Shanghai days and nights

One of the amazing things about being placed in Suzhou is how ridiculously close we are to one of China's biggest and most metropolitan cities, Shanghai. Thanks to China's high speed rail network, we can be in Shanghai in 25 minutes for the same price as a cup of Starbucks coffee in England. This is a complete luxury and something I plan to take advantage of over my time here, starting with our first Shanghai adventure last weekend.

A T-shirt at the sprawling fakes market. "Obamao" because aren't they just a match made in heaven?

Last weekend was the Chinese Qīngmíng Jìe, or Tomb Sweeping festival. This is the festival where Chinese people honour their dead relatives and make journeys across China to maintain the family tombs and leave offerings of food, tea, wine and chopsticks.  They also burn 'ghost money' and paper replicas of other material possessions, so that the dead lack nothing in the afterlife. After all what dead person doesn't need an iPhone 5? Qīngmìng Jìe also signifies the beginning of Spring, so is also a time for making the most of the warmer weather in anticipation of the approaching wet season. Since none of us had any family tombs to tend in China, we decided to make the most of the Spring time element of the festival (and the long weekend) by making the short trip to Shanghai. I think by this stage teachers and students alike were grateful for the break!

This is how Friday evening Jenny and I found ourselves at Suzhou train station trying to work out how to buy a train ticket. How hard can it be, right? Wrong. The combination of hundreds of people, all the departure boards only being in characters and the ticket office not actually being in the main station makes getting a ticket harder than expected. But we managed, making it to Shanghai in one piece and successfully navigated the subway to our hostel where a familiar face was waiting for us. 

As well as being my first time in Shanghai, this trip was doubly exciting because Greg, Henry and David also made the (much longer) journey to Shanghai for a mini Beijing reunion weekend. It's strange how once we were all back together it was as if we were still in Beijing, especially in some of the most 'Western friendly' bars. Had we ever left Lakers bar?

Reunited!

But apart from the Western bars that seem to pop up in every Chinese city, Shanghai was very different to anywhere else I've seen in China so far. In a nutshell it's very Western. A lot of the time we could have been in any city in the world Although the skyline at the Bund is iconic, there wasn't anything particularly Chinese about the huge skyscrapers, and the avenues of Zara and Apple stores were disappointingly familiar. There were Westerners everywhere and English speakers were a lot more common than we were used to, it's definitely a different kind of China. 

The iconic skyline at the Bund

There was only really one time we came across anything that made us think, "wow, we're really in China", the People's Square Garden.

In the West we all know about China's one child policy and the preference for boys leading to many girls being aborted before birth, or abandoned after. This has lead to a surplus of men in the country looking for, and often unable to find, girlfriends and wives. Combine this with the Chinese tradition of matchmaking and completely different dating and marriage etiquette and you get the very Chinese spectacle that is the park at People's Square. Every weekend hundreds of parents and grandparents gather in the park to essentially advertise their fully grown child to prospective suitors. Little adverts are attached to umbrellas standing all around the edge of the park detailing the height, weight, job and other essential descriptors for each young person looking for love. Then the parents and grandparents patiently wait for someone to take an interest. There was a 'business corner' specially designated to those who had degrees and good jobs, and we were told that not all of these young people were single due to a lack of girls out there. In fact there were a, perhaps surprisingly, large number of adverts for women looking for their Prince Charming; apparently the Chinese work so hard throughout their lives that they simply don't have the time to socialise and find their ever elusive one true love. So hence the crowded park, welcome to the marriage market! It was really bizarre walking through, browsing the bits of the adverts we could read and occasionally being stopped to ask if we were single. The idea of letting my mum find me a husband in a London park fills me with horror and, even though it may be said that my taste isn't always spot on, I just don't trust my mum's taste to find me a suitable match! But I guess this is where cultures differ. In China courting and marriage seems to be somewhat simpler. Dating is a long term affair from the off, we were told that if you made it to date three it was pretty much a sealed marriage deal, and there isn't really such a thing as engagement; after proposal comes a quick ceremony at a registry office, then the big wedding and celebration comes later. It's all very alien to me, but a truly unique and fascinating experience seeing Chinese matchmaking first hand!

Another novel thing in the People's Square Gardens was the English Corner just off from the matchmaking area. When we wandered over we assumed it was an extension of the marriage market and so weren't too surprised to be surrounded by groups of old men, however we were surprised when they all started speaking to us in pretty fluent English. It turns out that English Corner is where, every Sunday, all those wanting to practice their English gather to have a chat. Pretty quickly our group was split up and surrounded by our own little gang of English speaking Chinese asking us hundreds of questions. It was strange to be surrounded by Chinese people hanging onto your every word as you talked about the weather in England and whatever else they asked you about. It's quite an ego boost when a crowd says you have a voice like music and want to know everything about you and your perspective on the world! We ended up staying at English Corner for about an hour amongst the eclectic mix of people who came to speak English. As well as the expected young students and business men, there were a surprising amount of older people. Apparently it's very common for elderly Chinese, whose children work in the West, to learn English on the off chance that they visit an English speaking country at some point. It was really lovely talking to most of the people at English Corner and on the whole everyone was friendly and very welcoming. However, we did meet one unfriendly anomaly. This particular gentleman started off friendly enough, but as soon as he heard we were English teachers he turned sour and started shouting at us that we were ruining Chinese culture by teaching and should just go home. This was particularly strange because
1) he spoke English very well, so apparently it wasn't the idea of speaking English that he found offensive, rather actual English speakers doing the teaching,
and 2) he wasn't even Chinese, he was Taiwanese.
Very quickly a crowd of Chinese people assured us he was crazy and steered us away into more friendly conversation but it was an unfriendly and bizarre barrage that I won't forget in a hurry!

Overall our weekend in Shanghai was exhausting, culturally enriching, hilarious, expensive (but we'll forget about that point), and a whirlwind of fun. It was lovely to see some of those people we have missed from Beijing and it was a thoroughly enjoyable introduction to Shanghai and another side of the ever surprising China. I'm sure that we will have many more adventures in Shanghai, but for now it's back to Suzhou and our delightfully monstrous students until China grants us another long weekend holiday!