Construction & Capitalism

Sleeping construction workers in downtown Shanghai.


Today we went downtown to the commercial district. The first stop was the Shanghai Planning and Development museum, a bunch of high-tech videos and scale-models depicting a perfect and clean city; the way Shanghai will be in the future. It's hard to tell how much was propaganda, but it was definitely optomistic. The centerpiece of the museum was a full model of the city itself, about 60x40 feet, giving another illustration of just how huge this place is. Since arriving here, I have yet to see a view that isn't entirely of the city. I'm starting to wonder if there is actually countryside in China. And everywhere where you go, there is construction. It's impossible to have your eyes open in the city and not see construction (no exaggeration). Millions of migrant workers move from the countryside to come and work in the cities, most of them it seems are in construction. They usually live on-site. At one point in the late 90s, the newly-developing Pu Dong region of Shanghai was home to 1/5 of all of the world's construstion cranes. That's one part, of one city, of one country in the world. One out of five cranes. You get the picture. Lots of bamboo scaffolding.

After the lunch we went to Nanjing Road, a pedestrian street with shops and vendors galore and (you guessed it) thousands upon thousands of people. I'm not going to post a picture of it because I didn't get any that come close to doing it justice. Just think capitalism. My crowning achievment of the day was buying a pair of shoes, and speaking Chinese through the entire 15-minute experience. The women that worked in the shop were extremely eager to please, bringing out any kind of shoe I even looked like I was pretending to see out of the corner of my eye before I could say "bu yao". After I told them that I liked one but it was too big, then too small, they rushed to find an insole that made it just right. They complimented me on my english and I gave them the 150 kuai the shoes were marked at, not wanting to try to bargain and jeopardize something that had gone so incredibly well. Waiting for me at exit of the shop were guys probably about my age, holding out magazine ads promising "Shoes. DVDs." I tried to convince them that I already had bought shoes (hence the box), but they persisted. There were a lot of these kind of people. I never bothered to follow them to the promised land of "Shoes, DVDs, Sunaglass. Cheap." Though I did break my sunaglass. I'll have to find one of them next time. We were approached by people with surprisingly good english a few times, inviting us to their art exhibition. When we said we had to go because we were meeting somebody (true 1 out of 3 times), they said it would only take two minutes. Must have been a short exhibit.

I paid extra close attention to where we were going on the journey home through the subway (much more crowded this time) so that hopefully I'll be able to get back to Nanjing road on my own if I want.