How much is changing ... how little I want it

Gnnaarr…nggg…kapow!….fuggoff are some of the typical sounds associated with this Irish South African as he clambers on or off the subway trains in Shanghai. The Chinese don’t queue, they just blithely surge on and off at the same time, pushing and shoving to get a seat.

Hoooaaahhh…there is something surreal about the serenity with which all the discourtesy is managed: bodies slowly chucked-about clothing in a drying machine. A pretty young lass sails into me like an overgrown pink and blue handkerchief and kind of bounce-floats straight off me with a benign acceptance, lips barely pursing in understated annoyance. No moaning or yelling her head off.

Raaarrghhh….I shoulder aside the men as they try to push past me onto the coach. They are never aggressive, just mildly surprised: their slanting eyes – like the muddy marks left by twirling ice-skates – crinkling with defeat. I sometimes fantasise I am a Joost van der Westhuizen as I take on four or five Chinamen trying to push me aside in a vasbyt ruck and maul instead of just waiting for me to get off first, you teardrop-eyed Philistines. Hooooaaaah, a bit like Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman.

Man, I once saw Joost near the touchline with three or four bloody kiwis on his back and that superhero was still moving forward and nearly made it to the touchline.

“Ja,” I can hear Joost ask, “but do those chinamen weigh nearly a hundred kilos each?”
No they don’t, more like about sixty or so. Which is one reason why Joost van der Westhuizen got to be the only Springbok to play in the last three World Cups.

I weigh about 110 kilos, have a shaven head and a somewhat rotund figure. The image of a SA bowling ball thundering through the thwacked-about ching-chong skittles on the subways readily comes to mind. My wife, Marion, is two bricks and a ticky tall and I will say, “Hold on, chookie,” and she stands behind me and clutches my belt as I barge our way off the train. Just picture my little chook with her curly, chestnut cloud of hair bobbing, barely visible behind me in the fray, protected by my body.

Yislaaik my china, but we can only bitch and hak about subways and queuing in Long Bar, my usual watering hole on Nan Jing Xi Road, near where I live. James, a lanky chap from England hates the Chinese manners bitterly. He is thoroughly London British in his tweed jackets as he sips on a beer and lights a cigarette with a trembling hand as he describes the last onslaught he just endured on the way to Long Bar.

Ooooffff…I can just see him charging off the subway coaches for queen, country and Boddington’s beer (not necessarily in that order of priority) against that Chinese rag-tag army of rowdy galoots, grinding their ankles and insteps as best as he can, brolly poking bellies, his tweed-coated elbows thumping chests. All that’s missing is a hard bowler hat for body-butting.

The reason for James’s enraged reaction is that the British, of course, are particularly strict about queuing and everyday courtesies.

Not long ago, just a few weeks in fact, I stood ready to get off the subway as it trundled into People’s Square station, which is notorious for being a huge interchange. Waterfalls of people bang into each other as one deluge tries to get on while the other deluge simultaneously tries to get off. I tilted my chin left then right, stretching and cracking my neck muscles in anticipation of the coming combat as I waited for the doors to hiss open.

My jaw nearly dropped. Before me stood two rows of subdued Chinese standing in the orderly way people do when we were in London and Paris. They truly looked like chastened Chinese dolls of all ages, with a mournful, tails-behind-their-legs look on their faces. They now apparently can face fines if they don’t conduct themselves in an orderly manner.

You see, like Beijing at the Olympics, Shanghai is getting herself sorted for the World Trade Expo in 2010.

Pink- or red-coated subway doormen roam the subways with whistles and can fine offenders. Why a Barbie-doll colour like pink is chosen to represent authority is best known to Chairman Mao and the ghosts of the Monkey King.

But I actually found myself disappointed at the sudden arrival of mundane civilisation. I know we often bitch about the subway culture and the lack of courtesy in supermarkets and so forth, but I suddenly realised I was going to miss a culture that – by and large – cannot understand queuing. I didn’t realise until that day that I actually secretly enjoyed being swept into the whirlpool of a different culture every time I got off and on subways. There didn’t seem to be any rules, unless it’s Chaos theory.

At least the escalators and stairs out of the subway remain a great challenge. The Chinese cannot do the London underground thing of standing on the left on the escalator so others can hurry past on the right. It’s every chinaman and his cousin for himself. The pink- and red-coats were once instructed to train Chinese to stand to the left, but eventually gave up in despair as it was like pissing against a hurricane.

Yep, Shanghai is cleaning up her act so that Westerners don’t have to sample previously unknown quirks of the culture.

It’s actually sad! What is also sad is what is starting to disappear are some of the little trinket shops and breakfast-on-wheels carts with frying pans and hotpots (see below) where passers-by can grab a delicious omelette thingy called jidanbin, eggcake, or baozi, dumplings, on their way to work. Women saunter across the road in their pyjamas to get jidanbin or xiaolongbao, then saunter back to their little trinket stores where you can buy – oh – anything from bathroom taps and Chinese versions of Father Christmas dolls (even available in July) to fragrant buckets of flowers and stationery – “this is the best notepad you have ever run into” boasts one notebook). They are absolutely essential to the scenery.

I shudder, as I heard the complaints about these shops and peddlers being removed in Beijing before the Olympics so foreigners could come to a McDonalised city that had precious little left of the authentic Chinese flavour. Who wants to go all the way to a city that is virtually a clone of where you come from? Where McDonalds and KFC are starting to litter nearly every street?

How much is changing. How little I want it.

mgbreakfastpics.doc mgbreakfastpics.doc mgbreakfastpics.doc mgbreakfastpics.doc