Print

Pacific Crossings Travelogue

0By Mike Mense, FAIA

Three stories.

0On arriving in Shanghai, I took the maglev – the train that goes 160 miles per hour – and then the subway, even nicer than BART or DCMetro, and got off at Peoples Square. Now, I have to back up to say that the shoe shine guys in Hong Kong had me thinking. So I walk out of the subway station in downtown Shanghai and this guy waves his shoe shine box at me and I say, sure. He’s shining my shoes and these guys come up, regular looking guys in inexpensive western pants and shirts and they start talking to the shoe shine guy and then they start yelling at the shoe shine guy, and meanwhile, he is shining my shoes, and yelling back at them, but also looking frightened, and then he’s shining my briefcase, and I am just sitting there watching these three Chinese guys argue – I have no idea what they are saying. Eventually, I have nothing else he can shine so I reach to pay him something – and these other guys start yelling at me, clearly wanting me to put my money away, sheesh, so I am starting to understand, and I decide to try to bribe them (to let me pay the other guy, I mean, c’mon, I am not going to be the American who takes advantage of the Chinese shoe shine guy). No, they say, mostly by waving their arms, no, no, no. Now we are all yelling at each other and the shoe shine guy grabs money out of my hand (maybe a lot to him, not much to me). I say ok. That frees me from the three of them, but they continue to yell at each other until after I have left the square. I was pretty excited. I think they were “cadre”, street representatives of the “Party”. Wow, this must be the Peoples Republic.

0Another day, I am walking down the street and these guys start yelling “watch bag” at me. What? I don’t have a bag. Why would I need you to watch my bag? “Watch bag, watch bag!” Oh, finally I get it. They want me to go in a back alley so they can sell me a watch or a designer hand bag. Even in English, the language is tough.

0In Shanghai, there was a big park near our hotel with lots of trees and greenery. In one area, brides and grooms get their pictures taken. (China feels to me like a very sweet place, lots of wholesome couples obviously deeply in love walking around a bit moony eyed.) But like so many things in China, this is way off the deep end. There is a bus parking area, because tens of couples (she always in a western white wedding gown, he in a tuxedo) show up regularly to get their wedding pictures taken. The wedding planner storefronts look just like the banks and there seem to be just as many. The buses are lined up, some full of couples waiting to leave and some waiting for their turn. But that’s not the point. Hanging around the picture taking area are hundreds of handsome young Chinese soldiers in spit and polish uniforms, just lounging around and ogling the brides. I don’t know if they are hoping the brides will have a change of heart or if they are trying to decide what to look for in a bride. Hundreds of handsome young men (but only soldiers in uniform) hanging around watching…

Three worries.

0How do they build so fast? They have minimized first cost. They don’t have sprinklers, they often don’t have plumbing within an apartment. In a twenty story apartment building, there aren’t even smoke detectors. And, these twenty to forty story apartment buildings are built new with a window that can be removed so the tenant can install a room air conditioner. The most distinctive photograph of urban Shanghai is one of rows and rows of tall apartment buildings with hundreds of room air conditioners hanging off the sides, with the power cord plugged into a convenience outlet on the outside of the building.

0Walking around Shanghai on the weekend, you see, over and over again, four adults chasing after one child. This is Mom and Dad and two grandparents (I don’t know what happened to the other grandparents.) This is the result of the one child rule. Even the Chinese are worried about this generation of (can I say spoiled?) children and how they may damage China’s social traditions.

0China is great testimony to the difficulties of democracy. It is so much easier to get things done when you are not saddled with democracy. There are dangers, though, of inadequate vetting. We were shown a grand project, an environmental preserve occupying an entire island larger than Manhattan. This was to be an environmental preserve, an exemplar of sustainability – powered by an enormous windmill farm sure to kill every bird in the neighborhood. And there was no mention of the fate of the thousands of people who have lived on this island for generations, they will just go away.

Three discoveries.

0People are not supposed to wear pajamas out of doors, but they do it now in Shanghai because it is a status symbol. If you can walk around in pajamas in downtown Shanghai, you must live in downtown Shanghai and that is a thing of high status.

0You do not criticize the government. We were at a session where the panel was talking about green design in China, and how great the future looked. We had all just spent two days where sometimes the smog was so bad that you could not see to the end of the block. So, being from Alaska, I raised my hand and asked how we could be talking about sustainability when they were creating an environment in which humans cannot breath. There was an old professor. I believe he is wise, I believe he knows exactly what is happening. He looks at us ruefully and says, well, in China, you know, “form follows profit.”

0China gives me hope for the future of mankind. It appears that many more individuals are in the game there than in the United States. The parcels of property are much smaller, so there are many, many more building owners. (One of the results is something they call pencil towers -- forty story apartment buildings with four small apartments per floor. I would not want to be there in a fire.) Tens of thousands of small shops -- you might find a block with ten different shops selling women’s dresses, or fifteen shops selling plastic pipe fittings. I don’t know how it works. I don’t know how a buyer decides which one to use, but it is such a breath of fresh air compared to the Walmart and Barnes and Noble dominated U.S.A.

0Mike Mense, FAIA may be reached at 907 277 8761 or mike@mmense.com.