The Rise and Fall and Rise of Shanghai

I took a hard sleeper train from Xi'an to Shanghai, about 16 hours from 7 pm to 11 am, rocked to sleep by the train on Saturday night. The hard sleeper is big train cars, with a long hallway down one side and sections of bunks stacked 3 high at close intervals. It was surprisingly cozy and fun, but I'll admit I didn't sleep much. Still, it's a great way to get around China, cheap and time-saving. I'm going to try again for my trip up to Beijing and I think I'll sleep better if I can get a top bunk.

Shanghai is a totally different ballgame from other cities in China. Designated as a Treaty Port at the same time as the British took control of Hong Kong (end of the Opium Wars), Shanghai grew in importance much faster than the island colony. Already an established trading port, once the British, French, Japanese, and American concessions were established Shanghai became the most important city in China. The first soccer game in China, the first cars, telegraphs, electricity, modern universities, trolleys, you name it, Shanghai was the place. From the 1840s to the 1930s, Shanghai's star kept rising.

Finally arriving in Shanghai is a loaded experience for me. I was here in 1997, but I didn't see much, and I've read way more about Shanghai than I've ever seen. Pre-WWII Shanghai is romanticized by a lot of people, but for me the defining vision of a Shanghai teeming with opium dens and foreigners, and an image of the Bund with junks bobbing offshore in the water comes from "Tintin and the Blue Lotus," written by Herge in 1936. Tintin uncovers a lot of Japanese espionage in Shanghai and dashes about town from the Chinese walled city to the British and American international settlements, sneaking past the many border controls and competing authorities. Herge's work was inspired by the actual historic events transpiring in China at the time, which led to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and Shanghai.

Shanghai fell to the Japanese during the second Sino-Japanese war in 1938, and it's never been the same since. Whether it has changed for the better or the worse depends on who you ask. Yearning for the Jazz Age pinnacle of Shanghai in 1930 is common among ex-pats around town. However, most Chinese celebrate 1949 as the liberation of Shanghai, when the Chinese eliminated foreign control (if not foreign influence) and re-Sinified the city. Today, the seminal skyline of Shanghai is not the neoclassical buildings of the Bund but the new Pudong central business district across the river (right). No one seems to think that TV tower "The Pearl," (close-up below) which looks like a shish-kebab, is at all unattractive. Chinese people love it. That said, some yearn for the old Shanghai not because they love colonial excess and privilege, but because the future seems weird and arbitrary, guided by a confused vision of Chinese power but uncertain purpose.