Bananas Don't Travel Well

the condos beckonThere aren't many cities in the world whose names can double as verbs. Although we weren't forcibly put aboard a ship, we did find ourselves Shanghaied in a way, drawn irresistibly eastward. It all started with Facebook, to which I’d succumbed in Kyrgyzstan and where I managed to locate some old Taipei friends—Olivier and Laure—with whom I'd lost touch. As it turned out, they are now living in Shanghai and were quick to offer us a place to stay. At first we dismissed the idea; Shanghai wasn't on our original itinerary, and we'd both been there before. But leaving Kashgar, as we looked out the train window at perhaps our 5000th kilometre of dusty desert, the prospect of staying in a clean apartment and spending some time in a big city suddenly grabbed us, hard.

We drew up a plan to make our way east over the next couple of weeks, stopping at the more interesting towns and sights in Xinjiang and Gansu, China's northwest. But then we got the following message from Olivier: "Latest news: If you're missing wine, we have invitations to taste as much as you'd like at the Carrefour wine fair next Friday night..." That sealed it: we were by this time in Dunhuang, where the weather was deteriorating. In Jiayuguan, we decided it was time to high-tail it to Shanghai. But this turned out to be easier said than done.

The 1000-mile train marathon

There is one Shanghai-bound train that passes through Jiayuguan each day, and we could not get tickets for it. We learned after several trips to the train station that this is because the Jiayuguan ticket office is only allowed to sell four tickets for each run of this train, which originates in Urumchi. Although China's rail network is modern, efficient and relatively clean, it still—unbelievably—lacks a coordinated booking system. In Jiayuguan, we learned not only that seats sold from specific stations are limited, but that it is impossible to buy a ticket leaving from any station other than the one you are at. We needed to leave the next day (Wednesday) at the latest if we were going to make the wine tasting—a goal that had by now achieved almost life-or-death importance—so we bought the next available hard-sleeper tickets to Xian. Cat was heading for Xian anyways, and we hoped it would be possible to get an onward ticket from there. The problem was, the train left Jiayuguan in the early morning and arrived in Xian after midnight: not very convenient, but everything else was booked and it was the only quick way out of town.

The ride to Xian seemed excessively long: we were awake for most of it, I was fighting a cold, Cat came down with digestive troubles, and one of our cabin-mates had exceptionally stinky feet. We went for dinner in the dining car, where the chef hadn’t moved on from the days of spittoons, and was using the floor instead, and the food was worse than usual. Cat had plain boiled rice, which looked a lot more appetizing than the dishes we ordered.

About four hours from Jiayuguan, we emerged from the Hexi Corridor into China proper. The desert gave way to fertile land, planted with rows of green vegetables tended by peasants in conical hats, and the population density was noticeably higher here. But the most telling sign that we were in the Chinese heartland—one that only relented when we later ascended to the highlands of Tibet—was the thick gloom of coal smoke. As we neared Lanzhou, it reached peak proportions, some of the worst air quality we’ve ever seen. Throughout our stay in China, the sun was, at best, a dim light in the sky that you could stare at with the naked eye.

Subject of conversation

Lying on my hard-sleeper bunk, I eavesdropped on a conversation between three Chinese passengers. The Chinese are a garrulous people, often chatting away at several decibels above normal Western volume, and they have a remarkable ability to converse at great length about mundane subjects. I determined that these three spent about fifteen minutes talking about different kinds of fruit; this was followed by a lengthy discussion on characteristics of people from various regions of China.

The Chinese also have a fairly unnerving habit of staring at and discussing foreigners, often at point-blank range, and this train trip was no exception. Chris and I played cards for a while; our fellow passengers stood around watching us and commenting to each other on our movements. Although this degree of scrutiny can be quite alienating, the Chinese do not themselves consider staring rude (on the contrary, it shows interest), and any attempts to dispel it result in amusement and more staring and commenting.

Speaking Chinese doesn't help either. That morning, I descended bleary-eyed from my bunk and put my hiking boots on in preparation for a trip to the toilet. As I did up my laces, a man observed to his wife, "she has really big shoes."
Such comments strike me as funny when I'm in a good mood, but at that moment it just irritated. "I understand what you are saying," I advised him testily in Chinese.
"Oh, she speaks Chinese!" he continued, addressing his wife, "How does she know Chinese?"
"She must be an English teacher," she answered authoritatively. "Lots of foreigners teach English in China and learn Chinese."
"Oh," the man replied. "She really does have big feet."
I gave up and escaped to the bathroom. Over time, we got used to it and learned that the best strategy is to be overtly friendly from the outset. Usually, no harm is meant by their behaviour and I suspect that taking offense is viewed by the Chinese as antisocial.

Zhengzhou

waiting to exchange ticketsI discovered that the train we were on didn't terminate in Xian; it continued to Zhengzhou, about seven hours closer to Shanghai. Chris and I made the journey through a dozen rail cars to find the controller, in hopes of extending our tickets to the train’s terminus. His vacated booth was in a hard-seat car, where visibly poorer Chinese were traveling. I asked a conductor where the missing controller was, and was told, in the third person, that he had been called away and would be back "right away." Twenty minutes later, the same conductor occupied the booth and turned to me: "what can I help you with?" In the end, it was no problem to purchase the ticket supplements.

We stayed up until Xian to see Cat off, feeling a bit guilty leaving her there, alone and increasingly ill, in the middle of the night. (She later reported that she’d made it just fine although it was a few days before she felt better). Six hours of train-sleep later, we arrived in Zhengzhou and checked into one of the several thousand hotel rooms clustered around the massive train station plaza.

a sunny dayNever heard of Zhengzhou? Neither had we. It is a city of three million, one of hundreds like it in China that, compared to giant metropolises such as Shanghai, Beijing and Chongqing, ranks as a small town. This in itself made it an interesting place to stop, even though there isn't a lot to do there. Positioned at the intersection of the country's major north-south and east-west railway lines, Zhengzhou's raison-d'être is as China's largest railway junction. Our hotel room was on the 19th floor. Though we ought to have had a good view of the surrounding city, in peak sunlight we could see only about 500 meters through the city’s haze. We bought onward tickets to Shanghai for the next morning—Friday—we would make the wine tasting after all. We explored the city that evening, found some great dumplings, discovered that prices were about 50% higher in this part of the country, and goggled at the city’s massive neon-lit shopping squares. We had now unequivocally arrived in 21st century China—a giant consumer cornucopia.

The finish line

The next morning, we boarded our train. This one was a fast service, and we had soft seats for a change (the cheaper tickets had been sold out). As we whizzed toward Shanghai, we found ourselves looking around at our fellow passengers. Three young, fashionable, tanned foreign women sat ahead of us. Two of them were very tall and thin, the other was industriously typing on a laptop. Chris leaned over to me. “Do you think they’re models?” “Maybe”, I speculated, “but not the one on the aisle.” “No, I think she’s their handler,” he replied. “Where do you think they’re from?” “Italy or Brazil,” I answered, judging by their complexions and the way they were dressed. “I was thinking that too!” And then we looked at each other, and we could tell we each had the same thought at the same time. We were becoming Chinese, discussing and speculating on complete strangers! We had a good laugh at ourselves. But it didn’t end there. We were discreet, but a few trips to the boiler at the end of the car to fill our tea mugs revealed that they were indeed Brazilian—they were speaking new-world Portuguese. They were wearing legwarmers, which made me suspect they might be dancers. We discovered the truth as we disembarked in Shanghai—their bags sported a Capoeira studio logo. We decided they must be instructors.

Another world

suburbs by nightI called Olivier from the train station to get directions to his apartment. He asked if we still wanted to go to the wine tasting that evening. “We’d love to,” I said, “but we don’t have anything nice to wear.” “Oh it’s not a problem,” he said in his French accent, “it’s only the hypermarket.” We took a taxi to Olivier and Laure’s place, where their Aiyee (maid) let us in. She left in a hurry, and we had the place to ourselves for the afternoon. It was a lovely shock to go from dusty desert, cheap hotel rooms and over 48 hours on sleeper trains to a spotless 14th floor expatriate apartment, with all the modern conveniences. Olivier and Laure had clearly moved up since we’d known them seven years before in Taipei (as, I suppose, so had we, when we weren’t traveling).

We had time to move in, have a shower, and listen to some music before Olivier came home from work. We went for dinner down the street—a Taiwanese restaurant—and caught up. He and Laure had both been working in marketing in France and had leveraged their experience to get sent to Shanghai. They were enjoying it but admitted that they preferred Taipei, where life was slower-paced and the cultural differences weren’t as great.

After dinner, we took a taxi along the city’s raised expressways, passing miles of high-rise apartment buildings, to one of the Shanghai’s large Carrefour hypermarkets. It didn’t’ take long to dispel the image we’d conjured over the past week of white tablecloths and well-dressed Shanghainese sniffing, swirling and spitting. This wine tasting was in the basement parking lot, a space whose floor area covered at least an acre, but whose 8-foot ceilings afforded the ambiance of a 1970s airport departure terminal. Cardboard boxes of international wines were arranged around the room, and tables were set up with open bottles that people were helping themselves to. There was a live band playing swing tunes at ear-splitting volume, a variety of picked-over appetizers, Chinese cigarette girls in sequined micro-mini dresses and go-go boots, and practically the entire French expat population of Shanghai, which is no small number.

We met Carrefour’s wine distributor, a Chinese man who’d lived and breathed wine in France, but understood the Chinese market. The deal was this: the distributor put on this event annually to prove to Carrefour that it could bring in the money and remain their sole supplier. They were offering all the wine you could drink on the spot, in addition to a 20% discount on their entire wine stock (including some very expensive wines that were not open that evening). They judged—correctly—that the money spent lubricating would be more than returned as people stocked up at the yearly wine bonanza. We watched it in action: hundreds of tipsy professionals, pushing oversized shopping carts loaded with cases of wine around the striped asphalt of the parking lot, pausing from table to table to refill their glasses and chat over the blare of the brass band with their co-patriots. After our breakneck jaunt across the country, it was utterly surreal to be plunked in the middle of this. Indeed, after a few glasses, it was hysterical.

The French concession

here comes progressWe spent the weekend with Olivier and Laure and their French expatriate friends. We played boules in the suburbs, we ate French food, we drank and played pool, we had Sunday brunch on the lawn, surrounded by manicured gardens. It was a fun time, and a needed vacation from the past few months, but it was also totally unreal. Many of the restaurants and bars we went to were in the city’s old French concession, a tree-lined district that retains much of its colonial architecture but is undergoing a renaissance of nouveau Western influence. In the three years since I’d visited Shanghai, it had gone considerably upscale. You can get virtually any kind of western food there—the real thing too—but at near-western prices. Socializing with a young generation of expat professionals, brought over to work as managers in Shanghai’s booming economy but not mixing much with the locals, it struck us that we were in a new take on the old Shanghai of foreign influence and money.

italian graffitiBut Olivier and Laure also introduced us to another side of Shanghai. We visited Moganshan Lu, a neighbourhood of old warehouses near Suzhou creek that had been saved from demolition and were being developed into artist studios, galleries, and lofts. We spent Sunday afternoon touring the galleries, and came across some quality work. The more interesting pieces were surprisingly political—mostly various forms of commentary on the social impacts of China’s economic development. One of the galleries was a fascinating building in itself. It was a restored brick warehouse that had been saved from destruction, while all else around it had been laid waste, but then protected—too late—by Shanghai’s new development laws. It stood next to Suzhou creek in a field of broken, overgrown concrete, into which several half-ruined buildings decayed. Graffiti artists—locals and (for some reason) Italians—had made their mark on the encircling walls. For juxtaposition, this wasteland was overlooked by a forest of brand new condominium towers across the creek.

We succumb

dumpling shopThe weekend over, Olivier and Laure and their friends went back to work, and we were mostly on our own. We spent the week wandering the streets of Shanghai, enjoying not having any agenda at all. We made it to the Bund, so that Chris could take in the exploding Pudong skyline, which had been farmer’s fields when Chris was last there in 1989. We explored what was left of the old Chinese city, much of it in turn sacrificed to development since I had visited three years before. We visited Jingan temple, which was undergoing expansion, with new shrines being constructed from giant, imported logs, apparently funded by some very wealthy benefactors. We did some shopping. But mostly we just enjoyed being in a big, crazy city. In Shanghai, you can get the best of all styles of Chinese cuisine, and we indulged with our friends after work: barbecued Hunan spareribs encrusted in chili and cumin seeds, sweet and sour fish, and dry-fried green beans at Di Shui Dong; Guangzhou-style roasted meat, delicate shrimp dumplings and braised Chinese kale at the Hengshan Café. We were grateful to Olivier and Laure for their role in Shanghai-ing us.