Part 5 -- Cixi and me

Disclaimers: If you've made it onto this distribution list, it's because I thought you might enjoy hearing about my Asia trip from time to time. Because I'm being charged by the hour to use this computer, I'm rushing to write this e-mail, so please forgive any spelling errors or other imperfections. Also, not everyone may understand my references since I know you all from different walks of life. I apologize for this as well. If you rather not continue to receive these letters, please let me know--I won't be insulted--and I will happily remove you from the list. I'm really not that arrogant to think that the whole world is interested in reading of my travels and travails. If you write me back, it will probably take me a very, very long while to reply. Please don't be impatient with me. I'm not sure how often I'll be able to find one of these Internet centers and whether the connections will be decent. P.S. I'm sorry for sending two installments at once. I had a myriad of problems getting Part 4 done.

I'm writing from the Yu Ling VIP Internet Club in Shanghai. I finally found a reasonably priced e-mail place without a pack of backpackers shuffling and sighing behind me waiting to get on. No VIP's in evidence either. Only geeky Chinese boys playing video games with headphones on. One of them seems to bombing the bejesus out of Taiwan.

Shanghai is a tough town. It's all hard surfaces; no easy smiles. I'm foiled here at every turn. Stubborn pride makes me stay: I'm determined to figure out this city. Instead of taking a cab to wherever I'm going, I struggle to get there by bus or subway. So what if I'm only saving US$3 per ride? It's the principle of the thing. A city girl like me ought to be able to work out the Shanghai public transportation system. Pinyin or no Pinyin. It doesn't help matters when what Pinyin street signs do exist are written in very small letters. While standing in the bus, you can almost make them out through the windows--if you can peer between the packed-together bodies. The bus stops are a half-mile or more apart. If you misjudge your stop, you end up walking forever.

Then there's the scooters. When traffic is stopped at an intersection--buses, bicycles, cabs, cars, delivery carts, rickshaws--and you have the light; and you're crossing in front of a bus, a scooter will shoot through the red light between the bus and the curb, missing your toes by an inch or two. Red lights don't apply to scooters I guess. Walking is hazardous enough in China--given the torn-up sidewalks, the construction sites with debris falling on your head, the bamboo scaffolding, the loose tiles, the fumes--without the damn scooters to mow you down. The bikes will do that too, but they don't weigh as much. I don't remember scooters in Beijing. You've got to stay alert in Shanghai. Very alert.

Walking the city streets requires similar skills as the club scene in Boston. You must know precisely where the other players are at all times, without making eye contact. Whoever makes eye contact first loses. If a driver/biker catches you looking at him, that means you yield. If he's convinced you're not looking at him, then you have right of way. Still you must keep him and everyone else in your peripheral vision at all times in case someone breaks the rules. If a driver thinks you're only pretending not to see him, he'll cut you off.

Shanghai is a city of 12 million or so. It's the most developed city in mainland China. There are skyscrapers by the dozen. Business is booming. But there's not much to do here by way of sightseeing. There's the Bund (which I'll describe in a minute), the Shanghai Museum (of art)--which some say is the best in China--and the Yuyuan Garden and Bazaar. The Yuyuan Garden is Ming--dating from 1577 AD--with rockeries, pavilions and fish ponds. The garden is surrounded by the bazaar--a tourist magnet. It's a shopping and restaurant district newly built in an "Old Cathay" architectural style. There's almost nothing left of the real old city--it's been bulldozed to make way for the new. What old streets are left are not picturesque. They're poor and dilapidated--unless I went down the wrong alleys. I can understand why Chinese people prefer new apartment buildings.

Most backpackers head west for Guilin after a couple of days. I stay and stay. It looked as if my Chinese visa was due to expire in five days. I went to get it extended at the Public Security Bureau--the police station. Tourists are unruly--we must check in with the cops in order to extend a visa. Went to the place the cop shop was supposed to be. Wasn't there. Asked hotel people. No one knew what I was talking about. Called the American embassy. They directed me across town.

Found it at a different address than the one I was given. Waited on line. Got to the front of the line and was told that the visa was valid from date of entry (to China) not from date of issue (of the visa itself), so my visa should be valid until 19 September even though it's stamped 12 August. And I thought I had had that visa stuff all figured out. The cop--who spoke English--told me that the visa application form I had originally filled out had had that information written on it in English. I said, you're right, sir, so sorry, sir, I did not read the form properly. Then he smiled. Silly foreigner.

I'm staying at the Pu Jiang Hotel right near the Bund, a commercial strip alongside the Huangpu River. The Bund is famous for its 1920s and 1930s Continental architecture that's still standing. Noel Coward stayed at the Cathay Hotel on this strip when he wrote "Private Lives." The Pu Jiang had its heyday even earlier, at the turn of the century. Now it has a creepy quality to it--some guidebook likens it to a mental hospital. But it's good creepy. I like the dark wood, high ceilings, long echoey corridors and secret stairwells.

Its suites have been converted into dorm rooms that sleep 14 people (US$7 per person). Last night I was the only Westerner in the room, save this one who sleeps in a kimono. This means she works or studies in Japan, and she's gone native. I say hello to her. She gives me a crooked smile and turns away, which means, I want nothing to do with you, white girl.

One problem with talking with the other women in the room is that it's opaque to me which are Japanese and which are Chinese. If I screw up and mistake one for the other, I fear it may be a supreme faux pas. The animosity between the Chinese and the Japanese people runs deep, due to their long history of slaughtering each other. Plus none of these Asian women are saying boo to me anyway.

Except for this one girl, Reiko. She bounded over to my bed yesterday morning and woke me up to apologize for making noise the night before. Hell if I knew who was making noise the night before. Everyone was making noise. I fell asleep to the sound of 13 women rustling plastic bags, unzipping backpacks and clumping across the hardwood floor in platform sandals. (At least they weren't talking loudly after 11 pm, so they got points for politeness.)

Reiko had a desperate edge to her that put me off. She told me straight away she's Japanese, not Chinese, so that little matter was resolved. She wanted to know where I'd been in China. I told her I was going back to sleep. Sorry, Reiko, I'm NOT a morning person. Last night she cornered me and started up again in her very broken English. All I could make of it was that she was a cello student. I whipped out my "That's Shanghai" English-language rag and showed her the list of classical music concerts taking place in Shanghai, but she was leaving the next morning for Guilin.

This morning I received a two-page letter from her on top of my backpack that begins: "Dear Louise, Good morning! Thank you for your kindness. I appreciate encounter with you. I wish your trip is nice as yourself." She gives me her regular and e-mail addresses and asks me to write her. Appearances are deceiving--I'm not that nice.

It's steamy in Shanghai. About 92 degrees and a thousand percent humidity. [What IS the difference between "humidity" and "relative humidity" anyway? Despite the 100% humidity readings in Austin, Austin never gets THIS humid. Can anyone explain this to me?]

But I'm still here. After days of hitting brick walls in trying to get Chinese opera tickets--theaters closed for renovations, theaters with phones that go unanswered, sold-out performances, newspaper misprints and security guards shooing me out of buildings--I finally found some for a matinee at the gorgeous Shanghai Grand Theatre. A woman in the business center at the Peace Hotel (formerly the Cathay Hotel) produced them from a desk drawer. Of course I had asked a woman at the same desk three days prior for tickets, but she had said that there weren't any. In Shanghai, you just gotta keep pushing.

The show turned out to be a corporate pep rally for employees of the Shanghai Yunhai Industrial Company Ltd. I knew trouble was afoot when throngs of people in matching powder-blue, logo-ed T-shirts crowded the theater lobby, bearing red envelopes that said "Invitation." The workers were given shopping bags containing a wrapped present and promotional literature and seated in groups.

A full Western-style orchestra was set up on stage. With the other operas I'd seen, the orchestras have been small and offstage, consisting of a few traditional Chinese instruments. There was no room on this stage for any action.

At 2 pm, when the opera was supposed to start, a suit took the mike and started speechifying about something. I knew it wasn't about opera. He waxed eloquent for 15 minutes, then a woman appeared in a black evening gown as a video flashed onto a huge screen behind the orchestra. She began narrating the video, which was about the glorious products or services of the Shanghai Yunhai Industrial Company Ltd. The company seemed to be involved in the hospitality industry, judging by the images of restaurants, hotels and people relaxing in whirlpools.

When she was done, managers in matching black suits and ties and white shirts filed down the aisles. Each positioned himself at the end of a row of employees. The conductor struck up the orchestra and started playing the corporate anthem. The managers and workers all stood and sung their hearts out. The workers were reseated, and the managers filed out. All this consumed about a half hour.

Another woman appeared and started making explanations, but she was talking opera. This matinee was not to be a performance of an opera, only an opera recital. I knew such recitals were given, but I had been hoping this wouldn't be one of those. She would introduce each singer, who would appear in Western formal dress, sing one song and leave the stage.

Chinese subtitles blinked overhead, and the singers' images were projected onto the video screen. There were no costumes, no props, no storyline, no character interplay. Even worse was the orchestral accompaniment. To my ears, the music sounded like generic Western orchestral music, and it overshadowed the singing. A few traditional instruments were thrown into the mix, but the music had no edge.

A few non-employees, like myself, were seated in the best seats in front and in the boxes. In my box were a crop of men who were real opera fans. They sung along with the male singers. That was the best part of the show. The recital lasted just under an hour. The employees, who had been fidgeting and talking throughout the show seemed relieved when it was over. So was I.

I decided that I'd better clean up my act. A gay Belgian sinologist had told me that my clothes are baggy and unfashionable. That makes me unfashionable in both the U.S. and abroad. Diedeirck said that my attire wouldn't go over in Shanghai, let alone Hong Kong or Singapore. The modern Chinese woman wears her clothes black, short and tight. Just like the modern U.S. woman, I suppose. I wasn't sure I could go with the program, but I had to admit my clothes are ragged and faded. That's because I only have two shirts, one skirt and one pair of pants that I've been rotating for the past seven weeks. I've been washing them by hand using Chinese soap, which takes the tar out of them.

So I'm getting a silk outfit custom made. It's cheaper to do this in Vietnam, but I liked the idea of supporting the venerable Chinese silk trade. A concubine started the silk industry in China more than 5,000 years ago. Lei Zu, a concubine of Emperor Huang Di, taught the Chinese people how to cultivate silkworms and produce silk. Silkworms chew on mulberry and other leaves and spew out a soft, white substance to form cocoons. To make silk, the cocoons are soaked in water and then fibers are spun from them. Maybe it's crazy to get turned on by fabric made of dried worm spit, but I'm not the only one.

This province in China, Jiangsu, is the epicenter of silk production and commerce, and Shanghai is Silk Central. I found a silk shop that stood alone among a bunch of stores selling toilet bowls. I liked the tailor at this shop. He had an air of competence and understood everything I was trying to say. He was very patient. He did not speak one word of English--not one. Using hand gestures and a phrasebook, I asked for a rough estimate of the cost and the amount of time needed to make an outfit. I tossed and turned in bed all that night, growing ever more excited by the prospect of designing my own clothes. Usually when I go to the store, the clothes I'd like to own don't exist.

I returned to the shop carrying my ratty shirt and pants to use as examples. I had a hard time choosing between the different fabrics. Most of the Chinese prints are conservative and not very colorful--navy, beige, black and cream. I picked out a black textured silk for my pants. For a shirt, I chose a print with pink, purple and green roses on a black background. I realized later that the print looks like my futon cover that's in storage.

I tried to tell the tailor what I liked about my own clothes and what I wanted to change. He took many measurements. If I successfully conveyed my design to him, my pants will have deep pockets and come down to just above my socks. My shirt will have no pockets or buttons and come down to my forearms. They'll still be baggy, but maybe the luxuriousness of the fabric will compensate for this fashion misstatement.

Since my fitting, I've been walking around with a pink tissue-paper receipt covered with numbers and Chinese characters and swatches of my silk stapled to it. In two more days, my new outfit will be revealed. Now I feel just a bit closer to Empress Dowager Cixi, who swished about in the finest of silks back in the Qing dynasty.

Coda:
The Leslie Cheung mythology grows. You remember Leslie Cheung? The Hong Kong actor and pop star I have my eye on? Now I hear that another Hong Kong pop star, Danny Chen, wrote achingly beautiful love songs inspired by Leslie. After much suffering, Danny died about eight years ago. When I asked my source--an accountant named Chen Feng--whether AIDS was the cause of death, Chen Feng looked at me aghast and said,

"No, only his doctor knows the exact illness. It's generally understood that Danny Chen died of his unrequited love for Leslie Cheung."

Copyright Wonderlandİ 1999