Shanghai scared me at first...just the sheer size of the multitude...it knocked me upside the head and it took me a minute to get my bearings. But that was just the transitory first impression, not a fixed judgment, more of an initial shock at how foreign the place felt. It was not what I thought i'd find, and forced me to realize that I'd brought completely unwarranted assumptions and expectations with me to China. I'd hastily cobbled together a cursory knowledge of Chinese culture & history from a really ridiculous set of sources... bad kung fu cinema, the Noble House Saga written by James Clavell, the Art of War, random bits of trivia about chinese medicine, Mao's Little Red Book, and the assorted blowhard opinions of a bunch of economic pundits and narcissistic bloggers... i was seeing China through the eyes of Mao and other assorted dead men, reading about it's past, and trying to comprehend the world i was about to enter by digesting its statistics... but the numbers don't capture the soul of a place, they just point out its position in time and wealth... numbers won't help me make any friends, or connect with any people. And there are people everywhere, hordes of them, spilling out of every doorway and street, each with a story, a journey, a family, and demands and jobs and children... I was not ready for these masses...masses of people don't scare me...i am, after all, bengali... i'm used to being accosted by dozens of people in that peculiar asian way that immediately violates any sense of privacy you might have... but these weren't the great unwashed i was overwhelmed by, but thousands upon thousands of manicured mall rats, swarming through stores and over escalators and into multiplexes in their trendy threads, with designer bags in their hands and brands in their eyes... a veritable flock of well-heeled fashionistas, plagued with something similar to the sordid subhuman commercialism that's spreading through american suburban brats, the emerging paradigm of an entire generation of teenage girls who were exposed way too early to Paris Hilton & Britney Spears... it's no different in China... the nouveau riche are surfing seams of manufacturing money in a suddenly globalized world, and they feel inclined to show off their new status by spending the spoils of their labor on the hottest shoes, watches, and consumer goods. the Chinese are red communists? maybe by heritage, but the long shadow cast by Chairman Mao, the Cultural Revolution, and the Great Leap Foward has been eclipsed by something new.... the Chinese are gamblers and traders and investment bankers and greedy imperialists, just like the rest of us, hedging their bets and protecting their security and invading and occupying whoever they see fit... and while we were busy declaring eternal wars on a ragtag bunch of neurotic arab terrorists, the world casually ushered in a new age for China, because they manufacture all the crap we like to buy and they happen to finance the silly wars we choose to wage... it's a mindfuck, any way you look at it...
But it's not my place to judge. The beauty and depth of this city's rich heritage eludes my tourists' vision, and all i see are the crowds at the most commercialized corner of the city, where my hotel sits, between People's Square and Nanjing Road... And this spectacle of capitalist excess makes my bile rise, and my liberal guilt twitch... possibly because i am participating, and buying things, spending my money on items with uncertain origins that might further my fashion credentials in Babylon... so the self-loathing surfaces, triggered by a cityscape besotted with shops & stores, screens & facades, a steel and glass neon wet dream…
Yes...there are things here that I don't particularly like... But they say more about me than China. What I don’t like is a reality i have no control over, situations where I don’t feel safe, and conspicuous consumerism with no thoughts as to the consequences. I dislike pollution, public bathrooms that are noticable 50 meters downwind, people smoking in the elevator i'm riding in, and persistent pimps aggressively offering me "sexy massages" at 20 foot intervals along the sidewalk when i walk down the street at night. I don't like piles of pig bones sitting on my dinner table. I don't like being stuck in circumstances where I can only socialize with similarly transplanted souls... I don’t like feeling like an outsider…all of which means…that I need to learn more about this place, to appreciate it, to warm to it like a genial gypsy until it recognizes me and accepts me... i have to learn how to get by in Mandarin, which is a tall order for a linguistically challenged wanker like me, whose sole claim to competence as a traveler is my well documented ability to find good company, bootlegged music, and decent contraband in whatever country I’m currently traipsing through. I can’t even carry on a meaningful conversation in anything other than English, and occasionally, on a good day, painfully labored Spanish. This trip, ensconced in a ridiculously lavish hotel, made me feel like I’m becoming some horrible caricature of the jet set, one of those sad desperate bastards you find drinking to the wee hours at hotel bars, whose only knowledge of the native tongue is 'hello', 'thank you', and the haggling parameters while shopping. I don’t want to be that kind of tourist... i want to be something else...
So what kind of traveler do i idealize? the welcomed kind, i suppose. But am I the gregarious, social butterfly-type, trading quips and stories in every corner of the globe, surfing international circles while befriending everyone with ease & grace? Perhaps…but I am much more the quiet stranger in the corner, observing from afar, scanning the angles and surveying the angels overlooking the ruling families of every community i come across. i am wallpaper boy, the introvert in the black hoodie & tats, the dread in unobtrusive denim with crooked eyes & straight specs noting the scene from the shadows. It’s my choice on occasion to speak softly or through silence. I would rather be loud, and “wave my freak flag high,” as Jimi sings in "if six was nine”...
But there’s a time and place for that kind of freedom of expression, and this wasn’t it. i'm a tourist here, and i'm wary of where i can possibly fit into China…so i stay subdued, and on good behavior, because I don't know what I'm getting into and can't figure out how to blend in. There's nothing more obnoxious to locals than an overbearing tourist, right? So the next time I visit China I intend to exist a little differently, travel lighter, and eat different. I don't want to feel so...corporate, or American even… the truest travelers don’t wear their affiliations loudly on their sleeves, because they carry all stripes & creeds, and their characters can't be circumscribed by something as silly as a border. That's the kind of traveler i want to be, but staying in a cushy hotel for a week eating catered lunches while surrounded by foreigners isn't the route in.... you don't learn to love a country or people you're looking down upon from a skyscraper... a place always makes more sense to me from the bottom looking up...
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