Hi, Haibo.

After a torrential first four weeks of teaching in China, I was rewarded with an 8 day vacation to commemorate Chinese National Day, the annual celebration of the founding of The Peoples Republic of China on October 1, 1949. To demonstrate my nationalism, I escaped on a two hour bus ride to one of China’s, and therefore the world’s, most rapidly developing cities, Shanghai.

After briefly passing through several random rural enclaves, mountains of concrete began to sprout from the horizon as we approached one of the various satellite neighborhoods that are leeching onto Shanghai for dear life. Supposedly, each month the city expands with an addition the size of Houston, Texas! Before I could ask if we had reached our destination, we were floating through an ocean of air conditioning units, satellite dishes, and BMW’s.

Eerily reminiscent of my entry into Sao Paolo, Brazil, my entire field of vision was blanketed by concrete monstrosities and an army of cranes racing to increase the scope of this modern metropolis. I gazed wide-eyed out of the window like a country bumpkin completing a pilgrimage to the big city for the very first time. For more than thirty minutes we cruised along the elevated expressway past countless, identical apartment buildings, piercing the roof of a surprisingly clear sky. As the bus lurched to a halt, the passengers poured out onto the street, disappearing into the overwhelming anonymity that only a city of 20 million people can provide.

Navigating through the chaos, it didn’t take long for me to sharply revise my perception of China, which had been almost entirely based on life in quiet, little Huzhou. Quickly catching my attention was the existence of multiple foreigners on every block. Doing as the Chinese do, I found myself staring curiously at each one that crossed my path. There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000 foreigners living in Shanghai, and with this large population of foreign appetites comes a vast increase in the diversity of dining venues. Opportunities for culinary indulgence pulled me in every possible direction. My 5 days can mostly be summed up by my meals, which included a Brazilian steakhouse buffet, spaghetti Bolognese, a bacon mushroom burger, iced lattes, and Johnny Walker. Consuming almost anything my heart desired, strolling by Pizza Hut and Prada boutiques on tree lined streets, and hearing an array of non-Chinese languages, all nurtured the strange feeling that I was no longer in China. I could have easily been in any big city in the U.S. or Europe, which was an unusually disappointing feeling. All this points to a peculiar conundrum; Shanghai appears to be China’s least Chinese city, yet it seems to be the embodiment of everything that's currently taking place in this vast land.
Shanghai is developing at a staggering pace with increasing foreign influence, and the results are equally upsetting and amazing. I wonder how it’s possible for such blind expansion to continue without ruthless repercussions down the road, while simultaneously being in awe of the monumental organization and creativity required for such a place to even exist. While wandering the labyrinth of streets and expressways, you can’t help but catch the contagious feeling that you’re undoubtedly located in the center of the known universe.

Through most of China’s history, it has regarded itself as the center of the earth, most evident in its name, Zhongguo, or literally, the middle kingdom. To observe a single serving of this epic history, I paid a visit to the Shanghai museum, which is widely regarded as the best in China, featuring four floors of national artifacts spanning 5 millennia. My visit fell on the first of October, National Day, and as a result, entrance to the museum was free. The price for free admission was waiting in a line that came snaking out of the building and maneuvering myself around the masses once I made it inside. Most impressive was an exhibit of ancient, intricately adorned bronze sculptures. Admiring the exhibited works and contemplating their history provoked many a deep thought, but equally intriguing was observing the ways in which the museum patrons interacted with the exhibit. There's something strangely ironic about flocks of Chinese tourists taking pictures of a 5,000 year old bronze wine vessel with state-of-the-art cell phone cameras.

In retrospect, my time in Shanghai was an eye opening and perplexing introduction to one of the world’s greatest cities. It’s a place in constant motion and transformation where everything is for sale. It’s a poor peasant selling oranges to a Scandinavian tourist, while sharply dressed men abrasively chant, “Rolex, Rolex, Rolex,” in the ear of each male passerby. It’s where western appetites are satiated at unreasonably inflated prices and curious minds are further confused upon departure. Basically, it’s a city, and a country impossibly attempting to meld 5,000 years of continuous civilization and a communist façade with modern capitalistic globalization. Despite the difficulty of this endeavor, along with its center-of-the galaxy aura, Shanghai seems like an incredibly optimistic place.

This feeling is currently being conveyed by Haibo, an apparently friendly, sky blue, cartoon spokesman for the Shanghai 2010 International Expo, aka the world’s fair. Within a 50 mile radius of downtown Shanghai, you’re never likely to be more than 100 yards from some kind of Haibo manifestation, his ever waving hand greeting you at every turn, in preparation for an event that doesn’t begin for another 20 months. The expo is expected to generate over 50 million visitors during its five months of existence, which is impossible to comprehend, based on my experiences in the already overcrowded subway stations, continuously brimming at capacity. I don't doubt that Shanghai will be well prepared for their exhibition to the world in 2010, I just hope by that time I'm able to better comprehend this crazy place.