Shanghai on the Eve of the National Day

Shanghai is a very complex city. It is very unique mix of the old the and new. In more ways than one, it is the embodiment of our shame and our glory.  At the mouth of the longest river in China, it was one of the first ports in Central China to be "opened" to "free trade"( read "imperialist designs") to Western countries at gun point. Like some other port cities, western countries enjoyed, until the "unequal treaties" signed by them with the Tsing government were declared abrogated and abolished in 1922, what was known in history as "extraterritoriality" i.e. complete local legal and jurisdictional autonomy by Western nations on certain designated zones in the city like the English zone, the French zone etc. It was occupied by the Japanese in 1931 and it was only in 1949 that Shanghai reverted to China. It then went through a period of limited development until the Big Leap Forward. It was the headquarters of the ultra-leftists led by the so-called "gang of 4"  headed by Chiang Ching who assisted Mao to regain power through that 10-year national disaster called "the Cultural Revolution" after Mao lost political control following the failure of his Big Leap Forward in which he madly claimed that China should achieve within a few years what took the West a century. For many years, it watched with jealousy the rapid rise in development and wealth of Shenzhen under Deng's pilot controlled capitalist revival scheme called "special economic zone" under his new policy of "letting one part of China grow rich before the others" and it was not until Jiang Zemin and his cronies, the so-called "Shanghai Clique" rose to power that Shanghai took giant steps to catch up. It now boasts one of the largest container ports of China and Puxi (the west bank of the Huangpu River) was home to the 184-day World Expo 2010 which ended October last year, having been attended by more then 73 million with participation by 192 countries under the main theme of "Better City – Better Life" ( under five sub-themes for the different pavilions "Urban Footprints", "Urban Planet", "Urbanian", "City Being," and "Urban Future". It really helped to boost its tourist industry and vastly improved city's transport because 6 new subways were built between 2008 and 2010 and 4000 new taxis were added and to top it all, it added an extra USD 157 million to Shanghai's coffers. The Bureau of International Expositions (BIE) and the Shanghai government have already announced plans to build the world's only official World Expo Museum in Shanghai, on the Puxi side of the expo site. Construction is expected to begin in 2012 and it is hoped that it will be completed by 2015.

I went to Shanghai to attend the wedding of one of my nephews on the eve of the National Day earlier this hear and took the chance to record some of my quick impressions of this world city and to get a "feel"  of the city's pulse as far as I could do so through the eyes of my camera.

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An old fashioned church next to my hotel.



Two lovebirds sitting at the next table when I went to have a bite at a fast good shop at an underground mall shortly after my arrival. Both of them were highly educated, one works for the Nuclear Centre and the other for a pharmaceutical company.
 

Some teenagers I found at the food court. Not very different from those in HK, at least from the way they dress.

One of the natural food counters.

A mainly vegetarian dish on sale

This store sells dried beef and pork slices doing roaring business. The queue must have been at least 20 long.

The Architectural Museum of Shanghai

The same later at night.

 

American candy store in Shanghai!

The flashy head gear of the young I found close to my hotel.

LED have really come of age. You find them everywhere now, adding a bit of color to our dark city nights.

It's green now

Then red

Another building close to my hotel.

In the evening, after the wedding banquet, I slipped out to savour the night. This is Nanjing Road, the equivalent of our Causeway Bay or Mongkok.

A mother and son sharing some information on the small screen of the son's I-phone.

A big department store took the opportunity to set up an outdoor counter to push sales of scarves from Hong Kong!

It attracted quite a crowd.

Being a cripple doesn't mean being shut off from the festive spirit so long as one has a motorised tricyle. One can still come out with one's ever faithful little companion and vicariously share in the fun and sample the atmosphere of excitement felt by the pre-National Day holiday crowd milling in and out of the department store.

Nanjing Road was filled with people.

A store selling delicious hot buns and spicy soup. Looks a bit like Jiu Fen and Danshui in Taipei, doesn't it?

This one sells chipped ice, pearl tea, sea weed cake and fresh fruit juice

Everywhere you go, you find people busy reading their text messages.

Wherever you find people, you can be sure you'll find a Starbuck!

Something you'll never see in the streets of Hong Kong. Apparently, dancing is quite popular in Shanghai. You find them dancing everywhere: in the parks and even in the streets. The lady in mottled black and white T-shirt was really good at Latin dancing.

She would dance alone if she could not find a partner. No, not really dancing, more like demonstation of various types of Latin and ball room dancing.

This old man was not at all shy to learn new hip hop and rap steps from the young man.

A pair of young lovers openly embracing in the streets in full public view. Ah, the power of testosterone and oestrogen! The most powerful chemical weapon ever invented by Nature!

Some tourists sitting. There were lots of young professionals out for business. I was accosted more than 20 times within an hour! Some spoke to me in Japanese/English  "ma-sa-ji"?  Others in mandarin and some in English. Some literally pulled at my sleeves and my arms! Competition must be tough. Life on the streets isn't easy these days.

An advertisement promoting teenage T-Shirts directly over an old fashioned pension emphasizing its "old Shanghai" status

A grandfather teaching his grandson how to play a modern day version of the sling (?) ("丫叉") with electronic bullets which would light up with the explosive force of their upward motion as the bullet is released from the thick rubber band..

A young father taking his darling out for a photo shoot to add to the family album to be shown with pride to his son's doting grandparents and fussing aunties later.  

Some cleaning workers taking a break at a quieter part of the street.

Advertising booths everywhere along the pedestrian walk. This one is from an old British shoe brand.

Another store LED screen flickering messages pushing the sale of what makes most money from ladies everywhere: cosmetics!

But I found uniformed security guards, city guards, policemen, street committee or neighhorhood vigilante men at every street corner: some walking, some on bicycles, some on motor-bikes and some in small "golf carts" and others in patrolling vans.

The pavement before crossing the street to the riverside Bund. Again guards and security men everywhere.

The pedestrian crossing

The old style European buildings on the Bund,

Across the Huangpu River, you see modern buildings everywhere.

They were all lit up, probably during the annual 10-day national holidays only or all year round. I really have no idea.

More lit buildings.

Looking back at the buildings I passed.

The Bund, full of people, taking souvenir photos. After all, it's the eve of the National Day and the start of a long awaited annual break!