PUBLIC BATHROOMS AND SHOE SHINERS

We approached one of the many gigantesque malls recently constructed in Shanghai and entered, somewhat cautiously. The massive structures are connected via aerial and subterranean tunnels and house hundreds of shops, most of which were mid to high-range foreign brands. This was not a mall that catered fake brands being sold (at least not blatantly but does it qualify as commercial plagiarism when the shop is called Ralf Laurene? The mall is a testament to the booking Chinese middle class who, just as foreigners, wants to shop for clothing, accessories and electronics. I read about a t-shirt a woman saw on Tai Kang Lu that showed a little Chinese girl wearing a traditional Communist red uniform who was carrying a Louis Vuitton hang bag and listening to an ipod. Underneath the picture of the girl were the words "What Recession?"

Shopkeepers shout "huan ying guang lin" (welcome) when you enter a shop and for quite some time I was convince they were saying “Good morning” since I was a foreigner. In order to anticipate your every need, a sales person trails behind you but I found this to be genuinely claustrophobic, as though someone suspected I was going to slip something into my back pocket.

We tried to find a lunch spot in the mall where scents emanating from the lovely xialongbao and hot pot on offer made me swoon. Our stomachs were eager but the cues of hundreds of people were unappealing. The only vendor with a shorter cue was offering stinky tofu and over-fried-greasy-day-old-noodles.  Shanghai streets are teeming with diverse eateries so we decided to find an option outside of the mall.

We stopped at the restroom before leaving the mall and I entered to find a mob of women waiting around the stalls. Nobody had lined up in a general cue but rather, they paced back and forth protectively in front of a particular stall. Aware that I needed to quickly learn the rules of this game, I memorized who entered and in what order so that I was strategically positioned. A woman who gave in after me pushing past me to enter a vacating stall but I gently took hold of her elbow and said ‘no’, wagging my finger as if she were a schoolgirl.  She looked confused and tried to shake me off and push her way into the stall but I was thought the door, simultaneously grumbling in English, Polish and Spanish. I should have concentrated less on this woman since I stepping right into the Turkish toilet, but luckily I was not wearing open-toed shoes. Many argue that squat toilets are more hygienic than seated ones. The older generation in China rejects the notion of sitting to the degree that signs are often hung in bathrooms asking people not to stand on the toilet seat. And nevertheless, one often sees footprints on the seat.

Feeling accomplished, I exited to find Andy waiting in the hallway trembling and white. It seems that his first-time-in-a-public-bathroom-in-a-Chinese-mall was not a positive experience. Without dwelling on the topic of public bathrooms for too long, the overview is that Andy entered the men’s restroom to find a man sitting on the toilet, grunting and moaning as he read the newspaper and smoked a cigarette. There was no door on the stall and restroom was filthy, covered in muck and cigarette butts. Flies were rampant and yet, this man had a plethora of bags resting by his side, all boasting the names of high-end fashion brands!

(Fast-forward a few years to May 2012 when Leo Lewis wrote in The Times: “China's draconian 'one-child' policy is well known. But now a new code has come into effect: a two-fly rule now governs public toilets across Beijing. Central to the campaign is ensuring that the number of flies in each facility is never allowed to exceed two. The rules offer no suggestions on how to achieve the exacting standard or how to measure the fly population. The two-fly rule does not specify whether the quota refers to living or dead specimens, or whether to count a fly that, after entering, shows no sign of wishing to prolong the visit. One Beijing toilet cleaner, who gave her name as Wang, said that the rules were vague on what to do if the fly count was precisely two: "Are we obliged to destroy the surviving two, or leave them be?")

We left the mall and walked towards the Bund, discarding our aspirations for a meal as Andy recovered. Vendors selling real Rolex watches or Prada bags swarmed about offering good price. Weaving away from them was quite difficult and they adjusted their walking pace to ours so when I found myself trotting, the watch vendor trotted beside me, exhibiting an impressive level of balance. Smiles and no-thank-you only made us more vulnerable so we finally reverted to an aggressive-hand-up-bark-no-attitude.

We arrived at the Bund (Zhongshan Road), that is the waterfront area of Puxi (West City) facing Pudong (East City), the newer part of Shanghai. The Bund has been regarded as the symbol of Shanghai for hundreds of years, is less than one mile in length, and is a popular destination for tourists since it offers a glimpse of old Shanghai. Walking along the Bund at night causes sensory overload since the entire Pudong skyline is illuminated, including the Oriental Pearl TV Tower and Jin Mao Tower (the 2nd tallest building in the world). In terms of the buildings facing the river on the Puxi side, many of the major firms of the Far East used to be headquartered in these Gothic, Romanesque and Baroque style buildings but now most house high-end fashion brands or haute couture restaurants.

Just do not look at the river where you will find tons of plastic garbage floating in the waters. 

When walking away from the Bund towards some less tourist-ridden streets, an older woman with a shoeshine box blocked Andy on the sidewalk. He shook his head to decline but she insisted and squirted some cream on the tip of his shoe as we walked away. He started to walk faster but she began to swat at his feet with a rag. Hopping-trotting-and-then-running, I watched the old woman take after Andy in full pursuit. He dodged into a German pub and I joined him, my sides heaving from the laughter.

After a few stiff Bloody Mary’s we walked to the Metro to take the train back home.  We stopped at the pharmacy and I almost fell over since a saleswoman aggressively pulled me towards the mirror. Tapping furiously on the glass, she shouted that I had many terrible and ugly eye wrinkles. She shoved a bottle of eye cream into my palm and said my husband would no longer want me unless I became beautiful. 

Recycling

Garbage, it brings both challenges and opportunities

Standing on the edge of the Huangpu River, one is overwhelmed by the millions of lights emanating from the skyscrapers on Shanghai’s downtown skyline. Beneath the deceptively-glittering-postcard-picture-perfect image however, float tons of garbage. Far from being perturbed by this literal undercurrent of detritus, a smiling couple parts hands as the man opens a pack of cigarettes and tosses the plastic and foil into the water below. The woman drops her soda can to the floor but this is quickly snatched away by an older woman shuffling by, dragging her clinking-clanking black garbage bag with one hand and a rusty supermarket cart with the other. She has tied plastic supermarket bags on top of her coats sleeves to protect the fabric from dirt and looks frail but then heaves a stack of folded cardboard boxes and newspapers into her cart.

This shuffling bag lady is one of the many people who scour the city streets looking for recyclable garbage, motivated by financial incentives rather than environmental concern. Although recycling is not institutionalized in China it is socialized: nothing is wasted and for many people garbage is a means to financial security. For example, there is always a flurry of activity in city alleyways as dozens of housewives or their maids sell their recyclable garbage to waste-collectors, supplementing their household incomes. Although many of these waste collectors are listed in the phonebook, the recycling industry is not strictly regulated. Even so, 1.8million tons of waste paper were recycled in 2007 and 200,000 tons of glass and 200,000 tons of plastic in 2008.

The collector stacks items on his portable scale and pays according to weight. When he is finished he peddles away on his dilapidated tricycle, drawing his cart behind him, filled high with stacks of paper and even a small refrigerator. Children run behind him shouting as he makes his way to a waste collection station. The station will then sell the materials to recycling companies or to manufacturers who can use the materials. Electronic scrap facilities have even begun to apply low-tech, profitable, and environmentally sound approaches to the recycling of e-scrap in China. Nothing is wasted. Recycling is a fact - and a way - of life.

While the collector is doubtless not immune to the challenges imposed by the shift in the world economy and a related fall in commodity prices, he is still able to support his family, on average earning 500RMB (70USD) a week. In addition to approximately 60,000 individual collectors like him, countless small business owners owe their economic survival to recycling:  the woman in Fuxing Park who sells purses made from recycled milk cartons to both tourists and locals; the man who wheels about a modified barrel oven (on close inspection made from a discarded manufacturing container) filled with coal to roast potatoes; and vendors who have scraped together enough money to purchase the 2.35USD permit and have set up small flimsy stalls made of recycled plywood and chunks of scrap metal. These are all a step towards empowerment.

The effect of these recycled bits and pieces of construction material, and of these recycling-dependent lives, is somewhat chaotic. Since the close of the Olympics the police no longer patrol the streets to eliminate the most tangible and visible vestige of this floating population – its garbage.  The government has taken steps to promote recycling but the effect of these measures has been limited. For example, shops were banned from giving away plastic bags in January 2008 yet a country wide poll of 40,000 Netizens found that consumption has not decreased from the average three billion a day. ''It is too difficult to change a long-term habit,'' said Wang Ling, a Shanghai housewife. ''I always forget to bring bags with me when I go to the supermarket and buy a few plastic bags. The bag isn't expensive, anyway.'' The government also placed recycling bins in four colors (blue for recoverable garbage, green for glass, red for harmful garbage and black for other) in neighborhood alleyways but most people simply toss their garbage in whichever bin is closest. But never mind, a few minutes later someone will sift through the garbage and remove that which has a re-sale value.

Economic changes are taking place on an accelerated time frame in China but the social base is still largely structured on traditional values and as such, people are not generally concerned with protecting the environment without compensation. One is very conscious of people tossing garbage - on the road as they walk, from car windows, from apartment blocks – and of the speed with which recyclable materials are picked up by collectors. The theme of the 2010 World Expo Shanghai is "Better City, Better Life," and the government claims that environmentalism and recycling are principal components of this purported ‘better’ ness. However, when speaking with a young Chinese person or with an older migrant worker, their responses echo one another. “I will not bother to recycle since someone will always come and get the garbage that can be recycled; this is the job of other people.” 

Since nothing is wasted in China, more than 70% of the materials that feed China’s recycling industry are imported, according to China National Resources Recycling Association. However, Western values of over consumption and the related production of waste are slowly being integrated into the Chinese social fabric. Disposing of excess materials as prices for scrap and recyclables are dropping (50% in the past months according to the Shanghai Waste Material Recycling Association) will become an increasingly contentious issue in a country where traditional cultural attitudes about garbage and waste management exist. Is Paul Gilding, the environmental business expert, correct in claiming that China is nearing The Great Disruption, a point where nature and greed can no longer be compatible?

SATURDAY MEANDERING

Early Sunday morning we walked towards the Metro station and the streets were replete with people, carrying on as if it were any day of the week. Was this not meant to be a day of rest or was that a silly thought reserved for other countries? There were certainly no children prancing along dressed in their Sunday finest. Most shops in the French Concession were open and the food vendors were chopping-stirring-and-packing dishes into take-away containers. One of my favorite restaurants is run by Chinese Hui Muslims, identifiable by their crisp white cotton caps. Miniscule, is it not particularly descriptive as there are no Central Asian murals painted on the walls and no blasts of music accompanying diners. There is something bold and sweet about the these men who pulling dough into noodles from morning to night, seemingly grumpy from afar but boasting lovely and generous smiles when diners approach. They are accompanied by a petite young girl, hair covered with a colorful shawl and dressed in conservative slacks coupled with Hello Kitty sneakers, who runs about serving food to diners while an infant rests on the crook of her hip.

Hungry and impatient customers are seated on makeshift tables and plastic chairs, both of which are scuffed, chipped and wobbly. The steaming aromatic bowls of Langzhou lamian are overflowing with noodles, slices of beef, coriander and shallots. There is a similar noodle shop next door but the staff is gruff and their floors are filthy. It seems the later remained open through the night serving the Saturday night revelers. The server’s hair was in disarray and her pajama bottoms dragged along the pavement, across the heaps of sunflower shells and cigarette butts disposed. Rubbing her eyes I could not know whether she had just awoken or whether she had never gone to sleep.

Many small shop owners live in the back room of their shops and their belongings are limited. The rooms measure only a few meters and are windowless and humid. A mattress rests on the floor, a splintering wooden stool, piles of newspapers, an ancient and rewired television set, and stained rice cooker. A chamber pot rests by the door next to a chipped plastic cup bearing Mickey Mouse that holds a frayed toothbrush. There is an unassuming pile of clothing piled next to the stool and the rest hangs on the street, drying on wire hangers swinging from telephone wires. In the lane off the main road, I often passed an elderly man taking down his laundry from the wires with a wooden pole, a hook on its end. Giggling when I saw him remove a large bra from the wires, he looked at me and laughing said “Maybe this is better for you than me!

In the same lane was a shop that sold bits and pieces of everything that were crammed into hundreds of beaten up boxes that were then shoved into what seemed like a large closet. The inventory fluctuated and ranged from foldable mattresses to tools, flip-flops or sacks of rice. One thing that did not fluctuate was their daily schedule - they sat on the street all day selling but still going through the motions. They made their lunch and ate it while standing, shoveling the soup in with chopsticks, slurping loudly in appreciation. In the early evening they brushed their teeth in their Hello Kitty pajamas. Yes, mom and dad both wore pink Hello Kitty ensembles throughout the year, changing the traditional concept of his & hers. There was no privacy in their lives - did they mind or did they not know anything else? Their daughter was often found doing her homework on the street, perched over a small table and balancing so as not to fall off a chair that was too small for her growing frame. At least once a week I could hear her shrieks and howls as her mother furiously scrubbed her hair clean, rinsing it on the pavement as people walked by. In this neighborhood - the French Concession - the rich and poor mingled, the old world melted into the new world, the foreigners and the Chinese lived in the same buildings or lanes. Friendships were not readily made between people who came from each of the world the various worlds but people could not help be aware of one another and were generally cordial.

The exception - in my neighborhood - would be Yong Kang Lu. This street is a roaring example of old meets new and old does not appreciate new. The top level of buildings house small, dark, moldy and subsidized apartments built during the Cultural Revolution whereas the bottom level has been completely renovated and boasts modern and trendy bars-cafes-and-shops. When customers at the bars trail into the streets, continuing to laugh and enjoy one another’s company, people living in the top levels have been known to drop pails of water onto them. One hopes that the pails are filled with water.  

 

So, I deviate from my description of our Saturday meandering.

We entered the Metro station and were immediately tussled about until we were blocked amongst all the other commuters. Unable to move my arms or legs I looked about and was amused to see a number of very large signs that stated, in English and Chinese, ‘No Spitting.’  Another ‘Your mobile phone on your waist seems like the gifts for thieves.’ Or ‘Polite Language and No Noising.’ When we finally inched towards the platform there was a glass shield protecting the track and, in light of all the pushing, I imagined the shield was meant to prevent accidental suicides. When the train doors opened people on the platform surged ahead, literally ramming into the passengers desperately trying to exit the same carriage. In fact, the petite and elderly clothed in Mao like suits were the most vicious, their elbows flailing and fingernails clawing as they heaved forward. The carriage was overcrowded but the doors eventually closed with the help of a man who was pushing people inside. My mouth agape, I later read that the Shanghai Metro system had hired staff to “shove” passengers into the carriage so that the doors could close, allowing the train to move. Needless to say, we did not get into the carriage and waited, now strategically positioned and crouched like Rugby players, anticipating a fight.

Not only did we ride the train but we also managed to transfer twice without getting lost. Both female and male passengers stared at me and did not look away, even when I blatantly caught their eye. I wondered if the men found my Western features attractive or terribly ugly. And what were the children thinking when they pointed and giggled?

We paused near the Metro exit and, quite courageously and on a whim, stopped for a 60RMB (equivalent to 10 USD) haircut. WE were seated and a young girl squirted a mixture onto my head and began to lather it. Taken my surprise, I realized that she was washing my hair and giggled as I transformed into Bart Simpson’s wife. I worried that she might attempt to rinse out the shampoo while I was seated but she invited me to the sink. After this I was given a glorious neck, shoulder and head massage and wanted this woman to be my new best friend. Come live with us I mumbled…..

Bhutan

I have a bucket list of places I hope to see one day. One of these countries is Bhutan and I writhe with envy-coupled-with-desire-to-live-vicariously each time I meet someone who has traveled there. Some friends recounted their recent trip there and I was intrigued. Their daughter, suddenly awoken from her jetlag, also enthusiastically chirped into the conversation to share with the use the country’s penis obsession. 

It seems that they were inspired by the teachings of one of the country's most popular religious figures, Drupka Kunley, who lived around the turn of the 16th century.  Known as the 'divine madman', he was from a distinguished family and wandered the country with his own brand of Buddhism, putting the sexual act at the centre of religious experience.  As such, the doors of homes are adorned with massive paintings or sculptures of the penis, often emitting a thin trail of cosmic sperm, thought to ward off evil.  Legend has it that Drupka Kinley would hit errant demons over the head with his penis to subdue them and turn them into protective deities.  Several wooden penises are currently kept in the monastery and the longest (a brown wooden one with a silver handle) is considered a religious relic.  In fact, it is used for blessing the devout and the monk hits young women devotees who come to pray at the monastery on the head with it.  ‘The penis is stronger than the sword in many Asian cultures’ offered Carolyn.  For any cynics, please refer to the following link:

http://www.galenfrysinger.com/bhutan_festival_penis_ceremony.htm.  Note to self - have I found the perfect Christmas and wedding gifts?