100 Day View

My wife, Sophia and I, have now been living in China for three months. I feel very conscious that I have not begun to even see the real China. For China is a nation of nations with 55 recognised nationalities. We live in Shanghai which is regarded here as a western commercial centre made of expats and Shanghainese rather than real Chinese. It is a proud city and one of the fastest growing in the world. When I look out of our 31st storey apartment, I see laid out before me a city with a population almost as large as Australia. The pace of the construction programmes: roads, bridges, metros and tower blocks is truly breathtaking. Sadly, however, no attempt has been made to preserve the city’s historical heritage and only a few classic building along the Bund remain. However, it’s just been announced that the old British Consulate building is to be restored to its former nineteenth century glory. The Shanghai Daily has recently reported that the Shanghai government is “considering making wet markets a mandatory part of new residential complex projects.” Matthew Crabbe, the sardonic Shanghai commentator, recalls the destruction of the old wet markets but does not want to be “so churlish as to point out that those now proposing construction are the same people who signed the orders for destruction.”

The story I hear about property development in Shanghai is that rapacious property developers do deals for undisclosed sums to the Shanghai government to fulfil the demand for Shanghai to become a ‘modern’ city. This is more understandable in the context of Shanghai’s history in which its centre was carved up between the British, the French, the Germans, the Russians and ultimately the Japanese. Remnants of the French Concession remain but largely rebuilt in a faux 19th century style for boutiques and restaurants for the tourists. Paradoxically, at the heart of the ‘modern’ and capitalistically lavish restaurants, boutique, hotels and real estate offices of the nouveau French Concession lies the building at which the first congress of the Chinese Communist Party was held in 1929 and attended by the young Mao.

But more shops, conference centres, trade parks and apartment blocks are planned as add-on’s to existing Shanghai districts. So the "Hongqiao Main Functional Area". is being planned and will include Hongqiao Trade Headquarters Ecological Park to “gather the headquarters of world-renowned trade enterprises’. And latest news is that Disneyland is coming to Shanghai - actually to Pudong where we live and work. I guess this could be seen as a brand extension to the Disney English classes which are hosted for children at the Shanghai Cultural Centre (where we dance).