Shanghai is transforming before our eyes. This
picture was taken from the top of the city's tallest building. You can see skyscrapers
rising all over the city, farther than the eye can see.
This is the famous skyline of Pudong, a
"new" section of the city across the river from old Shanghai.
Skyscrapers don't go up one by one, but in threes
and fours and fives. Shanghai is growing rapidly, and all those people need
places to live.
Sometimes the new buildings look a little crazy.
You can be walking down the street, turn a corner, and come across something
like this. Someone spent a lot of money here.
And here (and no, we're not talking about all those cello and martial arts lessons). This is the World Financial Center. It's
101 stories high. When it was finished in 2007, it was the second tallest
building in the world. There's an opening at the top that makes it look like a
bottle opener, and you can actually buy a model that does open bottles. Can you
find the building in the Pudong skyline above? Can you think of a building in
downtown Charlotte that looks like it?
A few weeks ago, Parker and I went out to the edge
of town to visit a museum. On our walk from the metro station we came to a
whole neighborhood under development – several city blocks and a dozen tall
apartment towers. The road was so new that they weren't letting cars drive on
it yet. But pretty soon, thousands of people will be moving in. It's possible
to do these large-scale projects in China because the government owns all the
land. So if a project gets government approval, it goes ahead. It doesn't
matter who's living on it. Everyone has to go.
These buildings are displacing a much more human-scale
city. Most of the old city is organized into blocks of two or three-story buildings
called "villages" or "lanes." Shops and stands cluster on
the streets outside.
We really noticed the difference when we took our
bikes on a ferry across the river to Pudong.
When we got there, everything felt strange. It was
all tall buildings and open plazas. The streets were wide and full of cars and
there weren't many bike lanes. All the shops were inside the buildings, in
shopping malls that felt more like the U.S. than like China. We were glad to
get to the ferry and go back across the river. The old, narrow streets were
clogged with bikes and scooters and produce carts and people in wheelchairs,
but we felt more at home.
It's always a shock to come across an old
neighborhood being torn down to make way for a new one. It makes the
skyscrapers look like an advancing army determined to crush the small buildings
in its path. And it's happening all over the city. Buildings will be there one
week, and gone the next. Construction often starts shortly afterwards.
Our neighborhood is one of many that have been affected by this kind of change. Here's a Google Earth image of our neighborhood in 2002.
Here's the neighborhood two years later. Notice all the new, tall apartment buildings to the left of the picture. They're much fancier than any of the neighborhood's other buildings, and there's a big gate with guards.
Some people like the new buildings better than the
old ones. Some people want to keep the old buildings, and the way of life
they're part of. But as with everything else in China, it's difficult to protest. The people living in the old neighborhoods don't have a lot of
political or economic power. So if they're not happy, the main thing they can
do is in stay their homes as long as they can.
The other night, we came across this neighborhood,
right near downtown. Most of the buildings were boarded up, and it looked ready
for the wrecking ball.
But deep inside, we could see someone cooking supper.
When we first got here, we went to an exhibit by a
photographer who created "ghost" pictures of Shanghai buildings. It's
hard to tell if the buildings are actually there or not. It made sense for a
city where buildings are slipping in and out of existence 24 hours a day.
He even did a ghost image of Pudong. Who knows what will be there 50 years from now.
This isn't a new process. It's going on in cities
all over the world, as people move from countryside to town in search of better
opportunities, and as wealthy people look for places to sink their cash. It
happened in Paris and other European cities in the 19th century, when wider
boulevards and larger buildings replaced old medieval structures and created
the cities we know today. It happened on a smaller scale in Charlotte in the
1960s, when homes, churches and small businesses were cleared out of the Second
Ward neighborhood and replaced by a shiny new array of government offices. Things
change. New replaces old. Old bonds break and new ones are created. Still, in
this hustle-bustle modern world it often seems like the broken ties outnumber
the remade. Perhaps that's why we like the older city best.
Even at this stepped-up Chinese pace, it's
unlikely that everything will change. Old habits and ways of life are hard to break.
But it's hard to shake the sense that the city as we see it now is fading,
giving way to a different mode of living. If Parker comes back years from now,
what will he find?
See you soon!
Pamela
P.S. There's a good book about how some Chinese people
feel about losing old Beijing neighborhoods called The
Last Days of Old Beijing. I highly recommend it.
