CHINESE CROWD AROUND WESTERNERS
By Bob Van Leer

  (SHANGHAI, CHINA, Oct. 7, 1991) - We were strolling on the Bund on the Huangpu River waterfront at night and stopped to exchange a few words with a Chinese who spoke a little English.

  As we were stopped there more Chinese stopped and gathered around us, first a few.
Then we were encircled. The circle became four or five people deep with us in the center of it and not able to see in the darkness just how many were around us.

  I was getting a little apprehensive and then I remembered one of the guidebooks on traveling in China mentioning just such a circumstance and said not to feel threatened, the Chinese were just curious. This turned out to be the case.

  The Chinese who spoke English said most of the people around us were not from Shanghai but from areas further away who had come into Shanghai to shop.

  Apparently they had sen few, if any, westerners and were just curious. The effect was of us being on display such as in a zoo.

  There were five of us, Joanne Buckley, National Newspaper Association staff member and out tour leader; Betty and myself; and Paul and Marie Creviere from Wisconsin. Marie said she now could understand the feelings of Elizabeth Taylor who can't take a stroll without being mobbed.

Colonial Relic

  The Bund is a relic of colonialism. It is one of the most famous pieces of real estate in the Far East. Just a few blocks long, it is the site of the former international concessions forced on China in the 19th century by western powers.

  There is a park along the riverfront, a wide boulevard and a row of high-rise buildings dating from the 1920s and 1930s. This was the seat of western power in China.

  The foreign concessions were partially reintroduced after World War II but the whole system was brought to an abrupt halt after the takeover by the Communist Chinese in 1949.
Our hotel is perfectly located, on the Bund at Nanjing Road. Our guide book said Nanjing Street is China's nearest equivalent to New York's Fifth Avenue.

  It is the Peace Hotel, formerly the Cathay Hotel, built by either the French or British in the 1920's.

Walk-in Closet

  It has been upgraded but the hotel is still from another era. Our room is two or three times the size we would expect in a modern hotel. It even has a walk-in closet.

  We arrived in Shanghai today after an hour and 15 minute flight from Osaka, Japan.

  On the way to the Osaka airport a few things attracted our attention. Construction workers doing group exercises before starting work.

  High-rise buildings under construction were closed in with plastic on all floors. Wherever there was a piece of ground more than several city lots it was planted in rice. This is right in the heart of the city.

  We had no customs inspection in Shanghai and were taken directly to our hotel. Shanghai is huge, according to one guidebook it is the fifth largest city in the world with about 13 million population.

Jade Buddah

  A principal means of movement is bicycles. One of our hosts said there are more than 6 million bicycles in the city. After a brief stop at the hotel we were taken to the Jade Buddha Temple. It is famous for two rare statues of Buddha, each carved out of a single piece of white Burmese Jade.

  The most famous statue was brought from Burma by a Chinese monk in 1890, eight years after the temple's construction. Another was donated recently by a wealthy individual. The older Buddah is 1.92 meters high and is a sitting Buddah. A monk watching over the statue would not let us take pictures.

  We were taken to a vegetarian restaurant, the Gongeelin, run by the monks, we were treated to a total of 17 different vegetarian dishes, some quite good.

  I had practiced up on the use of chopsticks before leaving home and this is now of considerable help. My practice method was scattering a handful of peanuts on a table and picking them up one by one with chopsticks and eating them.

  We finished off the evening in the hotel bar listening to a Chinese band playing American jazz. And they were quite good. We were told this was the same band playing when the Chinese communists marched into Shanghai in 1949. They were brought back for a special concert.

  Tomorrow our schedule starts with a boat ride on the Huangpu River.