Little Emperors (16 page)

I get out on Nanjing Lu in front of the famous old Peace Hotel. If it's not fully booked, this will be my home for the next four days. Don't get me wrong. I'm not particularly rich this month. I want to stay here precisely because I'm poor until payday, which isn't until next week, after the National Day holiday. I want to stay here because I know they take credit cards. I have just enough cash for meals, postcards, and postage. A Visa bill and some Peace Hotel mini soaps will be my only souvenirs from Shanghai.

Feeling a bit of a fraud, I push through the revolving doors and enter the stained glass and dark wood lobby. The front desk staff must see from my faded jeans and ripped shoelace that I don't normally stay in places like this. They hand me a key, anyway. I take the art deco elevator up a few floors, then walk down the long, richly carpeted hallway to my room. I push open its big black door, pull the curtains aside, and take in the grand view of a concrete wall.

They have given me a room without a view. Noël Coward, who wrote his play
Private Lives
in four days in this hotel in 1933, would have surely complained.

An hour later, just managing to tear myself away from CNN (how strange and novel to hear news, to hear the outside world still exists), I go for a stroll up Nanjing Lu. This is the city's big shopping street, as well as the newest front line in the never-ending Cola Wars. At the intersection of Nanjing Lu and Xizang Lu, the battle comes to a head.

I climb up the circular pedestrian overpass to survey the troops. Stretching east, from the overpass back to my hotel, every street lamp has a large, round Pepsi sign on it, as if that entire end of Nanjing Lu is sponsored by the Choice of a New Generation. Turning and looking west along the street, every lamp is adorned with similar round signs for Coca-Cola. The north of Xizang Lu is brought to you by Sprite, while the south end of the street appears courtesy of 7-UP. Neon billboards straddle the tops of tall buildings, their huge Chinese characters flashing
PEPSI
!
PEPSI
!
PEPSI
! Where signs probably once exhorted
NEVER FORGET CLASS STRUGGLE
! they now proclaim
ALWAYS COCA-COLA
!

I step down off the overpass and continue my stroll up Nanjing Lu. I stop with a small crowd at the bright window of a bridal shop and watch a young woman in a poofy white dress having her makeup done for wedding pictures.
All the world's a stage
, and nowhere is this more true than in China. Everything here is public spectacle — from the smallest bicycle spill to the most heated marital argument played out on a sidewalk.
This young bride is no exception, until the makeup artist draws a gauzy curtain across the window and the small crowd disperses.

I continue slowly up the street. I step into a stationery shop to buy postcards. I choose some with black-and-white scenes of Shanghai in the 1920s on them, when the city was known to Europeans as the Paris of Asia or, depending on your mood, the Whore of the Orient. I step back out onto the sidewalk and close my eyes, almost willing the city to turn black and white, hoping that I will open my eyes to see Model Ts and fedoras and pinstriped suits, all jiggling erratically up and down the street as if in a scratchy old film. I open my eyes and Colonel Sanders stares back. It is still Shanghai in the 1990s.

Farther west on Nanjing Lu, I cross a wide boulevard under the imposing shadow of a gigantic concrete flyover. Beyond this, the street is lined with trees, their leaves shimmering in a cool breeze. I pass shoe stores and wool stores and eventually make a U-turn at the Hard Rock Café. I head back to the hotel along the opposite side of the street, stopping with a crowd to watch a soccer game on a huge TV screen on the side of a building.

I spend an hour and a half in my room watching CNN. At 7:00 p.m., I slip back out onto the street, where Nanjing Lu has become even more crowded. I've been in crowds in Guangzhou, but none this dense, this pushy. People put their fists into the small of my back or clutch at my elbow to move me out of their way. Many in the crowd are carrying large inflatable plastic toy hammers and baseball bats, bought from hawkers on every corner, and are hitting one another on the head with them. The street has a carnival atmosphere in anticipation of the National Day holiday, but I'm not in the mood for it. The push of the crowd, the noise, the flashing neon, the plastic hammers — all of it begins to make me a little crazy, so I duck into the nearest oasis, a Häagen-Dazs shop.

Alone at a table, I stare at my expensive scoop of vanilla chocolate chip melting in its bowl. I feel much the same way — small and sinking.

I miss Guangzhou
.

What?
What was that? What was that thought? Did the words “I miss Guangzhou” just cross my mind, stepping lightly, moving quickly to the exit? No. Could it be? I sense an argument between passion and reason brewing.

I miss Guangzhou
.

Oh, come on now! Why? Why do you miss that smelly heap of a city? Look at this place! Look at Shanghai's tree-lined streets and its beautiful
old buildings. Look at how much cleaner it is here. It doesn't smell like rotting garbage here!

I don't care. I miss Guangzhou. There are too many people here. In Guangzhou I have a space. I have a place. I have a life. Right now I want nothing more than to step out of the 7-Eleven in Wu Yang and hear one of my students call out, “Hello, Miss Dionne!” from an apartment somewhere above
.

I'm homesick for Guangzhou. Now I know I've lost my mind.

I finish my ice cream and step once again into the crowd. I realize that I am still hungry, that I am craving a bowl of noodles, a little
wan tan min
, but from my lookout on Häagen-Dazs's stoop I can see no noodle shops. I see only shoe stores — shoe stores, shoe stores everywhere, but not a bite to eat! This would not happen in Guangzhou, I say to myself, because the Cantonese have their priorities straight. Food before fashion!

I am too tired to go looking any farther. I push my way back through the hordes to the hotel.

Strains of live jazz come from the hotel lounge as I push through the revolving doors. I peek into the lounge, but have neither the proper attire nor cash to enter. I go to my room, flick on CNN, and stare at the ceiling in the television's glow. My stomach rumbles.

I miss Guangzhou.

I'm standing, naked and shivering, in a hotel towel, waiting for the damn hot water to kick in.
This
is a five-star hotel? How much am I paying for this room? How much is this brick wall view and cold water costing me? Just as I begin grumbling about making a hotel change, the hot water appears. I step into the shower and decide to stay another day.

My goal for this morning is to buy tickets to the Shanghai acrobatics show. After burning my toast at the breakfast buffet and filling the hotel dining room with black smoke, I step out onto Nanjing Lu and make my way to the ticket booth at the Shanghai Centre. On the way there, it is evident that tomorrow is National Day, October 1, the anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Each store along the street is flying a Chinese flag from sockets bolted to their shopfronts for just such patriotic occasions. The street is a festive procession of red, white, and gold — Chinese flag, Coke sign, Chinese flag, McDonald's arches, Chinese flag, Pizza Hut sign, Chinese flag, Coke sign . . .

I step up to the ticket booth at the Centre and find the attendant
leaning back in her chair, sound asleep behind the glass. I tap quietly on the window and say,
“Ni hao?”
There is no response. Again I tap. And again nothing. Finally, I bang on the glass and bellow,
“Hello!”

She slowly opens her left eye, then her right, a waking feline surveying her situation before making a move. She slouches forward, elbows digging into her desk, arms crossed, and looks up at me with a scowl that wordlessly asks, “What do
you
want?”

I smile and ask in polite but incorrect tones if there are any tickets for tonight's show. She glares at me for about twenty seconds, then nods.

I am making progress.

“Zai nar?”
I ask, pointing at a seating map under the glass on the counter. Instead of pointing helpfully at the map in return, she rolls her eyes and thrusts a stack of tickets against the window, level with my nose. I guess I have no choice. “Okay, okay.” I nod, pointing at the top ticket and paying my thirty kuai. She pushes the ticket under the window, then snaps the roll blind shut, determined not to be disturbed from her nap by any more people imposing on her to sell more tickets.

I turn and go wandering through the heart of Shanghai for most of the rest of the day. I wander past buildings that remind me of London, others that remind me of Paris. I wander through neighbourhoods that could have been transplanted from Montreal's Plateau or Tokyo's Ginza or New York's Wall Street. Then I wander past a large building with a large name, the Shanghai Health Education and Population Information Centre, and remember I am still in China.

Near the end of the afternoon I wind my way to Renmin Square, the People's Square, which is, indeed, full of people. I hop onto a concrete ledge, my throbbing feet dangling, and watch as the human ocean sweeps past. Little boys roller skate unsteadily by, metal wheels chattering against the concrete like cold teeth. A crowd of people surrounds a fountain set low in the pavement, and they scream and run and laugh every time the wind blows the spray toward them. Beneath all of this, beneath all of us, lies an underground shopping arcade that was once a bomb shelter.

I go back to the hotel for a rest and another dose of CNN. At 7:00 p.m., I am back out on Nanjing Lu, trying to get to the Shanghai Centre for 7:30 to see the acrobats. Traffic has been blocked off and the street is hopelessly jammed with people. It takes nearly ten minutes to navigate my way to the next corner, squishing past bodies and ducking swinging inflatable axes. There is no way I am going to make it in time for the show on foot.

I turn off Nanjing Lu and walk quickly north through dark side
streets, searching for a taxi or any street with traffic on it. I find a gang of pedicabs gathered under the tangerine glow of a street lamp. I show the address on my ticket to one of the drivers.
“Duoshao qian?”
I ask hurriedly.

He holds the ticket up to the light and inspects it. He snaps it back to me.
“Wu shi kuai,”
he answers, dragging smugly on his cigarette.
Fifty kuai?
He has got to be joking. The other pedicab drivers move in, encircling us, sensing my desperation.

“Er shi kuai,”
I respond. Twenty.

The driver laughs. The other drivers chuckle. He shakes his head, narrows his eyes, and takes another long drag on his cigarette. Smoke shoots from his nostrils.
“Wu shi kuai.”

Ha. No way. I may be a sucker, but I am not
that
much of a sucker. I march out of the circle and go another block, where I find an older pedicab driver who says he can take me to the Centre for twenty-five. Perfect. He extends a chivalrous hand and assists me up and into the seat behind him. With a heavy push on his right pedal, we are off into the Shanghai night.

As the pedicab shakes down the dark street, I imagine it is 1925 and I am a diplomat being hurried through old Shanghai for a secret meeting or an important social engagement. My reverie is cut short when an Audi nearly broadsides us. We go a little farther, then the pedicab driver stops. Can we be there already? We are still on a dark side street. I pay the driver, and he points the way to the Centre.

I begin walking, but once I find Nanjing Lu and get my bearings, I realize the driver has dropped me off barely halfway there. Fuming, I charge my way through the dense crowd, my feet aching from the day's wandering. I finally get to the theatre. I sprint up four flights of stalled escalators, only to find that my seat is practically in the back row of the balcony. I paid thirty kuai for my ticket, but am sitting in the twenty-kuai zone!

Once I stop fretting over the day's rip-offs, I begin to relax and enjoy the show. A man does a triple flip off a springboard and lands, legs crossed like a gentleman, in a chair sitting three people high. Four men fling gleaming sabres around in a circle. A man juggles a stack of spinning plates on the end of a pole balanced on the tip of his nose. The show ends with an oversized Darth Vader mask dance, putting a surreal finale on a surreal evening.

I catch a metered cab back to the Peace Hotel, flick on CNN, and again stare at the ceiling in the television's glow.
Shanghai
is a verb,
isn't it? Yes. It must be. This city has most definitely acted upon me.

I have been shanghaied in Shanghai.

Today is National Day, and all of China's one billion people have the day off. Or so it seems. At least half that many people must be out strolling on the Bund this morning. It is overflowing with people. I wedge through the crowd, squeeze myself off the south end of the Bund, and head toward Yuyuan Bazaar, Shanghai's Chinatown.

With its big, dark wood buildings and their sweeping, sharply curved eaves, Yuyuan Bazaar could be the merchant's district of a Chinese city a hundred years ago, minus the KFC outlets and Pepsi banners. Most of the buildings are filled with shops selling teapots, gold jewellery, film, and other tourist essentials. I window-shop whenever the crowd lets me near a window or squishes me up against one.

I wind my way through the maze of buildings until I find my goal for the day — the zigzag bridge and Huxinting Tea House. It isn't quite as tranquil as it looked on the postcards. The bridge is lined with the mandatory Pepsi signs and is crammed and bulging, railing to railing, with people. I claw my way onto the bridge and across to the tea house in the middle of the pond.

Inside the tea house I climb the steep steps to the second floor. Here there is calm and space, dark wood and bright squares of sunlight. People quietly talk and sip tiny cups of tea. Old photos of Shanghai line the walls above the doors and windows. I sit near an open window and order
wulongcha
, then sit back and sigh. Sunbeams dance across my cheek.