All Hallows' Eve

For the glorious occasion of "Wan Sheng Jie," my fellow English teachers and I made a triumphant return to the city of the future, Shanghai. To demonstrate my spirit, I paraded around the provincial capital as a thugged out elephant, which was the end product of a late night trip of costume searching desperation to the local supermarket, where I spotted my trunk to be. Greeting my plastic drainage pipe, inside out Cheerio’s box and diamond studded peanut medallion, were a variety of facial expressions ranging from the gleeful amusement of the taxi driver to the sheer terror of an unsuspecting old woman. Despite the mushrooming population of foreigners, Halloween has yet to fully catch on in China, so our unusual attire caused us to command even more attention than usual. Joined by my cohorts, Dexter the scientist, Gwen Stefani, Gem, rock star dude, Mr. Plumage, and 60’s girl, we set about terrorizing the city, and educating the locals about our strange cultural phenomenon.
In the aftermath of the festivities, my weekend was filled with the gluttony that Shanghai inspires in visitors arriving from places lacking culinary diversity (Huzhou). To cap off my visit and walk off the repercussions of some overindulgence at the bakery, I went to the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center, which chronicles the rapid accent of a fishing village into a modern, international super city, and optimistically projects its growth into the near future. Besides a fine spread of interesting before and after pictures highlighting the city’s capitalist makeover, the main attraction is a massive scale model of Shanghai, as it is projected to appear in 2020.
I’ve only spent a total of 7 days here, and they’ve all been contained within a pint sized 2 mile radius in the center of this labyrinth. Sprawling in every direction are masses of interchangeable skyscrapers and high rise apartment complexes. The most obvious difference between the present and the proposed future is the massive influx of the color green. Additional exhibits explain many of the strategies that Shanghai will utilize in its attempted greening process, which will be a monumental challenge, as the city continues its constant vertical and horizontal expansion. It’s a good sign that this attempt is being made, but for Shanghai to become more eco-friendly and simultaneously develop as projected seems impossible. Hopefully, for the sake of the world, China can make it happen.

A final noteworthy attraction of the museum is a complex promotional package, aka propaganda, for the 2010 International Expo. The centerpiece is a virtual tour of the city in 2010, when all of the planned facilities will be completed. Patrons huddle in the middle of a 360 degree screen that wraps around the room, blanketing your entire field of vision. The tour simulates flying at dangerously high speeds and low altitudes over the proposed future and is narrated by two overly enthusiastic Chinese children. In addition to the nausea resulting from this combination, just thinking about a future filled with automatically flushing toilets and bluetooth headsets caused the army of egg custard pastries in my stomach to stand at attention. I think I’m finding myself increasingly uncomfortable and ill equipped for life in the digital age.
The take home message of my second visit to Shanghai is that the more I know about the place, the more overwhelming it becomes. Explaining its massive scale is like describing snow to someone who has never been outside of the tropics, but I’ll attempt to do so by drawing a parallel to home. If you're like me, and you sometimes find yourself slightly overwhelmed when navigating through the chaos that can be San Francisco, this may help put things in perspective. Shanghai is roughly 9 times bigger than San Francisco, with TRIPLE the population density. Again, that's 9 times bigger AND 3 times more crowded. At this point, I’m still no closer to comprehending this place, but right now it’s probably one of the most fascinating places to be on earth.