"Netizens" ≠ internet citizens

Too much is made of the rage of Chinese "netizens". "Netizens" are not citizens of the internet - they're not even citizens of their country.

I launch this diatribe because too often recently the "netizens" of China have been getting accorded with the significance of the citizens of China. But there's a difference between the rantings of internet users of China and Chinese public opinion, for reasons that should be quite obvious.

China has, by liberal estimates, 250 million internet users. Now, anyone who might read this is an internet user. What percentage of you post to bulletin boards?

Given "you" are probably a foreigner, let's not impose cultural norms on the Chinese nation. They do many things their own way, and there have indeed been waves of rage poured out on Chinese bulletin boards - maybe the Chinese actually have a real affinity for these things.

So never mind that 90% of the "netizens" i walk past daily in internet bars are occupied with either games or instant messaging chats. Let's just presume the other 10% of Chinese internet users madly post to bulletin boards. Let's double it for good measure - perhaps, every so often after they've bashed the keyboard for a few hours defeated gamers let off their steam in short, fuming diatribes on bulletin boards. So we'll say 20%.

Now 20% of 250 million is 50 million - a lot of angry little flag-wavers, when they can find time outside their busy schedule of slaying orcs (or busting out phat-ass hip hop dance moves with combinations of the num-lock keys.)

But even using these ridiculously liberal estimates, the mood of the so-called "netizens" can't account for the mood of than a tiny fraction of the population. Moreover, the non-gaming "netizens" are a very particular fraction of the population. What sort of fraction?

I really hate the word "Netizen". It seems to imply that it's something to do with citizenship. Sure, one definition of citizen is simply "inhabitant". But when people talk about "netzens" they often are according them a kind of solemn significance - something harking back to the days (ancient or imaginary) of the "public sphere", with well-informed 'citizens' debating current affairs and government policies in city squares with fountains, cafes, libraries and newspaper letters pages. Here, being a citizen presupposes having a fixed identity in engaging with others, some kind of "rights and responsibilities" shit. On the contrary, internet chat rooms and message boards are places of rumours and throwaway, knee-jerk, semi-anonymous responses (even if you use your real name, especially in China where huge numbers of people share common names, you're probably not going to meet the people who read your 'opinion').

To me the identities people assume on the internet are a new thing, unique to the medium and the era. For one, they don't share the common background "netizen" implies. Discussion between 'citizens' implies both some level of mutual understanding (if not background) and expression of rational opinions that are pinned to one's public identity.

The only mutuality between most of the world's so-called "netizens" is that they use the internet. Sure, there are small corners populated by semi-permanent 'identities' (what a great word, probly should thank Mark Drummond or someone at The West for that) from different real-world backgrounds who engage each other anyway. That's great. But in the case of Tibet and the Torch relay the discussions take place mostly among 'citizens' of China, or the UK or "the (globalised) west".

Where people share common background. So between, at times, citizens of various nations or cultures. Not citizens of the net.

The sporadic ongoing comment wars between Chinese and foreign "netizens" about Tibet, the western media's coverage of Tibet, and the olympic torch protests illustrated the consequences: in most cases where Chinese and foreigners have engaged each other, it's been as though the two sides were from different planets. (If you care, read the other "SchizOlympics" posts on 'Mutant Palm'.) But overall, while the internet does facilitate some great discussions, most of what it facilitates are throwaway opinions one makes anonymously and holds no responsibility for.

That's because on the internet you can be and do just about whatever the hell you want, anonymously. And that goes for China. That's not being a citizen of the internet, that's being free to do and say whatever the hell you want. It's great for many reasons, and one of those is it lets you vent your spleen without being held responsible for what you say. The novelty of it is it's both anonymous and semi-permanent - i.e. quotable. More often than not what is said in online chats is a throwaway opinion, and shouldn't be treated the same way something written on paper would be.

This is made clear by the difference between the online rage and the continuing hyper-friendliness of everyone i talk to in the street.

They're the reason your clothes don't stink

Hmm why even continue...this pretty much says it all, thanks Titcho.

APRIL 11,2007: Unless you're a Tibetan, disrupting the Olympic torch relay is plain wrong. (If you are a Tibetan it's hopeless and counterproductive, but more understandable.)

It's true that much of the Chinese population is rather ignorant when it comes to Tibet. So is much of any country's population when it comes to just about anything political. Unfortunately, judging by the comments on the ABC website, where educated Australians get their news, many educated Australians are pretty ignorant of some important points:

- March 14 riots were riots - very bad race-hate riots in which innocent people were beaten to death and burned alive for being ethnic Chinese. (Also plenty of videos on Youtube). The kind of riots that would clearly be put down by force in any place you care to name. How would the Australian government respond to Aboriginal riots, including killings and burnings, against whites and asians in Australia?

- China does in fact have a historic claim to Tibet. Like almost everything political in China it's complicated, but generally when China has been strong, Tibet has been part of China and when China has been weak, Tibet has been independent or autonomous. China is strong now, and there isn't a hope in hell of it letting Tibet go.

- The claims of the Chinese military killing Tibetans are unverified. The fact is we don't know what's happened, and not knowing what happened isn't doesn't exactly constitute a "brutal crackdown". In fact, in the words of the Economist's correspondent - the only foreign reporter in Tibet, who was there until the 19th, 4 days after the riots finished - "It was only when they felt safe I think that there would not be massive bloodshed, that they actually moved in with that decisive force".

- The furore about the "shady" Olympic torch "thugs" is pure and blatant demonising and hatemongering behalf of the media. Media thug Andrew Bolt's blog on the subject started as "Rudd won't let Chinese invade" and has been updated to "So they are coming after all". But these guys are actually nothing out of the ordinary.


- The Dalai Lama was funded for decades by the CIA and supported the Iraq war. He didn't order the riots - it was clearly against his interests to do so. But he isn't "a simple monk". (And the theocratic state he ran before the commies invaded was not exactly all rainbows and sunshine.)

- The Chinese government doesn't care about "international shame" - in fact it helps it in its only real objective: maintaining power in China.

To top it all off, not even the Dalai Lama is calling for Tibetan independence.

As for the Chinese people, it's probably better they don't know the realty of these Paris, San Francisco and London protests. They genuinely are looking forward - like crazy - to welcoming the world to come and see how far they've progressed. And the fact is they have come a very long way, and a good 90% of them - or well over 1 billion of the people on this earth - are more than content to be hosting the Olympics. To overlook this, to deny or attempt to spoil for over 1 billion people the celebration of tangible (and historically unprecedented) progress that they are so eagerly awaiting would be, well . . . we should have a hell of a problem with them, as a people, for that to be justified.

But in fact, barely anyone is claiming or admitting to having a problem with the Han Chinese people, who don't actually have much more in the way of human rights than the Tibetans.

Don't forget how genuinely they deserve this, the Chinese. Our richness is in a very real way subsidised by the ordinary Chinese, as they have been and continue to work their arses off to better their own position - in many cases pulling themselves out of poverty as well - by their hard, hard labour. Though unintentional they've enriched the the positions of each other and people all over the world. If it wasn't for them, plenty of us would probably still only have our "sunday best" as a change of clothes. How could anyone in their right mind deny that number of people an occasion like this that they both deserve and desire, just because we don't like their government?

Not only that, as i mentioned above, the international criticism only serves to help that government we don't like. Having those thousands of reporters in the country before, during and after the Games is likely to teach the government some lessons about the advantages of allowing information to flow.

The Chinese government's heavy handedness and lack of understanding of minorities' concerns is stupid. The Chinese government's jailing of dissenters is stupid - these guys get virtually no mainstream international attention until they get locked up. The government's controls on information are to an extent unfathomable, because they involve so much history, and we find them abhorrent. Somehow despite this, plenty of Chinese citizens are as well informed as other truth-seeking 'global citizens'. "The rest" may wallow in apathy (majority) and/or blind slogan-shouting (minority), but that's a pretty apt summary of the populations of western countries like the US and Australia. Does this mean the Australian and US people deserve to be similarly penalised for their government's actions?

Yes, says Matt Taibbi: "We can't focus for more than ten seconds on anything at all and we're constantly exercised about stupid media-generated non-scandals . . . What a bunch of turds we all are."

Ha ha ha. But while our apathy means we get who we deserve ruling us - people who stand for nothing - the Chinese can't be blamed in the same way. After a torrid century in which China lost successive wars and was in parts occupied by foreign powers and subjected to long periods of warlord rule, little wonder unity was seen as the first step towards a decent life. Now as the people get richer, and keener to protect their individual rights, I think it is pretty inevitable that they're going to be granted.

By bringing the world to China the Olympics can only help to bring that about. As for the Tibetans, they probably look at examples like East Timor as a reason to keep fighting, and the Olympics as a reason to keep fighting NOW. But East Timor got free because the Indonesian people brought Suharto down. Ironically the Olympic torch protests, by causing Chinese people to rally as they have behind the government against the "outside forces" it says are pitted against China in its moment of glory, are actually making the Chinese people less of a threat to the Chinese government.

Chinese comedian-goose

APRIL 6, 2008: After last year's tragicomedic saga (which pre-dated this blog but if you're reading this it probably went to your in-box) heading back out to Hong Kong this time we were ridiculously, boringly well prepared. Photos (HK)

We even booked accommodation. Yes, that would be the second time that we have arrived in a town with accommodation booked - the first time being when Bill booked it for us in Beijing. The hotel turned out to be on an island out of town, whose locals deny there is "anything" there.

But the room was on the 30th floor, right above the busiest port in the world, with surreal, kilometre-long stacks of sea containers looking like the baby blocks of a spoiled child showing signs of OCD. From our vantage point the entire operation looked like lego.


We didn't quite prepare well enough, however, and found out in short order that we would have to wait 3 days for our Mainland China visas and another day for a train, and, in turn that we had to be out of our room the following morning because they had already rented it out. Probably to some South African Rugby Sevens watcher or a Communist Party family with two kids who chose it for its proximity to Hong Kong Disney Land. After two hours of non-stop searching and calling, we secured a room in a place near Central Hong Kong. This time from the 16th floor, the view out the window was again nifty in its own Hong Kong sort-of way.


Not so this place's electrical plugs, which grabbed onto my mp3 player's Chinese charger plug so fiercely that it came apart in my hands, sending what i can only guess was a 240-volt shock through my body.

Perilous too was, nay is, our financial predicament, so we took to riding the trams for our night time entertainment. Still, i discovered that HK trams, combined with HK lights, make randomly pointing the camera and pressing the trigger almost worthwhile. (Sorry if you hate these kind of photos.)





Our arrival back at the migrant workers' den dispelled all doubt about greasy, suspicious-looking Mr Shi: all our possessions were in perfect order, we now owe them a large sum of money, and he's letting us pay it when we get some money. Unpacking and setting up the brick stilts and wooden board that is our bed here in the darkness of the Shanghai day brought up a weak feeling of sadness, probably due to the objective shitness of our surroundings. After 2 months in Australia, the days seem very very dark here. It's good here in other (more shit) ways.

But why are we here? It's rare that a forienger - let alone 2 - will get to live so freely in China, not tied to an employer and not registered with the authorities. The situation that they don't actually know where we live is very rare. Chance like this asks for something special to be done with it, and that's how i'll measure this year.

Accordingly, I began my grand journalistic foray by trying to hawk off a shitty, average, mediocre travel story to get some money.

This required my first interview of a Chinese expert in Chinese. The interviewee, a Professor Chen, i'm reliably informed, is THE authority on Ming Dynasty history, and his voice is nothing if not authoritative. 'Warlike' would probably be a better description. The task was simple: just establish to what extent the Ming Dynasty undertook forced relocations of their population to the Great Wall frontier.

But of course after 2 months in Australia my Chinese had declined alarmingly. 15 torrid minutes later, when i played the recording back to myself, i could barely contain my laughter. I had people all around me (in the internet bar) looking to see what hilarious comedy the foreigner was watching. It sounded like the equivalent (in Chinese) of some young fresh-off-the-boat Oriental guy who can barely string a sentence together ringing up some recently-retired US military general to ask him about the inner workings of the "Coalition"s Iraq exit strategy.

"Uhhh, harro, uhhhh, my name......Zhu Hong Bing.......i a Austraria uhhh......." i trailed off mid sentence, ".....traverr writer."

"Yes," he replied, faintly chuckling.

"I want askeee......uhh.......i do some re......rea......readi.......reassssss........reasearch.....Ming Dynasty, did have any f....f...f....f....fooo......"

[Silence]

"Me have Ming Dynasty question-thing," I ventured, hopeful the more simple tack would turn the game.

"Aaaaaaahaaaaa, Ming Dynasty what question-thing eh?" the Professor demanded light-heartedly.

"Uhhh, Ming Dynasty........so, so do Ming Dynasty, did have any f....f...f....f....fooo......fourth.....fourth.......forced rela....relatio.....r...rrrr.....resuscit......re.....[long pause]......rerocation?"

Doing the opposite of what one should in an interview, i attempted to reduce the inevitably interesting and elaborate answer he'd want to give me down to a closed yes or no question. Alas, he responded to my question with the expected nuance, and I understood about 5 per cent of what he said.

I was saved by the fact you can now record Skype calls, in doing so breaking both Australian law and the journalists' code of ethics. But we weren't in Australia, and what the hell - only one person stood to be shamed due to the resultant recording, and that person knew all right.

Maybe i could become a famous comedian in China just by deliberately not studying and then trying to talk with really imposing, intelligent people. They'd lap it up!

Save the bridge

MARCH 24, 2008: I'm guessing others who thought it was a tragedy and whinge whinge and so on have noticed the Leighton Beach development basically has none of the negative effects it was supposed to have, like on public access to the beach.

I'm more worried about them phasing out that awesome bridge over the train line. Can't see rich people tolerating something so non-picturesque for long.







Stands to reason tho, because Perth people are spoilt for scenery. And yes yes i know you've all seen it all before so many times but i don't think we Perthites (can?) really appreciate how good the Swan River is, at least until we've been away from it for ages. It's gotta be one of the most idyllic settings for a city imaginable.





Wank wank wank, yes everyone's seen it before but my excuse is i'm high.

My eyes! I'm blind!

MARCH 1, 2008: I haven't been exposed to this much light for a good 10 months. Perth's very, uh, a very bright place. Photos of Australia, Hong Kong

Anyway.

We got jobs proofreading ("editing" when we choose to get grandiose about it) - Boxxy at a Shanghai expat mag, me at a small-time publishing house that's republishing old English-language books about China from between 1800 and 1950. Two days a week pays the bills for the whole month, so i'm fresh out of excuses not to get writing.

Many of these old books embody the classic old Yellow Peril/Foreign Devil antipathy, and the first job I got is worthy of attention, if only because you'll never read it. It's called "Beleaguered in Peking", and it's the diary of an American doctor who was caught up in the siege of the foreigners in Beijing in the Boxer Rebellion (1900). It was published just a few weeks after the siege ended, so it was pretty sloppily done and has a predictable amount of knee-jerk ranting. Which is hilarious of course. And though the title was "Beleaguered in Peking" - even on the title page - on the original front cover it's called "The Yellow Crime". Probably a shrewd, last-minute move by the publisher at the time.

Other highlights include:
- The 'heroine of the siege', Mrs Chamot, "after some shells burst in the baking room and killed one and severely wounded others of the Chinese bakers, Mrs. Chamot, rifle in hand, held the coolies to their work."
- "A Peking Belle: Perhaps, after looking at this picture, there will not be so much wonder that occasionally a Caucasian selects a Chinese girl for a wife. That there are very attractive Chinese girls this picture evidences."
- "Norregaard drew his revolver and fired two shots into the mob. The effect was instantaneous. The brutal cowards dropped Cox at once, and ran away like sheep toward their encampment."
- "Thanks to Mr Stell in the coolie supply department."
- "[T]he seeds of disorder and riot that yielded such a bitter crop when they ripened; just as only a poorly-organized, semi-patriotic, but fully looting society could do".

And a very entertaining obsession with the words "ruffian" and "filth".

Just after starting these jobs, we had to leave Shanghai to use our return plane tickets to Australia. Timing, as usual, was exquisite: this time just as the largest annual human migration on the planet began to take hold. The 300 million-odd migrant workers, in their efforts to get home for Chinese New Year, were just beginning to bring the transportation system to a grinding halt. Our plane was departing from Hong Kong on the 27th. Around the 20th I went to the train station to 'pick up' a couple of tickets to Hong Kong. [Insert Family Feud shut-down noise.] No chance. So I went to a different ticket office to get a couple of tickets to Guangzhou, near enough to Hong Kong, instead. No chance. I went to another station and there, after standing in line for about half an hour in the crowded hall, managed to get my hands on two tickets – hard seats for the 20+ hour journey.

So we packed up and left, just as a fear-inducing "public announcement" got delivered to us, warning all residents of our compound that no-one going away for Chinese New Year should leave anything inside that they don't want stolen. Crucial to your chances of having anything left when you get back, but no guarantee, was to inform the landlord of your dates of departure and return. My impression of the greasy, slick-headed landlord (actually the landlord's agent) had not been positive. He's one of these Chinese blokes who reeks of baijiu in the early morning and apparently never speaks at any volume below shouting. The idea of telling him of the long period we would be away filled me with doubts. We slapped the padlock on the door, tried to make the place look empty, and left.

Of course, before long it all went horribly wrong. Unbelievably, we were once again misinformed as to which train station to go to, this time by the clerk who sold the ticket. Luckily this time we had left 2 hours early for this very purpose, remembering that with 2000+km to travel and migrant workers creating mayhem at every turn, just one missed train or connection, one delay or mishap and we would miss our flight home. So, laden with suitcases and various bags, we descended again down into the subway. But the normally unstoppable subway train kept stopping in the tunnel. Then the doors at several stations apparently wouldn't open. At this point it was clear: though we in fact ARE migrant workers, heading home for Chinese New Year, our fellows were going to fuck us over.

But by some miracle we made it, and indescribably lucky we were. As we got into Guangzhou, after 1 hour's sleep (on the train floor, under the seat), the transport system went into its well-documented meltdown, due to the severe snowstorms across the country. Supposedly tropical Guangzhou was cold, colder than Perth in winter, and very very wet. The only accommodation available near the station was about 200 stairs higher than we were longing for. A little consolation of all this luggage-laden climbing was witnessing the strange arrangement of tall, narrow apartment buildings with narrow alleyways in between, creating what are effectively hutongs (tightly packed villages) stacked on top of each other. This means Guangzhou residents live about a metre from various neighbours' windows, but about 200 metres from door to door. I haven't explained this very well but the pictures sort of show it.



I'm glad I'm not one of the friendly staff on the Chinese train service, who would have copped it nasty from the millions and millions of stranded, shattered passengers being denied their only chance to see their families all year. When things go wrong, well, i wouldn't blame them for being a little confused as to how to handle the situation. This slogan on the red sign in the following pic reads: "Passengers first, safety first, service first".


So what happens, then, when snow storms make providing train services to carry millions of passengers home extremely dangerous? Which comes first - passengers, safety or service? The pictures on TV made the answer pretty obvious.

You know you're safe behind the razor wire of Hong Kong when you see a sign that states Falun Dafa (Falun Gong) is, gasp...


They carry out an extraordinarily aggressive propaganda campaign in Hong Kong against the Chinese Communist Party. The display in the picture below was in the middle of the Causeway Bay shopping precinct on a Saturday night, where body space is severely scarce. Surely they would need permission from the local authorities (who are actually selected by the Communist Party), to set up a stall like this in the middle of one of the busiest streets on earth. The "Practitioners demonstration" sign is interesting. The claims of organ harvesting are seriously horrific, but apparently Falun Gong is worried there are some who would see this and go home to try extracting organs for themselves. The Chinese writing above the English actually reads, "Practitioners demonstration, please do not copy."



So, homeless once again, after we got bored with riding up and down the above escalator we dumped our bags at the train station and headed for an internet bar to sleep. On the way, we passed Kowloon's harbour promenade to check the latest fashions. Not really, but Boxxy couldn't help but notice this picturesque couple.


Here they are, officially on "the Thrillseeker fashion blog, a daily digest of the best dressed people in seven cities across the world". That's what they think anyway, poor fools.

Two haircuts and no real jobs

JANUARY 18, 2008: In Shanghai, apparently for the next year or so. News is that at some point very soon i'm going to have to start being a journalist. On that note, i'll indulge in a mournful lament: The comic life and tragic end of old trusty $3 camera. Photos

A few years ago in Melbourne, i didn't have a camera, had never owned one and wanted to take some pictures. Shocked by the price (and concept) of disposable cameras, i didn't buy one. But soon after i was in an Op Shop, where i first laid eyes on that special unit, that which was to become 'OT'. About 50 grams of sturdy black plastic, no flash, no batteries, one blue button - to "take picture" - and no hint of any brand name - though it did have a high-tech sounding model number - 'T-808' - slowly fading away on the front. And a high-tech slide-across lens cover.

The camera plus 3 rolls of film - effectively three disposable cameras plus a camera to keep - totalled $13. This expendable Victorian op-shop unit proceeded to follow me to the edges of my world - to London, Dili, Busselton - accurately depicting the fuzziness with which i saw many of these scenes. And, pricelessly, my faithful companion required no attention or protection at all to keep within my possession. I could leave him unattended and his appearance of worthlessness would keep the wolves at bay.

Old Trusty came with me to China. But signs of a breakdown were showing. Winding the film back at the end of each roll now required inserting a knife directly into the film. Which in turn led to a prising open of 'OT's plastic shell and the leakage of sunlight. But, like a senile old man whose stories keep getting better as he gets closer and closer to madness, OT's leaks made for more and more interesting pictures. OT ended up on a bicycle expedition, where his owner encouraged his madness by hanging him off the bicycle handlebars in the direct sunlight. This also allowed him to snap people and things without interrupting the flow of the journey, or interfering with the scene. And you should've seen us - him and me - against the girls in the Chinese photo processing shops. EVERY SINGLE TIME they'd hand back the film, having done none of what we wanted, saying, "These pictures - all no good!" To which i'd reply that, yes, we knew, and no, we didn't give a fuck what they thought of our photos, and yes, go back right now and do it...every single damn photo...yes, 38 for the price of 36, yes, even the black ones at the end...And they'd look back at us like we'd just told them to go remove the gizzards from the flat cat on the road outside because we were hungry. In short, Old Trusty was at the peak of his game.

Taking this into consideration, you'd expect i'd become a little more protective of OT once we moved to the peasant truck stage. But OT's life was always happy-go-lucky. Messing around with different positions, safety ropes - paying attention to safety generally - was against the spirit of OT's existence. So he sat beside me on the front of the truck, ready to spring into action.

Then one day he wasn't there. By the time i realised, it'd been 20 minutes at least since he fell. I turned the truck around but already i could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. For in China there are people who literally subsist on what falls from passing vehicles. So, of course, after close to an hour, the search was called off and an era was over.

I tried to console myself with the thought that some really poor person had probably picked it up - poor enough to pick it up off the road - and they'd now have it as their first camera. This was indeed comforting, but the reality soon descended that, even if it did happen that way, as soon as they got the first pictures back from it - if not sooner due to all its stickytape holding it together and the requirement for a knife to wind back the film - they'd decide it was worthless and Old Trusty would be condemned to rest among rotting chicken hearts, feathers, light bulbs, engine grease, dog bones and torn plastic bags on a lonely open garbage pile on the banks of the Yellow River.





Old Trusty $3 China photos. RIP.

---------------------------------------------


So, as the title would suggest, after two weeks in mainland China's richest city, we're poverty stricken. Once again, maybe i've been in the countryside too long but i don't think it's worth it - for the most part Shanghai's rather boring, especially to to look at.

What's struck me most about Shanghai is its sheer completeness; systematic, orderly and insanely busy. The subway system is practically flawless; the trains come every 3 minutes for 18 hours a day. That's nearly 800 trains per day, just on our line. Not only that, it's close to 100% utilised, i.e. you can almost never get a seat. Not exactly comfortable, but a rare combination of extremely convenient yet not wasteful. Peak hour is insane...the people cram onto these trains literally moshpit style. The subway is almost new (built in the 1990s) and most stations have these as glass barriers to prevent crowd surges into the path of the oncoming trains. People here are so busy that there's a marriage market every weekend in the city square - hundreds of middle-aged to elderly people (the parents) gather to seek a match for their children. This can take many months. The people i spoke to have been going for almost a year now and haven't found the right match. That's obviously because they're very specific in what they want; one lady's requirements were good job, good education, high income and not good looking because good looking is "too hard to control".


The magnitude of this city's hard to grasp. It's so big that it takes almost half an hour to walk two blocks as marked on my metre-long city map. The population is 10-12 million. That doesn't include migrant workers - the peasants who come here to work factory jobs to send money back home - of which there are millions, 5 million by some estimates. Shanghai railway station is where a great many of them enter and leave, and it's getting close to Chinese New Year. Even that kind of chaotic process is done in an artificially orderly fashion, for China.



At street level there are legions of traffic inspectors preventing jaywalking and batallions of street sweepers - human ones in concert with mechanical ones. There's also an extremely orderly network of high-speed "Elevated Roads" - basically freeways on stilts, that allow people to drive around the city at 100km/h with no traffic lights. Now, the spaces below a stilted highway or metro railway, you might forgiven for expecting perhaps a bit of decay, bit of graffiti, a few patches of wasteland - at least some disorder of some kind, right? But in Shanghai even that space is utilised in a neat and orderly fashion, mostly with low-speed normal roads following the same course as the "elevated" ones above, and of course, immaculately kept gardens in the median strips. There are, i admit, occasional examples of the chaos and contradictions you'd expect in China's biggest city.




And in the former "foreign concessions" there are a few old European buildings in pretty good condition. But in most areas i've seen, whatever was here before, if anything, has been pulled down and rebuilt since the 90s, so most of the city as it stands today dates back only that far. You may recall that in Songyuan can be observed many fine examples of 90s decay. But outside appearances actually count here and the apartment blocks withstand the winds of time a bit better.

Thankfully in many ways, the Shanghai prices and our dire financial situation forced us out to the fringes. Here it's a tad more interesting. We live in probably one of Shanghai's best attempts at a canal-side slum area. The housing's low-rise, mainly 2-storey, and hemmed in among several woodwork and cardboard factories - although against the cracked, whitewashed walls - almost all of them - is a network of immaculately manicured hedges. The back wall overlooks the canal.



We live in a ground floor "apartment" in a complex full of (fellow) migrant workers from the provinces. The complex is aimed at them - the name means either "Residential Area" or "Little Migrant Housing Area", depending on how you interpret the Chinese. My money's on the latter because i've yet to meet a Shanghai person in the vicinity. To get to our place you have to take a left off a main street, walk 100m then turn right at a driveway, go through the left hand gate when you reach the dead end (the right one leads into a factory), then take the first alleyway on the right, walk straight for about 100m, bear left past the first building of the complex and you're there. We do, technically, have an address but it's next to useless: even a professional courier couldn't find it when he tried to deliver my mail. I had to meet him at the main road. It's really a maze, and the out-of-place hedges lend a strange authenticity to that feeling.

Our place is really more of a room than an apartment. Bare concrete floors, squat toilet, cracked windows that don't close properly and very, very cold. We had to buy two heaters with a combined power of 3000 watts to even make it livable. And this is a 12 square-metre cupboard we're talking about. The 1-inch gap under the door doesn't help. Strangely, those long grain-filled draft-stoppers that are common in Australia - where houses generally aren't drafty - are impossible to find here. So we feebly try to stop the cold air with a broom. Our bed consists of a pot-holed old couch and a wooden board propped up on six stacks of bricks. Can't complain, however - i think the previous tenants, migrant workers from Anhui province, slept four people on it. Many of the other flats in the complex are loaded with numerous bunk beds. Also the fact it has running water and an indoor toilet at all means it's still above the whole-China average.


Obviously Shanghai foreigners in general are another story. "A city of foreign decadence" is how Shanghai is often described - both old and new Shanghai. There are scores of foreigners here - westerners, that is; locals say there are scores of Japanese and Koreans too - and when it comes to anything involving money, beggars excepted, they do not hold back.


Most cafes and restaurants are simply out of our price range. We have hit the western pubs and clubs a couple of nights, and it's like being in a room full of division one Lotto winners. There is a genuine sense of of people throwing away vast amounts of money in a very indiscriminate and rather vulgar way. One Australian told me westerners enjoy something approaching impunity in Shanghai, due to a rule that says only English-speaking 'tourist police' can talk to foreigners. Told me the story of a friend of his who was parking his expensive SUV and collided with a guy on an electric bicycle. Story goes, he inspected the paintwork of his car, assessed the cyclist as being very poor, picked up his electric bicycle and put it in his wagon. Cops showed up, he told them what happened in charades, drove away with the poor dude's transport. End of story.