White Tiger Path 3.1 - Our Basic Goodness - November 2019
After returning from Shaanxi and Xi’an to Shanghai, I spent the next day with a friend at Dashui Lake, the last stop on one of the metro lines here in Shanghai. It is currently being developed, but China is structuring it to be one of the models for how they would like a municipality to function when creating new centres here. They have new methods for collecting and reusing water in environmentally sustainable manners and in general it just has a more spacious and western feel to the area. I think it would be extremely interesting seeing it in a few years for how much more it will have developed and how much more populated it would be, given how fast things are built here.
To continue my discovery streak, I visited two additional things in the French Concession. The French Concession is a section of Shanghai that was given to the French by the Qing dynasty, that would later become part of the Shanghai international settlement, made up of the original French, Americans and British concessions.
Initially the British, the original imperialist settlers of Shanghai, started this process of unequal treaties in China and the resulting ‘special zones’, which included key and strategic ports, were controlled by the imperialist governments in every aspect. As a result, a fair amount of British, French, and American architecture and feel can be found in and around these concessions. As examples, there is a Bellagio Tower and a Broadway Tower in the American concession and the bakeries that exist putting out surprisingly good bread in the French Concessions.
The first thing I checked out on this particular trip to the French Concession was the building where the 1st Party Congress of the Communist Party Of China was held, essentially where the CPC was ratified and officially created (this was extremely interesting to explore and is free for anyone who wants to visit as long as you don’t mind scanning your finger print , a common theme in China was being tracked) and the second was the Fuxing Park, which is a European style park established by the French that was very peaceful and beautiful and had lots of old men playing Mah-jong and old women practicing Tai Chi.
In general, I have spent more time walking and wandering around the French, British, and American concessions. They are real gems within the city and in my opinion they are consistently the best and most fun parts of the city. The old architecture, different eating options, and just the feel in these different concessions is like stepping into a different world, within a different world that has a hint of familiarity as one experiences when visiting a western country from a western country.
I’m now preparing for two upcoming trips. The first is to Shenzhen and Guangzhou. Shenzhen was the first special economic zone created here in China, by Deng Xiaoping in 1980. Both cities are in the south, close to the border with Hong Kong and I will be going as part of my Global Issues in China class.
The second trip is my month in Chongqing, where I will be staying with a billet family teaching English as South West University. I have already been in touch with my host family who has two small boys and should be getting dinner with my host father soon who is currently in Shanghai for some training to do with his work. This will be a very interesting time for me and present yet another face of China. I am very curious about what day to day life will be like, what will the dynamic with the kids and the grandparents be like, how strict will it be, will I have chores? Lots of things rush through your head upon going to live with a host family, for me personally, I find it’s best to prepare as much as you can and then just stop thinking about it until you’re in it. The strategies always worked for me in the past.
Both these trips will provide a different side and insight into China and I’m excited to share them with you once I experience them!
- Bai Hú
post script: A thought I had today, while riding the subway, is just how big a culture shock it was to live in Perth-Andover, NB compared to here in Shanghai. It’s been easier to slip into the society here and just go about my business compared with small town Canada. I’m not watched, I’m not analyzed, or critiqued here in Shanghai, like I sometimes felt like I was in Perth-Andover (PA). People were pretty much up in my business all the time, it felt like, in PA, and would turn their heads to see who I was for the first couple of months, whereas in Shanghai, I don’t think I’ve noticed one person do that because I was new or looked different. The feeling here in Shanghai is so much closer to that of Toronto or Montreal or NYC, than small town Canada. i.e. seeing someone do weird stuff on the subway in Toronto or New York wouldn’t be that uncommon, at least in my experience.
It's funny how you can go to a completely new and different country with such a different structure halfway around the world and feel more comfortable and relaxed (in a certain sense) than a different community in your own country. I think this speaks to how some cities are these great melting pots with truly universal characteristics; and in a way it provides a great sense of comfort and hope for me, in that, even with our perceived strategic rivals, there are these commonalities that can bind us together where we have shared experiences to build our current and future relationships on. I’m also going to bet that the inverse is true, and that if I were to go to small town, and truly small town China, I’d find a lot more in common with Perth-Andover there than I would with Shanghai (let alone Toronto)in terms of how I was received or people’s habits within the community.
I had the privilege to recently attend a lecture by Professor Zhao Quansheng, who is a professor at America University’s School of International Service in Washington, DC, a political commentator who is often asked by the US media to comment on US-Sino relations, and a whole list of other impressive credentials. One of the questions asked by a student at the end of his lecture was, "what do you think we need to do to build a better relationship between countries, but specifically the USA and China?”
His response paraphrased was, 'more of what we’re doing already with regards to exchanges, of young people especially, between our two countries, to build empathy and an understanding that we are more similar than we are different, that neither side is that bad, that we are growing closer rather than further apart, especially given how the world has shrunk and our markets are more open to each other now than they have been in the past and more tied together and dependent on each other, economically, than ever before’.
I think this is so true and has been my experience here as well as other places I’ve lived: you need to have boots on the ground, live in their world, look people in the eye, feel their emotions and soul and know that we’re all closer to being made of the same basic goodness than we may have thought. Our differences seem more superficial when we meet in person rather than when we read about them in a book or watching a story on TV.
Be open, be patient, make an effort to understand, and in the words of Lil Wayne "lend an opinion (to the situation) before you make one".