I went out for some last-minute exploration on my last afternoon in Shanghai, around the neighborhood where I’d been staying. The weather, unlike the past few days of brilliant sunshine, was grey and dull. Children played with their Young Pioneer handkerchiefs, calling out “Look, a parachute!”

I ducked down an alley into an old neighborhood, past some houses being refurbished and into a courtyard where some old people were sitting. I told them I was looking at the architecture, and they invited me to sit down. A hefty old woman told me that the two-story apartments were about 80 years old and had originally been quite nice. “They’re a mess now, though,” she added. Her children had moved into nicer quarters, but she was loath to follow, saying she couldn’t adjust to the newer buildings. Looking up at the glass and steel towers surrounding the area, I could understand how the prospect of moving there must feel like jumping into a sci-fi novel.

Talk turned to politics, and an old man told me he thought Chen Shui-bian shouldn’t step down. He wasn’t the first one. Most people here, when I mention the subject, seem to think the anti-Chen movement rather silly. I suspect the PRC leaders would rather not see a leader being called on corruption, alleged or not, as it would make for a dangerous example.

The old man took me to see his apartment, which he shared with his son, who was asleep on the sofa. It was a small loft, a little smaller than the Lofty Sky Palace. He paid 50RMB a month for the room and a small garden out front, he said, giving me a bag of wet peanuts as a gift. He then went outside to join a game of chess with a neighbor in the courtyard. The neighbor, from Hainan, was unemployed.

I went back out to the main street and walked along it for a while, enjoying the tree-lined streets and noting the abundance of satellite dishes, which are supposedly illegal. The bag of wet peanuts gave me a sense of legitimacy; it seemed as if I got fewer stares because of it.

But I had a train to catch, so I made my way back to Lennet’s apartment, gathered up my things, said my thanks and good-byes, and proceeded to the subway, which I took to Shanghai Train Station. It was already dark when I emerged from the subway tunnel onto the square in front of the station, which smelled of urine and too many people. Everyone walked through a metal detector, bit its beeping was ignored. I sat in the sleeper lounge watching the other passengers until my train, the Z6, was announced, and then followed the crowd over the bridge to the platform where the train lay waiting. I was reluctant to get on, waiting until the last minute, but when I found my cabin it was crowded with well-wishers seeing off my three bunkmates, an old man and two old women. They were all from Shanghai. The women spoke exclusively in Shanghainese, as if she didn’t want me to know what she was saying, while the man spoke Mandarin.

An announcement of our impending departure emptied our cabin of the crowd, and the train set off north into the night. I chatted with the Shanghai man for a bit before going out to explore the train. I’d thought it would have all of the various classes, but it turned out to be all soft sleeper cabins. Most of the cabin doors I passed were open, the people inside playing cars, drinking alcohol, and looking intently at laptops. The air conditioning was on full, the air frigid.

I found my way to the dining car and struck up a conversation with the train policeman who was tending the bar. I asked him why he chose that particular profession. “I didn’t have a choice,” he said. He’d been doing it for over 30 years, since the year I was born.

“What would you choose to do if you had a choice?” I asked.

“I’d be a boss and make lots of money,” he said. He, like the entire crew, was from Shanghai, and spoke like it. He told me that my Taiwanese accent was fairly thick.

Behind us a foreign couple was nuzzling in a booth. The foreign man came up and asked for ice-cream, but there wasn’t any. Only beer and soda. I had a soda. A man with a laptop was watching recorded TV programs on his laptop. A small article in the paper on the anti-Chen protests in Taipei was accompanied by a picture of red-clad demonstrators.

The messy, vibrant kitchen, surrounded by glass, closed down, and I returned to my cabin, where the three old people were already asleep in bed. I climbed up into my bunk and read my copy of Hotel New Hampshire, listening to the rattle of the train, the easy-listening music spilling in from the hallway, and high, whistling snores of one of the old women. I could see my reflection in the shiny ceiling, lit by the reading light.

I woke at 6am the next morning, wrapped up in blankets to fend off the frigid air. It was light outside, crude huts and fields flashing by the window. The real China, I thought. I went back to the dining car, where the policeman from the night before was chatting with his co-workers. “He’s Taiwanese,” he told them, pointing at me with his chin as I sat down. Breakfast was runny eggs, a bright pink piece of unpalatable “ham” and cold toast. At the next booth a very old foreigner wearing a cap was talking with a young Chinese man, apparently his assistant. “Have you seen Beijing on TV?” he asked.

“Nope,” the old man said. I was surprised by the sudden appearance of a large Volkswagen factory in the countryside. We were approaching Beijing. I tried to get back to my cabin, but found the doors between the cabins locked. I had to wait until the train stopped so I could walk back to my car along the cold concrete platform in paper slippers and retrieve my luggage. I then headed into the city.

Monday was another day full of roaming around Shanghai. Greg and I took the metro to the Xuhui District, in search of the old foreign concessions area. Lunch was a Chinese-style shredded-beef hamburger from a stall underneath the station, which I took on the train to let it cool down. Just as the doors were closing, a group of men attempted to board the train, leaving one of their number behind laughing, waving and pointing towards the next stop on the platform.

The train was pretty nice, and I can see now that there is a variety of trains here, some just as nice and new as the ones in Taipei.

We walked up the tree-lined Huaihai Road until we saw large Western-style mansions set back from the road in complexes. Since the gates were open, we went in to take a look. Many were being rennovated, and nice cars sat out front. Shouting came suddenly from the scaffolding of one of the buildings as a senior construction worker climbed up and grabbed the paint roller of another worker, shouting at him that he was “painting it wrong.”

We walked on. Some of the buildings looked like they came out of the 1910’s and 20’s, while others were clearly of art-deco descent. Rarely did I see the “window cages” that are so ubiquitous and damningly ugly in Taipei. In fact, Shanghai’s asthetic sense is leaps and bounds ahead that of Taipei in most respects. That might just be something the current population inherited from the city’s history, a history Taipei never had apart from the Japanese influence, but it makes the city seem grounded in a way Taipei can’t quite match.

It was encouraging that so much rennovation was going on, with hardly any signs of old buildings being torn down in the area. Greg and I walked into one courtyard to examine an elaborate older residence and immediately heard murmurs of “What are those foreigners doing here?” fromm the people standing about. I singled out an old gentleman in the courtyard and asked him about the house. “It’s really nice, I like the design.”

“No it’s not. It’s terrible!” he replied.

“Who built it and when?”

“Guess!” He said fiercely. It was obvious he wasn’t enjoying our conversation, but I pressed on.

“I dunno, uh, English?”

“No! Of course not! How could you guess English?” There was an awkward pause.

“Well, uh…”

“It’s French, stupid! Look at the columns!”

He went on to tell me it was almost a hundred years old and that 22 families lived inside. I had a hard time understanding his accent and had to repeat my questions to make myself understood. He guessed my age pretty accurately but wouldn’t believe that I was from Taiwan until I showed him my Taiwan travel document.

We continued up the streets looking at the architecture, passing the old Italian consulate. “I bet there were some nice meals there,” I said. At one point we passed a tall grey stone building on a corner with interesting curves and huge windows. Despite the ornate exterior, underwear and bras hung out the windows. I wondered how many families lived inside.

It was getting dark and we were getting tired and thirsty, so we stopped into a Mister Donut and marvelled at the “Multi-flavored Mister Hot Dog,” which was apparently a chocolate-covered corn dog. As we ate, a man walked in and picked one up. “Look, someone’s actually going to eat one!” I said to Greg, but the man heard and paused before continuing his shopping.

Lennet was off work so we walked up Maoming Road, which is lined with art shops and cafes. My hands were sticky from the donuts so I washed them in a conveniently located arty pool in front of one of the galleries.

As we approached Nanjing Road, the street was lined with recently renovated old split-level houses, and when we went up to Lennet’s office, I saw that they stretched for blocks, with no apparent destruction going on. Lennet said that only the walls along the street had been renovated.

We went to a DVD store that just about anything you could want, all in cheap plastic wrappers, and I picked up a couple of Sergio Leone flicks including A Fistful of Dynamite.

Lennet knew of a Japanese restaurant nearby where he said he often ate. The staff of the kitchen shouted their welcome from the kitchen below as we climbed up rickety wooden stairs.

Inside, a group of Japanese chatted drunkenly in the corner. Halfway through our meal (which was delicious), a couple of them dragged a semi-conscious man to their table and spread him out on the bench. As we ate, I could hear his slurred protests as Greg and Lennet, who were facing that direction, winced. I turned around to see that the Japanese were poking their drunk friend with chopsticks and laughing.

Later in our meal, the drunk began making gurgling noises and coughing. His friends tried to pick him up, and failed. They ended up dragging him by the hands over the stairway, leaving a trail of vomit on the wood floor. They then dragged him down the stairs, the loud thumping of him hitting each step on the way causing us all to wince as the staff rushed to clean up the mess.

We called up John and arranged to meet him at a lounge restaurant called “Arch”. On the way we discussed our favorite rappers. I put in my vote for Ice Cube and Method Man as my picks, based, I admit, on their looks and attitude as much as their music. As the taxi drew near, I saw that the place was located in the very stone building on the corner that we had admired earlier in the day. John was sitting inside reading as we entered. The place was cool, very low-key, with a mix of Chinese and foreigners. We ordered wine. Behind us, in the corner, a Chinese woman had wrapped herself around a guy, exposing various parts of herself as she did so, and made comments in a whiny, cutsy fashion that grated on my ears. Whiny Woman in Love! Gah.

So ended our day. Greg went out after we got back to Zhongshan Park, getting lost and coming back in the wee hours. I got a call from Ah-bu in Taipei telling me he’s going to be in Shanghai tomorrow. Unfortunately, I’m taking the train tonight from Shanghai to Beijing. I have no idea where I’ll be staying or what I’ll be doing there.

I’ve enjoyed Shanghai quite a lot. It’s modern enough, feels more or less international, yet is still properly rooted in its interesting history, even though the large-scale destruction of certain neighborhoods is depressing. Besides talking to random strangers on the street, I haven’t gotten to know the people very well, though. That’s something I’ll have to work on more during my next trip here.

See you in Beijing.

Lennet had to work on Sunday, since workers have to make up lost time for the last National Day holiday, but Greg was free, so we took the metro northeast to the Lu Xun Park area, which I’d read is near an antiques market. On the way we stopped by a train ticket office so I could purchase my ticket to Beijing on Tuesday. It was a surprisingly simple affair, though I’m still not sure which station I have to go to to catch the train.

At the stadium metro station, we walked up the road to Sichuan West Road and followed it for a while before deciding the main street was too boring, and headed into the alleyways. A large stone gate announced the beginning of the antique street, which was crowded with tourists and many foreigners. I asked Greg about the state of foreigners in China, and he pretty much confirmed that the range of types is nearly identical to those in Taiwan, albeit on a larger scale.

Most of the shops were crammed with people, and in any case I’m not as interested in the antiques as the old houses that contain them. We walked through another old neighborhood, this one more or less intact, and onto a large road. There, I noticed a short, dark young man running after a young woman on a bike. He was plodding stealthily behind her, his hands grasping the strap of her handbag. It took me a couple of seconds to realize what was going on, and I pointed it out to Greg. Just then, the woman turned around, and the young man retreated, walking back towards us. Seeing our accusing WTF stare, he smiled widely, shook his head and waved his hand, saying “No, no!”

“Uh, yeah, yeah!” I replied. After seeing the guy reformatting the obviously stolen laptop yesterday, as well as hearing many warnings about pickpockets and thieves in China, Taipei seems like a public security dream.

We kept walking though neighborhoods, mostly older ones, all the windows and doors painted dark red. “Was there a sale?” I asked Greg, but he didn’t know. At least they chose a tasteful hue and not, say, puke green.

We found another row of old houses in the shadows of yet more luxury high-rises, and went in to investigate. “What are those foreigners doing here?” A large older woman asked her neighbor, who was sitting in the doorway. He just shrugged, and she came into the alley where we were taking pictures of the elaborate cornice work and asked in Chinese, “Are you looking for someone?”

“No, we’re just admiring the architecture,” I said. She beamed at me.

“It’s wonderful, isn’t it? These buildings go back over a hundred years, and can you believe it, they’re just going to tear them down!”

“Well, they’re very nice, I’m glad I got a chance to see them,” I said. I wonder why entrepreneurs don’t do more rennovation of these classic old buildings, providing relatively cheap housing for those who still can’t afford the encroaching luxury high-rises. Lack of foresign on the part of the government, most likely. At one point I thought: replace all the bicycles with scooters and this would be Taipei. But that’s misleading. I do think the bicycles are a good idea, and China should be doing all it can to encourage the habit rather than putting all it’s resources into making China a better place for cars, like some kind of 50’s American Dream fantasy.

We walked back towards the Bund, as I was hoping to get some shots of it at night later, passing the elegant Astor hotel and the Bayer building, both reminiscent of New York City, and across the Suzhou Creek. From there we proceeded to the north end of the Bund, where there’s a sharp pointed monument and, supposedly a Bund museum underneath. We were led down by a man who seemed a little obsequious, and found that the museum is closed for repairs. He didn’t tell us this, of course; we had to walk all the way around the large circular hallway under the monument looking at cheap Chinese paintings before we found this out. I though the space would be much better used as a replica of the interior of the Enterprise.

We walked back down the Bund and then back into the side streets. Greg showed me a particular roundabout intersection that is surrounded on three sides by arching 30’s style art-deco-style buildings. At least one is a hotel, and we interrupted a wedding photo shoot to get a look at the lobby. Someday I’d like to stay at that hotel, just to see what’s it’s like. I’d bring my fedora and listen to 20’s jazz on the grammaphone while soaking in the porcelain tub with the window open because air conditioning hasn’t been invented yet.

Greg knew of a hostel called Captain’s where the rooftop commanded a nice view of the river and the buildings across from it, so we went up to rest our tired feet and get a drink. Backpacks lined the sofas in the lobby, while Europeans lined the desk. The bar was at the top of the building, with steel tables and a great view of the skyline. Only a few people, all foreigners, were sitting there looking dispassionate and cool, except for a group of excited Spaniards in the corner. The clock tower on one of the Bund buildings chimed out the hour as dusk fell, and I stood on the railing to get shots of the view.

We were chatting over drinks when the whole place was blasted with white light, and I saw that at least two of the buildings across the river are covered with huge TV screens.

Lennet showed up after getting off work, and we chatted and drank some more before setting out up the Bund so I could get some pictures. I didn’t want the traditional shots of the place, as they’re readily available already, but the alleys between the Bund buildings looked facinating at night. Unfortunately, most of them were guarded, so Greg and Lennet would go in first, create a diversion, after which I’d walk in and take advantage of their distraction of the guard to take a few shots. It worked pretty well, I have to say.

We got to the top of the Bund without being arrested, and proceeded around to a park I suspect now was the infamous “No Chinese or Dogs” sign park. We didn’t go in, however, but found an old half-torn-down cathedral next door. It looked like it was once a brilliant building, but now was half rubble. Greg climbed over the wall, which consisted of dangerously loose bricks and half a window, but we were too chicken to follow, as police rode by on motorcycles and Lennet donated his beer can to a passing collector.

By now it was way past dinner time, and we were all hungry, so we walked up to the city hall area in search of a restaurant Greg remembered from years ago. Unfortunately, it wasn’t there any more. “Typical Shanghai,” Greg remarked, though you could say the same of many cities, including Taipei. I bought a green apple-flavored Kirin to drink as we walked. It was delicious.

“You know why we’re down here and you’re on that bus?” Greg shouted at a passing busload of Western tourists, who gaped at him. “It’s because we SPEAK CHINESE and YOU DON’T! Whatever you do, STAY ON THE BUS!” Greg’s a fun drunk.

The city hall area is host to enormous old department stores, and everything is lit up. Photographers lined up to take pictures of the neon streets, but I didn’t join in. I didn’t bring my telephoto lens, for one thing, and it also just seemed like a hackneyed shot.

We continued west and came across another “Yonghe Da Wang” that was just about to close, so we ate there until they closed and then caught a taxi. Unfortunately, the cabbie didn’t know anything about Shanghai, so we caught another, driving past more luxury high-rises on our way back to Zhongshan Park.

It’s hard not to interpret Shanghai in terms of the familiar: “Like Taipei, with many Hong Kong elements,” etc. The unpredictable interference of the strange in a familiar setting makes me look for context that may not even be there.

So you’ve been warned.

Lennet and I took the subway on Saturday to the center of the city, around Nanjing East Road, I think. As we stopped to discuss where we would go next, two or three guys came up and started asking us questions in English. “Hallo! Where are you from?” and that kind of thing. Lennet ignored them, so I followed his lead, though I have to admit I thought at first they might just be friendly people. But then the pitches started: “Want to buy Fake Rolex?” “Massage?” We decided standing in one place wasn’t a good idea and walked down the street towards the Bund. It was a brilliant day, not a cloud in the sky, a fresh breeze and not too hot.

I was immediately impressed with the architecture of Shanghai, especially in that area, the old colonial/European stone edifices contain a feeling of old-world substance and class that the gaudy advertisements stuck on their exteriors can’t quite smother. The details of the cornices, the bay windows with cloudy glass, the dormer roofs and soaring spires impart the scene with a certain dignity and significance, a historical root, and I can only imagine what a shock arriving in Shanghai in the 1920s must have been like, especially after travelling through the rest of the country.

We had beef noodles at a Chinese fast food place (complete with a Chinese version of “The Colonel”) called “Yonghe Da Wang” and then walked under the road and onto the Bund to have a better look at the buildings, and periodically people would approach us with offers of watches, postcards and cameras. “Fake watch?” a hawker would ask me.

“Got a real one, thanks,” I said, pointing to my Casio.

“Fake camera?”

“Real one, thanks.”

“Postcard?”

“Gonna make my own with my real camera. Thanks.”

We also got one or two beggars. Unlike beggars in Taiwan, who lay on the street and look miserable, sometimes knocking their head on the pavement, beggars here look relatively healthy and follow their objectives.

We walked down the Bund. I took the obligatory picture of the skyscrapers across the river in Pudong, but I’m sure it’s been taken a million time before, as well as closeups of light bulbs on the overpasses. We struck inland, through a line of tall, luxurious apartment buildings and into an older area filled with ancient houses and streets. The houses were made of stucco and brick in wood frames, and for some reason, every door and window frame was painted the same dark red. Possibly due to the good weather, residents sat outside in the street chatting, making food and smoking.

It wasn’t a completely peaceful scene, however. Every so often we would come upon an area that looked as if it had recently been bombed, with every house flattened. Some were empty lots, some were mere shells, some had just been stripped. Everywhere the character marking houses for destruction marked walls and windows. The sun cast striped shadows from the bare timbers of the frames across the streets. The people went about their business, seemingly resigned to it all. A woman sat out in front of a house with a wok, cooking while a bag of paste sat under a press behind her. One old man combed through the rubble of a house, possibly his own.

Some of the houses left intact (for now) were cleverly constructed two-story affairs, with a high courtyard just inside the door and an intricate series of stairs and half-stories inside to maximize the use of space. Some of them had obviously been the abodes of rich families in the past, with carved wood doors and windows, all painted the same dark red. Lennet pointed out the ubiquitous chamber pots those who didn’t have toilets used. These places are well over a century old, predating even the oldest toilets. I ducked into the courtyards quickly to take pictures inside, ready to explain myself if I met any of the inhabitants, but I didn’t meet any.

We continued through similar neighborhoods, filled with shops and groups of people chatting in the street, before coming across a large refurbished area full of tourists buying cheap trinkets. Immediately the offers began anew. Lennet was interested in old maps, however, and I wanted to buy a blue Mao hat to wear backwards, so we continued on through. Eventually I found what I was looking for, but the maps were prohibitively expensive.

A few blocks later we passed a Taoist temple. Underneath, in the basement, was an Internet cafe. “No underage persons,” the sign said, with accompanying signage indicating not only that smoking and horn-blowing were not allowed in the vicinity, but the entrance was 1.8 meters tall.

We kept walking as the sun began to sink in the cloudless afternoon sky. We passed more of the tall, modern buildings that seem to be invading and occupying the city, erasing its past, and to an odd area called “Xin Tian Di”. This is an old neighborhood that underwent gentrification with extreme predjudice. All that’s left is the shells of the structures, now filled with expensive shops and Beautiful People, rich Shanghainese and foreigners sucking down lattes and looking very pleased with themselves. I suppose it’s good they kept the buildings, but the area felt a lot more like the Xinyi District in Taipei than anything remotely to do with cultural preservation.

We were meeting up with Lennet’s roomate John and another friend, Greg who lives in Hangzhou, at a restaurant later, so we walked down a nice tree-lined street past a plethora of expensive shops. In front of us a rail-thin Chinese woman slinked up the street, huge white flowers sticking at odd angles out of her head. I wondered if she’d just had surgery, but Lennet said it was a fashion thing. We passed some kind of show, with haughty women dressed in gowns and angel wings standing guard as another woman lounged on a divan a few feet back. She looked bored. They all looked bored. A few blocks later we passed a man squatting over a laptop on the curb. I looked at the blue screen and saw that he was reformatting the hard drive.

We got to the restaurant about sunset, footsore and sweaty after the long walk. The food was good, and it was interesting to meet John and Greg. After dinner we walked to the subway, passing by a large temple on the way. It was closed.

We took the subway back to Zhongshan Park and John’s and Lennet’s apartment, stopping at Dairy Queen/Papa John’s on the way. Yes, Dairy Queen! I was surprised to see it there, as Shanghai doesn’t seem to have any other chains that Taiwan doesn’t already have. Subway and Blockbuster, for instance, are nowhere to be seen, nor are there any 7-Elevens, in stark contrast to Taipei where 7-Elevens are so numerous they are often located across the street from each other.

Back at the apartment we watched some “Boondocks” DVDs that Greg had brought from the US. Shanghai TV seems to be limited to state-approved Chinese content only. As much as I like Shanghai and could see myself living here, the censorship of the media nags at me. I wonder what would happen if China slowly and quietly relinquished its control, notching down the censorship gradually until it’s at the level of, say, the US media or Taiwan media. That is to say, less censored, but still influenced. Would it be the disaster Beijing seems to think it would be?

Hopefully, someday, we’ll find out.

I had to get up at 5am to catch my flight to Shanghai. Packing the night before, thanks in part to a healthy dose of procrastination, took much longer than it should have, and I didn’t get to sleep until after 3.

I packed two bags, my backpack and my big backpack I’d bought a few days before. The latter was a mistake; too heavy, too big and covered with useless straps and clips. It was filled with clothes I wasn’t even sure I’d need. I’d have been better off with a tote bag. But the weather was cool as I crossed the bridge to the MRT station, and, I thought, surely it’s even colder in Shanghai and Beijing.

I managed not to fall asleep on the MRT, no mean feat, and caught a bus to the airport, whose name, according to the signage is now a confusing mixture of “Chiang Kai-shek International Airport” and “Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport”with varying combinations of the two. The last iteration I’ve heard of is “Taipei Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport”. I don’t see how they could make it even more bland and simultaneously confusing, but I’m sure they’ll try. We arrived at the older terminal, which I found I preferred to the new glass-and-steel terminal as the former evokes a cool 60’s vibe, lacking only period cars and men in hats smoking in the corner to complete the scene.

The place was packed, the ticket counters resembling a cattle market, but a helpful China Airlines staff member showed me a cool little machine that automatically checks you in, provided you don’t have any check-in luggage, and my big pack just managed to clear the carry-on box’s limits. I wandered up to immigration, got the usual questions about the apparent incompatibility of my nationality and appearance, and found myself almost two hours early for my flight. Damn, I thought, I could’ve slept in.

I watched planes flying in and out, the larger ones majestic in their apparent defiance of gravity, as well as pulling themselves around the runways surrounded by tiny airport vans. The planes parked at the terminals resembled upside-down boats at a dock, their rudders sticking into the air.

The waiting room gradually filled up with passengers as our 747 pulled into its berth. As always I waited to be the last one on the plane, and discovered that all of the hassle I’d saved with the automatic check-in machine had merely been transferred to the boarding gate. While all the other passengers could just get on the plane by relinquishing half of their boarding pass, I had to have all of my travel documents examined before I could board. “Am I the only one who used the machine?” I asked the gatekeeper, as I suspected my unusual status was somehow influencing the procedure.

“Oh, no, there were, uh, three others,” he replied.

As I crammed myself into my window seat, though most of my view was blocked by a wing, I found that, either I’ve been growing over the last few years, or the seats have been shrinking. I could barely fit my knees in the space between my seat and the one in front of me.

The flight was uneventful, Jim Northrup’s favorite kind, but my whole morning had been spent in a kind of feverish anticipation, such was my pent-up longing for travel. Airports! Tickets! Getting on a plane! Boarding announcements! All these ordinary aspects of travel I’d been craving for years. I’ve always enjoyed flying, but this time watching the clouds streak by outside the window held an even greater appeal due to my heightened appetite for such things. Even the in-flight meal, a bland noodle dish, tasted better than it normally would have.

We got in to Hong Kong around noon. Thanks to political issues, flying from Taipei to Shanghai is an all-day affair, when it should only take an hour or two. Direct links to China have been on the table in recent years, but as of now things are still tied up in matters relating to sovereignty, trade, designations, air space, boundaries, and many other factors. I still hope someday to take a cruise ship from Keelung to Shanghai, but I’m not holding my breath.

Hong Kong’s new airport seemed much more international after Taiwan, with modern stores and vaulted steel ceilings. My connecting flight, I found when I picked up my boarding pass, was booked solid. The impatient clerk dressed me down for wanting a window seat, when even aisle seats were unavailable. For me, looking out the window of a plane is half the fun of flying, so I wasn’t nearly as happy about this flight as the last as I put my heavy bags in a cart and wheeled it down to the Dragon Air, where I found many more people waiting to get on the plane than it seemed the plane could hold. Like a clown-car act at a circus, however, the long line of passengers somehow managed to disappear through the boarding gate. I followed, and found that I’d apparently been assigned the seat that no one else wanted, smack in the middle of the middle row, and directly underneath one of the TV monitors.

I passed the time in the air this time by reading and listening to whatever was playing on the TV. The sun, now low in the sky, shone into the cabin, and I took pictures of the backlit passengers as we flew into Shanghai.

The airport was another steel-and-glass leviathan structure, but I was excited just to be there, though airports are never really “there” but some intermediate limbo, only slightly related to the cities they serve. I passed a desk for Taiwanese nationals and asked if I needed anything, but a couple assured me I had all the right stamps. Apparently you can fly to China without all the stamps; as long as you have the olive-colored “Tai Bao Zheng” booklet, you can get any stamp you need at the airport.

Immigration presented me with another sea of people, divided roughly into indistinct lines for “Foreign Nationals” and “Chinese Nationals (including Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan)”. I joined the latter, assuming it would provide speedier service, but found it moved no faster due to a clueless Japanese tour group, filled with people who spoke neither English nor Chinese, that had bumbled its way through the line, right up to the counter. The Chinese around me expressed dismay at this interruption, and the airport official prodded them back into their group when it tried to take advantage of a break in an adjacent line. “That’s strange, I thought Japanese were usually more organized,” I said to a woman from Hong Kong next to me in line.

When I reached the immigration counter, I wondered if I would have a problem. It was the first time I’d ever traveled to China with a Taiwan passport, and I didn’t know how they would react. The official took my documents without a second glance, examined them, and then asked, “How long have you been a Taiwanese national?”

“About 12 or 13 years now.”

“What is your purpose of travel?”

“Pleasure,” I said, thinking to myself, this is going far too normally. “Do you get many cases like mine?”

“A few,” the official said. “I’ve never seen any myself, but I’ve heard of it now and then.”

I wanted to ask him more, but I felt I was pressing my luck, and in any case the travelers behind me didn’t look amenable to more delays, so I let it go and proceeded into the airport.

I’d been told a bus was the best way to get into the city, but I wanted try the new, very fast maglev train, as I’d never been on a bullet train, much less a maglev one. With an incoming flight ticket stub, it’s only 50 RMB. The waiting room was adorned with red PRC flags, most likely left over from the recent National Day celebrations. A woman on the staff held a group of people off at the escalator leading to the maglev platform while the train disgorged its passengers below, and then we were allowed down and onto the train, which looked much like an ordinary fast train. It was grey and short, with only a few cars. Curiously, the seats inside were very cheap and covered with low-price, ill-fitting canvas, and bolted crudely to the floor.

We set off into the dusk, past groups of single-unit houses set among swampy canals. The train’s speed was displayed on an LED at the front of the car as we accelerated to over 400 kilometers per hour, the train bumping along the tracks like an airplane on takeoff, though we were going much fast than that.

The train’s speed topped out at around 430kph and stayed there as we flew past the adjacent highway traffic, now illuminated by the full moon rising over the swampland. It was Mid Autumn Festival, I recalled, and thought of all my Taiwanese friends having barbecue out on their roofs, leaving the mess for stray cats.

A train official with a military-style cap sat at the front of the car. As we arrived at the terminal station (there’s only one stop) I asked him how fast the train could go. “431 kilometers per hour,” he said by rote, as if he got the question all the time, which he probably does.

“Are you sure it can’t go faster?”

“No.”

“I thought I saw it going 432 just now.”

“No, it didn’t.”

“Are you sure? Hasn’t anyone ever wondered if it can go faster?”

“No. Now stop bothering me.”

The train left me at a subway station. I gave the ticket vendor a handful of the unfamiliar money for a ticket into town, and he handed most of it back, along with a ticket. The subway in Shanghai appears much older and more used than the MRT in Taipei. As I got on the green-and-white train I saw that business cards were strewn all over the dark gray floor. I thought it was part of some ad campaign until two men walked down the aisle throwing similar cards at each and every passenger. Most of them threw the cards on the floor in disgust, while a few looked at them.

It was odd to hear the Chinese accents all around me, with some unintelligible Shanghainese thrown in. A couple of men who looked like migrants from Western China, looked at me with what seemed like open hostility.

At one point a young girl in a green sweater came up to me with a glass. She was a beggar and asked me for money, but the other passengers shooed her away.

I got out at the last stop, the Zhongshan Park Station, and went out on the street for my first real taste of Shanghai. I was surprised to find myself on a sidewalk that looked exactly like a Taiwanese sidewalk, in front of a mall that looked just like a Taiwanese shopping center, right down to the Mister Donut store. It was an uncanny feeling. I walked to the adjacent park and called Lennet, who offered me lodging while I was there. I’d planned to walk through the park to the rear entrance to meet him, but the guard said I’d get lost and told me to walk around. I met Lennet at the rear gate and he took me to his high-rise apartment along the Suzhou Canal.

After Taipei, Shanghai feels like an alternate universe, where just about everything is similar to normal reality, but you never know when you’ll bump into something completely different. Everyone speaks Chinese, but it’s not Chinese as we know it, Jim. The traffic is chaotic, but not like Taipei chaos. More people honk their horns. There aren’t as many scooters. The buildings are taller, almost Hong Kong-esque. I was high on the differences, though; I needed to get out and explore. But that was for the next day.

The dancing club was thankfully gone by the time I reached the park this time. More of our people showed up as well, including a newer guy who is particularly good at yanking other people off their feet. I didn’t do tuishou with him; I’d skipped dinner and didn’t feel like I could make the effort necessary. Instead I pushed Mr. V for a while, finding that having no energy to push actually made pushing a little easier.

“Here are two ways to push someone off balance,” Teacher Xu said after he arrived with his son and was watching the various pairs go at it. “Once you focus two points of energy on your opponent’s backbone, you either press the points together or pull them apart.” I assume he meant to pull the points apart, not your opponent. I was having fun pulling Mr. V down time after time, as he would extend his reach too far to maintain his stance and was therefore easily pull-able.

Teacher Xu told us that power came out of a concave shape, i.e. whichever part of you is forced into a concave shape, that’s the direction in which you have the most potential to rebound from. “In order to make your opponent reveal his strategy and therefore his weakness, relax by 50%, and he will show you everything,” he told us.

I suppose he said “he” anyway. In spoken Chinese “he” and “she” sound exactly the same, but it seems that female tui-shou practitioners aren’t as prevalent as male ones. It’s awkward, for one thing, as you can only push their arms and shoulders, while they can push anywhere they like. Maybe there are female-only pushing groups out there that I don’t know about.

Next week I’m going to be in Beijing, so I’ll miss class. See you in two weeks.

My brother Kevin, who is running for state representative in Kentucky, sent me a link to his new campaign website. He certainly has the background as well as the 1337 people skillz to pull it off. I wish him luck. On the left is a picture of me, Kevin and our father at Kraft Gardens in Winter Park, Florida in the 70s. Kevin’s eight years older than I am, but I feel far more than eight years behind him, at least in terms of actual accomplishments. We’ve travelled very different paths, however, so it’s really apples and oranges. We had some good times growing up.

Preparations for my One-man Retaking of the Mainland continue. I got a larger backpack to carry back all of the Mao hats I plan to buy, and I picked up my tickets from Lorenzo before I went in to work today. Tickets! Do you realize how long it’s been since I’ve seen my name on air tickets? Far too long. It’s been so long I’m not even sure what they do and don’t allow inside carry-on luggage these days. I realize that in areas like the US and Britain there are many extra things you can’t even on board these days, but here things should be a bit less strict.

I’ve been offered a place to stay in Shanghai, and Brendan has given me a bit of advice on where to find cheap, centrally located lodgings in Beijing. I still don’t know whether I should bring my 20D or not. If I do, it will be just with one lens, or maybe my beloved 10-22 and the 50 1.8 (might as well) so I can fit it in my bag without too much added weight. I don’t need much in my quest to walk around, just my cameras, Mp3 player, a notepad, a couple of books and some anti-acids, just in case. The rest is just clothes, basically.

Sounds like some kind of cryptic life motto: “The rest is just clothes, really,” he said, staring off into the distance.

Jojo drove Sandman and me to the Daniel Pearl Day festivities at Treasure Hill, where the party was well under way, on Saturday. Fortunately it wasn’t raining, and they had food. I had a hamburger that would have been fine if I hadn’t had to keep picking bits of gristle out of it.

We left the rock stage and tramped up the hill to the “accoustic stage” which turned out to be someone’s rooftop with a couple of chairs on it. Half-finished aluminum dormatories stood in the formerly empty space at the center of the complex. They looked hot and cramped. Later I learned that they were being built by the city government as temporary housing while the city rennovates their original houses. And when I say “rennovates” I mean “confiscates and starts charging rent to the original inhabitants after they finish.” Seems like a bit of a raw deal for the elderly people who have lived there most of their lives.

Nothing was going on at the accoustic stage, though not for the lack of trying on Sandman’s part, but just one guy playing sax simply wasn’t enough. I paid a visit to Mr. Zhang, whom I’d met when we were filming a scene there so long ago.

I talked with some of the other people milling around the roof, including a guy I knew and his cousin, who turned out to be really into Lord of the Rings and Clive Barker books. Cute guy, too.

On my way back down the hill, I met some people going the other way with instruments, so I turned around and headed back up. A few guys set up and played a few songs, with Sandman and me providing some accompaniment. Smoke from the fire just behind us caused the musicians to cough and wince. The show was short and sweet.

I talked with some of the younger residents, who said they were planning to stage a protest when the government came to move all the old people into the new dormatories. They were looking for ways to attract the media to their plight.

I went back down and listened to some more music from the rock stage, and then departed to meet up with Prince Roy, Mark and his friend Martin at the 24-hour Eslite Bookstore. We walked around looking for a place to sit/eat/talk, but none of the bars we tried fit the bill. We ended up at the new Q Bar. The only thing remaining from the old Q Bar is the pool table, and Mark was astonished to find that there were simply no Taiwanese people in the place. Prince Roy even met one of his co-workers.

After dinner we bought beers at a convenience store and sat out on the curb by Anhe Road chatting until about 2 or 3am. I didn’t feel like going home. I hadn’t been drinking anything but water, so after I said good-bye to Mark at his building I walked next door to the bookstore and walked around feeling sophisticated and literary as I looked at books and magazines, much as I used to when I lived in the area.

The sky was lightening as I walked down the empty stretches of Dunhua South Road, feeling that there was something special about living downtown that I’d forgotten all about, not the concrete, practical convenience, but a certain feeling of being in the middle of it all. I was a bit surprised to find that I missed it. I imagined that I still lived in an alley off of Dunhua, and that I could just walk back home. It was a good memory, even if the reality wasn’t quite as ideal.

Instead of returning to my imaginary home, I caught a long cab ride back to Xindian. Sunlight was streaming in through the blinds by the time my head hit the pillow.