ON A VISIT TO SHANGHAI





There was a time when every second person in China was called either Wong or Chang. Today, almost every second person one encounters wears the name tag: Trainee, as if the next generation has been given another common surname. It is the ubiquitous symbol of China’s determination to learn everything about everything, to gain experience quickly so that it can not only compete with the rest of the world but in time overtake it.


That fervour manifests itself in unlikely settings. A seven year old only child in Shanghai recites his English homework - ‘Mother’ / ‘Father’ - to himself in the internet café managed by his mother from her front parlour.


“How much for the internet?”


The boy responds by penciling laboriously: "Sixty hours for 10 yuan."


His mother immediately corrects him: "No! Sixty hours for 5 yuan." It is this spirit of commercial savvy and swift decision-making that has always distinguished China’s commercial capital – Shanghai – from its mandarin rival Beijing. For centuries, Shanghai has been China’s front parlour, the portal through which it received and traded goods and services on behalf of the mainland. It was never able though to rise above being provincial and down-trodden, a despondent imperial after-thought, while its rival Hong Kong - Britain's Gibraltar in the Far East - flaunted itself as a showpiece of high-rise capitalism. [EXTRACT]





Publsihed in DAWN, 30 Dec. 2006.