Le Royal Meridien, Shanghai

The Hotel we’re staying at is a trip. Le Royal Meridien is a Starwood hotel, a classy, 65 story tower located in central Shanghai, about a fifteen minute walk from the Huang riverfront. We were initially going to stay at a boutique hotel along the Bund, which is the famous colonial district that was a concession from the Chinese to the French government following the Opium Wars in the 1840's. Although I’d like to see as much of Shanghai as I can, it looks like I’ll be stuck in a conference room for 8-10 hours every day this week, so I’m not going to get a chance to stray far from this hotel. Lucky for me, this hotel is a universe unto itself, with multiple restaurants and cafes, a bar on the 65th & 66th floors, a huge shopping mall at its base, and we’re right in the middle of a crazy milieu of shops and malls set around the People’s Square. We’re right in the middle of one of the most westernized areas in all of China…. Hopefully over the course of the week I’ll get a better sense of context and where we are. I’m blessed to take part in these meetings, they’re an opportunity to rub shoulders with some of the most creative people I’ve ever met, and to pick the brains of globe-trotting ad men, who Naomi Klein calls “the philosopher kings of capitalist culture.” I’m not gung ho about the unfettered consumerism that drives the world’s economy, but I’m in no position to pass judgments on systems I barely understand. All I’m here to do is write, observe, document, and process… and if the Man happens to send me 12000 miles away to do that in a place I’ve always wanted to visit, that’s not a bad gig at all…. yes…the ad world has definitely been good to me…

Ventured forth outside the hotel to go for a walk and get my bearings straight. Sleep deprived and surrounded by hordes of people, I got disoriented pretty quick. Rushdie has a great passage in “The Ground Beneath Her Feet” (one of my favorite novels EVER), about what it really means to be “disoriented.” Etymologically, “disoriented” means you’ve “lost the East.” You can’t tell which way the sun rises or sets… I lose the East a lot, both literally and metaphorically, it seems to be a recurring theme for Asian transplants working and living in the West. We cease to think about where we come from, or temporarily overwrite our roots, in an effort to function properly in an individualistic state of mind that’s a far cry from the pervasive Asian mentality that’s more group and community oriented. Anyhow, after wandering through hordes of people for 20 minutes looking for an electronics store, I stumbled into a shopping center in the hopes I’d find a battery charger for my camera…

Didn’t find what I was looking for, but wandered around this mall for awhile to people watch and take stock of the scene. How exactly is China a communist country? Two blocks away from the hotel there’s a neon, 3-dimensional Coke Bottle that’s about 7 stories high, flashing its obscenely bright “Classic Coke” logo out into the night in waves of light like some kind of interstellar beacon. Everywhere there’s luxury outlets & designer brands, and given that so much of the world’s good are produced here, I’m having a hard time seeing how this economy is controlled. Where does the socialism fit in? After the death of Mao, Deng Xio Ping loosened the controls of the economy, but what I’m seeing here is a veritable orgy of consumer culture, capitalism gone awry... It’s surreal, and not at all like the China my friends described in the 90’s… I walked into a three story outlet for Nike Shanghai, and stood around looking at the shoes, contemplating my ideas about right and wrong and responsible business practices. I’ve been a supporter of the anti-sweatshop movement for years, and am a strong supporter of unionized labor, fair trade practices, and for holding corporations to account for poor human rights records. I haven’t bought anything Nike since high school, because my pervasive liberal guilt dictates that my personal sense of style needs to transcend the exploitation that so many brands traffic in. Yet standing in Nike Shanghai, surrounded by glossy products and sculpted mannequins, my head started swimming. By not buying these products, who am I benefiting? The people who produced these goods are not going to benefit from me not spending my money out of some kind of self-righteous stand over a market principle. Responsible consumerism is one thing…but there’s a lot of posturing involved when you’re trying to live right and buy intelligently in Babylon… anyhow, I sat staring at a pair of slick Nike cross trainers for about ten minutes, turning these thoughts over in my head, considering the contradictions. If an uber-conscious yogi & spiritual activist like Sean Corn is endorsed by Nike, how bad can it be? If I buy these shoes, what does my aesthetic say to the world? Eventually I walked out, more confused than ever…. How do I use my wallet consciously out here?...This looks to be an ongoing question…

After wandering through a couple of huge, multistory malls, I went looking for some food. Found a hole-in-wall restaurant on the side of the road selling dumplings for 4 yuan, so I bought a couple through a strained interaction with the hostess. I forgot to grab chopsticks, though, so I ate with my fingers, holding onto the dumplings with greasy hands while walking. It was sloppy, absolutely delicious, and I realized quickly that I might be engaged in barbaric stupid-foreigner-behavior, so I slunk off into the shadows of People’s Square to try and eat in private. Made the mistake of putting a whole dumpling into my mouth, which was insanely hot when I bit into it. I hadn’t realized these were soup dumplings, apparently a local specialty. I swallowed that dumpling, burned the hell out of my mouth, and my eyes started watering as I rounded a corner. I think I scared the bejesus out of a couple making out in the shadows, who looked up just as I came into view, with bulging cheeks, tears in my eyes, and soup running down my chin in little rivulets… I doubt they’d ever sPublish Posteen a dreadlocked desi quite so discombobulated as I was at that moment… It’s bad form to be a tourist walking through a city square with food all over you, so I saved the rest of the dumplings until I made it back to the hotel. They were delicious…fried on the bottom, sesame seeds littered on top, hot soup inside, and a hunk of tasty chicken waiting within… mmmmmmmmm…..