Shanghai Revisited

We spent a long weekend in Shanghai, our first trip back as a family since we left in 2002.

This is a picture of a freighter on the Huangpu River with a load of logs. We could smell the fresh timber.

The picture was taken from the Bund, the city's famous waterfront promenade, looking toward Pudong, the new part of the city that has sprouted in the past fifteen years. Dong means east in Chinese, so Pudong means 'east of the Huangpu.'

The tallest building on the skyline - taller than the Flash Gordon-esque Pearl Tower in the foreground, though the perspective doesn't show it - is the Shanghai World Financial Center, built by the Japanese developer, Minoru Mori. I met him and the architect at the groundbreaking for the building in 1997. The cutout in the building was originally designed as a circle, but the Chinese objected because they felt it looked too much like Japan's flag flying over Shanghai. They eventually settled on a square and the building is now popularly known as the bottle-opener.

We stayed at the Portman Ritz Carlton Hotel, which was the center of our universe when we lived in Shanghai. My office was in the complex and we were friends with the general manager of the hotel. He and his family lived in the hotel and the boys were friends with his kids, so they treated the hotel as their friends' house. The boys also attended a preschool there.

This is a view of the 8th floor podium from our room in the hotel. We used to play hide and seek there.

On the side is a playground, which we used to take the boys to. It always made me nervous because there is a low wall topped by a hedge, on the other side of which there is an 8 story drop.

We went down to the playground. It has new equipment but the setting has not changed.

And the same swings are there that the boys played on when they were little. I remember pushing them on these years ago.

The view from the hotel hasn't changed much. There are more tall buildings, but the Stalinist exhibition center is still there. Our old apartment building is in the distance at the upper right.

Huaihai Gongyu, our apartment building, from our room at the Portman Ritz Carlton. It's the beige building with a white center.

Our former housekeeper, Xiao Sun, threw a dinner for us with friends of hers who remember the boys.

The boys with Xiao Sun.

The next day, Xiao Sun went with us to visit some of our old haunts. We visited Huaihai Gongyu, which has been heavily renovated and renamed The Gascogne, its original name.

The boys used to sit on these steps in the morning while waiting for Sky's school bus to arrive.

We talked our way into our old apartment, now lived in by a French Canadian family. The apartment has been reconfigured. Here Sky is standing in what is now the living room, but was the master bedroom when we lived there.

This is a picture of Sky standing in the same place, years ago.

We left by the back, which hasn't changed much.

The neighborhood around the building is the same.

We went down the back stairwell.

Later, I took a walk through the back alleys, alone. Not much has changed.

There are still quite a few small businesses along the back streets. This woman was making you bing, or oil cakes.

Here, Xiao Sun is walking with True in Xiangyang Gongyuan, a park near where we lived. The old Russian Orthodox church in the background is just outside the park. It was being used as a brokerage house when we lived in Shanghai.

Men still gather in the park to play xiang qi, elephant chess in English, or wei qi, known in the West by its Japanese name, Go. The men here are playing wei qi (pronounced way-chee).

Most of the rides at Xiangyang Gongyuan had changed, but this rather strange one was still there.

We went to have donuts at Mister Donut, a Japanese chain that opened a branch nearby while we were living in Shanghai.

Sky and True, going into Mister Donut.

Mister Donut!

The boys loved this place when they were little. It was a mark of Shanghai's progress when it opened.

We went to the Garden Hotel. This is a picture of the boys in front of the hotel's fountain. We took pictures of them at this fountain not long before we left Shanghai.

The boys ran around a bit on the lawn. I used to make up games for them here just to make them run because our lives were so apartment bound.

True, on the back stairs at the Garden Hotel. We used to play on the second floor after eating at the Rose Coffee Shop in the hotel.

I remember these stairs when this was the Jinjiang Club in the 1980s. At that time, it hadn't changed since it was the French club, or Cercle Sportif, in the 1940s. The billiard tables were still there as was the marble swimming pool - both gone now.

We went to eat at the Rose Coffee Shop, a weekend tradition in the old days.

It hadn't changed much.

The boys ordered corn soup, as they always did when they were little. It was ridiculously expensive back then and the soup at that time was served in shallow bowls. The boys would inevitably want a second bowl, which they rarely finished.

True, eating his corn soup.

That evening, we ate at a good Shanghainese restaurant in Xin Tian Di, a redevelopment in the French Concession that was done while we were living in Shanghiai. It was a wonderful meal.

Sky, using the table cloth as a napkin at the restaurant in Xin Tian Di. Restaurants in China don't often give you napkins.

The next morning, we went for a stroll on the Bund and visited the Peace Hotel, which has been renovated, but is largely intact.

We went to the Phoenix and Dragon room on the 8th floor. Sky and I used to have lunch there now and then when he was little and it is where we had our last meal in Shanghai before leaving in 2002. I remember going there when I was in my 20s and Shanghai was still emerging from the Cultural Revolution.

True, looking out at the Bund from the Peace Hotel's Phoenix and Dragon room.

Anna, in the Phoenix and Dragon room.

After a walk along the promenade, we crossed the street to go for lunch at a friend's restaurant, M on the Bund.

We had lunch with old friends. This picture was taken on the restaurant's terrace. We spent a lot of time at the restaurant in the old days.

Sky, goofing around on the terrace.

Anna on the terrace. The Peace Hotel is the building with the green pyramid roof in the distance behind her.

This picture was taken as we were leaving the building that houses M on the Bund.

We went down the street to see the reconstructed Long Bar in the old Shanghai Club, now a Waldorf Astoria. The bar was famous in the 30s and 40s but was torn out in the 80s to make way for China's first KFC. The rest of the club was a ghostly time capsule when we lived in Shanghai, little changed since the Communists arrived.

I remember the building when it served as the Seaman's Club for the occasional merchant marine. It served ice cream and soft drinks and had a dusty cabinet of Communist-era publications. Not many sailors went there.

Here, the boys' old friend, Tram, is pretending to mix drinks behind the bar.

We went to see the house that we lived in briefly on Jiangguo Xi Lu. It was being renovated, but had not changed a lot.

We went up to see the boys' old bedroom.

True, reminiscing about the balcony of the boys' bedroom at the Jiangguo Xi Lu house.

Anna at the Jiangguo Xi Lu house.

This is a picture of her standing in the same spot, nine years earlier.