A Tale of Two Cities

I took this picture from the window of one of the apartments that I looked at when I first around here.  You're looking North, towards the center of downtown.  In the foreground is a traditional Shanghai street market, teeming with fruit peddlers and electronics merchants, many of them the very definition of mom-and-pop shops.  Almost all of them operate out of the front of their residences, and many of them rarely leave the confines of the market area, which you can see clearly defined by the red roofs.  The market is overshadowed - quite literally - by the modern city of sky-scraping hotels, apartment complexes, and offices for which the city is now famous.  This is one of what I imagine are several possible examples of the "two" Shanghais.  The buildings in the background here don't even scrape the surface of the gargantuan architectural wonder that can be found here. And this market is one of many just like it, remnants of an old city that just recently became new.

Anyone who argues, therefore, that Shanghai isn't a good example of "real" China need only get lost in the maze of Old City (another market area not pictured here), or haggle with a merchant selling antique chess sets, to know that there is plenty of ancient China within the bustling confines of this metropolis.  That said, the international influence here is more palpable than anywhere in China with the possible exception of Hong Kong.  Colonists from France, Holland, Great Britain, and elsewhere historically had outposts here, and for the last 150 years Shanghai has been considered the cosmopolitan capital of China.  It is here that you can see grand old Dutch architecture on the Bund before having Indian food for dinner and gelato for dessert.  And it is here where most international companies send their sentries to build colonies of their own to exploit the until-recently burgeoning economy.

For a 24 year old American living in Shanghai, the distinction between Chinese and international is a far more relevant tale of two cities than that of old and new.  The expat culture here is everywhere -- just this weekend I was invited to two dinners of over twenty people, not one of whom was Chinese.  People from all over the world live here, like to have fun, and like to share that fun with newcomers like me.  They party - hard - to the extent where going home before the sun rises is considered an early night.

And as fun as this paint the town red (and always) lifestyle is, I am hesitant to commit fully to it.  There are the obvious drawbacks: despite the fact that many of the expats here speak an impressive amount of Chinese, Chinese is not the language of choice amongst the foreigners.  They speak English, or French, or Spanish, but Chinese only as a novelty that they show off in front of waiters and taxi drivers.  An expat life is not the path to Chinese fluency.

But there's something subtler at stake here as well.  I came here in many ways to grow up -- not to toss my youth aside as finished, necessarily, but to actively take a step forward in my exploration of, if nothing else, myself.  In many ways, the expat life seems a step backward to me.  An unendingly fun step, but one in reverse nonetheless.  On Friday night, I went to a rowdy Chinese dinner with many friends of a friend, most of whom were American.  My friend explained to me that all of them, almost without exception, lived in a very small area which Chinese might call the northern edge of the Xuhui ('shoo-hway') District, and foreigners would call the French Concession.  These guys, on the other hand, call it, simply, "Campus."  The restaurant we were eating at was about a kilometer away from their little enclave, so everyone kept talking about how it was "Off Campus."  The whole night was reminding me of college -- in a really fun way, don't get me wrong -- but when you add On Campus/Off Campus to the beer-soaked dinner and the cacophony of "Call Me Maybe" and  "Livin' On a Prayer" blasting at the bar afterwards, I really could have been in Philadelphia with my TEP brothers, let alone Shanghai.  Rack those cups, pass the ping pong balls, let's play some beer pong and sing country songs all night.

But before you write me off as some hoity-toity culture snob who is swearing off the more-fun expat scene for good, here are a few reasons why I won't be doing anything of the sort:

Saturday was the 7th Annual Shanghai Chili Cook-Off, and these three pictures were my feeble attempts at capturing it.  Thousands of people, the vast majority of which were expats, flocked to the difficult-to-reach Pudong region (my new expat friends affectionally call it Pu Jersey, and I can see why) for some chili and beer.

A couple of weeks ago, on my first Friday night out in Shanghai, I was invited to this brand name-release party.  Two Danish guys are opening a sandwich and salad chain in Shanghai (anyone familiar with my dream of opening a Chop't here will know how excited this makes me), and I found myself at the official releasing of the brand name.  All Cape Cod enthusiasts who read this blog will be encouraged by its choice of name, I'm sure.

And then there's this.  It's blurry, but yes, that's me.  The more pertinent fact is that I'm riding in the side car of a motorcycle, a la Groucho Marx in Duck Soup, darting through the streets of Shanghai at night.  After the Lunch Box party, my Chilean roommate and a few of her friends dragged me to a Latin club.  How convenient that we were also with an American dude with a motorcycle.  I wasn't about to hop on with him, but the side car looked exceedingly comfortable.

So while there's certainly room for the fraternity-esque debauchery that seems like it comes naturally with the expat scene here, I'm hopeful that I can strike a balance.  Just walking around the city, speaking to Chinese people in Chinese would be a step in that direction, and I think I've done a good job of that so far.  There are two cities here, and I think I have time to revel in both of them before my tale here is complete.