The buildings in the modern center of Shanghai are truly impressive by size, shape, and materials used. However, the overwhelming impression fades next to the traditional ancient Chinese architecture and art collected in places like the City Temple of Shanghai and the Yu Garden.
A stone throw away from the city center these places stand in stark contrast to Shanghai's progressive skyline of long straight lines, steel and glass.
At the City Temple, colorful incent sticks, the color red for good luck and gold for financial fortune dominate the picture. People come here to honor their ancestors, and to wish for luck and financial fortune. They light up huge incent sticks, hold them to their head and heart and bow in all for directions of the temple area. The air fills with scent and a haze.
Outside the temple, connecting to the Yu Garden, the old quarter extends. Shops with Chinese art, mainly embroidery, stamp carving, fans in all sizes and colors, and tea are housed in traditional houses lined up along the narrow streets. No cars here! And, if you would succeed in imagining this place without all the tourists you might feel like back in old China.
You have to close your eyes though, for signs like Dairy Queen, Starbucks, McDonalds and KFC (complete with their Chinese characters) hanging from traditional roof tiles might ruin your imagination. And, looking over the three or four floor old buildings you can see the tops of the Shanghai World Financial Center Observatory, the Orient Pearl Tower, and the Jin Mao Building in the far distance. What a perfect visualization of China's stretch between preserving its traditional heart and being a modern player in this globalized world. For now, I guess the compromise is a traditional building housing Dairy Queen. The Shanghai tourist map calls it 'History meets 'new' modern'. Are they saying the Chinese have always been modern, but now it's just a 'new', meaning revived or different' modern?
In my opinion, the great modern buildings are a collection of the latest building technology, architectural skills, building materials and, most importantly, money. Meaning, the most outstanding building has, whoever can afford to pool the resources. The race is about, who can display this resource mobilization best. The Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the Taipei 101 in Taiwan, the World Financial Center in Shanghai. Bigger, higher, more expensive. The problem is, whoever has the resources next, will surpass you and leave your latest state of the art building in the dust within 2 years. What is truly unique, I come to think of more and more, is the 'foundations', literally spoken, which each culture is built upon. Which, I think, is building techniques based on the raw materials the people had available when they started to inhabit a certain place and called it their land. Structures in sync with the natural forces they had to withstand. I'd love to see these basics mixed with modern materials and technologies.
What is truly traditional, at least that is how it appears to me, is the Chinese cuisine. The menu in the restaurant reads quite different from my vegetarian cookbook: stewed bird's nest with pumpkin and honey, braised shark's fin (despite international protests, shark fin is still highly recommended), mixed jellyfish with special sauce, white marinated pig stomach, steamed abalone, quick fried bullfrog with special sauce, and braised pig ears with local greens.
Good thing I'm a vegetarian. At least I have a valid excuse not to have to try any of this. Except for the local greens, which I really like. Call me ignorant, I know.
Luckily, I'm already quite savvy in tackling noodles, rice and vegetables with chopsticks. While I was heaving some of these goodies on my plate, I was corrected though. Chinese do not eat from the plate, but from the small bowl, which food from various serving dishes is transferred into. The plate is for bones and other food trash.
Sharing of dishes is common. Often, someone’s chopsticks dive into the food, pick out a piece or two and dive straight back into the mouth. I was wondering if 'food hygiene' ever becomes an issue. For now, I am happy to know the people on the table I am sharing my food with.
One of my biggest successes in facing the tough culinary challenges of China was to substitute my immense daily coffee intake with green tea, and milk tea with grass jelly.
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