Shanghai, China – Letter Home Part II
2007 Fall Semester
Composed by IHP Trustee Fellow Brian Tauzel
Dear Friends, Families and Fans of IHP:
Our semester together has come roaring to completion here in exhilarating and cosmopolitan Shanghai. Though IHPers have been absorbed by a flurry of final papers, group presentations, and extra-credit projects, they have also carved out ample time to explore the city, soaking up the sometimes glamorous, sometimes gritty gestalt of this East-Asian metropolis.
Our time in Shanghai was brief but the line-up of guest speakers organized for us was truly phenomenal. We kicked off our program with a lecture from Frank Yun-O Peng, an authority in the fields of economic development and foreign trade, and a man who wears many hats: Director of the US-China Business Development Center, Senior Advisor of the Shanghai Foreign Investment Development Board, and former World Bank Consultant. His presentation heightened our appreciation of Shanghai as an unparalleled hub of global commerce. The city’s new deepwater port ensures its primacy in international shipping, and its Pudong district (which has been constructed entirely in the past 17 years and boasts the world’s second tallest tower) is the locus of an unfathomable amount of private investment.
Although the speed and magnitude of Shanghai’s growth are dumbfounding, its position as an international city is nothing new. The Bund is a downtown riverside promenade, where impressive building facades recount an earlier wave of international investment. During the early twentieth century many financial institutions established their Chinese headquarters on this street. The unique hybridized architectural style of the French Concession district – part Chinese, part European transplant – also reminds visitors of Shanghai’s bygone status as the “Paris of the East.” In the face of today’s rapid development, it is a minor miracle that so many of the city’s notable historical elements have endured. At times it seems that the ghosts of 1930’s Shanghai are waiting around every corner, popping up in the distinctive vernacular of Shanghainese Art Deco or hiding in the strains of jazz music, sung of course in Chinese. Ellen Schramm had a particularly intimate relationship with Shanghai’s past and explained how she went out sleuthing, hoping to unearth some of her own genealogical ties to the city:
I was excited about Shanghai when I first heard it was part of the IHP semester. Some fifty odd years ago my grandmother left China for good and now I was the first in my family to go there since. She was born in the British concession area of Shanghai and lived there until the Japanese invaded China. At that point she was relocated to a prisoner of war camp where she spent three years in her teens.
Although my grandmother has never had any desire to come back she was thrilled at my opportunity to see what still remains of the Shanghai she knew. I was determined to search for her old haunts during my two weeks here. I found the street near the Bund where I believe she used to live, which is unfortunately now a commercial pedestrian shopping district.
This was just the first of my lessons in the rapid pace of China’s development. History is often sacrificed to make room for skyscrapers and high rises, which while it proved to make my own personal search difficult, made for a very interesting experience overall. China is a very dynamic country and just being there with the knowledge of my family’s connection made the entire experience extremely worthwhile.
This family history has been interesting and at times frustrating. While I never expected to find much of the Shanghai that existed many decades ago, I have truly seen first hand the rapid and exponential growth that so often characterizes China’s major cities these days.
While I myself am quite prone to intense bouts of mushy nostalgia, most IHP students are more concerned with today’s fashions, and combed the markets of Shanghai for knock-offs of all things trendy and mod. I enjoyed watching how various students confronted the city’s hectic commercial streets. Carol Simonson, for example, was a true star amid the commotion. While entire herds of IHPers might start looking panicked and confused, thrown into a stupor by the overwhelming throngs of shoppers, Carol could always thread her way through mobs of people, leading a group with utter mom-like efficiency. Annie Liang was another champion in the markets. She would stand by, munching on some delectable street food, seemingly impervious to the chaos. After letting other students haggle clumsily for a while, she would deploy her two secret weapons -- incredible charm and fluent mandarin -- to get the deal of the century. After much careful observation, Lydie Theodor summed it all up with one perfectly concise statement: “In the markets, bargaining skills are a must!” Far from the shops with knock-off sneakers, IHPers visited the Nike Corporation’s Chinese Headquarters. They were surprised to learn that, due to the price of its products, Nike has proclaimed itself a luxury brand in China. Accordingly, it deploys specially tailored advertising campaigns in the Chinese market to reflect its elite status. Some students were even berated for tromping into the building while audaciously sporting the competitors’ sneakers (Adidas, Puma, etc).
We learned about another unique marketing-related issue when we traveled to the nearby Song Jiang agricultural district. While there we chatted with former IHPer Brian Heimberg, who has been living in Shanghai for nearly a year and a half. He took us on a tour of the organic vegetable farm where he used to work, and described some of the unique challenges currently vexing organic farmers in China. To me, one of the most interesting obstacles was the protection and monitoring of labels and logos. Much like in the USA, organic products fetch premium prices in Chinese supermarkets. Higher prices have proved to be an irresistible carrot for several notorious non-organic producers, who have started packaging their own products with stickers and labels that are cunning replicas of well-known organic brands.
Another field trip took us to a newly created entertainment district in downtown Shanghai, where we chatted with the American designer, Ben Wood, who has made waves in the Chinese architecture scene. His brainchild is called Xintiandi – several blocks of historic alleyway housing that has been converted into high-end cafes and nightlife venues – and has been a runaway success in Shanghai, although it is sometimes criticized for its theme-park-like atmosphere. For the time being, Ben Wood has stopped working in the USA altogether, moving his operations to China. When asked why he made this decision, he surprised us with an ominous assessment of planning and urban development in America. In China, he says, he finds abundant opportunities for large-scale projects where an architect can work with a great deal of autonomy. In the USA he sees only endless protocol, which can too easily bog down projects.
In our last days in Shanghai, IHPers focused solely on their final presentation, a three-hour-long extravaganza in which students showed off all that they’d learned on the program. For a day and a half, they deliberated, planned and practiced together, distilling the most striking experiences and important lessons out of their whirlwind semester. While it is wonderful to leave IHP on this note, I am also glad to see how experiences from IHP will not leave us after we move on. For example, Chris Balin will revisit Shanghai in the very near future; after winter break he will start on a spring semester program here. I am confident that every single IHPer will find their own way to return, whether physically or mentally, to our experiences in Argentina, India and China, during the months to come.
To all the readers, thank you for being with us in spirit during this semester. To the members of Cities, Fall 07, thank you for making my second round of IHP every bit as enjoyable and informative as my first IHP experience – it has been truly unforgettable!
Sincerely,
Brian Tauzel
