Shanghai Surprise Pt. 2

There's this stereotype in America about Asians being polite and docile and for the life of me, I can't figure out where the hell this comes from. Probably the Japanese actually, but certainly not the Chinese. I mean, we're rude, aggressive, loud and pushy people as anyone who's tried to elbow their way past the old Chinatown women on the Geary bus can tell you.

I do realize of course that issues of space and decorum are purely cultural and social and that there's no universal standard to hold people to. Case in point: try riding the subway in Shanghai.

On one level, the metro here is great - brand-new, very efficient, clean, etc. I take it almost everyday I'm in Shanghai to travel between Pudong and Puxi. It's easy as hell to figure out since there are only two lines to take and there's even recorded messages in English that tell you what the upcoming stop is. In fact, on the train, each stop is also written in English too, though inexplicably, by the ticket machines outside, the signs are all in Chinese and it took me and my sister some time to figure out just where the hell we wanted to go initially.

Supposedly, a very small percentage of Shanghai's residents actually take the metro, but that's a very small percentage of a very large population. Most rides during the day are standing room only especially at People's Square which is the transfer point between Lines 1 & 2. It's busy, like Grand Central Square busy (ok, well, maybe more like Union Square busy) all the time and thus becomes a very interesting place to observe how people in Shanghai deal with the issue of personal space.

That whole "personal bubble" thing that Americans have? Leave that at the airport because you'll find that bubble popped real fast when you try to hop on a subway car. It's a mad house, even by Chinese standards, as a dozen+ people line up in front of each train door, waiting to pounce inside. They almost never let the people actually ON the train get out first and every stop is an informal shoving match between those trying to enter and those trying to exit. It's gotten so bad that at the busier stops, such as People's Square, they have uniformed officers with bullhorns, droning to people - "first let people exit, then enter". Yet, despite this, it's a stampede every time. People aren't crazy about this either and there are loud complaints but inevitably, everyone who wants in usually gets in which means you're literally squashed, body-to-body with everyone on the train though thankfully, usually only for two stops or so.

Thankfully, I don't have personal space issues, so I don't mind being squeezed between four dozen people though it is a pain to try to squish yourself through the mass to get to the exit when you're unlucky enough to be on the other side of the train...mind you, this is only about five feet we're talking about, but it can feel like fifty given how clogged the car is with bodies.

I don't call it a lack of decorum so much as a general aggression or at least, impatience on the part of folks here. You get the sense that they feel that, if they don't bumrush the train cars, they'll literally get left behind and no one wants to be 2nd. My mom suggests that it's a by-product of a society that very much lives by a survival of the fittest attitude, no doubt augmented by the intricacies of Communist living the last 50 years. I don't know either way what the root causes are but I see it manifest all over the place.

Interestingly enough, the only act of generosity I witnessed on the subway was when a middle-aged white man offered his seat - in Mandarin - to an older Chinese gentleman.

In any case, this difference in decorum is also incredibly obvious on the streets. I don't know what the rates of auto accidents and pedestrian fatalities are but I imagine it must be spectacularly high. The deal is this: there's no predetermination about who has right of way and therefore EVERYONE - be it on foot, two wheels or four - seems to assume they have it. This logic leads to a situation where every crosswalk becomes mini games of chicken where it's pedestrian vs. motorist and everyone waits to see who's willing to blink first. This is especially clear in situations where cars are making turns and there's people attempting to walk across the street at the same time. The way I've figured it out is that there's a collision point that both parties recognize and whoever arrives there first gets right of way. But that space is very, very tiny and frankly would scary the living crap out of most Americans at how close it can get. Indeed, pedestrians here seem either breathtakingly brave or else wholly insane when they cross traffic.

Pedestrians are just as bad. At one busy intersection in Pudong, they actually have safety patrols - basically folks with flags and whistles - trying to manage foot traffic across the large boulevards. In many cases, these guys would gesticulate wildly and blow their whistles until their faces turned blue but they don't actually carry any official weight and people cross into oncoming traffic with spectacularly little regard to the fact that they're playing a human game of Frogger.

Same goes for the many people on bicycles, scooters and motorcycles - I saw one guy on a motorcycle cut in front of a van turning left, literally swerving around the front of the van and the rider seemed genuinely pissed off that the van, which was already in mid-turn, didn't stop for him.

At this rate, it's affordable to do all your traveling by taxi. Cabs are as commonplace throughout Shanghai as they are in Manhattan - I didn't visit a single neighborhood where I couldn't flag one down inside of 5 minutes. Like NY cabs, there's a flat rate for the initial distance but it happens to be 10Y for the first 2km, roughly $1.25. Most trips from Puxi back home to Pudong ran me about 20-25Y, which is barely over $3. Despite this, I tried to take the subway whenever possible, partly because I like mass transit (though oddly, just not in San Francisco), partly because most of the main parts of Puxi are clogged by traffic.

This is a long-term problem that city officials are only now trying to engineer their way out of. Pudong isn't a big problem (yet) since all of its main streets are all less than 10 years old and are built nice and wide. In Puxi though, it's a different story. There are currently two "ring" roads that encircle Shanghai and a third one is being constructed as we speak. These will help mobility around the city but won't do much to alleviate the bigger problems within it. The problem is that many of Puxi's streets date back to the first part of the 20th century and are built barely wide enough to accommodate 2-3 lanes of traffic. It's already a major hassle, especially in more popular parts of town (i.e. shopping districts) and it's only going to get worse as the growing middle class population in Shanghia insist on buying cars as displays of disposable income. Such conspicuous consumption doesn't come cheap - the average automobile sells for twice what you'd pay in the States (a phenom not limited to just China. Americans are likely the most privileged people on the planet when it comes to making owning a car affordable).

Car use is also one of the main contributors to the omnipresent smog that hangs over Shanghai. From what I hear, it's not even the worst case example in China which is truly frightening. I mean, the smoggy haze here NEVER goes away - even when it's raining. I've seen bad smog before - hey, I grew up in Los Angeles - but that gray pallor that floats above Shanghai makes the most days in LA look like the Alaskan horizon by comparison. It's not just auto use though - it's also factory smoke and many street vendors use coal to heat their stoves. As modern as Shanghai aspires to be, its oppressive air pollution is a decidedly old-fashioned problem that no one's solved yet.

For example, I took a trip up to Jinmao Tower's 88th floor observation deck. After being propelled up at speeds of 9m/sec, I was treated to a truly awesome view of Shanghai, with all of its sprawl running on forever. On the windows, it has the distance to faraway cities etched on them, for example, San Francisco lay over 10,000km to the west but the irony is that you can barely see over 10-20km with the smog. By the way, at 50Y a ride, a visit to Jinmao's observation deck isn't cheap by Shanghai standards and while it might seem as cliche as visiting the top of the Empire State Building, it might be worth the trip. If for nothing else than to gaze down 30 floors into the atrium of the Grand Hyatt which occupies floors 54-87 in Jinmao. It's an image that you're likely to find splayed into brochures everywhere but I admit, it's a sight to see.

But hey, you don't really come to Shanghai for the sights.

You come to shop.

And eat.