Shanghai is China, but wears a western disguise

Sunday Joe and I took a tour of one city block in Shanghai and it was the most enlightening thing we've done so far. For the most part, when you are walking or driving around Shanghai it feels like any growing, international city. It even feels like it could be a western city, except the asian architecture, but even that has had a lot of western influence for the last 150 years.
But on Sunday, we signed up for a tour with a local Shanghainese photographer. We started the tour at the Four Seasons Hotel, and GangFeng (the photographer) informed us that we were going on the tour in the block across the street. He told us that the entire block would be torn down by the end of the year. When we looked across the street, all we saw was a row of shops. But following GangFeng, we went between two shops down an alley and discovered that behind the shops is an entire neighborhood. We walked through this neighborhood of shikumen houses which is on the verge of destruction. A little history on the destruction:
A developer has purchased the entire city block. The people who live in these houses do not own them, they were moved there in 1949/1950 by the government, they pay rent to the government. Communism in China was a peasant movement at its beginning and the wealthy lost their homes as they were claimed by the government and then given to peasants and the poor to even things out. And many houses were built specifically for the peasants. So in 1949 many families moved into these Shikumen houses and it was literally a gift because before that they had nothing. Now in 2007, these same families still live here, sometimes 8-10 people living in a single house, depending on what the younger generations have been able to do.

The houses are ~350 square feet each, and made of cement and brick. Most do not have toilets or showers. They have portable toilets (bucket with a lid), and they take showers at a local public bathhouse. Kitchens consist of a hotplate and a wok and 50 years of grease from stirfrying coats the walls. Creative families have constructed a loft to create another "room". There are two windows in the whole house, so as we walked through these houses, my overwhelming feeling was one of darkness, dampness and cold.

Now that the developer is buying the block, all these people have to be moved out of their homes. But since they don't technically own them, there is a huge three-way negotiation between the developer, the government and the people. Our tour guide said that the people are calling this a "once in a thousand year event". For these people, this is their one opportunity to get a new home or a lump sum of cash that could propel them into a whole different situation. For the developer, they have to get everyone out as fast as they can so they can get started because they only have 50 years to make their money back. Why only 50 years? Because the land and buildings revert back to the government after 50 years! The tour guide tells us that everybody involved, developer, people & government believe it's a win-win-win situation. The only people upset about these shikumen houses being torn down is the tourists. The tourists think they should preserve their history, but the Shanghainese think they should have somewhere to live!

This tour, more than anything I've seen or read so far, brought home to me how China is a place where things happen TO people. And I come from a culture where people MAKE things happen for themselves, and we place incredible value on the ability to make things happen. It's the first time I really encountered what communism can look like in this modern city. Most of the time I can't tell this is a communist country at all, there is so much enterprise in this bustling city.
The poverty in this little neighborhood was so striking that I became a little numb to it at the end of the three hours. And as Joe and I reflected on the tour I wondered if things look any different in the tenements and slums of major US cities. Do they? I don't know because I've never really been a tourist in my own country...

Classes you can't sign up for at home

Today I got an email from the American Women's Club Shanghai (I joined last week). It said: Hi Ladies, We have a special treat! Carol from Shokay will be presenting a class on

“Designing your Own Yak Down Present”.

Honestly, I laughed for 10 minutes when I read the title of the class. It's not only the Chinglish signs and brochures that you see here that make you guffaw, sometimes it's the messages from your fellow ex-pats that send you off the deep end. :)

Cheers.