that back in the nineteenth century, it had a huge iron ball at its tip that would drop every day at noon and let people sync their watches. Also, one of the Bund’s most prominent building is the majestic HSBC building that has a dome on its roof. It looks like a building one would find in Chicago or Europe. The building was once the headquarters of a powerful bank. The HSBC’s building neo-classical design exudes elegance and has been adopted by many banks around the world to convey an aura of strength and stability.
The Yuyuan Garden
The Yuyuan Garden is probably one of the most significant highlights of Shanghai. In the busy Shanghai city, the Yuyuan garden transforms the bustle into tranquility. The highlights of the Garden are its classical Chinese architecture, exquisite sculptures, carvings, and the busy Yuyuan bazaar. The Garden is composed of Sansui Hall, Wanhua Chamber, Dianchun Hall, Huijing Hall, Yuhua Hall, and the inner gardens. The Garden was built during the Ming Dynasty and was privately owned by the Pan Family. However, today, it is an oasis of peace and tranquility for all the people of Shanghai. One of the most exciting features of the Garden is the zigzag bridge right in the middle below the green pond. According to mythology, ghosts walk in a straight line. Therefore, the zigzag of the bridge protects one from these evil spirits; walking the bridge brings people good luck. The Yuyuan Garden was one of the most crowded places that I visited, it was more like a market than a garden because of the crowds.
One thing someone notices in China is the people’s love for tea. The zigzags Jiu Qu Bridge in the middle of the Garden leads one to the Mid Lake Pavilion Teahouse. Although the price of tea inside the Pavilion Teahouse was high, just being inside the tea house gave me a glimpse of the Chinese culture as portrayed in books and movies. Old ladies were playing traditional Chinese instruments, and I slowly drifted to a land where Sun Wukong was king. I looked out of the window of the teahouse at the myriads of people below and felt glad I wasn’t among them. Although the Garden’s sloping roofs and the charming ancient Chinese architecture was a sight to behold, much of the Garden’s beauty lay in its carvings and sculptures. For anyone looking for a glimpse of ancient China, the Yuyuan Garden is the place to be.
I remember Shanghai to be a fast-paced city. Shanghai residents walked quickly, people were easily caught up in traffic jams, and the subway systems were mostly crowded. A friend who worked in Shanghai once told me that the reason most westerners who lived in Shanghai were binge drinkers was because of the fast-paced nature of their lifestyle. It wasn’t uncommon for employers to ask their employees to work from 6 AM to 6PM. Although Shanghai had some of the tallest buildings I had ever seen, fog could sometimes form and block visibility to some of the highest buildings. One night as I sat on a restaurant roof overlooking Huangpu’s golden bend, I marveled at the beauty of Shanghai’s Lujiazui skyline, I believed that it symbolized China’s hard work and perseverance. Then I reflected back to ancient sites like Yuyuan Garden, the Forbidden City, and the Great Wall. China’s ancient civilizations were rich, brilliant, and powerful. China was not doing anything new, it was only reclaiming its lost glory.
Zac Viper 