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Bryan Stumpf's China Journal |
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Travels in Shanghai Happy Easter to all! I’ve gotten past the initial growing pains of living in a foreign place and Shanghai no longer seems quite as intimidating or as threatening as it was when I first arrived. This doesn’t mean I have let my guard down or that I’ve become comfortably careless with my belongings and safety. It simply means that in the past few weeks, I’ve felt more comfortable exploring Shanghai beyond the Jiao Tong University campus. While walking to and from campus, I’ve explored the alleyway markets along the way. They are much like farmer’s markets with vendors selling everything from fresh ginseng and ginger to live eels and turtles for food. There’s even a cobbler that’ll fix your shoes while you wait and a seamstress who sits patiently with her sewing machine. When not walking, I’ve experimented with the Shanghai public transportation. Boarding any mean of public transportation can be difficult since the Chinese do not believe in queues. People simply charge towards the open doors of busses or subway trains en masse. A little pushing and shoving is usually necessary. I’d like to take back my initial comments about Shanghai not being as crowded as I expected. After riding the buses and subways on weekends and also visiting popular areas on weekends, I’ve found that the crowds actually exceed my expectations. If you are familiar with being a few feet from the stage at a rock concert with no seating, you’ll find riding on the buses and subways can be uncomfortably reminiscent. And waiting for the “walk signal” when crossing the street at People’s Square last Saturday reminded me of the battle scenes of “Braveheart,” with two armies facing each other and then charging forth. And I’ve noticed that the people of Shanghai rarely pay attention to the “walk” and “do not walk” signals at these crosswalks. In fact, in Xujiahui, the Times Square of Shanghai, there are uniformed “traffic assistants” that do nothing more than simply make sure that people pay attention to the “walk” and “do not walk” signals. If people simply just paid attention to the crosswalk signals, I’m sure Shanghai wouldn’t need these “traffic assistants” to be blowing their whistles and gesticulating at the crowds all day long. But maybe this is common in most cities. Also, I’d like to take back my initial comments about Shanghai not being as loud as I expected. I’ve found that nowhere in Shanghai can I simply listen to my CD audiobooks. And I’ve found the main reason I can’t catch every word of the spoken word CDs is because of the ubiquitous car honking. As Yaping and I were walking along a street with high-rise hotels, I pointed out how I thought the “no honking” sign was funny. The sign consists of two symbols: one symbol is what looks like bugle, the other symbol is a red X over the bugle. “No honking” signs can commonly be seen near the hotels and residential areas of Shanghai. After I mentioned how I found this sign funny, Yaping asked, “How do you get drivers to reduce their honking in America?” I said, “We don’t really have a honking problem in America.” Yaping also found it odd that, for the most part, Americans avoid jaywalking. In Shanghai, jaywalking is not only allowed, but people will find it comical for someone to choose to use a crosswalk. One night, a cab dropped me off on the side of the street opposite my apartment, about 30 feet from an intersection. Yaping thought it was absolutely hilarious that I walked the 30 feet to the intersection so that I could use the crosswalk instead of just walking directly across the street from the point where the cabbie dropped me off. But I’ve enjoyed many quiet moments in Shanghai. Just last week, I spent a day at the Shanghai Zoo. Yaping and I went to one area of the zoo called “Pets World” which I assumed would be a petting zoo. But it turned out, that “Pets World” was where zoo patrons could see various breeds of dogs in cages. Here you could find the larger dogs that the Chinese people rarely kept as pets, like Mastiffs and Dobermans. But they also had smaller dogs on display. In fact, in the center of “Pets World” was a little pen where they kept Scottish terriers. And nearby was a man selling bagfuls of kibbles that you could actually feed to the terriers. Each exhibit had a sign describing the animal that included English. Sometimes the translations were a bit confusing. In the penguin exhibit, there was a breed of penguin called the “Jackass Penguin.” And near the Giant Panda exhibit was an exhibit of the smaller pandas I had once heard a nature show host refer to as “red pandas.” But the English translation for this exhibit simply said, “Lesser Panda.” I sympathized for the little guys and, for the sake of their self-esteem, hoped they couldn’t read English. The giant panda was asleep face down right in front of the glass of his exhibit. It looked as though he had been walking on his hind legs and fell down face-first, and then just decided to stay like that for a while. Many zoo patrons were pounding on the glass and shouting in Chinese trying to rouse him from his slumber, but he slept through it all. I had to study his sides closely to make sure he was actually breathing. Sure enough, his black and white fur was moving ever so slightly to indicate that he was a very alive, yet hibernating panda. That’s all for now. Hope all remains well on your side of
the globe.
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