It's hard to believe that I have already been here in Shanghai for two weeks. To a large degree, it seems like I haven't had time to relax since I got here. I've now had my first full week of classes and two weekends to explore. Everything has been great so far.
As I've walked around, I've noticed so much. This city is very busy- there is always something to see, something to do. One of the first observations I made was how vertical everything is here. Many of the small local neighborhoods have been demolished to make room for massive, identical apartment complexes. At home, I've been known to lament the rise of "big-box" stores, franchise restaurants, and boring suburban developments. I hate the Targets, Wal-marts, and Olive Gardens that are slowly making every town in America exactly the same. I hate that the local driving range is going to become a neighborhood made up of 20 houses from the same exact blueprint. I hate that I have to drive all the way to Eastchester or White Plains to find a decent record store because they've stolen all the business from the little guy.
Here in Shanghai, though, this process has been taken to a completely new level. My apartment complex has three buildings; they all look exactly the same. Ditto for the complex across the street. On the ride from the airport to the CIEE office, I felt like I was watching the Flintstones- the same background passing by over and over. Here, it is like the Pete Seeger song they made us learn in Mr. Goldberg's class plays on repeat. They're all made of ticky tacky and they all really do look just the same.
One thing I found interesting, however, was that only residential buildings had this monotony. Shanghai is developing a prominent skyline, and I think it is very indicative of the nature of modern priorities here that only commercial interests have unique attention paid to design.
Then there's the issue of brands. In my neighborhood alone, there is a Papa John's, a Pizza Hut, two "Hello Pizza"s, three KFC's (two of them in the same mall, mind you), two McDonalds, two Starbucks, and a Dairy Queen. And those are just the ones that I've found. There is also an "Grandma Wu's" fast-food dumpling restaurant, and a place that we've began affectionately calling "Kentucky Fried Mao", because it is essentially a Chinese KFC, with a Chinese colonel and everything. Ticky tacky, ticky tacky.
There are, of course, other problems to this. The rapid building results not only in a cookie cutter city, but in a faulty mold. To the best of my knowledge, most of these buildings are constructed without insulation or central air. Consequentially, they waste a lot of energy with individual air units for each room that have to work extra hard. There is the issue of eminent domain, and many more that are for different times. I'm supposed to be learning about many of these in my classes, and will probably discuss them at a later date.
It was recently announced that the official population of Shanghai is 18 million people, and with the large migrant population, the actual population is surely much larger. It is growing quickly, too. While the construction might be necessary, I think it is also a bit of an autarkic cycle- the development encourages more people to come, which results in a need for even more development. I also think that history will look back on this development unfavorably.
Ticky tacky, ticky tacky...
(And now some pictures...)
You might notice that the umbrella is sponsored by Coca-Cola.
Underwear hang drying from people's windows.
