Shanghai reborn

UNESCO Courier, Jan, 1999 by Chen Danyan, Georgi Pinkhasov

Shanghai was once a colonial gateway into China, then went into eclipse. Today it is a vast building site bidding to rise as high as New York

In the nineties, Shanghai has exploded like a Chinese firecracker. Yet this is not its first explosive boom. That occurred some 80 years ago. Shanghai used to be a small fishing port carved into British, French, American and Japanese spheres of influence. While it was carved up, Shanghai grew into the largest metropolis in Asia. In the seventies, Shanghai lost its lustre. When night fell, the city was dark as the corridors and toilets in many homes which were dimly lit by the 30-watt energy-saving bulbs then popular across the city. The river banks were dotted with courting couples who had no rooms of their own and no cafes or parks to go to. The riverside became the only place where they could meet.

Today Shanghai, like a "prodigal son", is working frantically to make up for whatever time it has wasted, harbouring an ambition to overtake Hong Kong in its development and to emulate New York or other big cities of the world.

In the old parts of the city, houses can be seen on all sides with the same big sign: "To be demolished". Whole neighbourhoods have been pulled down, and where a wall still remains one can tell by the blotches and stains on it that here stood a dining table and there a low bed in which someone must have sat reading with his greasy head against the wall. Old buildings of the colonial period are being levelled one after another at night by blasting, to be replaced by skyscrapers with glass outer walls. In the downtown area, an overhead highway and a subway are being built simultaneously, and the whole city resounds at night with thudding piledrivers at work. If the weather happens to be dry for a couple of days, the trees along the streets will be covered with dust. Some say Shanghai is simply a giant construction site; others say it looks as if it had just survived an indiscriminate bombing. People who have been away from a particular area for a few months are apt to lose their way when they come back, and this has been an experience shared by many old dwellers of the city. People tend to complain about taxi drivers making detours to cheat their customers without realizing that they too are constantly trying to find their way. The city map of Shanghai has to be updated every three months.

Huge German supermarkets have started to trade in Shanghai. So have big Japanese department stores, luxury shops from New York's Fifth Avenue and Haagen Dazs ice-cream parlours. Many other commodities have found their way to Shanghai as well, such as Shell petrol, French perfume, Swiss chocolate and Philips electrical appliances. There are also Irish pubs, Kobe style cafes, Bordeaux wine shops, hard rock bars and even Tex-Mex restaurants, now very much in vogue in Europe. After long years of impoverishment, people in Shanghai, infused with an urge for material possession, are now rushing in all directions into shops, real estate agencies, banks and all other places where money can be made and spent.

In the streets, pedestrians vie for passage with motor vehicles: shoddy taxis converted from 125cc Happiness brand motorcycles, air-conditioned coaches, swarms of motorized pedicabs ferrying first-grade pupils and trailing black smoke behind them, shaky push carts full of construction debris, and imported Cadillacs belonging to foreign businessmen. In the narrow streets built in the twenties, people and cars go busily on their way. This is Shanghai today.