The Outer Limits

9/24/06 – Yesterday we made our first real foray into suburban Shanghai. We’d been way out west and way out east before, when we were looking at schools in April, but we didn’t know where we were going at the time. The birthday invitation directed us to meet at the Xi Jiao Sports Center on Hong Qiao Road, some distance past SCIS, for the bowling portion of the festivities. You never know how long it will take to get anywhere in this town, so I allowed an hour for the taxi ride, and with very little traffic and an experienced cab driver it only took us about 20 minutes. Xi Jiao Sports Center bills itself as “A Country Club In The City,” and its facilities are very nice – a beautiful indoor pool, squash courts, a small bowling alley, nice bathrooms, marble everywhere. While we waited for the birthday girl, the other Julia, and her entourage, we checked out some of the amenities.

I figured that since I was out in this neighborhood I should explore – after all, this is where the majority of SCIS families hang out. I had considered visiting the Shanghai Jewish Center, which advertised that its bakery would be selling bagels, but I didn’t think Rosh Hashanah was the best time to drop in on the Lubavitchers. I took out my map and got directions to the Marriott, one of the local landmarks. It isn’t a long walk, out Hong Qiao Road, past new construction and not-so-new, hotels, a medical center from the book of business cards of favorite expat places, and lots of weeds like those that grow in the eastern U.S. There is demolition going on even here, but the buildings being torn down are more likely 15 than 50. One of the buildings possibly destined for demolition is a low concrete structure with what looks like a mosaic of a Chinese landscape along the building’s front, but on closer scrutiny it turns out to be a picture of a mosaic.

This area is very different from downtown Shanghai. The streets are wide and straight, with bike lanes that are separated from the stream of vehicle traffic by curbs or fences. Out here you see white folks jogging and even riding bikes with the rest of the 2-wheeled traffic. Cars and motorcycles still honk, but there are fewer people for them to honk at. After mohn strudel (at a Hungarian deli) and a bathroom break at the Marriott I walked back in the direction of SCIS to check out some of the streets I’d heard so much about, like Hongmei Lu. This is where the famous pearl market is located and the Hongmei Lu food street, but it turns out that it is actually a restaurant street with a lot of foreign restaurants and cafes – Japanese, Iranian, Indian, American, German, plus the German bakery that the school moms recommend. The bakery has wonderful truffles in dark and white chocolate that are called rum balls but taste like marzipan. They cost about 50 cents apiece and are big enough to share.

Hongmei Road and vicinity are home to 2 big expat grocery stores, but I wasn’t planning to shop, so I left them for another visit. I continued east until I arrived at Gubei Road and the famous Gubei Carrefour. Carrefour is a French import, very popular with Chinese and foreigners alike. This particular branch is known for the amount of shelf space devoted to imported food items. It also carries a wider selection of organic produce, all nicely wrapped in plastic, than the other branches. We needed more drinking glasses, and I ended up doing some grocery shopping after all. I always find it necessary to balance the fact that I am at a place where prices are low and most of what we need is available, with the fact that if I want to walk anywhere I’m going to have to carry all the crap I’ve bought. I prefer not to go toilet paper shopping alone. The Gubei Carrefour wasn’t nearly as crowded as the one that Julia and I visited last weekend, which is near the metro. However, the metro fare plus a one-way cab ride probably cost us more than if we had taken a cab both ways to this one. I’ll probably go back next time I need to do a big ugly supermarket shop by taxi.

There is a problem with all maps of the new parts of Shanghai. Most of the streets weren’t in existence when the maps were drawn, and they were definitely not drawn to scale. I thought I would go to the nearest metro station and hop a train to home. I walked through new fancy apartment complexes with names like Vienna Plaza, Athena Garden and Paris Garden (Ba Li Hua Yuan). I think I found where the Koreans live; 2 buses from the Shanghai Korean School stopped in front of one of the complexes to let out busloads of kids. But it’s still Shanghai, and Shanghai is still China. You still see people riding flatbed bikes carrying 5-gallon bottles of water or produce or stacks of burlap bags. You still smell the sewer when it’s hot, and your shoes still get dirty walking on new sidewalks. I walked down brand new streets, past apartment buildings under construction and apartment buildings fully inhabited with satellite dishes and laundry drying on every balcony. I finally got tired of walking and caught a cab for home. The truffles survived the trip, I am happy to say.

If Gubei was a trek, the trip to the Shanghai Racquet Club and Apartments that night, past Hong Qiao Airport and near the Puxi campus of the Shanghai American School, was an eye-opener. I had a map and the taxi driver knew where he was going, so we had no trouble until we got into the development and had no idea which direction to go. Past the Outer Ring Road, through truck traffic, past a BMW dealership, through smells of burning trash, along a short business street jammed with young Chinese out on Saturday night, past dark landscapes edged with light poles advertising nearby compounds and villas. The expat communities out here have names like Forest Manor, Westwood Green and Rancho Santa Fe. Eventually I started seeing signs for the British International School, so I knew we were in the general vicinity. The cab ride took a little less than an hour and cost a little less than $10. Getting home is never quite as difficult as getting from downtown to the outskirts, but it's about time I learned how to tell the taxi driver to take the Maoming Lu exit off the highway. I can see that it will save us some time and money in the future.

The birthday girl’s parents chose this development because it was convenient to his work out of town; it’s big and full of families, kids, bikes and the rest; and it has a great club house. I can see the appeal, but it would never work for us, in spite of Julia’s burning desire to live near her friends. I would go nuts if I were that far from everything, and Bill wouldn’t be able to get to work. Still, in hindsight, I wish we had chosen a place that had a pool and a gym. Next lifetime.