Silence and Shanghai
Posted by Stuart at 09:32 AM on October 09, 2006I suppose that I picked a bad time to take a two and a half week break from posting anything to this site. But don't worry, everything is fine here, regardless of the coup and visa situations that we have been dealing with lately.
Part of the reason for my silence is that Piyawat and I went to Shanghai, China for a six day holiday. But unlike most trips that I take, I haven't yet found the motivation to write much about it. To be honest, my main take-away from the trip was that Shanghai is way over-hyped. It was "nice", but not terribly interesting. Unfortunately the government decided to destroy most of the interesting sites (like temples) and, as I have noticed with other communist countries, history started when the current ruling party took over. Everything that happened before that has been bulldozed, erased, or just forgotten. (Or so it would seem.)
It was also a bit difficult to get around, as not many people spoke English. And the food wasn't terribly exciting either. Chinese food in Shanghai is very bland, at least when it's compared to the Thai food that I adore. Prices were a bit expensive too, again at least compared to Thailand.
On the good side, I secured a visa at the Thai consulate that will cover me through the rest of the year. And the weather was nice and cool, which was definitely a welcome break from the Bangkok heat.
Perhaps I will find some time to talk about some of the things we did see. I'll be sure to at least post some pictures at some point. But I just wanted to give a little update for now.
Hi Nui. Yes, "Manufactured Landscape" is a good phrase for it. They have practically built an entire city of skyskrapers in a little more than a decade. There are a lot of parks in the town as well, but they were made after forcibly relocating all of the people who lived in that area.
But after all that building and landscaping, the city still feels soul-less. There doesn't seem to be any emotion, or passion, or any feeling at all.
It also seemed very hard to learn more about "real life" there. When I was in Burma (and definitely here in Thailand) people were more open and more willing to share what they have with me. But not a single Chinese person started a conversation with us, or offered to help, or showed us anything about their personal life. And we were there for a fairly long time (6 days).
I am not saying that one is better than the other... just observations on different cultures. But I know for sure which one I want to surround myself with.
That's interesting what you said, "soul-less". I wondered about the cost of all that development.
I loved my visit to Burma too. Went there sometime before the year 2000, I think...Have to look up my old passport. People there called Thailand "Ayodhya", took us back some 400 years for a brief moment. I was highly impressed by how religious they were. Totally amazed that at 10:00pm the Shwedagon Pagoda was well lit and full of people.
Can't wait to see those pictures!
I have spent months in mny places in China and can say without a doubt that the people in the North are completely unwilling to deal with westerners - though I'm suprised it's still as bad as it was a few years back. I'd hope the whole Olympic thing might have lightened them up a little.
That said, the people in the mid- to south- (say, Chengdu downwards) were always much more friendly towards me, but still quite detached.
There is a very good book called "River Town - Two years on the Yangtze" about a peacecorps guy, in China. He was there two years and despite thinking he had made good friends, at the end he realised - he hadn't. The Chinese simply didn't trust him enough to ever be a real, real friend. It's quite sad, but after all the years of problems in China, you can understand a little why they are so very wary of the rest of the world.
Glad you're back. Looking forward to seeing the pictures. I just came home from seeing a Canadian documentary about China's industrialisation, "Manufactured Landscape". If you ever come across it, I highly recommend it. There were considerable footage of Shanghai in that doc, it certainly looked like an immense city.