China Eats the World

On this trip we've been reading Tom Campanella's forthcoming book "China Reinvents the City" from Princeton University Press. It's hard to imagine a book about China that is more engaging. I recommend it, and most of the ideas in this post are from the book.

China's economic boom has allowed the national psyche to make major strides in recovering from some of the traumas of the Mao years. First, the influx of prosperity and resources means that for a lot of people, scarcity and hardship are either unknown or a distant memory (however, I should emphasize that life is getting harder for some as reforms progress). Second, the new availability of resources and leisure time in China has spawned an unprecedented building spree of theme parks that commodify China's culture and sell it to the masses, essentially remanufacturing one of "The Four Olds" destroyed in the Cultural Revolution. The first of these theme parks was Splendid China in Shenzhen, followed by over 2,500 more from 1989 to the present, including Tang Paradise, Yunnan Ethnic Villages, and countless Buddhism-themed parks. Unlike American theme parks, which are oriented towards amusing children and gratifying thrill-seekers, Chinese theme parks provide an opportunity for adults to rediscover and consume Chinese culture and history in a bizzare mix of miniaturizations of major buildings and topographic features, song-and-dance shows (or "Vegas and Bollywood with Chinese characteristics", as I like to call them), and mechanized statuary and fountains.

Not all 2,500 of those theme parks are about China. In addition to theming and consuming the landscapes of China itself, there is an enormous appetite for flavors from abroad. We visited "Windows on the World," right next to Splendid China in Shenzhen, a theme park that is essentially a giant garden full of miniatures of various wonders of the world, like the Pyramids, Angkor Wat, the Lincoln Memorial, etc. There is a powerful will in China to explore the world afresh after years of isolation, through consumption. There I am at left with some students, next to the Eiffel Tower, in China!

The most recent manifestation of all this theming and consumption seems almost logical if you can just accept the premise. In the suburbs of Shanghai, nine new towns are being constructed as part of Shanghai's regional plan. In a wild riff on Shanghai's history as an international treaty port, with different concession areas taking on different urban forms, each new town has a European country as its theme, and the theme is implemented by private developers right down to the security guards' uniforms. It's hard to believe, until you see.

I Make Like Tintin

And ride around Shanghai in a pedicab. I'm with one of the students on the trip who is my roommate where we're staying in town, Krisanna.

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.

Yaodong

On Friday we visited a part of China that I had no idea existed. I have traveled around China quite a bit, and read even more about it, so it's rare for me to be caught completely by surprise. We drove three hours north of Xi'an, which was already kind of in the middle of nowhere, to a tiny village that was really in the middle of nowhere.

The Loess Plateau covers an area of northern China equivalent to the area of Belgium, mostly along the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. The geography of the plateau is extraordinary. Summer temperatures are regularly above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, while winter temperatures are below –20. The soil is incredibly dry and fine, but much heavier than sand. This extra weight is due to the fact that the plateau is not a desert – there is a three-month monsoon season in the autumn that drowns the world, though the rest of the year is very dry. These extreme rains have shaped the plateau into a series of ravines along the Yangtze, and allowed a substantial amount of agriculture to flourish. The hillsides have all been shaped into terraces, and every little possible patch of land is cultivated. Thus, the Loess Plateau supports a population of about 40 million, remarkable for an area of poor access and scarce resources. Despite it’s size, population, and beauty, I had no idea this place existed. Check out the view on the right!

This region of extremes is notable for some of the most and least sustainable practices in China. The intensive agriculture required because of population pressure causes substantial erosion and silting in the Yangtze River that creates flooding problems downstream. This is a huge problem for China as a whole. However, the people of the Loess Plateau have also evolved an incredibly material- and energy-efficient housing form, and this is what we traveled to Henan Province, Da Ping Zhuang (Great Peace Village) in order to see. To cope with the unusual conditions of their region, the Loess Plateau inhabitants have evolved a truly remarkable form of vernacular architecture. Similar to the adobe cliffside dwellings of the first peoples of the American southwest, the residents of the Loess Plateau build yaodongs, underground cave-like housing of astonishing complexity and beauty. At left, looking down from the ground level into the courtyard of the house of an extended family. Each door off the main area is a bedroom, storage area, or little barn.

The villagers came from miles around to meet us. They were overwhelmingly warm and welcoming, and by the time we left, several of the students had to be dragged back onto the bus. I could see the appeal. Inside the rooms, it felt air conditioned, even though it was 100 degrees outside. The houses were mostly over 300 years old, i.e. older than the United States, but many were still habitable. The rooms were plain but cozy, and the village was full of adorable children and fruit trees. The outdoor cooking facilities were minimal but efficient. It's clearly a harsh life, but very attractive to city-weary students. At right, a view of one of the rooms. The bed on the left is made of brick, and can be heated on the inside like an oven in the winter.