Shanghai As Explained to Us by Our Local Chinese Guides

Our guide, a pretty little girl named Irene (so many of the girls around are slim, petite, pretty and ageless looking that it makes you wonder about their growing cosmetics industry and how it still manages to sell them any products) introduced herself by letting us know that every Chinese person’s English name is one they have actually just picked up from the dictionary! She went on to guide us through a bus trip of the foggy, cold, and rainy streets of this huge city of 22 million people emphasizing that it is by far not the largest in China one of the most important ones as it is the economic center of mainland China.
As we shivered in the bus, she also shared with us the fact that most places we will visit in China do not have central heating (including people’s homes) so we should not expect to feel much warmer and that the rain is a constant in Shanghai (they basically have 3 seasons of rain). Just as cold as it was during our whole stay in Shanghai (close to zero degrees Celsius with even some snow flurries at the end of our first day), it can get brutally hot in the summer here, with temperatures reaching about 40 degrees Celsius. Each one of the guides we had reiterated the fact the global warming is the cause for every bad weather we may experience. China has embraced this notion even while back in the US I have friends who refuse to believe there is such thing as global warming…
It is hard to believe when you witness the skyline of Shanghai with all its high-rises that Shanghai used to be a small finishing village and its name actually means “go to the sea” in a local Chinese dialect. The new city is now labeled the “Manhattan of Shanghai” and its amazing growth only began in 1997. Every single guide we had was very proud to let us know that there are now over 2000 buildings in the city with 20 floors and above!
Another element of the city the locals are very proud of is their public transportation system. As we sat in traffic jams every time, we were re-assured that the current 9 lines subway is going to be expanded to 12 lines by 2010 so that all over the city every residence and office will be no further than 900 meters from a subway station! Subway tickets are only 3 Yuan’s and buses are free for seniors so everyone can actually use the public system. Furthermore, many of the big freeways crossing the city will be turned into 3 story freeways to ease congestion and the roads in the center of town will all go underground to allow for pedestrian traffic everywhere.
2010 is an important date for Shanghai since it marks the year the World Expo will open here. Just like Beijing is preparing everywhere for the Olympics, Shanghai is using the Expo as its milestone for many projects around the city. Its curtain call will open the stage of over 60 million visitors within a 6 months period and unveil the extremely hard work that went into making Shanghai a metropolitan force to be reckoned with.
All this tremendous growth comes with a heavy price for the residents of the city. Many of our young guides talked about how expensive it is to buy an apartment in Shanghai now. Before the 1980, all apartments were owned by the government who then made them available for purchase to the public for very cheap prices in the beginning of the 90’s. Since then, prices have escalated to a point that a regular apartment in the city costs $2000 per sq. meter on the average. We were also told that there are now some apartment buildings asking as much as $10,000 per sq. meter! Many young people can no longer afford the buy and end up living with their families. Some places have started renting apartments to tenants who live with “flat mates”. Renting is still considered in China to be a ‘no no’ because every family wants to own some property and use it to build their assets. Everyone, I have been told, believes that prices will continue to go up therefore renting will be a grave mistake; “like throwing away your hard earned money.” Residential construction is everywhere and the new buildings have names such as “Likeville” (that one had a banner on front with a quote from Frank Sinatra, of all people, about enjoying life!)
Many outside investors are enjoying the boom in real estate in the city. The Japanese have built the biggest shopping mall recently. However, not too far from the shopping center (whose front resembles a Disneyland attraction, not any different than others, even though Las Vegas comes to mind more often), the old streets of Shanghai are still full with traditional merchants selling in open markets anything from produce to household items for “real prices”, not the prices only Expats and tourists and upper middle class Chinese can afford.
So how do you reconcile the Maserati/Ferrari dealership with the street dealers asking you, “want Rolex watch?” everywhere on the adjoining streets? In this Chinese labeled “Golden Land”, that lights up the skyline at night and had every Western luxury available, what does the average person feel about this juxtaposition? One of our guides is an older man. He was laid off from being an engineer a few years back when many local factories closed to make room for the new foreign investments. Now he works as a guide after spending 3 years teaching himself English (he is working on his Japanese and German as well). He claims he is finally making some good money (I presume a lot of it has to do with the tips he is getting) and smiling he tells me: “Chinese are best in two things: making money and cooking! Chinese food is best in the world and now we are also allowed to make money again.”
Money is the most pervasive talk everywhere and it is mixed with a great sense of pride of where China is right now. The future is the focus of every talk we get. Referencing the past is only to discuss briefly the darker times while moving on quickly to the promise of the future. As Kissinger said, China wants to prove to the world that its last 500 years have only been a slight diversion from its 5000 years of glory. In other words, China is “back on track”!
We cannot help ourselves feeling slightly cheated having our guides try to sell us a Disneyland-like version of Shanghai peppered with a few hard facts such as that Shanghai has moved way from being a city of light manufacturing to having 80% of its jobs in the service sector. And, according to one of our guides, being a teacher right now is a very good job because many of them make money on the side tutoring students after hours. And university professors still get government housing for free. He wants his daughter to study to be a teacher or a banker. There are more and more women, he says, that are choosing careers in the growing financial sector of Shanghai. “Shanghai women strong because they all work,” he says. “So their husbands now all learn to cook!”
One of the young guides tells me that no matter how far along women in get in corporations or private companies, Chinese women will always put their family first. Considering that all of them only have one child and that children here go to school from 8 AM to 5 PM, you wonder whether the emphasis on family is strictly attitudinal or do these working women actually have a lot to do in their homes? One thing became clear – as we passed an elementary school at noon and saw students leaving, we were told almost all need to go home to have their lunch served by their mothers or grandmothers. A small number of schools offer lunch in cafeterias now that works are moving to live out of the city into more affordable housing.
And speaking of kids, I was also told that kids in the city are all studying almost around the clock seven days a week taking many extracurricular activities mostly focused on academic topics rather than sports. So many of the parents are convinced, I was told, that good grades are the only way to ensure a child’s future as a member of the middle class. Since the Chinese culture is driven by a strong family structure, there is little rebellion from the children. Yet, the Internet café’s I have visited were full with youngsters doing nothing for hours except playing video games, smoking cigarettes and seemingly having no other care in the world…