Flat, Chugging Cargo Boats

It’s already Tuesday here. I don’t usually fly into Pudong, Airport.  You can’t cut off the extra time needed to go south.  The westerly direction can be shortened going over the Arctic, en route from New York, but the extra time needed to go south from Beijing to Shanghai cannot be circumvented.  I don’t know this airport routine as well. “Where do you go to meet a DiDi?” It’s down there, where the cabs are and there is no one in line for cabs.  That’s rather different from Hong Qiao.  I already have some cash and soon I’m joking around in Shanghai dialect in the back of a tired, old VW.

It’s warm in Shanghai.  It’s nearly November but you wouldn’t know it when you stepped outside.  I shed my hoodie, and I shed my Pakistani vest and finally, my coat.  None of its needed. This is tee-shirt weather. And it is just the same when you land in the U.S., suddenly you feel like dialing people in China to let them know you’re here.  I could dial them any time without any charge from the U.S. as well.  The same is true in the other direction. There must be something about looking out the window and seeing the familiar buildings of Shanghai that makes me want to dial local people up.   I want to exercise the rights of being here.  

Familiar annoyances.  My laptop can’t find the hotel WiFi, because of some cookie.  The VPN is blocked. The call to bridge Bangalore and Tokyo is on now.  And the person who came to meet me is already downstairs. I put the phone on speaker and let them talk about precisely what makes this technology special. I smell like twenty-two hours ago and I need to feel water on my skin. 

The Meridien once again.  I give my friend a hug and we head up to the 41^st floor and chat by a window.  The tip of Puxi, the bend of the Huangpu and all of Pudong laid out below us.  How is it that the Huangpu after all these years, still has those flat, chugging cargo boats that ply their way along in trains from one side of the Huangpu to the other?  Perhaps they are making their way all the way out to the Yangzi?  They were legion in 1993.  I suspect they were legion in 1933.  And so, despite all this remarkable development the Huangpu remains a working-river, in a way that the Hudson River and the East River have long since ceased to be.

Tuesday, 10/29/19