Plane Trees Are Singing

This is a beautiful day.  It is enough to make you fall back in love with Shanghai.   I’m riding along a westerly section of Beijing Road.  Most buildings have been refurbished.  The sun is out.  Everyone looks smart.  Gardens all look well tended.  And the ubiquitous plane trees are singing out in full bloom.

I had a nap earlier but I’m still tired.  And to my right a group of parents is all milling around, waiting outside a school.  And till I die I will be forever comparing anything I see here with what I saw here when I first arrived, when seemingly everything was a compromise.  Everything was pending.

The cops in Shanghai have more ability to be cops than Beijing’s finest.  This morning I watched a cop pull a motorbike driver over.  Presumably he shouldn’t have been riding on that road.  Beijing cops have to worry too much about precisely who it is they are pulling over.   With less VIPs per square meter in Shanghai, cops can be more assertive.  To be clear, cops in a place line Tiananmen Square aren’t cops .  They are paramilitary and they have can act with impunity to nearly anyone, within a small well-defined area.  But that’s not Beijing.

Tonight I decided I couldn’t have Shanghainese anymore. I needed something different.  I found a place on-line that sounded about right: a Middle Eastern, tapas place with by lake in the park.   Walking distance, open late . . . I made a reservation for late and worked through till I went over.   The food was wretched, everything seemingly sweetened for the tounges of the Shanghainese palate.  It was lovely though to walk around that park at night and consider the old Shanghai Race Club building with its mournful clock face.