We never had it that bad

January 11, 2009: Just before we left on that last journey we got the chance to swap rooms - still in the same flat, but now on the other side of the building. Photos

Sweet deal - halfway point of the lease, same price, practically the same room basically but this one has a balcony instead of a bay window. And of course the view swung round 180 degrees.

The view from this side is not much less spectacular but definitely more interesting. We're looking out on a large expanse, probably the largest expanse of original Chinese city rooftops, almost certainly from the 1800s and maybe before [horseshit. obviously from the 20th century most of them] (we're in the middle of the small part of Shanghai that was here before the foreigners came--a small walled city).



They look to be in the process of a systemactic re-roofing of every house, which will ensure less people live in dank and mouldy conditions with water dripping through when it rains. The current roofs are that crazy-jumbly Chinese type that seem to use about 10 times as many roof tiles as necessary, while the new roofs are boring, Modern (yes Karl Langdon would be proud) type ones at the cost of completely ruining the visual effect for worthless foreigners like me. At least this means they're not planning to knock them all down.

Judging by the fact they're doing every house in a pretty poor area, along with the total lack of regard for aesthetics and historical value, some government authority is behind the re-roofing. So it's going to get very interesting when they get to these ones below:




Will the owners just roll over and allow their hard-earned, probably slef-built 2nd-floor shanty to be dismantled, or will there be confrontation? [they didnt get to them, they stopped after doing about 1 out of every 5.]

One place that could really do with a new roof probably won't get one though. Right below our new balcony is the worst housing i've seen in Shanghai.



It looks like it came from the same design sheet as our Minhang place but it's older, more dilapidated, and appears to be built on a kind of rubbish dump. The outside fence that faces the big, wide, modern street is decorated with some kind of fake bricks and a huge poster of gorgeous dramatic landscapes. I don't think anyone lives in the end apartment (the one with the roof missing), but still i feel very sorry for anyone who has to live there. Residents hurl their rubbish and pans of cooking grease off the balcony towards the wasteland, where an old man with a cart collects it from, and where kids joust with huge bamboo poles.



There's apparently no undercover route to the toilet - a feature always alluded to in classic industrial revolution slum descriptions. People scurry back and forth in the rain and cold, i saw one woman carrying her tissue bucket in and out. That's the bucket you put your used toilet paper in instead of flushing it cos the pipes are too thin. I didn't see any men carrying tissue buckets. I wouldn't like to see the men's room.

Even with all this though, being a relatively modern building, conditions there are probably still better than conditions in Old Shanghai under the roofs i was just ranting on about above. The ancient couple who i buy beer from run an open-front shop in a brick house somewhere in the mass of rooftops, and they still live on a wooden platform above the products, just like Carl Crow described 70 years ago.

All of this to ponder and imagine during smokos on the balcony. And as a bonus we no longer have canisters of explosive lobbing past the window every saturday morning. (Many if not most of the apartments in our complex, which comprises about 5 or so 20-25 storey buildings, are completely blank i.e. virgin concrete, never been lived in. They're not unsold, they're mostly just investments that people snapped up during the property boom with no intention of doing anything with but sitting on. In these days of real estate carnage people are actually starting to and move tenants in - or move in themselves. And of course when you move into your sleek brand new property in the centre of Shanghai, the first thing you do after you step out of your sleek brand new black Audi is banish the evil spirits. With explosives.)