From my Tingzijian

Shopping for our third annual 4th of July cookout here in the lane, we decided that we needed a cleaver to whack apart the ribs. We found a glass caseful in Metro, a huge German box store that would remind Americans of Costco (and boy has it changed since our first days here when frogs jumped out of a pool begging us to liberate them from the food section — freaked me out so much I didn’t go back for four years).

Anyhow, the cleaver.  German, Chinese, what have you, in quite a range of prices.

“We’ll take that one,” I said in Chinese, indicating to the clerk to unlock the case.

“I need your hu jiao,” she replied.

“I get so frustrated with this language!” I said to my husband. “All the syllables sound the same. It sounded like she just asked me for my passport!”

And then she pointed to the sign.

Huh? So that if there is a stabbing somewhere during Expo, the police can check the records and see which foreigner recently bought a cleaver and track down the murderer? Admittedly, there have been some awful stabbings lately in China, widely reported. But aren’t there cleavers in every household? Back when I took a Chinese cooking class, the chef showed me how to whack ginger into cubes with a cleaver and then slice –no more careful peeling with a paring knife.

Anyhow, all ended well. Although I didn’t have my passport with me, in the back of my wallet I found a crumpled photocopy. Got the cleaver and the ribs were scrumptious.

Still, what’s with the hassles to give us a false sense of security here? Last week, at the entrance to Expo, security made a friend of mine apply the lipstick she was carrying in her purse — lest it be what, cyanide coated? Concealing a dangerous weapon?  C’mon — lipstick? It’s starting to feel like some other countries I know.

I’ve probably been avoiding writing about Expo because I’m still trying to figure out what I think. After all the hype, it arrived on May 1.  We decided to wait a bit to go, until there were reports about what is worthwhile. But with low turnout in the first month, and nonetheless reports of extremely long lines at some pavilions — several hours to ride a cable lift in the Switzerland pavilion, more to play mini-golf in the Malaysia pavilion — I wondered if it was just a huge mistake.

I’ve been a couple of times now and I’m still wondering about the whole thing.

The site spans both sides of the Huangpu River, and we have spent most of it in the Urban Best Practices Area on the Puxi side, which is smaller and less crowded. This is what interests me anyhow — green technology, ecosystems, what the future portends. Indeed, the city of Chengdu has an exhibition of its Living Water Garden, which demonstrates how water plants can help clean water in industrial situations. But it wasn’t clear to me that anybody was taking in anything beyond the fact that they were in a pretty garden. Who and what is an Expo for, anyhow?

There were also some humorous sights, even if unintentional. Like the placement of the oil pavilion adjacent to a low-carbon exhibition.

I’ve heard that the GM pavilion is interesting, and perhaps it is, but facing a several-hour wait, we weren’t that interested after all. So instead, figuring it was as close as we will ever get, we wandered into a Saudi pavilion that shows how they put all those people making the hajj into a city of tents that are all air-conditioned!

And then we spent quite a while in two pavilions that seem to serve as bookends. The first, called in English the “Footprint Pavilion,” held out promise of discussing our carbon footprint. But then we walked into a room of gorgeous cave murals from western China, then to another room where I found myself standing on the Acropolis; in a central area, I found myself surrounded by people strolling around in togas as I stood in the middle of the Roman forum. History, I get it. Mankind’s footprint.

But upstairs, doubt intruded. What the heck is the gem wall of gloom?Turns out it’s a model of a prototype of a walled city, in which the wall mechanically rises and falls, buildings rise and are leveled again, and shrubs burst into tall palm trees and subside again. Why? Who can tell.

I wandered past a fake David in Florence, peeked into Amsterdam, and filed past films of Mohenjodaro and bits of Tenochtitlan, trying to get my bearings. And then I arrived in Troy. I know it was Troy not only because it said so, but because of the enormous horse with a hinged door that periodically squeaked open, revealing hidden soldiers brandishing their swords behind the heads of the oblivious crowd passing through. Okay, so the Trojan horse is not exactly historical, but mythological. I didn’t get really fussy until I saw what the archaeologists are uncovering:  medieval shields and a crown bearing a cross?

Done with history, or a fantasy of history, we moved onto the Future Pavilion. At first I felt nervous as I saw models of perfectly sterile buildings and films in which deer frolic happily among children playing harmoniously.(I wish I had counted the number of times we saw the word “harmonious.” No, really, I don’t.) By the time I got to the Control Tower, a pulsing tower of light, I felt sure I was trapped in a scary Star Trek episode. You read for yourself:
As my son said, what about all the issues we face to get to this perfect world? (Oops, would that include political issues? Whoa, now.) My plan was to wait for Captain James Kirk to arrive and save me.

But meantime, we contemplated getting an ice cream, but then decided the line’s too long.

I can’t believe it’s here. One more day until Expo!

From the moment we arrived in Shanghai in 2004, we heard about it. First the Beijing Olympics in ‘08, then Expo in Shanghai in 2010. We never expected to see it, as we planned to be about 4 years gone by this point. It’s been a long slow crescendo of planning, frenetic in the last few months.

Today I thought I’d go down to Nanjing Dong Lu to check on a “how many days until” marker I’d passed from time to time. 1 天！The crowd — all 20 million Shanghainese out enjoying their 5-day holiday — was electric.Well, except maybe this guy:The bank’s crawlers are in the spiritif perhaps a tad grandiose.Tonight I’m sitting on my balcony listening to the opening ceremony. The sky first turned bright red, then bright green as fireworks exploded simultaneously.

Pinch me. I’m still here.

The other day my husband told me where I could find him –  at one of our favorite DVD stores, in our old neighborhood, where we get our fix of movies and American TV shows for 7-10 RMB per disc. Even if you don’t find a film you want to watch, it’s fun to read the plot summaries on the packaging. For example, on the back of It’s Complicated, I read:

“Love is a very complex about love, divorce, as well as all the films and their related. The story revolves around three children, runs a bakery Barbara Christmas, life is very wishful Jane car eer start. Although she had been divorced ten years, it has been well maintained and ex-Jack relationship. However, they left town to attend his son’s graduation ceremony, everything became complicated, they are quietly sprouting their new love of…. Jack and a young beauty remarriage, while Jane was in love with his kitchen renovations architect Adam.”

But I’m digressing again.  On this day, when I walked into Big Movie, no husband. I began to get irritated. And then I slowed down and looked around. All the movies on the shelves were Asian. And the place seemed to have shrunk. Sadly, Big Movie had become Small Movie.

“Where are all the western DVDs?” I asked a young lady. Without a word, she took two steps to the other end of the foreshortened aisle and pulled on a cabinet, which swung out to reveal a door.And behind it, down the rest of the aisle, was my husband, perusing boxed sets of 24, The Wire, Weeds, and (I’m sorry to say) Sex in the City. I thought maybe I had wandered back in time onto the set of The Sting or something.

Apparently the word has gone out: No fake goods for the next six months. Shanghai is going to be soooo squeaky clean for Expo. At least in the front part of the stores.

Coming back to Shanghai from sunny California was shaping up as a downer, what with the endless winter here — 42 degrees F (5 C) and snow on Wednesday, long underwear definitely required in the drafty damp buildings.

But then I read my email and found an invitation to an unveiling of an old pai lou (fancy gate at the entrance to an important street). What the heck, jet lag has me up ridiculously early anyhow, so yesterday morning I headed over to the ceremony at the site of an old Jesuit orphanage in Xujiahui. Apparently artisans at the orphanage created the gate and sent it to San Francisco for the 1915 Exposition there. And now, after an odyssey through Europe in the hands of private collectors, it was coming home to Shanghai in time for the Expo here.

Not too surprisingly, there was a welcome band outside.Inside — because yes, the gate turned out to be inside — there were the predictable speeches by local officials,and of course there were pretty girls in uniform on hand, nervously awaiting their cue

to pass around flowers.Then, just when I was beginning to doze, hands were placed on the crystal ball, and I think maybe abracadabra was chantedbecause with a pouf! and a flood of light, the curtain fell, gold flakes swirled, and the pai lou stood revealed in all its elegance.

Indeed, the detail of the carving is stunning.

And it’s amazing that the local district government tracked down the pai lou and spent a year restoring and reassembling it.

Congratulations, Shanghai.

Here is a terrific article by my friend Anna Greenspan. While I’ve been giving you the microcosm of  preparations for Expo 2010, telling you what’s going on in my lane, she covers the whole city. Read it at http://www.theglobalist.com/.

Just to remind you, here’s our lane’s current status in the Beautification for Expo program:

morning greeting from my garden gate

view of our gate (on the right , dark gate between gray pillars) from across lane

what I had to step across to get out

Lots of sledge-hammering, digging, piling of rubble by the lane entrance, and re-filling of holes.

We’ve been a bit confused about what’s going on, because we haven’t seen the pile of  steel pipes at the entrance to the lane diminish.

But now we know what happens to the pile of rubble. Coming home late the other night, we came across this scene:

front end loader loading rubble onto pickup truck

And then ghostly figures appeared to sweep up the street.Yesterday I asked one of the workers how long before they finish. After he said “tonight,” (meaning, I assume, that the section in front of my gate would be passable then), he said “ten days.” They are really pouring on the oil now. After all, it’s only about six weeks now until Expo starts.

There was a hubbub at the entrance to our lane this week.Apparently you could go up to a desk and talk to someone about how Better City, Better Life (for Expo — see the Haibo?) is coming to you.In our house, we already knew. The 6:45 am whomp, whomp, whomp of the sledgehammers has been going on steady for several days now.

from our front gate

And it would have been hard to miss the crash when the truck dumped its load of bricks.

As anybody who’s been reading this blog for more than a year knows, at our last lane house, we lived through months of picking our way through stinky trenches while the sewers were replaced. (See The Big Dig and other entries circa November 2008.) What are the odds that we would have the same experience at our new house?

As it turns out, pretty high. This is going on in lanes all over Shanghai now at a frantic pace, readying for Expo’s opening on May 1. Why? As somebody told me when I asked what the desks and signs were all about, “They want to impress the foreigners who are coming to Expo.”

The jackhammers are coming soon, as I’m told they’re going to re-pave the whole lane once they finish with the sewers. Could it be worse?

Yeah, that could be our car parked at the end of the lane.  (The owner must have missed the meeting.)

I heard the news last week that the creator of Gumby passed away at the age of 88. So it seems fitting that, even before he died and perhaps unbeknownst to him, he is being memorialized on a grand scale here in Shanghai.

Several years ago, we barely paid attention when Shanghai unveiled the new mascot for the then-distant World Expo 2010. Looks like Gumby, my sons yawned. But Haibo, as the blue near-knockoff creature is known here, has since become ubiquitous.  Gumbys greet you at the airport, adorn the Expo ads pasted everywhere promising Better City, Better Life, cuddle up as soft toys and dangle on the ends of keychains, and are carved into topiaries at traffic intersections.

My favorite rendition is in a park along a major boulevard in Gubei. How about this  multi-cultural festival of  Gumbys frolicking under the already-bizarre (permanent) flowerpot sculpture!

And I guess that would be the American Gumby/Haibo under the ten-gallon hat!

Art Clokey must be smiling.