14.08.30

Looking for Communism in all the Wrong Places
Life’s just an amusement park, and we can’t stop searching for pleasure.  Wei Hui, Shanghai, Baby

Someone has sprinkled the wake-up dust of consumerism on this place, I think.  Everywhere, everyone is shopping.  Nanjing Lu in Shanghai is the apex of it all.  By now I’ve tired a little of shopping, determined as I am to hit the books and get my shit together for grad school, I just don’t have time for this girlie messing around.  At least for now.  Still, I managed to pick up a new shirt (Chinese princess with “Year of the Girl” inscribed beneath her), a pair of lounging pants, and souvenirs for the fam.  Rod also bought me a jade bracelet at Zhongshan Mountain in Nanjing.

All this shopping is somewhat illusory, as most of China remains extremely poor, still the wealth is increasing astronomically for some.  Large-scale construction is occuring across the river in the “Special Economic Zone” of Pudong.  The old European colonial buildings of the Bund, picturesque as they may be,  somehow seem less monumental, remembrances of a time now past.  The future of China is definitely Chinese, and we shall see what effect this will have on the rest of the world.

As for communism in China, I would say it’s barely noticeable here in Shanghai, though I suppose this city has always been the market-centre of the country.  Fast-food chains like McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and especially KFC, can be found on every corner.  Consumer goods of all kinds can be purchased.  The architecture as we rode the train to Nanjing, however, had preserved the Stalinist past with the grey block-style buildings.  Financial institutions were all state-owned, and most cars (including taxis) were Volkswagen sedans.  But again, these pieces from the not-so-distant past were overshadowed by the enormous construction/purchasing of the future that was taking place everywhere we looked.