The Neighborhood

9/20/06 - We live on the edge of one of the big tourist hotel and shopping areas in Shanghai, half a block off Nanjing Xi Lu. If you walk west down Nanjing Road you pass restaurants, shops and shopping malls, some Chinese and many American and European. This is where you find your Prada, Escada and Cartier. You can buy a real Rolex here, as opposed to the ones the guys on the corner try to sell you: “Hallo lady, watch!” “Hallo, Rolex!” The brand names you see include Louis Vuitton, Birkenstock, Burberry, Max Mara, Bulgari, Lancôme, Tag Heuer and Esprit. Also Vskonne, Lan Tang, Sparkle, Easy Shop, Urban Shock, Hot Wind, Et Boite and Zara. There are stores selling mobile phones, eyeglasses, flowers, baked goods, candy and treats (one store has its name, I presume, in Chinese over one door and “Childrens Food” over the other), whiskey, cigarettes and jewelry. We have Lei Yun Shang Pharmacy Since 1662, although obviously not in that same building. In the heat of summer, walking by the pharmacy, you get a whiff of ginseng every time the door opens. And then there’s Mickey Mouse’s underwear (Knock knock, who’s there, Mickey Mouse’s underwear), one of a chain of stores selling the Disney children’s underwear collection. We are sad that none of us can fit into them.

Julia’s favorite store, on the corner right near Mickey Mouse, is called Westmend. Not West End or West Bend. This store (it’s part of a chain) has 2 windows holding 4 white featureless mannequins clad in short ruffled clothing in white, black, pink and dark purple or maroon. They change their clothes every few days.

We also have lots of grownup underwear stores.

As you walk along Nanjing Road (yi zhi zou) from our street, about 15 minutes if the sidewalk isn’t too crowded, you get to Shanghai Centre, the center of the wealthy traveler’s universe. Shanghai Centre is home to the Portman Ritz-Carleton (known as the Portman to westerners and Po ta man to the Chinese), an exclusive apartment complex, an office tower, the Shanghai Centre Theater, and a series of shops and businesses, including Haagen Dazs, California Pizza Kitchen, Tony Roma’s, a bank, a tailor, Aeroflot, Turkish Airlines, an expensive grocery store, an expensive Italian restaurant, and an expensive wine and cheese shop (and I do mean expensive – the cheapest cheese is about $7.00 per 100 g, or almost $35.00 per pound). In front on the sidewalk are the designers: Ferragamo, Gucci, Marc Jacobs – they are available for your spending pleasure, at the same prices as anywhere else in the world.

Directly across the street from the Portman is the Shanghai Exhibition Center, an imposing yellow stone building with columns and carved trim. You can see it from the elevated highway going east or west. When we were here in April there was an agricultural show. This August, after we arrived for our stint, there was a show of sex toys. Recently, this month, the center housed the Shanghai Design Biennial.

One thing that amazes me about shopping in Shanghai is the incredible number of upscale shops. Yes, there is only one Fendi boutique within this particular 6-block area, but unlike American cities, where you might find these designers opening their flagship stores downtown to great fanfare, go to another major shopping area in Shanghai and you will find the same stores. I guess with 20 million plus inhabitants and numerous wealthy business travelers and tourists, there are enough potential customers to keep all these places in business. An amusing aspect of the way shops are clustered here is the prevalence of American fast food chains. Every fancy mall and expensive shopping district I’ve seen, with the exception of Xintiandi, has a McDonalds or KFC in amongst the Diors and Armanis. They also may have a fancy café in the center and a market full of imported food items in the basement, but many of them have reasonably-priced Chinese restaurants as well, both fast food and waiter service.

Between our apartment and the Portman there are 3 Starbucks.

Walking down Nanjing Road is an experience. My Chinese class is about 10 minutes past the Portman, although it’s only about 3 blocks further west. The traffic lights are long, and at several intersections we have traffic assistants (and presumably their superiors), in uniform, motioning pedestrians back onto the sidewalk and blowing their whistles at people and bikes that deign to ignore the red lights. The sidewalks on the south side of the street are covered with boards for almost a mile. When we arrived in Shanghai last month some stretches were also covered with green or red outdoor carpeting, perhaps to make the uneven surface seem more hospitable. I wondered why the boards were there, but didn’t learn their purpose until one night when we walked to a restaurant for dinner and found the sidewalks opened up, with workers uncovering pipes underground. Now that I know there is empty space beneath the boards, I see darkness through the gaps, and it makes the walk that much more exciting. It is very common for sidewalks to be dug up in Shanghai. Rain adds to the excitement, when along with wall-to-curb bodies, the air above the sidewalks is full of umbrellas jockeying for position. Mixed in with the shoppers and people going to work or lunch are the people sweeping the sidewalks with twig brooms; the construction workers; the beggars and people with missing limbs; the boys thrusting cards advertising airlines? airport shuttles? in your face (shouldn't they be in school?); the people on bikes carrying enormous stacks of flattened cardboard; the vendors of phone cards, cheap clothing, bead jewelry and assorted odds and ends; and in good weather, street musicians.

We are only 3 blocks from the number 2 subway line at Shimen Yi Lu. When the weather is bad or I am in a hurry, I can take the subway one stop and be at my Chinese class in 15 minutes.

At the other end of our street, on Weihai Lu, we are near the Four Seasons Hotel, which is located a block past the intersection of the two streets forming auto parts row. The blocks and blocks of auto parts start at our corner. Interspersed are small restaurants, food stalls, shops selling whatever, municipal offices and construction sites. Shanghai is full of construction sites. If you don’t turn right on Weihai Road but instead cross the street and continue straight (a dangerous proposition as there is no traffic light here), you walk through Top of City, a large apartment complex consisting of at least 8 high-rise buildings arranged in the shape of a squashed figure-eight with 3 lobes instead of 2. The two circular walkways at either end of the figure-eight surround ornamental plantings and are connected by a bridge that bisects a lagoon. At one end of the bridge is a small sign that says “Do not surmount parapet DANGER!” and shows an icon of a person falling. The water is very shallow, but perhaps that’s what makes surmounting parapet a dangerous proposition. In spite of all the silt and barely submerged grasses, the lagoon is rather attractive, with water lilies and lotus and a red canoe moored near one of the apartment buildings.

Julia wishes we lived at Top of City. On the other hand, she also wishes we lived at the Shanghai Raquet Club, where 2 of her American classmates’ families live. I think our neighborhood is probably more interesting.

On the other side of Top of City is Dagu Lu, a quiet street with a variety of foreign and ethnic restaurants, two competing video stores that offer current American TV programs, a fancy spa (part of a chain that the expat ladies all like), a pet supply store, a produce market, a club of unknown description, and more construction. We wouldn’t buy Julia the complete Gilmore Girls set at the video store, but we bought the complete Pink Panther. Turns out that the DVDs you buy in a store like this aren’t necessarily a lot better than the ones you get on the street even though the packaging is nicer. On the other hand, at around $8 for a box of 6 disks (5 films plus special features), the price is still pretty darn cheap. You get what you pay for.