It would be a cliché if it were not indeed true: viewing cosmopolitan China is to witness the future. And while travelers must always remember that first impressions are just that, and that the observations of a "stranger in a strange land" are more a window into the writer's world than a snapshot of the place itself, it is hard not to believe that Napoleon's "dragon" has awoken.
Shanghai, since the 1800s one of the most "western" of Asian cities because of its troubled, yet profitable, interactions with Europe, is in the midst of a massive growth spurt. Entire sections of the city exist where none did even five years before. Breathtaking infrastructure abounds: the 400 km/h Maglev train that whisks tourists, businessmen, and the Shanghainese elite the twenty miles from Pudong Airport in 7.5 minutes; modernist office buildings, high-tech centers and schools that welcome both Chinese and western capital and technocratic expertise; and, of course, the massive (and as yet relatively unclogged) five-lane highways that have been built with the 22nd century (rather than the 1950s, as in the United States) in mind.
But in the midst of the city Fortune recently called the "Oz of the Orient" one also sees constant reminders that China remains a developing nation?.
There are other things, too, that remind one of the gap between U.S. and Chinese standards of living. Shanghai's residential buildings, for example, are much darker at night than their American counterparts. Peering in the lit windows, one sees that even the swankiest apartments often have only a single overhead light - sometimes only a modest light bulb - testimony to China's far higher (relative) energy prices and the laudatory checks on consumption that such prices impose. (Given China's extraordinary energy consumption levels, one shudders at the prospect of their emulating Americans.)
Quaintly, Shanghainese still hang their clothes outside to dry. (For historians like me, this immediately conjures up visions of turn-of-the-century New York, where back alleys had clothes line that connected neighbors together in the common pursuit of drying their britches.) Progress, one would add, should not be measured by grotesque energy consumption or the lure of the Kenmore dryer; still, it is striking to see these subtle reminders of the gap between our own nation and this fledgling world power.
[Editor's Note: The picture depicts the Jin Mao Tower, former tallest building in Asia, standing next to the almost-completed Shanghai World Financial Center, which will be the second-tallest building in the world next to the Burj Dubai.]
No comments:
Post a Comment