In a city of extremes, skyscrapers and teenagers grow taller as shares plunge
Moderation has never been popular in Shanghai. Over the years the city has been home to many types of excess, from opium and sing-song girls to Red Guards. At the moment the favourite is construction, and its partner, destruction. One of the newest and boldest examples of the immoderate is the Shanghai World Financial Center. After a false start at the time of the Asian financial crisis, this megalith has shot up quite suddenly across the river from the Bund. Billed as the world’s tallest building for roof height, but second to Taiwan’s Taipei 101 if you count pointy bits, this one is big by any standards. The original design had an enormous hole at the top, ostensibly to give high-flying dragons free passage — but bearing a passing resemblance to the rising sun of the Japanese developer’s national flag. This did not find favour with the Shanghai authorities. The round hole was made square and national sensitivities were satisfied. However, whereas the original design combined the menacing curve of a Samurai sword and the provocative circular emblem, the final design looks like something between a dog whistle and a very large bottle-opener. The locals favour the latter. To say that it is ugly does not really do it justice. It is actually very ugly. But worst of all, it has ruined the view of the Jin Mao Building, by contrast one of the most beautiful skyscrapers in the world. This wonderfully light, silvery structure which glows gold in the evening light is now overshadowed by a ghastly dark bottleopener. Unfortunately, unlike most bottleopeners, nobody is going to forget it.
Further up river, another feature will soon cut a swathe through the city and make its mark on the skyline. Although low rise, there is nothing shy and retiring about Expo 2010. It is Shanghai’s answer to the Olympics and everyone is wildly enthusiastic, if slightly unclear what it actually means. I’ve never been to an Expo. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who has been to an Expo, or at least who admitted it. But in 2010 all that will change. Shanghai hosts the World Expo 2010 on a large plot of land spanning both sides of the Huangpu River, south of the old city. It will obliterate what remains of the shipbuilding and ship-repair industry in that area and take out assorted rust factories and dwellings. The theme is ‘Better City, Better Life’ — but probably not Better Business if you are in shipbuilding or factory-owning. The area will be endowed with new transport facilities on land and water to gather in the visitors. Even if a relatively undemanding percentage of Shanghai residents decide to visit, it is still likely to be huge. Take in a few more of their Yangtze Delta neighbours and it will be the biggest Expo ever. But the preparations for this go beyond mere concrete and glass. Following the success of the Beijing Olympics, Shanghai is on notice to keep up the pace. The media has begun a punchy campaign to make sure everyone behaves in a ‘cultural’ way.
It’s not just buildings that keep going up in Shanghai. Never mind prices or car ownership, have a closer look at the people. Ten years ago I could meet someone at the airport and expect an unrestricted view from my average European height over the crowd. No longer. Assignations are now obscured by lanky local teenagers and towering twentysomethings. Thirty years of reform have produced more than just double-digit economic growth. Statistics are not readily available but sample surveys show that the youth of Shanghai have sprung upwards in recent years. A weekend stroll down any shopping street certainly gives anecdotal support to this. So what’s the secret? A revolution in eating habits: more meat, fruit and vegetables are being consumed by more affluent people. In fact, more of everything, including things that never featured before in the diet. Chief among these are dairy products. But thereby hangs a cautionary tale. In recent weeks milk has become a dirty word in Shanghai, its contamination with melamine having proved deadly. In order to sell higher volumes of milk, water was added — but as this would dilute the protein content, melamine was also added to up the nitrogen count which is used as the test for protein. Melamine is good for flat-pack furniture, but very bad for human kidneys. Supermarkets rushed to remove out-of-town milk products from their shelves, leaving only a trusted Shanghai producer’s wares and premium-priced imports. I don’t think this episode is going to change eating habits here but it may make producers, and their inspectors, a bit more careful. It will certainly make consumers more powerful.
The ‘golden week’ holiday for National Day last month probably came at just the right moment for the Shanghai Stock Exchange, one of the things that have been going down rather than up. Five trade-free days gave bruised punters a welcome respite. Pleasantly detached from the market bloodbath, they might even have been tempted to try some retail therapy. Golden weeks were introduced to stimulate consumption in a population notoriously fond of saving. This one is unlikely to have been as successful as some of its predecessors. The stock market has a strangely powerful influence on Shanghai, even among those who are not active investors. When it’s down, everyone feels a bit flat. One remedy for this has become quite popular, although not without cost: get a pet. As with everything in Shanghai, fashions have changed. In Mao’s time chickens were good news and everyone had them, whereas dogs were bourgeois and banned. Insects have come and gone, fish are useful for feng shui but not companionship, pigeons have flu, and cats, well, they have run out of mice in the new high-rises. So with Mao long gone and capitalism in the ascendant, the answer is a dog. A lot of people agree. Particularly the army of vets, hairdressers, couturiers and undertakers who cater for them. Shanghai is now full of dogs but strangely you rarely see one on the streets. This is because they are largely confined to their residential communities, within which they are quite prominent. Indeed, neighbours who may not know each other by name will be referred to as Prince’s mother or Rover’s father, in a strange way bringing the highrise community closer together. In return for food and exercise, dogs now provide cheerful companionship for their owners whatever the stock market is doing.
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