July 14, 2006 – Strolling Through Shanghai Pu Dong

July 14, 2006 – Strolling Through Shanghai Pu Dong

On Sunday July 9th after having breakfast in the Grand Café on the first floor of the Sofitel Jin Jiang Hotel in Shanghai’s Pu Dong district, I head out of the hotel with my Nikon Coolpix digital camera in hand, loaded with a 64-Mbyte flash card intent on capturing as much of this incredible city as possible. I walk northeast along Yanggao Road, the direction I ran this morning, but carry on after the intersection with Huamu Road, where earlier I hadc turned right toward Century Park. Ahead and off to my right is the new Shanghai Science and Technology Museum. Its roof line reminds me of architect Eero Saarinen’s TWA Terminal at JFK—though this one is more streamlined and less art deco in appearance. I’m tempted to visit, but feel compelled to continue on gathering in more of the sights, sounds, and smells of the city. Yanggao Road is ten asphalt andlanes across with a waist-high metal barrier in the median.

The barrier is constructed of 5-foot wide, 4-foot high sections each resembling a rectangle with one of the long sides bent into an arc—this side is up. Each section looks like a letter “D” which has fallen on its flat back and connected to a metal post fastened so that the flat back of the “D” is a foot off the ground. The inside of each “D” is filled with bars, equally spaced across the width. Each bar has a single knot. The vertical position of the knot on each bar at either end is the same. The knot’s position rises on each adjacent bar moving toward the center bar. The result produces the impression of an arc of the same slope as the top of the section. Alternating sections have the arc formed by the knots on the bars upside down; all this to keep pedestrians and cyclists from trying to cross the road anywhere other than the major intersections.

The squeaky clean road is bordered on either side by an asphalt path, just a bit narrower than one traffic lane on the street. The path is for cyclists and motor driven scooters and cyclists to use. It’s separated from the traffic by a couple-of-foot-wide greenbelt and the same decorative divider as in the center median of the road. Next to the cycle lane is a cement brick sidewalk, where I’m trudging along. It’s a bit wider than the standard sidewalk in the states. It’s separated from the bike path by a two-foot wide section of small shrubs no higher than six inches. I notice that the cyclists and motor scooter and cycle riders use the sidewalk as a passing lane and employ their horn to get pedestrians out of the way—I observe the custom of yielding to them.

I think this is an appropriate place to speak about horns and their use in driving, here. I would declare that the horn is as sacred to the Shanghai driver as it is to the driver in Manhattan, the other city where the horn is an integral part of each motorist’s car controls. Cars and trucks use their horn to ask slower moving motorists to move out of the way. Drivers use the horn to alert pedestrians and cyclists and motor scooter drivers to make way in right turn lanes where the little green man on the traffic light clearly says it’s okay to walk. What the little man means to say is it’s okay to walk if a motorist of any kind doesn’t want to get through. The horn is also used to alert other motorist that the one honking is going to run an orange or red light. Finally, motorists use the horn to chastise one another about not obeying traffic signals. This morning during my run, I observe an older lady on a bicycle cross six-lane wide Huamu Road at an intersection where the light told her not to do so but the nearest car was far enough away that she could make it. As she moves across the road from my side of the street, an approaching car over a block away indignantly honks to alert her she has gone against the light and continues to honk after he passes her and she has reached the other side without trouble. “Don’t have a cow man,” I think, but then again, neither should I.

Yanggao Road continues on to a large elliptical-shaped traffic circle that connects it with Century Avenue and Yuanshen Road. In the center of the roundabout is a gleaming metal sculpture that resembles a many-spoked wheel. The hub of the wheel is off center and run through with an axle. The other end of the axle lies on the ground behind the wheel and keeps it slanted at an angle rather than setting straight up. I’m fascinated with the sculpture and take pictures of it from different angles around the traffic circle. I can’t see any sign indicating the name of the piece or who created it. East of the roundabout are two city blocks that form a Mall in front of the Museum of Science and Technology. Paved with terracotta bricks the open space is dotted with large garden-filled squares blocked off by concrete borders. Along the edge of the mall are bright red 12- to 15-foot high square columns each three feet on a side, completely covered in what resembles flowers blood red in color. Each column sits in a square garden filled with yellow flowers. Shanghai has spared no expense of it public art. Across the street opposite the museum is a large dark green structure that resembles two bulbous green bowls that seemed to have been joined. Two amoebas splitting as viewed from the side. Each forest green bowl is constructed of thousands of rectangles forming a grid pattern that resembles an Excel spreadsheet. The surfaces of the bowls reflect images in front of them in distorted indistinct form.

I was about to leave the mall when I notice a bicycle with a two-wheel wooden trailer in place of a single rear wheel. The trailer is loaded with large filled plastic bags, The cycle sits next to a concrete wall four or five feet high and 12 to 15 feet long, which appears to be the side of a stairway leading underground because it has a mate 20 feet to the left and the surface between the two seems to recede into the ground. In front of the cycle is more bags or plastic tarps—it’s hard to tell. Suddenly the well-ordered perfect composition took on a human form. Here were the possessions of the man who called this place home, a thought that made me happy and sad at the same time.

I move away from the mall walking northwest along Century Avenue. A wide six-lane boulevard with an access road in front of the sidewalk I’m walking along beneath a line of young trees, their leaves providing a welcome shade from the hot Shanghai summer sun. It’s got to be in the upper 80s Fahrenheit if not hotter, but the high humidity makes it feel over a hundred. Beyond the access road is a five-foot wide curb lined with trees and bushes and housing a bus stop with two new-looking shelters. One billboard advertising a Motorola cell phone forms the wall on one shelter and a second advertising Coco Cola provide the walls for the second. Buses enter and leave the access road at the beginning and end of each block. Beyond are six lanes for traffic with double yellow lines dividing them, then another curb, access road and sidewalk on the other side. High rise office complexes and high-rent domiciles line this stretch of Century Avenue. These expensive structures are set back from the sidewalk and hidden from the curious eye of pedestrians like me by newly planted landscaping—trees—tall enough to provide shade, plants, and decorative gardens with ponds and garden art. It reminds me of the Gramercy Park in Manhattan and small private parks in London’s Belgravia district though of a much younger vintage. These parks are less than a decade old.

At the end of the block, the sidewalk ends and along the street off to my right, I’m confronted with a slighter older neighborhood. This one comprises a long block of high density window air conditioned dwellings, lime green in color and six stories high, four condos per floor. I’m looking northeast along Zhangyang Road. Each six story structure abuts another identical one though set forward slightly, resembling a staircase on its sides. I cross Zhangyang proceeding along Century into what looks like a two story strip mall—shops on the ground floor not obvious what’s on the second. A large sign confronts me as I approach with an attractive woman’s face dominating the left half of its surface and the word “Homes” in a non serif font with the “e” a funky pink letter of a different font on the right half. Beneath and behind the sign is a line of shops: Pizza Hut delivery, an outreach storefront—determined more by the look of the place rather than anything I can read—among other shops. A wooden 10 to 12-foot high barrier blocking the sidewalk along Century extends to the front of the strip mall and then runs parallel to the front of the stores. I’m walking along the length of these shops with the fence on my left thinking that the walkway would come out at the other end just beyond the wooden fence.

As I pass the Pizza Hut, I realize that the walkway in front of the line of stores dead ends. I’m suddenly out of place in among locals who frequent these shops and I’m the one strange being—not so much strange in looks but in the fact that I have a Nikon camera in one hand and a tourist map in the other—dead giveaway. I turn around and briskly retrace my steps to the intersection of Zhangyang Lu and Century. I change directions walking east on Zhangyang, toward a tall towering building with a Courtyard Marriott sign on top. The sidewalk on the north side of Zhangyang is also bordered by a high wooden fence barrier. Across the street is a line of shops with Chinese signs and the tired look of places that have been shopped hard and not put away, a block of 42nd Street before Disneyfication. A red sign with large yellow Chinese characters catches my eye. These shops are the ground floor of a line of three story uneven height buildings that line the street. At the end of block, I notice a McDonald’s sign on the top of the third floor of the building near the end. Somehow the Chinese characters seem more meaningful.

Further along Zhangyang Road I pass the Intercontinental Hotel and I immediately become aware of a woman on bicycle looking intently at me. It’s the camera and map that give me away. She’s spotted me as a tourist and rides up beside me and opens the box mounted on the back of her bike which is filled with counterfeit watches and offers me a two-for-one deal. I smile and say no. She persists and I walk on smiling and shaking my head and waving no and she finally relents. I don’t see many Western tourist along the street and I’m confronted by another lady with bicycle and counterfeit watches a block further down the road. I’ve found time square in this part of Shanghai.