Shanghai Rhythms               

By Yihong Ni

	Besides observing the poverty that dwells alongside the affluence in Shanghai, I also noticed an excessive desire for money (what else is new?).  The business of making money is an intense game that creates corruption and greed but at the same time, more jobs.  Salespeople use a combination of flattery, intimidation, and dishonesty to sell products.  Walk into a store and prepare to be greeted with gleaming eyes and white smiles.  Eager to catch the potential customer, they position the bait.  "I'll give you the best deal."  "This is genuine, I guarantee you."  "Would I lie to you?"  Once the customer hands over the money, the customer is demoted from a juicy target to a speck of dust.  The brash message that "money makes the person" grows increasingly loud and boisterous, and drowns out the mellow tones of sincerity and decency.  Who will drive that Mercedes...and then crash it recklessly and walk away?

	Even middle and high school students feel the imminent pressures of the job market.  Intense competition exists at the high school level due to limited spots in colleges and technical schools.  Students feel enormous pressure to achieve high marks on college entrance exams.  My cousins head to school before seven in the morning and come home for dinner around six in the evening.  After school and on weekends, they take extra classes to prepare for exams.  Summer recess begins in late June and classes resume in mid July.  All the hard work in high school culminates in taking the college entrance exams.  Students must declare all the colleges to which they plan to apply along with intended majors when they take these exams.  Many students feel that declaring majors before entering college is inflexible, but they also want to be assured of obtaining a decent job after college.  

	Shanghai at once harvests the benefits and struggles with the problems of rapid economic growth.  Shanghai is a paradoxical city.  The sweet fragrance of gardenias weaves through the putrid odor of damp alleys.  Old sidewalk tiles run next to new streets.  Trees of hundreds of years shade old city quarters.  Large, flashy billboards of Coca Cola, KFC, and Calvin Klein line pedestrian overpasses and crown the top of office buildings.  The city is of wood and steel, beauty and shabbiness, kindness and rudeness, intimacy and indfference, compassion and greed, tradition and transience.

	In the evening twilight, an old woman sits on the sidewalk and calls softly, "Buy some gardenias here.  Fifty cents a piece."  My grandma used to buy gardenias for my mom and aunts to wear when they were young.  This time, my mom and aunts secure a clip of silky gardenias onto my shirt.  I breathe in the fresh fragrance as we walk toward the bus that would take us home.  As daylight dims, traffic continues in the street.  The chatter of voices continues to rise and fall.  A corner fruit stand continues to glow with brilliant colors of ripe litchis, plums, watermelons, bananas, and oranges.  

	There is an ancient Chinese proverb that says a leaf never fall far from its tree, and so my heart returns to Shanghai.  As time passes, people come and leave.  Wealth flows in and out.  Buildings rise and fall.  Money, power, and trends come and go quickly and have no inherent value.  However, the kindness and support of family and friends are everlastingly precious.  The young grow old, and the old learn to be wise and teach the young.  Shanghai is deeply rooted in China's enduring history and heritage.  The people of China share a common language with many variations and a rich culture with many nationalities and live by the peaceful values of family, friendship, and scholarship.  Having endured numerous vicissitudes, the people of China are resilient in spirit.

	So if you visit Shanghai, it might be cool to see the tall buildings and shopping plazas and the fake replicas of brand names, but please remember to experience some of Shanghai's more common and unpretentious rhythms.  You might even find common, or at least similar, rhythms between Shanghai and your own hometown.  People and places are all connected somehow.  The thinnest strand of silk once linked two continents, and so the smallest similarities link so many different people when they listen to and participate in the rhythms of Shanghai and despite differences.  Through time and space, I chase the lightning bugs of my memory, bits and pieces of light, each holding a piece of the past reflecting a part of the future that will be formed by our actions.  I chase these lightning bugs home to Shanghai and hope their light will sustain.  (part 2 of 2)