Blog S

How do we get 'Shanghai' into our language in so many ways? What does it mean to you? I know I used a shanghai catapult as a kid to put small rocks where they shouldn't ever go, stupidity at it's commonest; and I think more than once my fortunes have been shanghaied, and several of my acquaintances have had the same, negative experience, but, having said that, I also spent a fair amount of time in that bizarre grey city, where east really meets west, where I was denied a room in the Shanghai Mansions, my favourite piece of pre WW2 architecture, even though I was brimming with money, as these people have an inherent fear of how to dispose of my body if I should die on their premises.... no kidding; I had to stay instead in a nearby hotel where there were no showers, and one was obliged to go outside, round the block, and up a steel stairway to a strange commercial showerhouse, where you paid for a locker, undressed totally, put the key round your wrist, collected a towel from the indifferent concierge, and stepped into a low concrete room with twenty showers around the walls, the floor ankle deep in soapy water, and, abluting oneself under the agreeably hot deluge, one became aware that every chinese who came into that space was pissing directly into the water as he arrived at his shower space, and with never less than fifteen people showering and pissing, I was amusingly preoccupied with how I could step out of that space and assure myself that the urine of the locals was not between my toes still...... I needed, too, some film for my camera, and calling at the only photographic shop I could find, was only able to buy black and white film, looking remarkably like a Fuji product , but bought his entire stock of film, for a very modest price, and shot the lot in three weeks of walking around this strangely conflicting environment, but, upon reflecting about the place as I departed, chose never to develop that film, but carry it all, undeveloped, in an Xray bag, to this day, and maybe, should the chemicals be handy, I might just push the thousand or so images out one day and hang them in a flash Chinese exhibition hall to remind them of where they were not so long ago. Because I watched the Shanghai Grand Prix, with a typhoon looming over the new millennium architecture, in the reclaimed swamp of precious wetlands, and wondered if it could be any wetter than the Japanese one, which should have been stopped, and marveled that the enormous run of grandstands was completely packed with what must be entirely new fans for this weirdest of sports, and what do they get out of seeing the embodiment of 21st Century technology, when so little of it actually comes out of the Asian environment. Sure, Bridgestone is Japanese, Honda and Toyota are there, and a pc board or two will have semiconductors and resistors sourced in Asia, but, when you see how the masses of these people get about on a busy day in their corner of the world, and the immense gap between the man with a Mercedes ant the millions with a bicycle, and how they are so excited to be in those grandstands watching motorcars representing the pinnacle of performance and attainment, then, well, you do the math, we are all shangaied. Nuff said.