Strutting the flesh on a cold winter’s day

Regular readers of my blog will know that one of the joys of living in Beijing – and many other parts of China for that matter – is the way that people spontaneously get up and dance in the most public places. Go to any park or public garden … even simply walk the streets in the evening, and you will see people waltzing or doing the tango or simply moseying around in some personal dance of their own. It’s wonderful!

 

So it is no surprise, too, to see that Beijingers love to go dancing in more established places. I, myself, have danced with them in a few of the clubs and dance schools around the capital. And now there is yet another dance school about to swell the numbers. This one is called the Beijing Salsa Club; and your favourite blogger has been invited to go and swell the numbers at the club’s official opening celebrations.

 

 

The map that is sent appears to be more a reflection of the designer’s artistic capabilities, than with worrying over-much on the actual distances involved. But by judicious comparisons with Mr Google’s very own map of the same area it is not too difficult to work out what the art-loving designer had in mind…

 

 

There is still snow lying around since yesterday, but worse, a partial thaw and then a hard overnight freeze has turned some of the pavements into ice rinks – something that my sit-upon can now well testify to, having made an unscheduled landing on a piece of pavement real-estate near the station exit.

 

Hobbling and slithering along, I finally turn into Baiziwanlu and after a while discover a new museum to add to my list of museums-in-Beijing-to-discover – the Today Art Musuem (looking very much like Yesterday’s forgotten building), with a row of 20 sculptures, all looking as if they are contemplating suicide from the top of the building.

 

 

Down below are characters who look as if they have escaped from Beijing’s 798 Art District. Mind you, just to look at them in this arctic weather makes me shiver.

 

 

When I finally get inside the building and down to the basement level, it’s like a rabbit warren with corridors going off into dark deserted passageways where you can’t even see the ends. There are loads of empty units waiting for tenants – perhaps Fritz, the owner-manager, got a bargain on his first year’s rental. Finally, after wandering around for what feels like hours – and bumping into loads of other lost souls on the way, we finally all see a flash of red in the distance that proclaims a celebration…

 

 

and sure enough we crowd into an already crowded dance studio to catch the remnants of a welcoming speech.

 

The timing is perfect, because just before the start of the performance dancing, everyone is invited to try some “special sparkling wine from Italy” or some hot tea. The wine is left almost untouched as most people try to squeeze as much hot lemon-honey chai as possible into their paper mugs. There’s even cake on offer, though I have to say it reminds me of the stuff that clowns traditionally throw at one another in the circus. As there is no-one I particularly fancy the need to throw cake at, I decline the offer of a slice.

 

Finally the performers are ready to begin. First off is Fritz, the owner-manager – a Filipino from whom I used to learn Bachata in a studio in the north east of BJ. He is accompanied by his lovely wife – and all eyes are on her as she manages to wiggle bits of her body that normally have no place wiggling anywhere, and the result is an incredibly sexual performance from the pair of them.

 

 

Rapturous applause follows. One feels almost sorry for whoever has to come on next, to perform in their shadow.

 

But the feeling is totally misplaced. A Chinese girl comes on in a lurid pink outfit that you certainly wouldn’t want to see the morning after the night before. She, it appears, will be teaching belly dancing in this establishment. Her ‘credentials’ are impeccable. Again, she wiggles parts of her anatomy that logic tells you have no right to have a mind of their own. Fritz and his lady-wife are soon forgotten as everyone becomes mesmerised by this object of beauty.

 

 

There is a slight pause as the assembled guests are asked to all move to the very back of the room. The next act is going to be “dangerous”. Yeah, right! A guy looks through the dressing room window, and it looks as if he is wearing a dress!

 

But soon, as he and his wife emerge, we see rippling muscles (on her as well as on him) from this Russian duo who are soon throwing each other around the room – he lifting her as if she weighs a feather, and she throwing herself around him as if he is a pole dancing substitute. Truly awesome stuff; and once again the audience goes wild.

 

 

“Are you ready for some more?” Fritz goads his audience, with predictable responses. “OK, for the next one, I want you all to move forward again – no even further forward. Yes, right onto the dance floor…”

 

Yes, it’s that embarrassing time when audience participation takes over. Fritz demonstrates some easy moves, the music starts pounding away and before you know it, everyone is dancing Gangnam Style.

 

 

Finally, as the music dies away there are some fond farewells, plenty of hand wringing and back slapping, and the place spills out into the rabbit warren of tunnels once again.

 

But hey, your favourite blogger knows he has an hour or so to get home, and with the cold temperatures outside, he also knows a thing or two about what that does to the human bladder.

 

A sign to the loo seems a temptingly sensible idea before going out into the snow-filled streets. And predictably – well as predictably as you’ll find people dancing in the streets in the capital – we find Beijing’s army of slogan writers has turned its attention once again to the walls of the male loo.

 

It’s an exhortation I can well appreciate, having previously visited many of BJ’s not-so-nice public inconveniences.

 

 

I am left wondering how long it will be before someone scribbles a few words underneath… Step back and prepare for Armageddon, perhaps?

Travelling Through Shanghai's Time Tunnel

Unlike Beijing, Shanghai is not chock-a-block with museums. It probably has only about a tenth as many as the northern capital. But what it does have is certainly on a par…
 

One such museum which I would strongly recommend anyone to visit is the history museum on the lower ground floor of Shanghai’s iconic Oriental Pearl TV Tower – you know the one… it looks like a rocket kitted out with pink balls!
 

Visiting the city during the Mid Autumn Festival, when the entire population of China appears to have nothing better to do than to wander aimlessly in front of me wherever I go, might not have been the best planned idea … but whereas said aimless wanderers all choose that same day to visit the TV Tower, your favourite blogger escapes the mad rush by heading downstairs while everyone else thinks of taking a lift to the top. Result? Massive crowds going up; empty aisles going down!

 

The museum’s focus is on the century it took for Shanghai to transform itself from the opening of the port in 1843 to when the communist nation was declared in 1949. Before the TV Tower was built, the Municipal History Museum had been opened in 1984 on the premises of the Shanghai Agriculture Exhibition, moving to a new location on the Hong Qiao Road in 1991 and thence 10 years later to Pudong’s take on one of Lady Penelope’s Thunderbirds.
 

Anyway, the blurb promises that “The consummate combination of multimedia technology and exquisite architecture models takes you travel in the time tunnel of Shanghai history.” So… let’s go on in and take a look …

 

The museum itself has a floor area of around 10,000 square metres. The over 30,000 items displayed are divided into five sections: "Trace back to HuaTing", "Style and Features in the Town", "Sketch of the Port-opening", "Foreign Settlement", and "Old footsteps in Shanghai”. The museum aims to try to reflect “the historical evolvement of the politics, economy, culture, society and people’s life in modern Shanghai”. And I have to say I think it does a pretty good job of that.
 

Now, friends of your favourite blogger know that I love old photographs; and in this museum there are plenty of opportunities for gawping at them. For instance, here is what the Bund looked like in 1893 – the 50th Jubilee of the founding of the settlement.

 

In 1901, Prince Zai Feng – who was the last Qing Dynasty ruler of China, (as Prince-Regent during the reign of his son the emperor Puyi) – went to Germany by way of Nanjing Road.

 

And 30 years after that, this is what Nanjing Road looked like in the 1930s

 

while this was the Fuzhou Road at the same time.

 

Once you are through these initial pictures (nicely given a sepia tint to make them look really old!) you find yourself in a room dedicated to transport.
 

Here’s an early trolley car model, representing the first trolley track route in Shanghai, which was officially opened for business on March 5th 1908. The first trolley line owned by the Chinese was put into operation five years later.

 

The well to do, of course, shunned trolley buses in favour of their sedan cars...

 

And as the century progressed, the better off stuck to their cars rather than hobnob with the low life. Here’s a Buick Sedan from the 1940s - a symbol of high end consumption in the metropolis.

 

I now realise that in following everyone else, I have skipped a room, and so find myself going back in time once more – this time to see a wedding sedan chair on show.

 

There are also horse drawn carts, more sedan chairs and even wheelbarrow chairs on display.

 

Soon I have found my way back to the proper route once more and climb the stairs into the second section - a maze of Old Shanghai scenes peopled with life-sized wax dummies. Here I can learn about country life as was, and city life as was, with dioramas of a tea-house, a cloth shop, a soy sauce & pickle shop, a bean curd stall, a salted aquatic products (ie seafood!) market in Xian Gua Lu, the dragon shaped wall in Yuyuan … the list just goes on and on, each with a highly detailed scene in low lighting…

 

Yes, there’s more… Chinese cotton production; wine shops; herb shops…

 

I turn a corner. Oh Yuk! How gross the Chinese are at times. Like most Chinese museums, the place is full of loos. But that would be far too civilised for some I dare say. It must be so disgusting to work as a cleaner here!

 

But wait … there’s more (no, not peeing brats… I mean the museum has loads more to see!)

 

The next hall is crammed full of scenes from Shanghai's foreign concession history during the late 1800s and early 1900s. A helpful sign tells us it represents “The Metropolis Infested with foreign Adventurers”, and then goes on to remind us that in 1840 the British launched the Opium War as a pretext to invade China.

 

Naughty Brits! There’s also an explanation of the “mixed court” – After Shanghai became a treaty port, the foreign powers seized part of the city’s administrative and judicial powers, representing an important symbol of Shanghai’s semi-colonial status.

 

Of course, one can’t forget the opium smoking houses, which could be found scattered along all the streets and lanes. Many solicited customers with girls (now, there’s a novel idea!) and they were called Flowery Smoking Houses. The numerous opium dens, we are told, were part of the gloomy side of old Shanghai.

 

Looking at the painted walls, it seems to me that old Shanghai was really a rather nice place to live in – assuming of course that one had money! Here’s what Huaihai Road – then called Avenue Joffre – looked like. Joffre, BTW, was the commander-in-chief of the French army during WW1.

 

As a result of its multinational colonialist status, Shanghai quickly became the nationwide centre for newspapers and information in the 1920s. Wangping Street, which is where more than 10 famous newspapers began production at the end of the Qing Dynasty, became known as Newspaper Street.

 

Naturally, sex was never far below the surface of this heaving metropolis, and the city’s dens of ill repute are also captured for all to gawk at…

 

… including a model of one of the call girls. I notice that here there are no explanations given in English of what is going on. Perhaps the images speak loudly enough by themselves!

 

And anyone who despairs nowadays at how sex is used to sell all kinds of products need only come here to see that the idea is anything but new! Why this girl is holding her box of ciggies while she already has a lit cigarette in her holder is anyone’s guess. But look at her left hand. Something definitely a bit deformed about her, I’d say!

 

This poor devil, on the other hand, looks like she has pigged out a bit too much on the confectionary someone has given her. She looks as if she’s about to throw up at any minute!

 

I have mentioned in a previous blog about the Jing’an Temple. There used to be a well in front of it from which its bubbling water gave it the moniker of “bubbling well” (ok, so what else would you call it!). The spring water gushed out day and night, and it was widely regarded as the 'Sixth Spring of China'.

 

And here it is a few years later. The buildings and the people have changed, but not the well, which was abandoned when Nanjing Road was widened; but in 1999 when the new subway line 2 was being dug, the original well guardrail was unearthed, and after reconstruction, the spring was relocated to the crossing of Huashan Road and West Nanjing Road, where it regained its former charm – or so we are told.

 

Shanghai also became the financial hub in the region, given its international status. Both foreign and Chinese currency circulated together. But in the 1930s, the head offices of the Central Bank, Bank of Communication and Bank of Peasants started using the same money, and Shanghai’s position as the financial centre was consolidated further.

 

Something else that Shanghai typically “made its own” was to supply the opera trade with costumes. There was a concentration of various opera troupes including Peking, Kun, Hu , Yue, Gunagdong, Xi and Yong operas, and the top suppliers all set up shop in Shanghai. Here’s a reconstruction...

 

Peking Opera became very popular in Shanghai, and the Dangui Tea House was the earliest theatre offering this kind of entertainment for its customers. Two were built – one on 1867 and the second in 1884.

 

There was also a district known as “Small Garden” which was a popular name for the area around the present Guangxi Road and Zhejiang Rpoad, adjacent to Fuzhou and Shantou roads. The concentration of recreational facilities led to the emergence of nearly 100 shops which specialised in selling women’s shoes in fashion at the time. Can you imagine squeezing into something as small as one of these shoes? It must have been so painful!

 

After the 1911 Revolution, when men no longer wore pigtails, people started visiting the barbers more often and by the 1930s there were about 1000 large and small barber shops in the city. I love this depiction which is a bit like something out of the Frankenstein films, don’t you think!

 

I’m nearing the end of my trip through Shanghai’s time tunnel. From here until the exit one walks through a huge collection of yet more pictures and lithographs. Here’s a few more for you to enjoy…

A forest of masts…

 

Reflection of ship masts on the Huangpu River…

 

 

Shanghai-Wusong Railway’s Opening to traffic…

 

A girl from a wealthy family on a wheelbarrow sedan…

 

Mid lake pavilion in Yu Yuan…

 

I emerge into the daylight once again, now knowing everything there is to know that is worth knowing about the history of Shanghai. What a fabulous museum!

A Visit to Jing’an – a Mecca for Leophiles?

Unlike Beijing, which tends to have a strong history in which it continuously wallows, Shanghai is much less endowed with old buildings and historic sites. Not that they can’t be found, of course, but it’s just that there are much fewer of them.

 

One old Buddhist temple that most definitely is on the tourist beat, however, is on West Nanjing Road just a stone’s throw from a metro station on line 2 that bears its name.

 

Jing'an Temple (静安寺) sits on one of the busiest roads in Shanghai, in one of the city’s business districts that also contains several luxurious residential complexes and “boasts” (if that’s the right word) an extremely vibrant nightlife. An Art Deco "dancehall" is just across the street, while neighbouring roads are stuffed full of cafes and bars. Some have remarked that this area is China's equivalent of New York's 5th Avenue.  The local park round the corner used to be old Shanghai’s graveyard in which expatriates got buried! Ironically, Jing'an means tranquil and peaceful!

 

You’ll know you’re at this temple well before you see the entrance. Gold lions smile down at you from every vantage point. The whole place looks dead impressive … from the outside!

 

Inside, it’s a different story. The temple is diminutive in size when compared to others around the country, but it’s still nice to visit, albeit that your stay will be a lot shorter…

 

The temple appears much younger than its true age - unsurprisngly. Originally built in the 3rd century Wu State (222-280) north of the Wusong River, it was moved to its present site in 1216 during the Song Dynasty in order to protect it from flooding. It was destroyed in 1851, rebuilt during the reign of Emperor Guangxu (1875-1908), turned into a plastics factory during the Cultural Revolution, burnt to cinders in 1972, reconstructed after 1984, and finally opened to the public again in 1990. Most of the recent remodelling has been done with Burmese teakwood. And that’s its problem – it all looks too new and somewhat soulless.

 

Nonetheless, every April 8th, the birthday of Sakyamuni, there’s a temple fair which lasts for three days. Apparently “Tranquil and peaceful” are not words that spring to mind at that time!

 

 

In the centre of the first courtyard is one of those large tripod-shrine-like-thingies in which people burn joss sticks or paper and try to throw coins into the upper reaches for good luck. Anyone short of a bob or two and a tad of patience could make a small fortune here going around collecting the discarded coins. But of course, that would bring bad luck and is therefore NOT TO BE RECOMMENDED!

 

The lion theme is continued at the base of the “thingie” – as it is on various stone plaques dotted around the place…

 

 

whilst dragons can be seen accompanying you up the stone staircases into the first hall.

 

 

Yet more animals greet you on the wooden doors – this time some rather cute elephants (can elephants be cute I wonder?)…

 

 

One of the prized sections of this temple is the Mahavira Hall  (大雄宝殿) which was completed in 1991. Here there’s a Jade Buddha, 3.8-metres high and brought over from Burma (or Mayanmar as apparently we’re supposed to call it these days)  – the largest sitting jade Buddha statue in mainland China.

 

It weighs in at  11,000 kilograms and is so big that a wall was torn down to get it in. The statue was made according to the style of traditional Han Buddhists, whereby the face was shaped like a full moon and the expression was “tender and serene”.

 

 

In 2009, an additional statue of Tathagata made from 15 tons of silver, 8.8 metres high was also placed in the temple.

 

 

To the east of the main hall is the Guanyin Hall in which you can find a statue of the Goddess of Mercy made out of one piece of thousand-year-old camphor wood, standing on a lotus-shaped base.  It is 6.2 metres tall and weighs 5 tons.

 

 

But I’m afraid I’m a sucker for portly, rotund statues of Buddha. They always appear so happy, unlike some of the other po-faced Buddha statues …

 

There’s also a collection of Arhats soaking up the rays of the overhead fluorescent lighting

 

 

and lest they get bored, they can stare at some rather cute painted panels running along the opposite wall.

 

 

As I said, not a huge amount to see, but quite interesting in its own way. I doubt I will rush back to Jing’an if ever I return to Shanghai, but I’m glad I went.