Lights, Culture, Action Shanghai is back as an international
city of mystery, but just how much of its rejuvenated
mystique is fake? By RON GLUCKMAN and
CRYSTYL MO
Balanced on a barstool inside his chic restaurant near Fuxing
Park, Shanghai native Tony Zhang sips a glass of mineral water
and explains why he returned to the city of his birth after
spending most of his adult life in the U.S. "The changes are
amazing," he says, marveling at the renaissance that is transforming
this Chinese metropolis of 13.1 million. "I've been back six
years and there has been no letup." Art galleries, theaters
and museums - disused relics from Shanghai's storied past
- have been restored to opulence and are playing to crowds.
A few blocks away from the restaurant is the luxurious Ruijin
Guesthouse, once Cold War quarters for visiting dignitaries
such as Indonesian strongman Suharto and ex-president Ho Chi
Minh of Vietnam. Now facilities are rented for elegant weddings
held daily on the lawns. Zhang himself is partner in a trio
of fashionable establishments - California Club, a disco,
and the Baci and Tokio Joe restaurants - as well as an online
magazine, ChinaNow.com. Across the Huangpu River, the skyscrapers
of the Pudong special development zone rise like an information-age
Crystal City. "The hardware is all there," says Zhang as he
takes another drag of Perrier and considers Shanghai, circa
2001. "Now, this city is putting in the software."
dancers at Rojam disco
Delete that. Shanghai, despite its new economy aspirations,
is not like a computer. Once the rich and decadent cultural
center of Asia, the Paris of the East (aka Whore of the Orient)
is more like a movie character. Specifically, she is Norma Desmond,
the faded film star who polishes herself for a comeback in the
Hollywood classic Sunset Boulevard. After years of neglect and
suppression under Communist rule, Shanghai has started to recover
her old flair. New restaurants and nightspots are opening weekly.
The art scene, if not flourishing, at least has a pulse. Magnificant
art deco-era buildings have been restored and new cultural palaces
erected. Some say the changes are all superficial, that the
city is learning to be flashy but lacks the institutions -
rule of law, free thinking - needed to be truly modern. Still,
the Grand Dame purrs in anticipation of hogging the limelight
once again: "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up."
You can't keep a good woman down. With China's accession to
the World Trade Organization, Shanghai is once again strategically
crucial as a trading and financial center. The city is being
positioned as an investment magnet for multinational corporations
and a seduction for foreign capitalists. Attributes that were
once considered taboo, inimical to Maoist teachings - Shanghai's
fusion of East and West, its communities of artists, writers
and intellectuals, its bourgeois entertainments, its aggressive
brand of capitalism - are now assets to be celebrated and
nurtured as the trappings of a cosmopolitan, international city.
"Living here is like being in New York City right after the
war - it's about to explode," says Paul Liu, a former banker
who is now chief financial officer for a Shanghai redevelopment
project. "I have four friends who have closed on apartments
here in the last four months. They aren't even planning on living
here. They just want to have a place near the action."
Jocelyn Brent, a local fashion-industry entrepreneur and Liu's
colleague, credits the allure to Shanghai's decadent and disreputable
history. In the 1920 and '30s, the city was notorious for its
population of graspers, grifters, musicians, opium smokers,
prostitutes, carpetbaggers, subversives, spies - all colorful
individuals who contributed to the mystique. "There is something
about Shanghai, that edginess, that innate stylishness," Brent
says. "I think people are absolutely ready to live that life
again."
While entrepreneurs and a handful of creative types are returning,
some citizens grumble that Shanghai's rejuvenation is as self-delusional
as a smear of greasepaint. "Everyone says Shanghai is so developed
but it's not," sniffs Xiao Jun, a local artist who knows window-dressing
when he sees it - that's his job at Shanghai's Number One
Department Store. "It's all on the surface - buildings and
propaganda. It's completely one-dimensional. The people have
no exposure to real, multifaceted culture. They're suffering
and they don't know they're suffering."
But what misery! And how politically incorrect! Every weekend
night, some 1,500 Chinese and several dozen foreigners get naked
together at the Haikuo Tiankong bathhouse and entertainment
center, where the masses soak in tubs of milk, sweat in the
"fire jade heat room," watch movies and swim in the pool. It's
public. It's legal. The chandeliered lobby is sheathed in marble,
the facilities are clean and vice-free. And after a round of
miniature golf (clothing required), you can get a massage (naked
again) and watch a Vegas-style floor show (the audience is clothed,
the performers less so).
Highbrow diversions are making a comeback. Shanghai is splashing
out on theater stages and concert halls, architectural gems
old and new. The Lyceum and Majestic theaters - art deco houses
straight from Shanghai's past - staged plays in Polish, Russian,
French, English, German and Yiddish before they were left to
decay. Both have been extensively renovated, as have been the
Shanghai Concert Hall and the Dramatic Arts Center. Citizens
have a magnificent new Shanghai Grand Theater on People's Square,
built with $60 million in government funds. The Shanghai Art
Museum, recently relocated to an old horse-racing track and
refurbished for more than $12 million, houses one of the country's
best collections of contemporary Chinese art.
Opportunities have boomed for local thespians. Guevara, a play
based on the life of the Cuban revolutionary, was produced this
month at the Lyceum, former home to the British Amateur Drama
Club founded in 1866. Yu Rongjun, marketing director of the
Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center and a playwright, says he's staged
three shows in the past year. Critics say Shanghai's scene is
marked by uneven quality and short runs, but many works are
revived and picked up for television, according to Lisa Movius,
who covers the theater for ChinaNow.com. In early March, five
plays opened in one week, she says. Few Asian cities can boast
as much.
Nightlife is back, in the bistros and discos that have erupted
throughout Shanghai's gentrifying neighborhoods. Vibe-seekers
from Australian backpackers to Hong Kong ravers elbow into newly-opened
nightspots such as Pegasus, a flash techno-dancehall billed
as the "exclusive club for exclusive people." Skinny Chinese
girls in spike heels and sunglasses shimmy with students from
the local American high school. When the DJ takes a break, off
they dash, nose rings flapping, to Park 97. The hot spot, co-owned
by Tony Zhang, was built with about $1 million to echo Hong
Kong's famous Lan Kwai Fong district of eateries, expat bars
and slick discos. The wealthy and beautiful, foreign and local,
are fond of the vibrant redevelopment. "It's the place where
Shanghai girls who have already found a sugar daddy show off
their expensive clothes," says a local club-hopper.
As it was in the prewar days of jitterbugging at the Peace Hotel,
in the city's old foreign quarter, Shanghai is once again "a
totally cool place to party," says a weekender from Hong Kong.
"There's nowhere else like it in Asia." Says a Londoner on the
mobbed dance floor of California: "Shanghai has a buzz. There
are better party cities, but the fact that this is China gives
it more of an edge."
Make no mistake, the city teems with displaced workers from
China's southern provinces. There is poverty and pollution.
But a lot of people are spending a lot of money making it less
like other Chinese mega-cities. Handel Lee, who owns the Courtyard
restaurant and art gallery in Beijing, is lavishly refurbishing
a palatial seven-story building on the Bund, Shanghai's famed
riverfront boulevard. He wants to bring jazz music back to the
district, wants to give it a hint of illicit rendezvous harking
back to the 1930s when the city's East/West fusion culture was
at its peak.
"Shanghai has a lot of discretion right now, a long leash,"
says Lee, a transplanted American lawyer. The window for experimentation,
for cultural and culinary diversification, is open. There are
exotic restaurants like Latina, among half a dozen Latin American
barbecue joints that are in vogue. StarEast, a sort of Planet
Hollywood launched by Hong Kong celebrities Jackie Chan and
Alan Tam, will open this month. On sunny weekends, clubbers
assuage hangovers with champagne and brunch at the Face, a brick,
colonial estate housing two of Shanghai's finest eateries: Lan
Na Thai, decked out with Thai statuary, and Hazara, serving
Indian delicacies downstairs in a mock Rajasthan tent. On the
main floor is a billiard table covered in red baize. Out on
the veranda, there is a whiff of the city's racy past coming
from the opium beds meant for guest lounging.
Shanghainese recall a restaurant scene that, at the start of
the 1990s, boasted one privately run eatery, the Grape. "It's
astonishing," gushes one customer at T8, another trendy outlet
that opened last month. "Five or six years ago, the height of
elegance in Shanghai was the Grape and a bottle of wine. And
we're talking Dynasty [a sweet, locally made brand]."
The remarkable thing about Shanghai is that the trendy hangouts,
once envisioned for foreign clientele, are now full of Chinese.
Ordinary residents are responding to eclectic offerings with
enthusiasm and sophistication. "Some of my young Chinese friends
don't have a lot of money," says Brent, the fashion entrepreneur,
"but they still read Wallpaper and save their money to buy Issey
Miyake." Lee, the American lawyer who owns a Beijing restaurant,
says locals "are not intimidated by things that are new. In
Beijing, I cannot get a crowd that is more than 10% Chinese.
But look around the best restaurants in Shanghai, and it's mainly
Chinese. You don't see that anywhere else in China."
Nico Ni, a fashion model who has worked runways in Paris and
New York, recently moved from Beijing to Shanghai, a decision
that confounded some of her friends because the Chinese capital
is the traditional cradle of the domestic fashion industry.
"I do feel a bit like I'm sacrificing my career by moving here,"
says Ni. "But Shanghai is more of an international city. The
shopping is better, the atmosphere is better, people are more
fashionable. And I'm modeling for international companies, not
for state-sponsored fashion shows." Says insurance industry
executive Janet Tai: "It's not like Hong Kong, where everybody
is just stressed out from work. The drinks aren't cheap but
the mood is good - it's more hyper!"
For a better sense of Shanghai mystique, hop into the sidecar
of the motorcycle piloted by Mark DeCocinis, general manager
of the Ritz Carlton Hotel. DeCocinis offers personal tours of
the city to guests who disgorge $18,000 for a deluxe accommodation
package at the hotel. His bike, a replica of a 1938 BMW, provides
an exhilarating viewing platform. "Here's where they all get
wowed," screams DeCocinis over the roar of the engine as he
brakes to pull off to the side of the elevated highway at a
strategic vantage point. Spread below the flyover is Shanghai's
past: the distinctively European architecture of the Bund. There,
across the river, is the future: the Pudong skyline, dominated
by its sci-fi Oriental Pearl TV Tower and a wall of glass encasing
high-tech office buildings that could have been designed by
Mr. Spock.
From the technological standpoint, Shanghai has always led China.
It was the first city to have gaslights, electricity, telephones,
running water and streetcars. The mainland's first automobiles
cruised the first paved roads in Shanghai, which once laid claim
to more autos than the rest of China. Pudong is an attempt to
muscle to the forefront again. Government leaders in 1990 declared
it a special development zone, with an emphasis on high-tech
industry. In February, Shanghai Mayor Xu Kuangdi announced his
intentions to make Pudong a center for semiconductor production
rivaling Taiwan and South Korea within five years. Two computer
chip foundries have already broken ground.
The ambitious vision needs supporting infrastucture, and the
disappearing marshlands of Pudong are quickly becoming festooned
with gaudy ornamentation. There's the Bund Tourist Tunnel, where
glass-enclosed cable cars shuttle tourists between Pudong and
the Bund - under the river. Entertainment on the dank ride
is a psychedelic light show. For culture, there's the Pudong
Science and Technology Museum, set to open April 1. City officials
say the museum will outclass Beijing's and Tianjin's science
museums. Pudong's Grand Hyatt is listed in The Guinness Book
of Records as the world's highest hotel, complete with the highest
swimming pool and the longest laundry chute - dirty underwear
falls 88 floors. For shopping, Thai agribusiness conglomerate
Charoen Pokphand Group is building a $335-million mall that
will be China's largest. Developers say it could take up to
17 years to break even.
China's first rescue heliport is under construction in Pudong.
This month, the district began building the world's first commercial
magnetic-levitation railway. The $1.08 billion, 33-km line,
to be completed by 2003, will link the district with its newly
opened international airport. Trains will be capable of traveling
at speeds of more than 400 km per hour. Wait, it gets more surreal.
The Grand Hyatt perches atop China's tallest building. Next
door, there are plans to build a city in the sky - the $15
billion Bionic Tower, if it is ever actually constructed, will
soar to 300 stories and contain housing for 100,000 people.
staff training at the Grand Hyatt,
the highest hotel in the world
Ambitious projects are also under way on the other side of the
river. Hong Kong developer Shui On Group is spending $150 million
to redevelop a neighborhood of classic shikumen (colonial-period
row houses) into a mock Old Shanghai with a shopping mall and
an amusement complex. Called Xintiandi, the project began with
the razing of five square blocks, displacing hundreds of families.
Some had lived there for generations. Project manager Tony Wong
says the theme park/planned community has a slogan: "Where yesterday
meets tomorrow in Shanghai today."
Xintiandi may represent everything that is ersatz about Shanghai's
resurrection. Foreign newspapers criticize projects as expensive
showpieces for a new China that doesn't really exist. They point
to Pudong as a largely vacant potemkin village concocted for
foreign investment. Some of Shanghai's parks resound with recorded
bird sounds played over loudspeakers.
While the city's intellectuals, media and artists may be on
a longer leash, they are still muzzled by censorship. Bookstores
sell only state-approved literature and newspapers. The police
are quick to crack down on unsanctioned behavior, as they did
last year during raids of dozens of Internet cafEs to ferret
out online porn. Decadence remains illegal. Officials late last
year closed down nightclubs on Maoming Lu and Julu Lu to weed
out prostitution and drugs. Venues where openly gay men congregate
are routinely forced out of business. So are all-night rave
clubs, which have a tough time coexisting with the official
curfew of 2 a.m. "The in-thing now is dinner parties," laments
one raver. "It's so boring." Still, many clubs routinely flout
the 2 a.m. rule. It's never hard to find a place to dance and
drink until dawn.
Even if most of the reconstruction has been of the bricks-and-mortar
variety, Shanghai citizens are nevertheless pleased by the start
that has been made. "What you see now is just on the surface,"
says returnee Zhang. "It will take generations for everything
to fall in place. But I see Shanghai taking its place as part
of that elite of world-class cities." Some day, the Paris of
the East really will be ready for its close-up.
Commentary
2003-12-06
Coming soon to the commentary column--behind the scenes stories of the how the articles are really put together--the difficulty in getting anyone to accept an interview in China, the political sensitivities, the great stuff that got cut because of space, and much more about the joys and frustrations of writing in China
