Reckless fireworks - back in Shanghai

OCTOBER 18, 2008: To faithfully go back to this "blog's" origins, here's a (digitally enhanced) group email. Photos

Why? Well people just now started recklessly firing off big fireworks amidst the spinney of skyscrapers that boxxey and i find ourselves living in now. I'm talking big explosions going off right next to the people's windows in the buildings opposite us maybe 50m away. The explosions were happening maybe 5 metres from some other people's windows. (The photo is the place during the day.)




If any of said windows happened to be open, as ours was, the people inside could expect to be sprayed with fresh and colourful hot embers. I don't know if you knew this, but it seems fireworks, at least home-use fireworks here in the home of fireworks, only get about 10 storeys up before they run out of thrust. They launch into the air like a Spider Burton mongrel punt, and when they hit the top of their trajectory and start to fall, then they explode. Actually this morning we had these little canisters of explosive floating past our 9th floor window in slow motion and then exploding. That they explode then the is plan, but i saw at least one fail to and fall, smoking, into the bottleneck entrance of the underground car park. Brave, whoever picked it up and got rid of it.

This place we're in, it must be said, absolutely rocks, but the journey here, on our no-seat train tickets, sucked worse than we imagined. We got to the train station's departure gate (Chinese train stations, we were reminded, are like airports elsewhere) about 4 hours before the train was due to leave, which was about 1/2 an hour before the next person. The strategy worked, and when we were let on we staked out a position next to the slinky-style carriage-join area, by a locked door with a window. Sitting on our luggage we were quite comfortable, even smug, until between 10 and 15 more people arrived to inhabit the same slinky-join. As we protected our initial advantage it became a bladder battle. Everyone was going to Shanghai, 18 hours away, so if you got up, any breathing space you previously had would be gone when you got back.


At Huizhou, the first stop out of Shenzhen, even more people piled on despite there being nowhere for them to go. This fella below used the chaos to his advantage by jumping off and snatching 2 instant noodle cups from a hapless platform cart-pusher. Over the following hours, he managed to phase himself into our leg space. He was a chain-smoking kid of about 20, his shirt stained and holed, heading away from his family home during "Golden Week", to look for work in Shanghai.


Which is pretty much what we were doing. On the day we arrived, on zero hours sleep each, we somehow managed to house-hunt through about 5 or 6 rat infested holes before coming across the place we're in now.

We're smack in the middle of the old city, the somewhat forgotten walled city (the wall's gone and no-one seems to know about it nowadays) that existed before foreigners came to Shanghai, and home of the Mandarin Garden and that tea house that's on just about every "oriental" bowl, including the Turk's. Our ninth-floor bay window has one of the most interesting views i could have hoped for: the old city is ringed by an oval-shaped road (Zhonghua Rd) built on the site of the former city wall. Within this road (wall) is an expanse of low-rise, high-density Chinese bustle, ringed by the dense skyscrapers outside. The high-rise we live in is part of a mohawk cutting down the middle of the oval, so our room overlooks a quilt of jumbly rooftops across to the forest of skyscrapers beyond, which is pretty unreal. In the other direction, through the unremarkable blockade of the neighbouring buildings in our complex, we can see skyscrapers in Pudong on the other side of the river that play ads and tripped-out visualisations on their, uh, well, themselves - The whole skyscraper is basically a giant TV screen.


Here's a panorama from the other side (someone else's room), it's quite detailed and probably chopped off here so suggest clicking to view full size.


I can say that based on what i've seen most of Shanghai outside of the old areas is - how did they describe Perth that time? - "boring and functional." Not even in a communist way. Just in a chaos-being-well-under-control way, a place with plenty of malls, where people can live inane lives inanely, walking on nicely paved, tree-lined sidewalks wide enough not to have to bump others or step over roadside sellers' blankets. In other words, quite nice. But where we are, the tiny back streets and alleyways within that jumbly patchwork are the most interesting i've seen Shanghai get, all "chaos constructions" with split-system airconditioners, fighting-insect mini-markets, illegal gambling tables with crowds of onlookers (some holding card games, others holding insect fights), and occasional interesting smells between the rubbish piles. In one filthy thoroughfare I saw a woman walking her trophy-dog, a magnificent Collie, with the leash in one hand and a brush in the other, stopping about every 10 steps to brush some part of the dog. I wasn't much of a Shanghailander last time, probably because Minhang isn't exactly in Shanghai. But with about 90% of Shanghai's interesting places within 1/2 an hour's walk, there's really nothing to complain about...ah, nothing to complain about, that good old boring group email formula.



The apartment we live in is supposed to be a 3 bedroom one, i believe. The owners are apparently a union of family members from Fujian who have bestowed responsibility and residence benefits on a Gen-X relative, Mr Zhou (i.e. "Mr Joe"). Zhou was kind in letting us move in the day we arrived, saving us hundreds in foreigner-hotel fees (you can't stay anywhere cheap in Shanghai if you're a foreigner). But the apartment wasn't yet finished, and we were the first to move in.

The whole apartment, it turns out, is a DIY job. When performing some installation task or another, Zhou is the archetypal cowboy - cigarette in mouth, mobile in one hand, massive powerdrill in the other, digging out big holes in the brand new wall. Wonky archetraves and non-flush skirtings aren't the worst of Zhou's worries. He's also had to rewire the whole house in order to count the individual rooms' electricity consumption. I'm somehwat surprised that he survived, especially when i asked him if being an impromptu sparky was dangerous, to which he replied "impossible!"

Once he'd finished making 3 bedrooms into 5 and renting them out as such, Zhou decided to move his own family in. Problem was, he had nowhere to go. So what did he do? He ordered in some glass panels and sliding doors, and sectioned off a part of the communal living area. Then he moved his family in, who now live behind the glass.