getting modern

That adaption to the modern world is pretty interesting, and has its own qualities. On many street corners are piles of parcels - the impact of online purchase. But postmen are not allowed to deliver direct to student residences. So the parcels gather, and their owners come here to hunt for them. 

at the university

I had the real privilege and pleasure to meet up with M (and E) at Fudan University, and to spend time with her and some of her students. Whilst Mao still watches over events, it feels like a place that is also moving fast.  

and one more

Have to mention the Shanghai Museum as well. Perfect size for visitors for summing up the cultural artefacts that define China. Like almost everywhere I went, very busy with almost entirely Chinese tourists. Several young pioneer groups - brought into the 21st century but the huge array of media equipment being used. (The young people in this shot were being 'arranged' by their teacher for an endless series of photos and videos, in between photographing each other with their phones.) *


* Because China is so central to the production of 21st century technology, everyone I knew assumed that technology would be rampant. Well it is and it isn't. The government blocking of everything from Google to Dropbox is making usage patchy (or based only on Chinese apps). Or - like some of the students I talked to - blocking turns out to be a pretty dumb solution since you can just get a VPN. 

another favourite

And whilst we are doing my favourite tourist places in Shanghai, I have to mention the Urban Planning Exhibition Center. A fantastic mix of left-over heroic communist iconography (and centralist planning) together with some really interesting exhibitions about the history of the city, all wrapped around an atrium containing a massive 3-D model of the city.

jade buddha

Of course, Shanghai also has its traditional side. A must-see is the still actively used Jade Buddha Temple. Don't know how these buildings and all their treasures survived the communist period. 

alternative arts

Liu Dao is an international multi-dsciplinary electronic arts collective based at island6, in the on-trend ex-industrial warehouse complex called M50. (You can also often see their staff at White Rabbit in Sydney.) Their work makes  me laugh - an irreverent take on what happens when you muck around with technology, light and animation to make emotional and social comment. My favourite (which does not reproduce well as a photograph so is not here) is of a woman standing up cramped within a vertical thin picture frame that she endlessly dusts from the inside.

old-new

As with much of China, development in this city is happening very fast. There is some preservation activity - two areas of historic long tangs, Xintiandi and Tianzifang, have been adapted into commercial areas of tiny shops, that maintain the traditional longtang pattern of labyrinth-like alleyways with a limited number of exits to the main streets. You can take your pick on whether this is better than re-development, or just leaves a pastiche.

Meanwhile, sights like the one above, are also pretty typical.

typical

Might have been partly because I had a really good lonely planet guide, or because Beijing is much stuffier and more 'historic' (although this seems to suggest not); but managed some great cross-sectional walks across Shanghai, threading through a whole series of interesting variations of colonial, shikumen and longtang patterns. Including streets lined with plane trees, shading pavements where commerce spills out, mixing bicycle mending and contemporary pottery in a very charming way.  

smoggy

And then to Shanghai and a walk to the Bund. Arrived on a truly blade-runner day, greyed out with pollution and then overlaid with a torrential horizontal rain. Plus, of course, massive numbers of people, going in every direction on every variety of wheeled vehicle and in a wild variety of wet weather gear, much of it improvised. A perfect chaotic and crazy city from my point of view, loved it at once. 

beijing park

All very happy to have survived, and gotten back to Beijing without much damage. The others went off on what turned out to be a very long hike of Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City (both of which I have already been to), so I took myself off to the Olympic Park to see the Birds Nest Stadium. Lovely day out, everyone else out too, obviously still very much used - although bit strange to be in that weirdly over-sized hard landscape that you can get in the aftermath of dealing with Olympic crowd numbers. 

more and more Wall

Days 3 and 4 seemed easier in comparison; although still quite testing. Amazing privilege to walk sections of the wall that would not normally have been possible as a tourist, and glorious to be in places where there was no one else. The views from each beacon watchtower were worth all the fear. And even the repaired section still quite empty: what a sight to have all to yourself (well in the midst of a lovely - and often quite rambunctious - group!).

in honour of Mr Lee (2)

I have much to thank our guide for. On the most difficult - and completely scary - section, he let me put my hand on his shoulder and walked me across, not really understanding why I was so stupid but happy to help. I might still be there if he hadn't done that. 

in honour of Mr. Lee (1)

Our Chinese farmer guide must have thought we were hilarious. We had fancy walking boots and backpacks and water-bottles ("at least 3 litres for each day") and slandered ourselves liberally in sun-cream and had lots of snacks in case we got hungry. And we needed to stop a lot.  He had an umbrella and a flask of tea. A tote bag to carry these items was all that was added on 'harder' days. And of course, he would run backwards and forwards in his ill-fitting plastic bootees sorting out our problems whilst we huffed and puffed and felt very pleased indeed with what we were achieving.

meeting the Wall

Hard to describe the walking - or rather scrambling - along the top of the wall. I knew it would be challenging and much more uneven terrain than the repaired bits you see in tourist photos.  Also knew it went up and down a lot along the summits of a never-ending range of sharp edged and deep-valleyed hills. But was not expecting to clamber over rubble. Or walk across very thin ledges with steep drops to either side. Or negotiating narrow sections and the various scrubby trees and bushes they now support. Or sliding down loose gravel with nothing to hold onto. (All of course, all also either steeply up or steeply down).

And although I had thought about getting fit (and was very happy to keep up with the mainly younger front-runners) for some reason it never quite percolated that walking ton the top of the Great Wall of China involved heights. And that I get vertigo. And worse than I realised.

So pleased someone lent me a walking pole, and really appreciated the willingness of my companions to take it in turns to walk close in front of me on the more terrifying sections, so I could look at their feet rather than over the edge. And turned out to feel like a truly amazing thing to do, exhilarating and meditative all at the same time. 

camping

The first of 3 camp sites, all on farmers' land right up against the Wall. Which traces the top of the hills in seemingly every direction,almost always in view. And as extraordinary as could be, not reduced by all that unavoidable prior knowledge. I am a camping kind of person (love the opportunity not to have to wash much) but definitely wished I had taken an extra blanket. 

first lunch

… and still torrential rain as we arrived in Beijing. Slightly anxious moment at the airport where I worried I might not find the group I was travelling with, so many people, but of course they stood out as as interestingly miscellaneous bunch of people with massive walking boots, unwieldly rucksacks and ridiculous (Marie Curie Charity) daffodil badges and tee-shirts. Transported to a hotel located in a hutong right in the central district, so amazing location from which to get very very wet. Hid in a shopping mall for most of the time. Then off the next day to the Wall, about 3 hours on a coach, and still a boundary to the Beijing region (we crossed backwards and forwards across the security barrier many times). First 'authentic' meal by which I mean away from the extravagant glitz and enormity of Beijing, with everything much more basic and grubby. Also reminder of the ubiquitous thermos flask (for tea), plastic bowl (for washing) and requirement for a personal toilet paper supply and a good sense of humour around toilet facilities. 

Followed by amazing 'practice' walk, steeply up and then along beside the wall for a few hours. Beautiful. 

a little story

The Broken Hill tour and the Terra Nullius book have got me thinking a lot about stories - about the kind of stories that get told about a place, particularly to its tourists and visitors (and in a way, therefore to the inhabitants themselves) something I will be returning to.

So here is my anecdote: that says something about that weird intersection between what feels like an unbelievably ancient land and the way the most recent settlers cruise across its surface. At one moment on the train, as I was watching out of the window idly staring at mile after mile of scrub and orange-brown soil, I saw 3 emus  appear from nowhere and cross the long straight road running parallel to the train tracks. This in the middle of an empty plain. And at that precise moment an ute  drove past (the first vehicle I had seen for 20 minutes). The first and second emus got by, but the third, thrown into a panic, turned back and was hit a glancing blow, such that it flew up into the air. I saw feathers explode and the emu hit the ground - and then the train had gone by.

And then nothing for ages.

the weirdness of broken hill

As part of the journey, we got to stop at Broken Hill, once a boom town for mining, and now - still a mining town but more normal. Well, I say normal, but the whole sojourn felt quite surreal; and not just because we were woken up before dawn (after not sleeping the previous night due to it being a train and all) and were a little lagging. First, we were driven around almost every street in a bus, up and down the small town grid, being shown absolutely everything - some of it twice. I kid you not, we were even introduced to the Coles supermarket as an exciting event; all given out in full chatty and obvious jokes compere mode. Which was followed by a murmured repeat across the whole bus, due to a larger than usual number of older, hard-of-hearing people who needed to be told all over again by their nearest and dearest.

Then, at some unclear point, we were driven to the waste earth/slag heap piled up by the town, on top of which has been built a miner's memorial, in honour of those who had died. A mixture of poignant and community hall, with volunteers serving scones and tea. But also, since I had been reading a book called Terra Nullius on the train, also echoed strangely of missing - indigenous -voices. Neither the tour nor the memorial plaques contained any reference to aboriginal history or people, a whole world ignored and marginalised. 

At the same time, there was another absence - the fact that all the time we were at the memorial, we were walking on top of a working mine, and the tough hard work that continues to involve.

off on the indian-pacific

And then, most amazing of all, we got on the Indian-Pacific train (a fabulous birthday treat from E). They went all the way to Perth, K and I as far as Adelaide. Brilliant, quite old-fashioned (although none of the guests would have been right in an Agatha Christie novel) and a great, lazy way to see the scenery go by.

city bingo (2): more humorous signs (2)

Took the ferry over to South Perth to investigate where I stayed 25 years ago, and walked past this restaurant/hotel, with a sign that says - 'The Windsor. It Just Sounds Fancy.' Love it.