Old Shanghai and its Temples

The Apple Store at Hong Kong Plaza

"Chinatown"

The oldest history of Shanghai, dating from the Ming Dynasty, is buried in "Chinatown", which begins at the edge of the vast luxury stores that put Fifth Avenue, even the Champs Elysées, to shame. I became quite familiar with Hong Kong Plaza, which lights up at night in mutating blues and greens and purples like the Olympic site (perhaps financed by the same Hong Kong zillionaire), because it contained another Apple Store--my oasis, my home away from home. To the strains of Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkle I would join hundreds of non-customers using the Apple computers. Once I found myself sitting next to an Italian from Perugia, working in Shanghai for several years. "What are you doing here?" he blurted out. "Don't you know these people are crazy? Just try to get a roll of toilet paper, just try!" ("Expat fever," said Jacques.) But the security guards manage an English word, "Welcome" and even when I set off an alarm by unplugging a computer, the staff was all smiles and apologies. Steve Jobs, his body barely cold, was watching over us.

From the very high end shopping, with exquisite ladies' rooms where uniformed young ladies tried to instruct me how to use a sit-down toilet, the old Avenue Joffre from the French Concession, now Huaihai Road, begins to feature lavish Chinese-style modern malls with vast jewelry stores selling gold and diamonds guarded by enormous jade dragons and gold Buddhas--next door to shiny Kentucky Fried Chicken or MacDonalds.

We left the street to enter a labyrinth of alleyways selling jade carvings and seals made to order along with an infinite variety of tourist trinkets, and found Hu Xing Ting Pavilion and its pond surrounding the oldest tea house in Shanghai, that radiates zigzag bridges thronging with tourists of the East and West. Large muscular goldfish flocked in hordes to the surface while Chinese men from the countryside stared at them fixedly, unable to stop obsessing about their proximity. Turtles struggled up an embankment to get some sun.

Hu Xing Ting Tea House...

In the tea house, serene and unassuming, Chinese customers cracked sunflower seeds all over the exquisite little tables and a young man in a soiled silk shirt took our order and immediate payment. We drank jasmine and chrysanthemum teas and the boy brought us rice cakes and tiny tofu pillows and quails' eggs for Jacques, while we watched the tourists below on the murky lively pond with beautifully feathered geese.

....Shanghai's oldest tea house

Then we entered the Yuyuan Garden, a tiny intricate folly of rocks and streams and Ming (and later Qing) pavillions for reverie, nonetheless logjammed with tourists. Yuyuan Garden had been built during the reign of Ming Emperor Jiajing (1559) as the private garden of Pan Yunduan, an administration commisioner of Sichuan Province. Chinese gardens are noted for their coy labyrinths, fantastically grotesque rocks and ancient trees, which we loved despite the fact that every nook was occupied by a tourist. We wandered and bargained for a pair for jade earrings in a hall of young girls who told me I was beautiful and that Jacques loved me so much. Then we wound our way out, toward the Temple of the City God.

Yuyuan Garden

Shanghai City God Temple is an important Taoist temple built during the Ming Dynasty Yongle period. (Emperor Yongle, 1360-1424, had built the Forbidden City.) Only ten of its original halls still exist. It is dedicated to God Cheng Huang Qiu Yubo (1297-1373) who had been "during his lifetime a Mongol Yuan Dynasty Jinshi, Ming Dynasty Imperial Academy bachelor"--his wife is also prayed to--and was designated a god after he died, "in charge of urban security, people's lives and wealth, health and safety."

The City God

It was a fabulous Toaist menagerie of thunder and war gods, and always the gods of wealth. I actually prostrated myself before the god of literature, a giant colorful blue-robed laquered gentlemen with a gleam in his eye, unlike the sad-faced one in Beijing, and the god of wealth, jovial and conspiratorial. Chic young people who looked like supermodels held long bunches of burning incense above their heads and bowed from standing, down to the ground. Chinese snapped photos (a taboo we had been told) of the gods and then prayed. A woman had just purchased a porcelain god of wealth and set it up before each god she prayed to. There were the 60-year cycle gods, too - but labeled only in Chinese characters. I winked at the one I thought was the god of 1951 (my birth year), in plain green robes.

Prostrating before the God of Literature

Then we emerged from the smokey circles and onto "old" streets selling enormous amounts of everything - in a 10yuan (1 dollar) store almost every temple accessory or revered symbol could be found. Poorer streets were hanging with laundry in front of shallow dwellings, dirty and poor inside, while outside were stands of food, produce, used Chinaware, and a woman washing her hair in the street.

In a Buddhist convent, a few unhappy-looking nuns wore gray robes and shaved heads, while a small crowd of cheerful neighbors hung out, drinking glasses of tea. Along the street women folded gold papers for the temple in the shape of crowns.

Taoist priest ceremony

City God worshippers

Further on was the sparkling new construction of the Taoist Temple of the White Cloud, where a god of thunder greeted us. Inside the courtyard was the usual casual neighborhood gathering, but inside the temple an orchestra of cymbals and strings and drums played celebratory music. About 20 young priests in gleaming embrowdered robes chanted and circled the temple, looking equally bored and curious about our presence, some whose eyes twinkled and some looking threatened as they proceeded with their ceremony. The sides of the temple had clay mountains of Taoist gods, eyes bulging, melodramatic, some sleeping, some yawning into their big bellies.

Taoist disciples

Afterwards we bought snacks from a young man who had learned French in Gabon, and bargained for a silk tai chi shirt (down to 8 dollars). We walked through Huaihai Park where songbirds hung in cages with enameled posts for their food and water--the saddest part of the day, except for the sight of the fields of demolition, munching away at the old Chinese city.

old Chinatown