I just have to say, is this real life?! You all have no idea how many times I’ve had to do a reality check in the last week. I got back on the ship from China yesterday, and in two days I’ll be in Viet Nam. Two days is not enough time for me to process the last 8 days, and I still haven’t fully processed Japan! Shanghai shocked me. After spending time in Japan, I thought Shanghai, China’s largest city, would look a lot like Tokyo. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The buildings were just as tall, but the streets were dusty and empty for the New Year. Every skyscraper looked completely unlike the last one, with the most varied architecture I’ve every seen in one place. The Bund was filled with bulky British colonial buildings, and across the Huangpu River, the oddly shaped towers created Pudong, which was built up just 20 years ago. A grey haze hung over the skyline every morning as the city slowly woke up. I’m glad I spent a full five days there (most people stayed only two, and then flew to Beijing), because I was able to really get a feel for the city. The first day I was alarmed by almost everything- the unrecognizable food, the crazy driving (pedestrians don’t have the right of way), the pollution, the spitting and coughing, and the prevalence of Mao Zedong 30 years after his death. I did many things, like visit Fudan University’s Center for American Studies, which my Sino-US Relations professor directs, and the Shanghai Museum and the Urban Planning Museum in People’s Square where I learned all about the history of Chinese art and Shanghai’s future as a developing city. Over all, though, my favorite days involved going to Hongkou and Zhouzhuang.
My third day in Shanghai, Kristina and I walked to Hongkou, about 20 minutes northwest of where our ship was docked. This neighborhood was where many Jews settled in Shanghai when they were escaping Nazi Germany. When the Sino-Japanese war broke out though, the Jews were confined to a ghetto, called the Restricted Sector for Stateless Refugees. We found Ohel Moishe Synagogue, which is at this point, the only evidence that there was ever a Jewish population there. Now, the tenement-lined streets are filled with lower class Chinese families setting off a constant stream of firecrackers celebrating the New Year. Unfortunately, the Synagogue and museum were closed for the holiday, but we were handed a brochure and created our own walking tour. We saw the distribution center where families were sent to be placed, and the park where Jews would meet on the weekends. There was a monument in the center of the park with a description of the area written in English, Chinese, and Hebrew, but aside from that, it looked like any other park in the morning. The space was filled with women practicing tai chi and children playing ball. Once called Little Vienna, now the neighborhood has transformed to look like any other residential area. Everyone has been talking about how dynamic and rapidly changing Shanghai is, but it felt most evident to me as I walked around this once Jewish neighborhood, now completely devoid of any Jewish culture.
I really loved walking around town with just Kristina. It’s always fun to have lots of people around, but I think everyone has discovered that a pair is the easiest, 3 is the safest, and 4 is the best way to split a cab. It was great only having to consult one person about what we should do next or where we should eat. We went over to Doulun Cultural Street, where there were lots of interesting storefronts, including calligraphy stores, Christian bookshops, an antique store filled with old communist paraphernalia, and a tea house with a statue of Charlie Chaplin in front. The street was also home to the old meeting house of the League of Left Wing Writers, which has been converted into a museum. Unfortunately, all of the displays were in Chinese, so we weren’t entirely sure what we were seeing. We turned down a side street and it was like walking through a black hole. All of a sudden, we were completely out of place. There were women frying dough in the street, locals browsing tables of boxed fruit, and dried fish hanging everywhere. You should all be proud that I kept it cool as fish heads were being chopped off right before my eyes!
I wanted to keep these posts short, but I’m clearly failing miserably. So I’ll just write about Zhouzhuang. On the third night, the ship left for Hong Kong, and myself and 3 other girls stayed in a youth hostel. In the morning, we set out to find the sightseeing bus company that ran buses back and forth from the canal towns of Suzhou and Zhujiajiao. Once we got to the station, the woman at the ticket office said there were no trips to either of those places that day. When we asked where they were going, she replied with “Zhouzhuang.” Completely mystified, we quickly decided to just go for it. So we hopped on the bus to a place that we could not even find in our travel guide, ready for a day of adventure. It turns out that Zhouzhuang is the oldest water village in the Shanghai area. It was about an hour long drive outside of the city, and is a tourist destination mostly for the Chinese. So as if we didn’t stand out already as 4 white girls, we clearly didn’t belong there! That said, it was the most incredible place. It felt like “real China” completely unlike the concrete jungle of Shanghai. The town was a complex network of alleyways and bridges, interspersed with old residences and souvenir stands. We walked slowly through the packed sidewalks, taking it all in. Eventually, we got to Quanfu Temple, an old Buddhist religious site. It was one of three Buddhist temples that I was able to see in China (including the Jade Buddha Temple in Shanghai, and the Temple of 10,000 Buddhas in the New Territories of Hong Kong) and it was beautifully ornate. I walked through courtyard after courtyard of sanctuaries filled with incense, and across bridges stretching over coy ponds. Though every aspect of the temples was gorgeous, I didn’t feel the same type of connection that I felt with the Shinto shrines in Japan. I’m interested to see how I feel in the Buddhist temples in India, which I expect will have a very different atmosphere.
So right now, I’m trying my best to get over the cold I caught (colds spread around this ship FAST), and reading up on Vietnam as fast as I can. For some reason, Vietnam wasn’t one of the countries I was really excited to see, but now that Southeast Asia is all I need to focus on, I really can’t wait to experience the culture. I’ll be spending two days on the Mekong Delta, and I’ll see the Cu Chi Tunnels and Cao Dai Temple, but other than that, I have no idea what I’ll do! Most people are actually going on a Semester at Sea trip to Cambodia to see Phnom Penh and Angkor Wat. Oh man, I can’t believe I didn’t even write anything about Hong Kong here. Hopefully I’ll get the chance to put up another post tomorrow before we get to Ho Chi Minh City!
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