The Liu Xiaobo Project

Wednesday

During the night we docked at Chongqing ("Chunking" in the past to the West; now pronounced chong ching). Just when I’d almost adapted to the rocking, rushing sensation, the sudden tipsy gravitational shifts beyond my control, we were riding a funicular railway up to the largest city in China, perhaps—in the fluctuating calculations of such things—in the world: 32 or 33 million. I’d gone up top to take photos last night before retiring, of the dazzling skyline. Even then I could see—and feel—that that downtown straight ahead was only a part, that we also were surrounded, on both sides of the river (we’d finally come far enough up the Yangtze, retracing Mao’s path for that matter, that it was a river again), by city. Dense, high-rise city. By day it was not dazzling, but seemed rather grim. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/mar/15/china.china

Leaving the Katarina, we met several men walking the other direction, carrying in supplies to the boat. They were carrying these unimaginable loads, three cases of beer on either side, for instance, in the old, old manner, suspended from a bamboo pole. We walked from the waterfront area to a crowded square and boarded a tour bus (accosted every step of the way by intense vendors, as always); there was free time before we needed to be at the airport. After a short ride through the crush of humanity and traffic, we disembarked at a square for a short walk to a multi-story old market building.

Unfortunately for someone who gave up red meat over twenty years ago for ethical, not dietary, reasons, the first floor we entered was the meat and fish one. Now, I grew up in the country. I knew our freezer of butchered, wrapped beef, for instance, I’d seen walking around our pasture not long before. I saw chickens being killed, and helped pluck them. But this place was huge, filled with seemingly never-ending rows of stalls of hanging cow, pig, duck, goose, chicken carcasses. Dogs. Blocks of pig’s blood, a sort of congealed blood sausage also called “blood tofu.” Tubs of live frogs and eels (that one woman helpfully killed in front of us, should we need to know how at some point). Traumatic as it was for me, I was not the only one: every single one of us wanted out; the smells of blood and what had recently occupied intestines were everywhere. The market was actually kept quite clean, but still you were aware that you were walking over absolutely anything. So is that Western squeamishness again, considering everyone else in the group eats meat? Being detached from the reality of where it comes from and how it’s obtained?

The produce level was fascinating: the hugest cabbages and carrots any of us had ever seen, a wide range of mystery vegetables even beyond those I’d seen and asked about at an Asian market in Los Angeles, stalls selling everything from baked goods to “thousand-year” or “hundred year” eggs (depending; never really older than several months at most).

From the market we went gratefully back out into the chilly air of a large nearby public plaza. Rows of people on the far side were doing a jazzercise-ish dance session to music. A few older women closer by went repeatedly through what was clearly some version of Tai Chi closer to its martial arts origins, each holding a sword (we’d seen a small group of people in a small porch area at the top of a flight of steps, going through the very routine we’d—two of “the boys” and me, at any rate—been learning on the boat). Bamboo pole carriers came and went. The square was in constant motion, crisscrossed by people coming and going. A few of us made it a point to visit the “happy rooms” before leaving: very clean, not Western; somewhere in them incense was burning.

Eventually we headed back to our bus, and it headed for the Chongqing airport. While waiting inside the terminal for Jia to check us all in, I noticed and was awed by the long list of Chinese domestic airlines, almost none of which I’d ever heard of.

The drive in from the Shanghai airport, about two and a half hours later, itself took over an hour. On the way our Shanghai guide, a native, explained pudong (“east of the river,” the name of the airport, in fact) versus puxi, “west bank,” for a city based around a river, the Huang Po, last tributary of the Yangtze before it empties into the South China Sea. Flaunting its avant-garde new skyscrapers, with the glamorous, historic European-style waterfront Bund area, Shanghai at first glance feels more open (despite its population of 23 million), more cosmopolitan, than Beijing.

After settling in a little in our new hotel, some of us trailed along with Jia at dusk to become oriented a bit and get a few pointers about our immediate area. Emerging from an alleyway where merchants were closing up for the night, we found ourselves on the historic Nanjing Avenue, a portion of which is now pedestrian-only, on a corner occupied by a large shiny new Apple Store. She’d pointed out a couple of small markets, and now the multi-story shopping mall across the way, before turning us loose for the night. I went across with one other woman to check out the food court on the sixth floor of the trendy, upscale mall. The restaurant we finally settled on, one Jia had recommended, in fact, had a sizeable line waiting for tables. The two young women taking reservations spoke no English, even to indicate how long the wait might be. We took a number anyway. Finally there was one young man who did speak English, who was kind enough to intercede for us, since otherwise we wouldn’t even have known when our number got called.

After dinner we finally walked in the direction of the river, to see the Bund at night. Its reputation is deserved: it’s spectacular. The skyscrapers across the Huang Po in Pudong are brilliantly lit up in colors; on the side of the Bund itself, the long row of stately old European stone buildings is bathed in a golden glow. The river is visible only from an elevated promenade now, much as in New Orleans, which offers a place to stroll and stare at both.

In the morning after breakfast, which we now took in the eighteenth-floor restaurant with a panoramic view of Shanghai, we set out for a silk rug factory. We got to watch one young woman at work weaving a new one and hear about the various combinations and knot counts before beginning to look at rugs on display and for sale. It belabors the obvious to say that they’re beautiful, as well as to say some larger ones cost as much as a small car. One room was filled with antique, museum-quality silk rugs, worth visiting just to see and touch them. Downstairs, among other things, there was a gallery and shop of silk embroidery. Some of these pieces are astounding, appearing fully three-dimensional by the use of colors and types of thread and stitch; one large one of a tiger had won a national award, and looked literally alive—the fur, the eyes, everything.

The next stop was the Yuyuan Gardens, a 400-year-old classic Chinese garden we entered after crossing a zig-zag bridge past a famous old tea house (where Queen Elizabeth took tea while in Shanghai). The garden is—duh, beautiful, plum trees beginning to bloom when we were there, large examples of bonsai throughout it in addition to the rockery, pools, and trees themselves. The garden is now at the heart of Shanghai’s Old Town, a preserved bit of the way the whole Chinese part of the city used to be (and thankfully, really authentic, though cleaned up and restored and now crawling with tourists; our Shanghai guide mentioned that twenty years ago people were still living in the upper floors of some of the buildings. I'd asked whether there were many surviving hutongs in Shanghai, earlier, only to be gently set straight: in Shanghai they're called shikumen; Jia reminded me, later, that hutong is a Mongolian word, and so used only in the north).

We were left to fend for ourselves for a couple of hours, and I set out in search of food. Though we’d been told we were more likely to find people who spoke English in Shanghai than Beijing or the other places we’d been, it long having been an international city, that certainly had not proved to be the case. The multi-story restaurant I wound up entering continued that pattern. The second floor was cafeteria style, but with each stage along the way being a different vendor. By the time I was pointing and holding up one finger for some squid and vegetables a woman was stir-frying before my eyes, the Indiana couple from our group had also shown up, and we ate together. I also had some sort of soup with chopped greens in broth. Busy, busy place, incessant noise and bustle. The cashier, as happened other places, just turned the total around so that I could see the amount without words.

The couple finished and went on to their sightseeing before I did. So, alone, I wandered the old town. The modus operandi everywhere, in shops as on the streets near tourist attractions that are like running a gantlet, is for vendors to attack. If you so much as approach a counter (as in one nicer large shop I entered, with a number of things that seemed interesting), that vendor starts leaping to the conclusion you’ve agreed to purchase, whipping out packaging. There doesn’t seem to be a concept of “browsing.” Being left alone is not an option. There was a huge candy store (no English) filled with utterly unidentifiable products. By comparison the sellers were a tiny bit restrained (the shop was very busy), one offering me a small sample of what was in the foil-wrapped fish: chocolate. I bought a few sesame candies, that I could recognize, and a hawthorn cake (because it did say so in English).

Eventually, after wandering and sitting in a pavilion by the small lake and wandering, I stopped and bought tea. I was brought a small pot of it, with a handleless cup a quarter the size of a Western one. It was good and hot, sitting at a table outside; the day—though sunny!—was chilly. But then I realized my time was up, so I quickly finished it and went to rejoin the group at our meeting spot by the big famous tea house and the bridge.

After rest and cleanup at the hotel, our bus took us to the restaurant where we’d be having dinner. Traffic crawled along. We seemed to be away from the glitziest façade, in a regular shopping street. We saw a man nudging a plump little yellow and white kitten out the door of one shop with his foot—gently, and the kitten was obviously clean and well-fed, but such a busy sidewalk and busier street.

Our last official dinner together, in a big steamy restaurant, was of course good and varied. I wound up sitting with all the Mexicans, and before it was over found myself saying “Si” to the Chinese waiter, a harbinger of the disorientation surely to come when it was all over. One large group of men across the way appeared to be celebrating—something, periodically cheering loudly and laughing.

Our ultimate destination of the evening was the Shanghai Circus—which, far from a tent, performs onstage in a theater in a swanky multi-story downtown shopping complex. It’s—justifiably famous; every act—every contortion, feat of balance, magic trick—was absolutely astounding, sneaking up on you with a slow, subtle beginning, then building and building, becoming more and more unlikely and astounding. It also was beautiful, costumes, backdrops, choreographed, in the way Olympic figure skating transcends the physicality. One trapeze act was at the same time a thrilling dance of longing and goodbye between one man and one woman, in old-fashioned street clothes, against a huge blown-up photo of old Shanghai (I asked afterward).