May Day in Shanghai

Here's an old joke, favourable to Mao:

It's October 1 and Chairman Mao, leader of the Chinese Communist Party, is making a speech in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on the occasion of the anniversary of the Revolution.

Mao talks for one hour, two hours, two and half hours. Suddenly, the lights in Great Hall go off. Mao exhorts the crowd, "Everyone in Great Hall raise left hands!"

Everybody obediently raises their left hands. The lights come back on. Mao continues his speech. Three hours, three and half hours.

Again the lights go out. Again Mao exhorts the crowd, "Everyone in Gerat Hall raise right hands!"

Everybody obediently raises their right hands. The lights come back on. Mao finishes his speech to a thunderous ovation. But a voice rises from a little guy at the back of the hall:

"Chairman Mao, Chairman Mao, wonderful speech! Another victory for the thought of Mao Tse Tung! But, Chairman Mao, how did you get the lights to come back on?"

Mao replies, "Ancient Chinese proverb: many hands make light work!"

* * *

We had purposely arranged to be in Shanghai on April 30 to see how the Chinese celebrate May 1st, which is International Workers' Day.

May Day marks the anniversary of the call by the International Working Man's Association, led by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, for a worldwide demonstration on May 1, 1891, in support of the demand for the eight hour workday. Up to then, workers had been slaving under horrible conditions in the mines and factories of Europe and North America for long, long hours (10,12, 14 hours per day, six days a week) and low, low pay.

In Chicago, Illinois, USA, a big demonstration was called for May 1, 1891, to promote the eight hour workday. A conflict took place on the picket line that day at the local plant of McCormick Reaper, a manufaccturuer of agricultural machinery, at which scabs tried to cross the picket line. Two strikers were shot by police(?) and killed.

A few days later a demonstration was called in Haymarket Square to protest the killings. At

the square, police fired into the crowd killing three more people. Then they went about arresting trade union activists and blaming them for setting off a bomb to which the police allegedly were responding. Of the arrested trade unionists, two were hanged and three more were jailed for long periods. That event is now recognized in history as the Haymarket Massacre.

Since then, May Day has been traditionally marked by workers round the world by strikes and demonstrations. In the former Soviet Union, it was a national holiday marked by huge military parades in Red Square. May Day is also a statutory holiday in many European and some Latin American countries, such as Mexico.

In Canada and the USA, federal governments hold Labour Day statutory holidays on the first Monday in September deliberately to separate that event from the traditionally more militant

May Days of Europe and Latin America.

On May Day, 2011, in Shanghai, workers are getting a stat holiday. In fact, in this sociaist country, up to last year, they got a stat holiday lasting a full six says. In other words, May Week! This year, the holiday has been shortened to three days.

Still not bad, better than what we workers get back in Canada. I wouldn'tmind three full days off work with pay, thank you very much! How about you?

There was another reason we arrived in Shanghai on the day before May Day. Now that the standard of living for Chinese workers is increasing and they have more money in their pockets, they like to travel and see things in their own country on national holidays. So, on May 1, tens of millions of Chinese take to the roads, railroads, and buses to get away. We did not want to be caught in the crush.

Instead, we were caught in the crush of millions of Chinese coming to Shanghai to take in the sights of the big city on May Day.

Shanghai was nothing like what I expected. Oh, I had read about the great strides the Chinese had made in modernizing their economy and becoming a world leader in many fields. But nothing prepared me for the scale of Shanghai.

Shanghai is now one of the great cities of the world. It has a population of 15 million permanent residents and another estimated 15 million migrant workers. These are formerly agricultural workers from the countryside attracted by the city lights and the prospect of a higher standard of living in the big city. Shanghai is ultra-modern, flashy, and the third most important finacial centre of the world after London and New York. It is the financial capital of Asia, a big difference from the colonial period in which it had the worst slums, opium dens, brothels, and sweatshops of Asia. In those days, it was a place where you might be "shanghaied" into doing something you didn't want to. Today, it is a place where tens of millions want to live and visit.

We have purchased tickets on the Big Bus Tour, which is a self-guided city tour on which you can jump on and off a number of double-decker buses at various points of interest. It costs about $50 Cdn. per person and includes an evening cruise on the Huangpu River to view the Shanghai skyline plus free admissions to the Jade Temple and the Ginmao Tower and an audio presentation as you ride the bus. A little pricey, but still a decent value for your money. And the ticket to ride is good for two full days.

We make our way on foot from the Le Tour youth hostel to the Jing'an Temple Metro stop. Vehicular traffic is congested here even on this holiday. The streets are full of cars and buses of every make, including a lot of luxury models and SUV's, not to mention motorcycles, scooters, mopeds, bicycles, three wheeled vehciles. The sidewalks (I kid you not!) are also busy with bicycles, mopeds, and motorcycles. You literally have to dodge them as you walk along if you don't want to be listed among the large number of traffic fatalities per day.

At the Jinq'an Temple, which is a huge, stunningly-restored golden pagoda, there is a Metro station. But there is also a shopping centre over the Metro with many glitzy shops. Today, there is also an exhibition of personal health appliances (humidifiers and messagers) in the open air part of the mall, where two big whimsical bronze statues of fat businessmen in bowler hats, long coats, and briefcases and umbrellas are cavorting together.

We get on what in Chinese is literally called the "underground." The subway system is more modern and much more extensive than what they have in Toronto. Languages in use in the Metro: Chinese and English (but not much of the latter). It is packed today with nicely dressed Chinese going in every direction. There are many family groups with only one very healthy-looking child, dressed in their May Day best. Women here prefer high heels and like to look western. The subway cars are air-conditioned. Good thing, too! It is hot and muggy outside.

At People's Square, there are modern glass and steel skyscrpers which are more interesting than the ones at home because of their novel geometric shapes, colours, and styles. There are also lower buildings that probaly house government offies because hundreds of red national flags adorn the buildings. Long red banners with Chinese characters on them hang from what we guess are the museums. There is an enormous amount of vehicular and pedestrian traffic and the double decker bus moves very slowly through the noise and clouds of desiel exhaust. We are under a yellow sky where the sun tries occasionally to pierce the smog.

There is no demonstration, parade, or official May Day celebration today because we are told that may Day is not a traditional Chinese holiday. Instead, on July 1, the day on which the Chinese Communist Party was founded here in Shanghai in 1921, there are big celebrations. The building in which that first congress was held is now a museum.

Our sightseeing bus takes us to the Bund. This is a curving stretch of about a kilometre along the Huangpu River where majestic buildings remain from the colonial period. They are mostly former banks, gentlemen's clubs, and stock exchanges that belonged to the British, French and other colonial powers. There are wide sidewalks full of peole. Rivers of humanity

cross the streets at intersections on the green light to get to the promenade on the riverside.

Here on a raised conrete walkway are views of the new suburb of Pudong on the other side of the river. There, amazing, tall, ultra-modern skyscrapers dominate the skyline which simply dwarf anything on the Bund. One of them is a bulbous tower similar in shape to Toronto's CN Tower, only bigger. You have to be patient and prepared to jostle a bit to make it to the railing for a photo op in front of the Pudong Skyline because everyone else has their cellphone or digital camera in hand with the same idea. There is a never-ending dance of people changing places to take each other's pictures.

Once you make it to the raling, you get the full effect of the magnificent view: the towers of Pudong, the ships on the river, the wind off the sea, the planes in the sky going to and from Shanghai's two international airports. It may be May Day, but the traffic on the river never stops. A steady stream of barges is heading downriver with cargoes of sand, presumably to enlage the new port of Pudong. Going up and down river are also a lot of ocean-going vessels laden with cargo.

Up the promenade is a large monument to Heroes of the Revolution. It includes a long semi-circular wall below promenade level on which there are very good bas reliefs in the style of socialist realism of various events in the history of the Chinese revolution, we surmise, since there are no subtitles in English.hile the monument is kept in very good condition, it appears to be from an earlier period and, except for the big statue of Cahirman mao nearby, bears no relationship with the other more modern public art around here or the ultramodern architecture of the new buildings. Unlike the throngs along the railing, only small groups of people are to be seen here photogaphing each other in front of the reliefs and getting harangued by the security guard with a whistle whenever they try to climb onto the reliefs.

Out of the blue, we become the objects of photography ourselves as the groups of Chinese reeatedly ask to pose with us in front of the reliefs. At first, we think it;s because I look so silly to them in my shorts and baseball cap. (Chinese men do not normally wear hats or shorts.) But later, we discover that it's because of the fascination with all things western that we are sought for photographs. In restaurants, we are always seated by the front window or the front door as a kind of advertisement that the establishment meets western standards. When Siobhan goes into a store, Chinese girls follow her in to see what the store might have to offer a westerner. Then the girls want to check out what items Siobhan is interested in. This kind of thing happens repeatedly, everywhere we go.

There is a photo shoot nearby. A fake bride and groom, photogaphers, lighting specialists all slowly working the old buildings of the Bund or the skyline of Pudong into the poses. The original British Consulate grounds are open to visit, that piece of land the British forced the Manchu king (queen?) to cede after the Opium War, which became the beachhead for the colonial occupation of China for over a century. It is a beautiful old building surrounded by gardens.

Next door is a posh hotel with both Prada and Chanel stores taking up most of the grounde floor. Next door to that is a big temple of a bank, the Bank of China. Surprisingly, it is open on May Day. Lucky for us since Vonnie and I need badly to change some money and couldn't find any branch banks open. Inside, we meet a group of tourists from New Zealand fresh off their cruise ship.

Time to move on. We could cross to Pudong through the underwater pedestrian tunnel for a rather substantial fee by local standards ( and, in fact, shop our way under to the other side, we have been told.) But we do have tickets to ride the Big Bus and so we are driven across to Pudong via the Nanpu Bridge and right up to the Ginmao Tower. This tower, which was the tallest building in Asia until the Pearl of the Orient went up, has an observation deck on the 88th floor where there are a number of shops selling souvenirs. From there, the smog obscures a panaromic view of Shanghai but gives a grand view of Pudong, an enormous brand new city built in the last 20 over marshland. Clearly, this stunning new development was designed using SIM CITY game software straight from Brendan's computer. In front of the tower are the spectacular office building/skysrapers of the financial district. They come in many intriguing shapes and colours. Our favourite is the Bottle Opener, the big one with a enormous rectangular opening near its summit. Rubbing shoulders with the financial centre skyscrapers are the rows of high end residential towers, all in the same style and with the same coloured rooves. Next to them are developments of lower end residential builings, clumps of identical buildings of different styles, as far away as you can see. The river separating Pudong from old Shanghai and is full of maritime traffic. To the northeast are busy docks, tank farms, and industrial sites.

The plan, according to the audio transcript on the Big Bus, is to double the size of Pudong in the next 20 years.

When we reboard the Big Bus, we head to what is advertised as "old" Shanghai. It is a stunning shopping area of old pagoda buildings. In this area, there are at least two, maybe three, Starbucks, and one Hagendaaz, among the various Chinese stores. It is hard to walk here because the narrow streets are so thick with people, including dozens of Chinese tour groups. There is a one walkway over a big pond full of fat koy and a traditional Chinese garden for which there is an admission fee. We also visit a market similar in size to the clothing and textile market, but mainly for dry goods. It may be May Day but business is booming in Old Shanghai.

But we don't have time. We want to do the evening cruise along the Huangpu River. After many frustrating wrong turns, we just make the boat just in time. On shore, it was hot and humid. Now, it is cold in the wind on the top deck. Here, a Dutch tourist takes the photo of Siobhan and me that is, I think, on the home page of our blog.

Whoa! The buildings of the Bund light up tastefully, showing off their classial detail. Then, the skyscapers of Pudong light up. Our mouths drop open as it turns out that the entire sides of the buildings facing the river and Shanghai are gigantic screens on which are shown ads and pictures and graphics in many very lively colours and patterns, mostly to promote products and services. Then, the Pearl of the Orient lights up with rows of coloured lights and splashes of colour. It's a light show of enormous proportions for the thick crowds gathered on the promenade of the Bund, who, in turn, provide a never-ending strobe light-like spectacle with flashes from their ubiquitous cell phones and digital cameras.

Toronto, Montreal, and New York can't hold a candle to this.

Siobhan wants to see the Cool Docks nearby, a restored harbourfront area meant to attract night life. It was pretty quiet when we arrive for dinner at an Indian restaurant. Then it's back to the Bund where the crowds are thick as ever and on to the Big Bus back to People's Square, at a snails' pace through heavy night-time traffic. There is a "perfume fair" at People's Square and a "real estate fair" nearby.

It's been a long May Day in Shanghai for us. But, except for the red flags and banners downtown (which, for all we know, may have been put up months ago) there seems to be more interest today in shopping than in socialism.