| The 14-hour flight to Shanghai, China was frazzling. I was caught in the netherworld between sleep and being awake. The preparations for the trip, fitting two weeks of work into one, and staying up the night before had taken its toll on me. The plane was jammed with people flying home for the Chinese New Year, leaving, it seemed, the air depleted of oxygen. I was left wondering why I had taken this trip to China, my first real international excursion, until an elderly woman who didn't understand English shared an orange with me. She smiled and the foreboding went away. Welcome to China. My son and his friend Summer were to meet me at Pudong Airport. I hadn't seen Andrew since he took off for Hefei, China to teach conversational English at a middle school for a year. When news came back to Madison that Andrew had a special Chinese friend from Hefei who was a woman, several friends expressed suspicion. Perhaps she had latched onto Andrew as a ticket to the U.S. That's another thing that frazzled me. When I saw Andrew -- reflecting the changes living in a place totally different for six months can make -- and Summer waiting for me, I was relieved. In my own, naive sort of way, I had paid RMB400, about $50, for a taxicab to take us to our hotel in the Bund. When Summer found out, she immediately began an emotional back and forth conversation with our taxicab driver that lasted into our trip. He relented and refunded us RMB100. (Later, I found out the cost should have been RMB150. Sometimes, you have to pay for your education.) Shanghai has been one of the major commercial gateways to China for hundreds of years. The Bund on the Huangpu River is lined with old European-style commercial buildings where the banks and commercial interests were centered. Nanjing Road, as lit up as Times Square, is the main shopping district in a city of 16 million people filled with shopping districts. You can probably buy anything produced on earth somewhere in Shanghai. While one may not worry about pickpockets in the commercial areas, it does get wearisome as people constantly approach you to buy "Rolex" watches and other pirated or genuine articles. I must have been wearing a sign marked "tourist." You quickly learn not to make eye contact lest you be considered a mark who is interested in what the person has to sell. And you will still be trying to leave five minutes later. In a crowded department store, we were snagged into a "free" skin creme demonstration. I bought some out of politeness and only realized later that it was skin whitening cre;me. Like I really needed it. Those salespeople were good. One time, on the river walk along the Huangpu River, Summer stepped between Andrew and one particularly persistent vendor. She walked away from the exchange with a confused look and I asked her what was wrong. She replied that the vendor had told her she was Chinese and that she should be helping him sell to the Americans and not helping them avoid a sale. I could tell it was a new experience for her and she was hurt. Many of the streets of Shanghai are narrow with shops lining both sides of the street. The shops are very shallow, with the vendors performing their services facing the street. Whether it was ironing clothes or making noodles, you could see it all just meandering down the street, carried away with the flow of humanity around you. We kept crossing the trail of President Bill Clinton, who had stayed at our hotel and ate at a restaurant in an old shopping district that displayed a huge photo of Bill and Hillary signing autographs along with a replica of the meal they must have eaten while they were there. Clinton had also gone to the section of the Great Wall of China that we visited in Beijing. Clinton was pretty popular in China. Funny, I didn't see anything about George W. Bush. I had always had this comforting thought that American embassies and consulates were American "ports" in case one ran into difficulties in a foreign country. Andrew had some questions about getting as visa to visit or work in Greece when he leaves China, and so, we walked to the American consulate hoping to get some help and direction. When we got to the consulate, it was guarded by the Shanghai police. I showed them my passport and asked to speak to someone at the consulate. The guards didn't understand English -- or pretended not to. They kept motioning for us to leave the entrance. Summer went back and forth with them in Chinese and one of the guards gave her a written statement -- in Chinese -- telling us we needed to go to another location to obtain a visa to the U.S. During the midst of this, some Americans arrived, showed their passes and went inside without inquiring what was going on. As I retreated to the other side of the road, I began to take out my camera to take a photo. Wrong move. Some guards came out of the gatehouse and started shouting at me. Photos were forbidden. I never got to talk to an American consulate employee. Glad we weren't in real trouble. On my last morning in Shanghai, the smog cleared and the temperature rose to almost 70 degrees. It felt like your first moments in Florida after flying down from a frigid Wisconsin winter. I sat on the river walk drinking my Starbuck's coffee and smoking a Cuban cigar as I watched the people stroll and the ships cruise lazily on the Huangpu River. It was a wonderful moment of peace and solitude. It doesn't get any better than that. |
| Shanghai wandering by Jonathan Gramling |
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| (Right) Andrew Gramling and his friend, Summer, talk to a passerby on Zizhong Road in Shanghai. |
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