Revolutionary Spirit

Although the picture below was not taken there, a real Shanghai treasure is the Propaganda Poster Museum. Founded by one man, Yang Peiming, and housed in the basement of an apartment block on Huashan Lu, it's an unlikely trove of propaganda posters from the era in which Mao dominated the CCP.

Whether nationalistic, patriotic, xenophobic, or all three, the posters provide both an eye-catching entree into the various political movements of the Maoist era as well as a timeline of these upheavals that post-civil war China endured.

Imagine harnessing all of this enthusiasm!

A Street

This small street on the western perimeter of Shanghai is home to a row of furniture sellers who source their wares from city homes and the nearby provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. The furniture is purportedly old, but its provenance hard to establish. The street has about ten shops on either side, each about ten feet wide and thirty feet deep.  The shops are all alike, with furniture piled either side of a narrow passageway that leads to the back of the store. There are tables, foot stools, chairs, old screens and smaller items such as wooden foot baths and washing tubs.

In the recesses of each store are the owners' four-poster beds, each more distinguished than any of the furniture on sale. Besides every bed are drinking vessels, one of which is usually a hot water flask. There are no toilets and the cooking facilities primitive.

Bottle Opener

If tall buildings are a good gauge of a country's economic prowess (or impending financial doom), then look no further than the Pudong skyline. Despite the shroud of pollution, you can see the Shanghai World Financial Center (known to foreigners as the bottle opener).

Shanghai World Financial Center

A Bend in the River

This picture is taken from the top of the Lupu bridge.  You can't see Pudong's central business district (see above), but it gives an idea of Shanghai's considerable girth. The solitary ship almost seems out of place, but just a few miles further west and the Huangpu River swarms and churns with a miscellany of nautical activity. 

Where Concrete Meets Bucolic

On the outskirts of western Shanghai is a land where China's growth story is rudely juxtaposed with its less burnished past. Gleaming new factories, empty highways, and half-finished residential tower blocks sit shoulder to shoulder with dilapidated housing, human squalor and fetid canals. Both worlds are joined by air thick with dust.

Yet alongside these two worlds are pockets of bucolic life where rice grows in muddied paddies, where the housing is rural yet well-kept, and where bicycles are used as often as vehicles. If you ignore the dust and don't look up at the towering electricity pylons that crowd the horizon, you might imagine living here.

Signage

Foreigners, especially those whose mother tongue is English, have always delighted in the English language signage that is produced by local scribes.  Malapropisms are just the beginning of the strangulation and permutation of the English language that takes place here. Much of it provides amusement for expatriates, many of whom are eager for some lightheartedness in the face of crowds, pollution, a new language, and local habits that can be beguiling, frustrating and enervating all at once.

Occasionally, however, appears a sign that produces mirth, wonder and joy.  A sign to be celebrated. Like the one below. Or the one below the one below.

Hotel Thing Confluence