So much more to write about but so much less time to do so. Thank you to everyone who has been nagging me to start posting again – I can hardly believe that my last post to this blog was on July 18th. We’ve done so much since then, a lot of which I’d love to write about. Our holiday back in the UK, trips to Xi’an, World Expo, Suzhou, learning Chinese, boys back at school, an avalanche of lovely visitors, fireworks, and the weather at last being less mental. Oh, and Liverpool being in the relegation zone.
Grandma (Dorothy’s mum) and her friend Deb are coming to the end of their stay with us. These intrepid travellers left England on September 12th, travelling by train via London, Cologne and Moscow before spending a few days in Beijing (北京). Another train took them to Xi’an (西安) where we met them after our own overnight train journey from Shanghai (上海). We spent a fascinating couple of days admiring Xi’an and the mind-blowing wonder of the world that is the Army of Terracotta Warriors (兵马俑). We all flew back to Shanghai from Xi’an, with Deb diverting to Guangzhou (广州) to stay with her son Henry for a few days before they both joined us in Shanghai.
One reads and hears an awful lot about “real China” – it’s what tourists desperately seek and expats like to believe they’re experiencing. We all want to feel that we’ve found the reality of life in China. Of course in many ways you can’t make any distinction between what is real and what isn’t. It’s all real China, whether it’s the designer clothes shops in Shanghai’s French Concession area, the gleaming 100-storey buildings of the Lujiazui (陆家嘴) financial district, the crumbling and aromatic homesteads of the streetworkers and migrant workers, or the farmers working their rice terraces amidst the dramatic scenery of Guilin (桂林). It’s all very real, but it’s all very different. China is an incredibly ‘stretched’ place; it couldn’t be otherwise being so huge and with such a colossal diversity of ethnic and cultural influences. But the dramatic twists and turns of the last 61 years have also left it stretched socially and economically and the evidence is all around, even here in Shanghai no matter how “unreal” a part of China it may be.
Yesterday we went out to Qibao (七宝), a traditional Chinese water town that is now within the net of Shanghai’s hugely expanded metro system. We’ve been once before but it felt a lot more like real China this time – very busy, very noisy, and very Chinese. The National holiday period brings the crowds out and the narrow shopping street surrounding the bridges across the canals were jam-packed with Chinese visitors. It takes a little while to realise that Chinese faces are not necessarily locals. In fact, on a couple of occasions I have been able to help Chinese tourists in Shanghai who have looked baffled by the ticket barriers at the metro stations. Loudspeakers in Chinese and broken English encouraged everyone to pay more attention and to behave with civilisation towards others. The stretches of canals are travelled by tourist boats propelled by a single paddle from the back of the boat, and overlooked by tea houses bedecked with red lanterns. A fabulous sight and welcome respite from the overcrowding on the shopping streets. Getting a table in any of the restaurants was going to be impossible given the constraints of my embryonic Chinese, my English politeness and the impatience of the stomach of small boys. So we went in search of street food to keep us going. Most of you know that I’m pretty adventurous when it comes to food, but I’ve finally discovered something that repels me – stinky tofu. I don’t know how they make this stuff from what is usually such a bland and innocuous substance, but despite its miasma the Chinese queue to get their hands on it. Thankfully we found considerably more appealing alternatives. Nourished and energised we explored several delightful little museums which are scattered around the old streets of Qibao with exhibits covering miniature furniture, shadow puppets and cricket-breeding, before returning to the peace and quiet of our apartment and another wild late night session of Mahjong.
