There are so many ways to define Shanghai, yet a few popular icons do a lot of the talking. As the international metropolis and a symbol of China’s rising economic power, there’s the Lujiazui (陆家嘴) skyline — with the Oriental Pearl Tower (东方明珠) and high offices of Chinese and multinational corporations. There’s the Maglev train or the high-speed train (高铁) that represent China’s rising technology. Then there’s the ‘Paris of the East’ or ‘East-meets-West’ kind of Shanghai, that harkens back with nostalgia to the 1920s and 30s, with its art deco architecture, and its qipao (旗袍) wearing calendar poster girls art (月份牌), the Haipai (海派), and the west bank of the Bund (外滩). There’s also a more recent ‘old Shanghai’ with the shikumen (石库门) architecture and disappearing areas such as Laoximen (老西门). Then there’s the more modern Shanghai, beautiful lanes full of expensive yoga studios or artisan coffee shops, lined with the London Plane Tree (法国梧桐). Here, you could live just fine without ever integrating or speaking a word of Chinese. Western journalists may live here in ‘authentic’ historical buildings with a rent higher than most people’s wages, and many foreigners who arrived here 20 years ago, lament on Reddit that the city is not what it once was (but I think what has changed most, is them — not the city).
Yet I feel the most honest part of Shanghai is its middle belt; outside the middle ring road, but inside the outer one. This part covers large areas of Yangpu, Baoshan, Jiading, and Minhang. Thirty years ago these districts had steel factories in Baoshan, car factories in Jiading, tobacco and textile factories in Yangpu and Minhang. The factories are mostly gone now, and so are the factory workers — pushed out, replaced by office workers who earn more than they ever did — yet they are still not without their anxieties.
Migrant workers outside of the outer ring road are almost like expats in their own country. They come for work, send money home, do video calls with their kids on long distance, and their home is still somewhere else, in a village or town where they own a house outright, something paid off and rooted, something to return to. The middle-class belt has no such escape. Their kids go to school here. They are registered here. They have rooted their lives in this city in a way they cannot leave. Yet unlike the wealthy downtown, the city is not a playground for them. This middle class is busy paying off their apartment across twenty or thirty years. Whatever is left goes to the car they are saving for, or more likely, the additional tutoring classes that will determine whether their child gets to stay in this middle class or slip below it. They live in between those ring roads; on paper too wealthy and comfortable to complain, but too squeezed to relax.
These xiaoqus here — even if they lack the iconic power and aren’t as pretty as downtown’s historic buildings — to me are really Shanghai. They’re crowded with life; high-rises six to twenty floors tall, in living areas not designed for families to all have one or two cars each. Many lanes are small and full of parked cars, but there are usually tiny squares and openings where people sit outside.
When the sun is out — especially on weekends — households all together will hang out their laundry on these large racks, coloring up the streets, as if in a choreographed activity that is widespread across all of Shanghai. It’s colorful but also disarming, as everyone’s clothes, bed covers, and underwear are visible.
In 2006, when Mission Impossible 3 shot a few scenes in Shanghai with Tom Cruise running over houses and through alleys, the government insisted that the film makers chop off the scenes where clothes hanging from windows were visible. A few years later, in 2010, the World Expo was held in Shanghai, and to improve the appearance of the city, people were encouraged not to spit on the ground or loiter. Meanwhile, the city also wanted to ban people going outside in their pajamas (another typical Shanghai thing), and ban these laundry poles and racks — yet locals (rightfully) argued it should be considered a cultural heritage.
When we lived in an old xiaoqu in Yangpu, on the fourth floor — we would also hang our clothes using these poles. Because so many windows would face towards the little open space in our xiaoqu, while hanging your clothes you would see other neighbours. I love these pastel-colored xiaoqu’s where you know most of your neighbors by the sounds you hear through the walls. How late they go to sleep, how they quarrel, or which instrument their kid plays on Saturday. Hanging out of the window you can softly hear the city’s hum in the background. Eva, once while hanging laundry, didn’t put it back correctly and dropped one of the poles, falling down from the fourth floor onto a BMW. Luckily our poles were bamboo, not metal.
I don’t know if Chinese people will ever grow fond of clothes dryers and widely bring these in their tiny apartments. I hope not, but also it doesn’t matter. Right now, in a city that demolishes and builds fast, you can go out on any sunny day and look up, and know exactly in which city you are.
