Some Final Adventures

Hi! Sorry it's been so ridiculously long since I've posted. I am now back in Boston, but I'm definitely not done talking about China! I started writing the post below a week ago, but got too busy/lazy to finish it and post it. It's about my second to last weekend in China. Enjoy...

That title is rather dramatic, but I guess things are getting a little dramatic here, in terms of how quickly time has flown past, and how much I have had to do before leaving. For example: I started writing this post Tuesday, but now it’s Sunday, and I’m in the airport waiting to board my flight to Toronto. For the sake of having some semblance of focus, this post is going to be about last weekend. Then, once I return to Boston (AH!), I’ll post about what it was like saying goodbye here and sort of try to wrap up my China experience. If that’s even possible. But first, let’s rewind a bit to the weekend, because it was absolutely marvelous (and adventure-filled).

Saturday morning I got up early to go meet up with my friend Douglon Tse (fellow member of the Milton Class of ’09, currently a student at the University of Hong Kong), who was in town for the weekend to see his dad, who works in Shanghai. Douglon had invited me (because he’s absolutely crazy awesome) to go along on a private, very very special tour his dad had arranged of the Shanghai World Expo site. The Expo, in case you don’t know, is the current incarnation of the World’s Fair; it happens every 10 years, and features pavilions from most countries, and provides a tremendous opportunity and a tremendous amount of prestige (and responsibility/expense) for the host country. Kind of like the Olympics. Except the Expo is even bigger because it runs for 6 months, and involves building basically an entire city, not just an Olympic village. So the Chinese government has set aside (read: seized and razed?) a huge piece of land on the eastern side of the Huangpu River (aka Pudong) and has been busily transforming it into a sort of ideal “world city” filled with futuristic buildings, examples of urban best practices, pavilions, and a whole infrastructure of its own. It’s just an incredibly enormous project. China is also busily rebuilding Shanghai in preparation for the millions and millions of visitors they’re expecting to get. The Expo doesn’t open until May, so I was a little bummed that I was going to miss out on seeing it, since it’s such a big deal. And Douglon, per usual, came to the rescue! I got to spend a morning touring the Expo site, and it was amazing, for many reasons. The most obviously striking part of the tour was how completely un-ready the site is. It’s a massive construction site, filled with debris, scaffolding, construction equipment, construction workers, piles of dirt, cement, steel, etc etc. Certainly not a place ready to be descended upon by tourists anytime soon…and yet May 1 is not that far away. Getting an inside look at a Chinese construction site was really cool in and of itself; tens of thousands of workers from all over China have migrated to work on the site, and seeing them and their temporary housing was interesting (overwhelmingly men, but I did see a couple female construction workers interestingly enough). The other highlight was, somewhat obviously, seeing the pavilions. The Chinese pavilion has become something of a national icon, much like the Birds Nest, as its image appears everywhere—posters, advertisements, TV, etc. I think it’s a really striking, beautiful building that deserves to become a classic. Built to look like a modern pagoda, it’s bright red and absolutely massive. The other iconic building that we saw was the flying-saucer-like performance stadium. I have a feeling that that one’s aesthetic might be a little more short lived than the China pavilion. My other favorite pavilions were the Scandinavian countries’; they’re all well thought-out, interesting buildings, that show a commitment both to showcasing the country, and to adhering to the spirit of the Expo and highlighting some sort of “best practice.” The American pavilion, on the other hand, does not yet exist…uhoh. In our defense, the recession hit, and our government decided it wasn’t going to spend any money on the pavilion which I think was a good choice. But we have failed at finding private or corporate donors, so we have yet to start to build our pavilion. I think we should just set up a hot dog stand. Or maybe put some voting booths out on display that people can go into to practice voting. The Chinese government would love that!

After our tour of the Expo, we went to look at Douglon’s dad’s latest development project, which is renovating the former headquarters of Justine Matheson (the largest opium importing firm) on the Bund. It’s an absolutely INCREDIBLE building, with beautiful detailing and a breathtaking view. I can’t wait to go back when the project is finished, because it blew me away in its unfinished state. So cool, particularly for a history buff like me. At this point, that building basically embodies the historical irony of the Bund—former center of commerce in Asia, now completely irrelevant, supplanted by its new neighbor, Pudong, across the river. After an amazing (lots of superlatives when it comes to describing this whole morning…but it was really superlative) lunch, I made my way to the train station, where I caught a train to Nanjing for a 24 hour solo excursion.

I’d been looking forward to getting to travel on my own for a long time, and the trip was a wonderful chance to just hang out with myself. My hostel in Nanjing was well-located, right in the middle of the Confucian Temple District, which is a mostly pedestrian area that was lit up and bustling on the Saturday night I spent wandering around. Sunday, I first went to the Taiping Rebellion (or Taiping Heavenly Kingdom as the Chinese still call it) Museum. This museum was remarkable, not because it was particularly good, but because it sort of (accidentally) summed up all of the Chinese neuroses about the 19th century. For instance, the plaques in the museum implied that the Taiping were practicing communism even before Communism existed, while at the same time they laid the foundations for modern commerce in China. What?!? My other favorite quirk was that the museum never once mentioned Christianity or the Taiping’s pseudo-Christian basis (the founder claimed to be Jesus’ younger brother). Not once. According to the museum, the Taiping were just another righteous peasant rebellion against corrupt masters and a broken system…not slightly crazed messianic cult-members genuinely inspired by Christianity. Ah well. They were both, so I guess the museum gets a 50%. From this perplexing (but slightly funny) museum, I went to the very thought-provoking, very disturbing, very emotionally involved Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall. The Nanjing Massacre took place during 6 weeks in December 1937 and January 1938. When the Japanese army invaded China and finally captured Nanjing (then the capital), they went on a raping, killing and burning spree that left 300,000 people dead, and many hundreds of thousands more scarred and scattered. The Nanjing Massacre was a horrible, violent act—one that still exacerbates Japanese/Chinese animosity, especially since members of Japan’s Right Wing claim that it never happened. Ugh. The museum is incredibly detailed, filled with artifacts, interviews with survivors, photographs (of executions, dead bodies, a ravaged city, etc…), and even a viewing platform over a mass grave site. Most of the time, this heavy-handedness feels appropriate, or if not appropriate, it doesn’t feel like it goes too far over the line. However, I definitely experienced moments of intense discomfort with how the museum was handled, in particular with how it often seemed to be egging on anti-Japanese Chinese nationalism (if that term makes any sense…). For instance, upon leaving the main exhibit halls, you walk through this area that’s all about “Peace” and how we must all never forget the past so that it can never be repeated, and how every one on earth should join together to forge world peace. Good stuff, right? And then in order to exit you have to go through this “separate” exhibit about the “glorious” victory over the Japanese and how the Chinese triumphed in the war even though the Japanese were incredibly savage, etc. And it goes military victory by military victory, up until the Japanese unconditional surrender…without once mentioning Hiroshima and Nagasaka. Again: What?!? This unnecessary, untruthful aggrandizing of Chinese military “might” left a bad taste in my mouth, and reminded me why the animosity between China and Japan is one of the potentially most explosive nationalism-fueled feuds of the 21st century.

After leaving the museum, I spent about an hour or so figuring out how to navigate Nanjing by bus to go across the city to the other major site, Purple Gold Mountain. The mountain dominates the eastern part of the city, and is the site of Sun Yatsen’s tomb, the tomb of the first Ming emperor, and a beautiful scenic park. Sun Yatsen’s tomb is incredibly grandiose, and I don’t think he would be particularly happy with it if he knew, as it was built by the Nationalists in the style of a Ming Emperor’s tomb. Hmm. Maybe not appropriate for someone trying to start a republic. But you have to walk up like 400 steps or something to get to the tomb, and the view is beautiful. The Ming tomb is also really cool (it’s a World Heritage Site), and in the late afternoon light, it felt melancholy and abandoned and beautiful. The mountain is just gorgeous in general, and, with the autumn leaves (a soft yellow) but dark branches (purple) it really lives up to its name, as it looks purple from far away but yellow when you’re there. From Purple Gold Mountain, I then took the bus back into the center of the city to see Nanjing’s ancient city wall and the city’s largest gate, Zhonghuamen. By this time, dusk had set in, and wandering around this ancient city wall (wide enough at the top for 3 horses to walk abreast, and four layers deep, it’s more like a castle in the middle of the city than a gate) in the dark with the city lights twinkling below was a little creepy, but also striking and beautiful. It was such a moment of feeling the intersection of ancient and modern in China.

After that, I hopped on the metro and caught my train back to Shanghai. It was an amazing weekend!