Time keeps on and the hands travel backward.

Hard to believe it's been over a month since the last post. Things have been busy here and at the same time I've seen a ton of stuff to write about. Just in the last month the monumental task of seasonal garden bed change-outs and tree pruning on the boulevards has taken place. Imagine that every avenue in New York looked like Park Avenue and you'll get an idea of how fanatically proud the Shanghainese are of their city.

It's this pride that has been a real surprise to me. I grew up during the cold war and expected that the Chinese would be far more "Stepford" and mechanical in the dissipating shadow of the Cultural Revolution. If one is forced to achieve it is generally a soulless or apathetic proposition by virtue of deprived liberties. Even the lowest rung on the Shanghainese ladder, presumably the street sweeper, is fastidious about the quality of their work.

This leads to a much more bizarre conundrum as people ascend the ladder where it seems greed and cutting corners on quality are prized attributes that transcend pride and cross the territorial line into arrogance.

Evidence of the Chinese transition from third world to world power is apparent everyday in the form of decades old three-wheeled bikes hauling everything from recyclables, to water cooler refill bottles, to plate glass panes to who knows what all in the shadow of Shanghai Tower. The old is definitely being swallowed by the new.

On the home front, Amy our Ayi has settled into the new domestic routine, including cooking (... yes, Chinese food). The in-imitable Mr. Zhao, our driver has a new Ford S-Max (or as he says essa-maxa) that he operates with surgical precision. And the ships endlessly navigate the Huangpu as a testament to the voracious consumption here.

After three months of living here, if you asked me to stick a thumbtack in the metaphorical corresponding spot on the western time line it would have to be at some point during the creative revolution of the late fifties or early sixties. A sexual revolution reminiscent of the first wave of the British invasion is happening full force. A retailer's poster that caught my eye sums up the new Chinese. It screamed in fluorescent colors (like a four-year old throwing a tantrum at the check-out line) "It's new. I want it!" 

In the coming weeks I will connect these dots.

© 2011 Karl Shaffer

To infinity and beyond!

Criss Angel eat your heart out.

As a matter of fact, that is a sofa levitating outside my 20th floor balcony.

Sometimes, more and more as time passes, one just has to love the Chinese people. They do things that we, as Americans, have been conditioned not to attempt because of legislation, insurance rhetoric, fear of lawsuits, boo-boos, or whatever.

In this case, I wholly expected the outcome to be as magnificent as the climax to those wonderful Warner Brother’s Road Runner cartoons where upon, Wiley Coyote’s ascension, is met, by a more rapid, and eventful decent into oblivion. Which is exactly why I bothered to record this event with images in the first place.

Much to my dismay, something that Americans have come to second-guess all too often prevailed – common sense.

I can hear it now watchdog groups, “You're lucky something terrible didn't happened” or “Wait’ll the boss hears about this!” even worse “It’s all fun and games until my lawyer gets involved.”

China will have none of it.

If it looks possible they will, with measured risk, attempt to make it happen. I suspect some of this is due to a Wei Qi mentality. (Wei Qi the strategic game that involves problem solving by identifying opportunities in a landscape of shifting probabilities.) Just who calculated the probability and what the variables taken into account were, is not immediately clear.

The problem in this case, a sofa bigger than the apartment front door, as well as the elevator. Was met by an opportunity, having a better than average probability for success; getting the sofa up to the 28th floor, through a sliding glass door large enough to accommodate it, with a window washer’s guide wire, a mover’s tension strap and a few nylon ropes to help traverse.

As Ed Harris so eloquently, and forcefully mandated many years ago “Failure is not an option.”

I watched for about 15 minutes as a conversation focused on the sofa ensued between two movers, seven security guards and one female supervisor. Once all parties involved had spoken or enlisted support to one opinion or other, it was off to the 28th floor. The window washer’s guide wire was lowered to connect to the securely bound sofa. There were numerous inspections of the mover’s tension strap and the connection. As the sofa began to rise, the seven security guards dispersed to a wider parameter and still with keen eyes, evaluated the security of the connection and stability of the lone mover manning the traverse line. Again, the De facto commission gives its approval for lift-off.

Slowly, the sofa rose above the bushes, smaller trees and eventually the tallest Palms.

The security guards’ parameter grew larger as the sofa was hoisted higher. It is important to note at this point, that the opportunity of increased altitude brought with it a greater probability of a “big boom” if any of the principle components should fail. Soon the "sofawaffe" approached my balcony at about 320ft without incident. The slackness of the traverse rope puzzled me because the sofa was seemingly as stable a rock while the mover manning the rope seemed to be vigorously wrestling with it.

Within a few seconds it was at the height depicted in the image above and quietly ascending to the 28th floor. Slowly, and steadily she rose to her new crib. I was awestruck. They did it. Even thought I could see wires the smoke and mirrors couldn't hide, I was astounded. 

Then as quietly as it had all started, "mission control" disbanded and went on to lesser furniture and more chatter on the security radios.

The one probability that I’m willing to wager on, is that the Chinese appetite for the "new" will assure that re-entry is much faster than lift-off.

© 2011 Karl Shaffer

Cities do not build themselves.

Shanghai Tower as it will appear in the financial district in Pudong.

“Cities do not build themselves, machines cannot make machines, unless back of them all are the brains and toil of men.” – Lewis W. Hine

Over the past two months the people of Shanghai have inspired me. There is an energy here that I can only relate to via my early experiences in New York City in the mid-1980’s, and those two generations removed, of my grandparents at Ellis Island, in the early 1900’s (in the excitement they must have felt as opposed to "freedoms" they would enjoy). There seems to be a sense of purpose and a quiet optimism. Everywhere I look they are building. Perhaps the most significant sign of this quiet optimism is a walk down the street – Shanghai Tower.

The tower is the third in the architectural trilogy (in the new middle of Shanghai) symbolizing the past, present and future, of not only Shanghai, but also China and quite possibly all of Asia-Pacific. It will be the world’s second tallest building, only to the Burj Khalifa, in Dubai. It will also be in Asia’s first super high-rise corridor.

I have posted a few images from architecture and design firm Genlser to give an idea of how they, and apparently the people of Shanghai, envision the future. Like most of the world’s tall buildings, and the numerous man made wonders throughout time, let's not forget they are stratagems in a modern sense of the word, meant to inspire and seduce.

The building itself is elegant in its simplicity and form. When one considers the architectural “prefixes” of the Jin Mao Tower, representing the past, and Shanghai World Financial Center, representing the present, Shanghai Tower makes a credible argument as an accurate vision of the future. Like many great works of art it seems natural in the context of its place and time. It endears with a familiarity and originality. Many architects will likely, upon its completion, pontificate to having discounted such an aesthetic in favor of something more radical.

They would have missed the point.

The great thing about the building is its intrinsic Confucianism. If you believe there is a rhythm to Shanghai it's definitely rooted in Confucianism, at least on the surface. This is a building, like the traffic I have described in Shanghai, that at once conforms and defies. As it towers some 630 meters over the streets of the Pudong financial district it will spiral 120º laterally to lessen the impact of high winds on inhabitants as it pierces the skyline. It will have gardens and green areas enveloped within to create spaces as awesome as one might imagine the legendary, hanging gardens of Babylon to have been.

As the crowning achievement of Shanghai, it will also come to symbolize the struggle looming over Shanghai, of whether or not it has the soul to become one of the world's most decadent cities.

Shanghai Tower was born to be a magnet for capital investment as well as capital divestment of sorts (from the lax hand of a voracious new consumer). And make no mistake the competition is fierce for such high stakes in a global marketplace, even more so among the emerging Chinese mega cities. The tower will demarcate a neighborhood that surpasses the most affluent shopping addresses from Rodeo drive, to Magnificent Mile, to Fifth Avenue.

1. Framed By Jin Mao and SWFC.   2. The second ring milestone.   3. A Night vision accenting the 120º spiral.

Shanghai Tower has recently reached a few small milestones with respect to its grand expectations. In the past week, a second, structural reinforcing ring has been completed at about the 20th floor. The jump cranes are in the process of jumping to the next increment, to complete the third “can” in the stack of nine. It is now nine stories taller than it was when we arrived in early August. The work is continuous, day and night, rain or shine, dog day or holiday. It is as life in this city.

The sentiment is of witnessing the emergence of the Empire State Building in the late 1920s and early 1930s. A young city, in a young country aspiring to overtake and replace a vanguard. Seeking to establish its own voice so as to invite and eventually lord over the conversation. Day-by-day, week-by-week, Shanghai climbs to a place few cities have gone and few could go. What inspires me most about all of this is that it's not the first time Shanghai has been in this position.

When it's finished history will reserve judgment and look beyond the obvious. Like another famous stratagem in history, the Trojan Horse, it will be a matter of the success of the ideology emanating from it, as to how great the brains and toil that built it, will be remembered. 
© 2011 Karl Shaffer

Shanghai: the debate rages. Noun, verb, or both?

A bit of swill, a wee bit more – thus a verb is born.

I suppose this should have been one of the very first entries in this chronicle of experiences. However, in the interest of being fair, open-minded, and uncharacteristically sans-paranoia, I chose to wait and see if my first impressions were warranted.

            

After numerous coincidences, it seems that there may be an ever-so-slight basis in reality for such an entry.

            

In any event, on with the debate.

            

A noun – is a word used to name a person, place, thing, or idea. A noun can be a proper noun or a common noun.  A verb – is a word that shows action, or that indicates a condition, or a state of being. It is indeed a rare occasion when either transcends its own classification and joins the realm of the other.

            

Enter, Shanghai. It is at once a city, Shanghai, and a state of being, shanghaied.

            

To understand the nature of being “shanghaied” one really needs to understand the origin of the word (which, I for one, have taken for granted). It is as much a lesson in geography as it is in linguistics because geography was the catalyst for the original linguistic interpretation of the shanghaied state of being.

            

Shanghai is located at the mouth of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River dividing the city nearly in half just before it reaches the Yangtze. This geographic dynamic created a tremendous network of waterways giving the region a great advantage where commerce and trade are concerned. In the 1800’s this advantage required manual laborers, specifically sailors, to sustain it. If you’ve ever sailed, even on the smallest vessel, you know that it involves concerted manual labor (heck – my kids don’t even want to sail because they might have to clean the boat when we’re finished). Something that the opportunities of the late 18th century could help a wise young lad to supersede if he had a lick of sense. It was the combination of this geography, commerce, and need for manual laborers that birthed the origin of the verb “shanghaied”.

            

Apparently, many sailors in Shanghai started their careers by virtue of "involuntary actions" – they were kidnapped for compulsory service aboard a ship, especially after being drugged (I need some of that stuff – Dramamine just doesn’t have the same effect with my kids). 

             

Let the newly expatriated be warned. The following definitions should always be tucked away in the back of an expat’s mind so as to not be so naïve as to think that Shanghai exists exclusively as a noun. 

            

shanghaied:

1. To kidnap (a man) for compulsory service aboard a ship, especially after drugging him.

2. To induce or compel (someone) to do something, especially by fraud or force.

I will let you ponder the definitions for a bit and imagine the many ways a new citizen, namely the expat, in 2011, can meander about in Shanghai, while being shanghaied.

            

The essence of the original definition of shanghaied is alive and well today sans the illicit narcotics and premeditated intend (might I be erring on the side of political correctness… ).  Not only is the essence evident in our recent quest for moon cakes but also numerous other more important and necessary endeavors of immigration. 

            

Whether shanghaied by intent, or negligence, it smarts just the same.

            

This is especially so when the intricacies of language and technology are involved in connection with cellular services in China. I may have been a bit premature in discounting narcotics when you consider the habitual use of  “black berries” and “smartphones” (of which I do confess to, but can control the need for) an absolute, addictive indulgence. 

            

All you can do is smile and keep on moving.

to be continued.

©2011 Karl Shaffer