Sojourn in Shanghai
Part 1
23rd November 2005
Night had already set in, shrouding the airspace over China in blackness. Flight MU 548 was coursing through this night, with the lights from cities big and small creating a scene not dissimilar to a forest fire as viewed from all those miles up. The fire of urbanization seemed to be consuming their periphery, blazing with the flames of the emotional, physical and psychological hell most ordinary Chinese must be enduring each and every passing day. We must have been over Shanghai by then, the most populous city in the world’s most populous nation.
I wasn’t optimistic as my plane honed in on the city’s airport , having gone through my own emotional hell nine years earlier, having had my passport stolen in Beijing as winter loomed and temperatures plummeted ever lower.
Yet, I was determined to enjoy my hard-won vacation, knowing all too well that I had such chances only few and far between tumultuous years in my life. So, clutching my two most precious worldly possessions as I exited the airport, I braved the cold night air.
True enough, the airport was shrouded in a haze that resembled that in my own country only on the worst days of forest fires in Sumatra.
I called a contact at a payphone who told me to check in to Liang liang Inn at a certain given road and ask for room 514.
Not long after I had passed through the doorway, a short, rather stubby man whose slickly combed short hair gave him the look of a gangster approached me asking if I needed a car. Fatigued and a little cold to boot, I counter-instinctively answered ‘Yes’.
Just as quickly, I asked ‘How much?’.
“Liang bai,” (meaning two hundred).
A little dazed by unfamiliarity with the environs and feeling more than a tad lost, I nodded weakly, and followed the man straight ahead. Glancing left, I spied a dirty yellow cab and, with the notion that I was about to be Shanghai-ed by the man who approached me, I half ran towards the cab driver who was standing beside his vehicle and blurted the question of how much it would cost to go to my destination.
A hundred and fifty was his answer. I said OK.
Just as I was about to enter his cab, the first man was hurrying towards me, insisting that the car I was about to enter was not supposed to be used and insisting that I follow him. A group of shady-looking men nearby conveyed the notion that it would be foolhardy of me to enter the yellow car.With a heavier heart, I reluctantly followed the first man. Just before the doorway to the carpark, I asked him to drive his vehicle up to the first level ,afraid that I would be waylaid or deprived of my possessions if entered the deserted carpark. The other men who had prevented(or strongly discouraged) me from entering the
yellow cab lined the way to the carpark. Holding my breath, I did their bidding.
Fast forward through the next few minutes and I find myself in the car of a private Shanghai denizen, his girlfriend seated in the front passenger seat. Still, I harboured a sensation that they would whisk me to a clandestine location and deprive me of all my bodily possessions. That fear eventually proved to be unfounded, and after forty or so minutes of driving at a moderately fast speed through the dusty darkness, I ended up in my destination hotel and quickly found myself in room 514, a rather spacious, slightly smoky but otherwise clean room with a double bed and a dubious picture of a topless brunette tearing her way out of brambles over the toilet.
I turned on the TV, which was tuned to figure skating, and quickly dropped off to a welcome slumber.
23rd November 2005
Night had already set in, shrouding the airspace over China in blackness. Flight MU 548 was coursing through this night, with the lights from cities big and small creating a scene not dissimilar to a forest fire as viewed from all those miles up. The fire of urbanization seemed to be consuming their periphery, blazing with the flames of the emotional, physical and psychological hell most ordinary Chinese must be enduring each and every passing day. We must have been over Shanghai by then, the most populous city in the world’s most populous nation.
I wasn’t optimistic as my plane honed in on the city’s airport , having gone through my own emotional hell nine years earlier, having had my passport stolen in Beijing as winter loomed and temperatures plummeted ever lower.
Yet, I was determined to enjoy my hard-won vacation, knowing all too well that I had such chances only few and far between tumultuous years in my life. So, clutching my two most precious worldly possessions as I exited the airport, I braved the cold night air.
True enough, the airport was shrouded in a haze that resembled that in my own country only on the worst days of forest fires in Sumatra.
I called a contact at a payphone who told me to check in to Liang liang Inn at a certain given road and ask for room 514.
Not long after I had passed through the doorway, a short, rather stubby man whose slickly combed short hair gave him the look of a gangster approached me asking if I needed a car. Fatigued and a little cold to boot, I counter-instinctively answered ‘Yes’.
Just as quickly, I asked ‘How much?’.
“Liang bai,” (meaning two hundred).
A little dazed by unfamiliarity with the environs and feeling more than a tad lost, I nodded weakly, and followed the man straight ahead. Glancing left, I spied a dirty yellow cab and, with the notion that I was about to be Shanghai-ed by the man who approached me, I half ran towards the cab driver who was standing beside his vehicle and blurted the question of how much it would cost to go to my destination.
A hundred and fifty was his answer. I said OK.
Just as I was about to enter his cab, the first man was hurrying towards me, insisting that the car I was about to enter was not supposed to be used and insisting that I follow him. A group of shady-looking men nearby conveyed the notion that it would be foolhardy of me to enter the yellow car.With a heavier heart, I reluctantly followed the first man. Just before the doorway to the carpark, I asked him to drive his vehicle up to the first level ,afraid that I would be waylaid or deprived of my possessions if entered the deserted carpark. The other men who had prevented(or strongly discouraged) me from entering the
yellow cab lined the way to the carpark. Holding my breath, I did their bidding.
Fast forward through the next few minutes and I find myself in the car of a private Shanghai denizen, his girlfriend seated in the front passenger seat. Still, I harboured a sensation that they would whisk me to a clandestine location and deprive me of all my bodily possessions. That fear eventually proved to be unfounded, and after forty or so minutes of driving at a moderately fast speed through the dusty darkness, I ended up in my destination hotel and quickly found myself in room 514, a rather spacious, slightly smoky but otherwise clean room with a double bed and a dubious picture of a topless brunette tearing her way out of brambles over the toilet.
I turned on the TV, which was tuned to figure skating, and quickly dropped off to a welcome slumber.
posted by DP at
3:18 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home