China - Sept 19th to 23

The dragon.


First impressions:

1. Natalie Portman. She was the first advertisement I saw in the Shanghai airport, even before immigration control. Dior's Jewish princess. Welcome to China!

2. Brutal efficiency. Both the flight, and at the airport.

3. What is communism? Is this it? Or if not, what is this?

**

Is China old fashioned? Or is it the future?

I feel like anything I write about China will not do the place justice, and I only saw one corner of one massive (23 million person) city in a nation of many ethnicities and stories and over one billion people. So it is unfair for me to make observations. Only some thoughts from my brief visit.

Being in China made me realize how ... 'light' Singapore is. Singapore, as they say, can 'look' Chinese due to its 75% Han Chinese majority, but it is far, far from China. It is a garden city, it is a colonial city.

China is a great modern empire built upon thousands of years of influential history with its very own, roaring soul.

I was bamboozled, awed, offended, exhausted, invigorated, enlivened, weakened, strengthened, inebriated, and fucked by Shanghai. Not sure what else I can say, other than I would like to go back and slip more deeply into the city. If Shanghai is a pair of clothes, I only picked it up, smelled it, and looked at the price tag. I didn't put it on.

**

Sunday, 23

Shanghai Pudong International Airport

Just took the 300 km / hour 'Maglev' train to the airport, which felt like flying.  Not sure if it is necessary, but cool nonetheless. Can't see a maglev in New york or any other America now or in the future. 20+ miles in 7 minutes.

Some concluding thoughts on China / Shanghai, ending my first (and not last) visit.

Shanghai may not be the 'real' China, as the capitalist, global gateway with so much historical (Western) baggage and artifacts. But it certainly has parts of it. Just as New York City may not be the 'real' America, it is, quintessentially, a very American city.

Shanghai feels like 20 world cities jammed into one. New York, Paris, Moscow, Tokyo.

Maddening, frenzied, beautiful, frightening, electric, ugly, creepy, exciting, sad. Futurist. Old fashioned. Dirty, sleek. Fast. Layered. Alive. Excessive. Neon. Obscene. Fantastic.

Shanghai is like an erotic slap in the face when coming from languid, shiny, fine-scented Singapore. Singapore is the nice girl you met at the cotillion, and Shanghai is the whore you keep going back to.

Talk about 'spontaneous pockets of interaction'. Anything goes.

Art deco mansions next to a tea house. Ming dynasty doorway next to a Citibank. An impromptu bluegrass band announcing songs about Nashville in mandarin and then again with an Appalachian twang.

"To what do we compare China?" (ask Logan and Fainstein).

To everything. To ourselves.