Saturday, June 14, 2014

Back Home Along Beijing Road




Had lunch with a view of the Bund today.  Went out, as one must on to the roof of the Nissin Building and stared up stream and downstream.  I walked over and considered the Union Building next door  and it’s distinctive tower so remarkably close.  Inclusion there with the arc of twentieth century river front buildings only possible from a perch like this where it feels lofty till you gaze across the river.   Staring across to Pudong was once an empty gaze, the Huangpu was filled with sputtering little craft with rudimentary hulls and outboard motors. 



I just spent a bit of time on line looking to refresh my memory and Jiang Zimin’s Oriental Pearl TV Tower was newly under construction in Lujiazui that first year that I was here, twenty years ago.  Looking on line there are the pictures from right before that time, when the bow in the river is a blank canvas.  I think like most people then, I was underwhelmed with the aesthetics of the Oriental Pearl TV Tower.  It looked like a gaudy space tower going up and it has not improved with time.

It seems like every other tower that has gone higher and higher since that time 登高望远,[1] has been a hit or a miss.  I like the look of the Jinmao tower.  It feels like it belongs in New York, which is as a high a compliment that I can pay.  Let’s swap it for the dull “Freedom Tower.”  The Shanghai World Financial Center is certainly taller, which is the base criteria.  And it might have been beautiful.  My understanding of the story was as follows; a Japanese architect designed the SWFC building.  A circle motif was planned as the defining flourish for the summit.  Mid-build it was decided that this circle was actually a subliminal symbol of Japanese dominance.  With critical, patriotic eye, the innocent circle was clearly a stand in for Japanese rising sun lording over Shanghai.  Abruptly the design was altered to utilize the polygon that is rather awkwardly positioned there now.

The yet-to-be-completed Shanghai Tower certainly is yet again taller than everything, anywhere, save the Burj Al Kalifa in Dubai.  And so far, the shape seems rather appealing.  It appears to spin and twist in a strange alluring way.  And certainly the view from the top (which I’ve blogged about Russian daredevils having considered a few month’s back) is certain to be more interesting then the Burj itself, which, alas, largely looks down at a lot of high end apartments and desert.  The view from the Empire State Building down on to the dense mid-town build, for example, is much more memorable.

I decided I would walk home from this fabulous, brunch meeting and that to do so, I’d walk along the Bund, take a left and stroll up Beijing Road, East which is where my residence is located.  The first thing you run into half a block on from the Bund is the Peninsula Hotel Complex.  It sure looked like a good place to make use of the facilities.  And indeed, they have nice facilities.  But once I’d gotten past the Peninsula Hotel, and Xizang Road, Beijing Road becomes a remarkable paste-in of the Shanghai that I used to know. 



Fortunately, Beijing Road for the stretch I walked today is oddly plebeian given the proximity it has to the rest of the city’s build out.   I walked for a kilometer or two mercifully denied even one posh place.  The effect is like a long row of open garages welcoming you in to so many small family storage rooms.  This place sells twine.  That one has spark plugs. It’s not clear to me why these have been allowed to remain here in this incandescently hot rents to pay.

Writing this now I have some Jackson Do Pandeiro and his swinging, upbeat Forro, sound on; “Casaca De Couro”  from the 1975 album “Brilhantes.”  I’d knows his work, but hadn’t really known him.  But at the time of my walk I had the big Ed Mota album “Aystelum,” which I’ve written about on this page before brightening up my afternoon.  And it will now always be fused in my mind, I think, with the store fronts of Beijing Road.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                




[1] dēnggāowàngyuǎn:  to stand tall and see far (idiom); taking the long and broad view / acute foresight

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