Exploring Shanghai and Hangzhou
By Lin Acacio-Flores
Publisher:Philippine Daily Inquirer - Publication Date: 08-06-2007

Our office family of 29 lawyers in the Platon, Martinez, Flores, San Pedro, Leaño Law Firm goes on an annual trip abroad, and the married ones dutifully bringing their spouses along. This year, 43 of us flew from the unusually hot and humid Manila summer to China’s cool spring in Shanghai and Hangzhou.

In Shanghai, we boarded the Maglev train, which practically flies just above the ground and arrives at destination in seven minutes, where it would take a car ride 45 minutes without traffic. We were told that only Germany has a similar train. Minda Santiago, who arranges and accompanies all our trips, took my arm and sighed, long and deep.
“You tired?” I asked.

“I’m sad,” she said, “that our country doesn’t have all these.” She wasn’t just referring to the train, she meant the whole of Shanghai, and I had to agree with her. Except for the toilets, I thought, making a mental memo to tell her about it later.
The Pudong district, all of 522 sq km, was simple farmland only 15 years ago. Now it’s a well-planned metropolis. From the 360-degree view afforded by the glass-walled second level of the Pearl of the Oriental TV Tower, we saw the Nanpu and Yangpu bridges arching over the Huángpu River.

Skyscrapers (“sky scriptures” said Shirley our Chinese guide) pointed to the sky. The elevated Inner Ring Road curved in loose whorls above straight highways. In between were generous spans of green, parks of trees and brilliant flowers. All these built in the last 15 years... if only we could do as well.

Not that everything old was torn down to shape the image that Shanghai is building - as a city reforming and opening to the world as a major hub of business and commerce. Foreign colonizers built stately buildings in classic European styles in the 1840s; these have been preserved to remind the Chinese of the time foreigners dominated the country.
We strolled along the wide avenue of the Waitan Bund in the sunshine, classic edifices on our right, the river on our left, flowers and benches here and there, and it seemed as though we were in Europe. The only reminder that we were in Shanghai was the enormous red streamer with Chinese calligraphy running down the whole length of one majestic building.
On a leisurely boat ride around the Huángpu River one breezy evening, we viewed the shore and saw all the buildings outlined with strategically placed lights.

Dr Sun’s wife

Dr Sun Yat Sen is familiar to us as the man who triggered the Chinese Revolution. We were brought to the residence of his wife, Soong Ching Ling. The story of our guide was that Dr. Sun Yat-Sen had a first wife and would have taken Soong Ching Ling as a mistress. But the strong-willed lady refused to be a concubine, insisting that he divorce his first wife and then marry her. She became an activist, a leader of the People’s Republic of China.

Her house is simple and unassuming. The receiving and dining rooms where Dr Sun Yat-Sen received foreign diplomats are small, comparable to rooms in a Filipino middle-class home. The beige armchairs are in the upholstered western style; the dark, carved side tables and coffee table as well as the unpretentious (but priceless) scrolls and blue-and-white vases are Chinese. The dining table sits only eight at the most.

Hangzhou

We traveled for two and a half hours out of Shanghai to Hangzhou. Our buses left the densely populated scenes of business buildings and crowded residential zones. Now farmlands lined either side of a highway dotted now and then with farmhouses two or three stories high. Some had a sort of round turret on top. Shirley said that was “where the family keeps their dead”.

The island at the centre of the highway was filled with flowers all the way, bright, well-cared-for beds of yellow and red.
Hangzhou’s streets were filled with people, buses and cars. Flowers lined the curbs. We were brought to the Temple of Yu Fei, general and national hero of China. In 1961, this compound of traditional Chinese buildings and gardens was declared a national protected monument by the State Council. In it are the tombs of Yu Fei and his son. On one plaque are Chinese characters with Yu Fei’s motto: Be loyal to the Motherland. We jostled with the crowds of local tourists, on vacation for one week to celebrate Labor Day, which they also mark on May 1.

Hangzhou grows the best Chinese tea on terraced hillside farms. The tea pickers are women choosing only the tops with three tiny leaves from among the thickly branching bushes. This is women’s workbecause men are not that patient, said the guide. But it is the men who toast the leaves by hand in huge hot pans like our kawa.

With many humorous asides, a girl told us how to brew tea. The best is Dragon Welltea, very green in colour, fragrant and smooth-leaved. We were told of its many virtues as an antioxidant and cure-all. Of course each one of us came away with several cans. The girl packed each can herself, very tightly (I am the best tea-packer, she said), tamping the contents down. Rather expensive, that tea—300 yuan, about P2,100 (US$39), for a can of about eight ounces.

We took a boat cruise along the West Lake, viewing a peaceful unspoiled green shore. In the distance rose the multi-roofed Six Harmony Pagoda. Our visit to the Flower Harbor with its dense trees, peaked-roof porches from which one could watch goldfish (carp) as large as mother bangus, was cut short by rain.

Toilet training

Oh yes, the toilet incident. In women’s public toilets, almost all cubicles have the toilet bowl built into the tile floor, its edges flush with the floor. In other words, females squat to use them. There may be only one western toilet in an aisle of 12 toilets, so there’s usually a long queue of foreign women in front of the western toilet.

My jet-setter friend, Bee Martinez, taught me how to use the Chinese toilet when we were in Beijing two years ago. On the way to Hangzhou, I decided to avoid the waiting line and do it the Chinese way. Well, I did, but while rising, my legs threatened to do a ballet split because the floor was wet and slippery. Fortunately (with a desperate prayer), I got my old knees to work and stood up. From here on, Bee, don’t persuade me to try it again.

But I forgot all about that over lunch in Hangzhou, arguably the best meal we had in China, said Doris San Pedro, my gourmet friend. Among other dishes, we had chicken steamed in clay, wrapped in cellophane and unwrapped before us, its aromatic steam a prelude to its heavenly flavour. “Beggars’ chicken,” said someone. What a misnomer, I thought.

All our lunches and dinners were multi-course lauriats; I must have gained five pounds. Woe is me, I thought, as Lina Platon and I browsed through the pretty dresses in the Shanghai department stores along Nanjing road, the major shopping street. Almost all Shanghainese women are so slim. And here I am, a medium in the Philippines, an XXL in Shanghai.

Wow, what a very nice story.