A Sunday Stroll in Shanghai
It's the Year of the Dragon, may it be good to us all.
China in the early 1990s was a land of change and opportunity. The contrasts between old and new were everywhere, especially in the larger cities. Infrastructure was often outdated and often failing. You could see signs of coming changes, but you had to look pretty hard.
Our first hotel in Beijing was a learning curve for everyone in the company. Even when it opened a few years after schedule, it was hardly complete and had issues and snagging lists that would have destroyed a Finnish forest if you had tried to print them all out on paper.
On one of my first visits to the hotel, I had an interesting experience in the shower. It was a combined shower/bathtub with one faucet. You turned the faucet to make it work. Left was shower, right was tub. In my room, however, once you had the water flowing, when you returned the faucet to the “off” setting in the middle, you could still hear that the water running. Somewhere.
I mentioned this to our Chief Engineer, an amazingly talented and wonderfully calm and resilient young man from Helsinki. He had been the youngest Chief Engineer in company history when he was hired by our first hotel in Finland. The first time I spoke to him was days before the Helsinki hotel opened. The call started well, but at some point, although he was polite and nice, I felt he wasn’t engaged. I asked if I should call at a time that was better for him.
“Yes, while we’re talking, I see a sprinkler just went off above the reception desk.
“Det skall jag prioritera,” he quietly and calmly said in Swedish.
That was another of his qualities, Mika always had his priorities right! If you’ve ever seen a good old-fashioned sprinkler head explode and how much water it produces in seconds, you’ll understand how remarkable his calmness was in this typhoon-like situation with a literal tsunami flooding the soon-to-be-opened lobby.
Fast forward to China and my mention of the invisible running water in my bathroom. First, he asked a few questions. Did water come out of the tub? Did it flood through the wall? Did it come up the drains? I answered no to all and he again showed me that he had his priorities right.
“Det kan jag inte prioritera,” he said.
The water would run down the pipes, end up in the basement where people would clean up the mess. He would, at some point, get around to it. It just wasn’t a priority.
One of the issues viewed as a possible hindrance to China’s chance of hosting the Olympic Games was that there weren’t enough taxis in Beijing. Almost overnight, thousands of new taxis appeared. Not all of them were of equal, or even any kind of, quality. Sitting in the back of the small, cramped cabs was hazardous to your health. Fumes often funnelled into the car instead of out through the exhaust pipe.
On average every third or fourth trip ended either prematurely or via foot power. I.e. the passengers had to get out and push the taxi to the destination. Of course, once you arrived you still had to pay the fare.
I had the opportunity to fly to Shanghai for a weekend break during a business trip to Beijing. I booked a first-class flight (which in those days cost peanuts compared to economy in Europe) and was awed by the first-class service. The lounge was quiet and serene and I read international papers while waiting for my flight to board. When the flight was called, I proceeded to the gate and got in line. A well-dressed local gentleman asked me in excellent English:
“Didn’t I see you in the first-class lounge?”
“Yes”, I replied.
“No need to stand in line, we have priority.” I followed him as we walked passed the many who were queued up to board. No one complained. When we got to the front of the line, the boarding process was stopped and we were invited on board by a bowing gate staff. At the entrance to the plane, the flight crew handed out gifts to us. I received a genuine leather and relatively high-quality belt with an Air China buckle. It lasted for years.
In Shanghai, I had booked a room in the Sofitel on Nan King Road. What I had failed to learn was that both addresses and hotel names were different in Chinese than in English. Different as in not sounding alike at all. Also, in Shanghai, taxi drivers could not be expected to be prolific in English.
I only realized these two things when I arrived at the front of the line I had waited in for 45 minutes. A guard pointed to the taxi, I got in and asked the driver to take me to the Sofitel on Nan King Road. Whatever I said was Greek to him and whatever he said was Chinese to me. We struggled massively to understand each other. We were holding up the line that zippered together behind us connecting taxis to waiting passengers.
A guard got upset and started yelling in Chinese and in something that might have been English. He made it clear that the taxi driver had to drive and if I didn’t want to be in the taxi I was welcome to go to the back of the line. I didn’t understand a word of what he said, but it was clear this was what he meant.
The taxi driver looked at me with something resembling fear in his eyes. I said, “Go”. He smiled and away we went. It was an interesting ride. Sometimes we were on a freeway. Sometimes we were on nothing more than a narrow lane like a good old-fashioned back alley. Then it was back on the freeway, into heavily trafficked city streets, onto the freeway again, and then down another alley. I was sitting in the back seat silently kicking myself for being “Shanghaied” as soon as I landed.
Taxi drivers try to “Shanghai” you everywhere, I thought to myself. Living in Oslo at the time, if you didn’t know where you were going, the taxi drivers would be sure to take you on the scenic route. Later, when I moved to Copenhagen, every taxi I took home from the airport would insist on taking me on the motorway as soon as they heard my Norwegian accent, rather than the direct, shorter and far less expensive local route.
So, what should I have expected in Shanghai, where the term “Shanghaied” obviously was invented? I should have been better prepared, I thought and a small bruise was forming where I continued to kick myself for my stupidity.
The taxi stopped. I looked out and there it was. No, not the Sofitel. Just some local streets in Shanghai. A policeman was standing on the corner. The taxi driver yelled something at him. The policeman shrugged his shoulders, yelled something back and off we went. More streets and alleys, but decidedly fewer freeways. We were entering something more similar to my perception of a city centre. Suddenly the taxi stopped again. He switched off the meter. I looked out and saw a hotel. Nope, not the Sofitel. The driver didn’t ask me to pay for the fare, but he did say something before he jumped out and went into the hotel after briefly stopping to exchange a few words with another policeman on the street.
A minute or two later he exited the hotel with a big smile on his face. He said something to the policeman and the cop smiled too. The driver jumped into the taxi and said something to me. I didn’t smile because I had no idea what he had said.
It was my turn to smile a few minutes later. We pulled up the driveway to the Sofitel. I was happy, the taxi driver was both happy and relieved, and the doorman was welcoming. I paid the fare and added a small tip. OK, I might have been Shanghaied, but I had arrived and I was happy enough for that.
Upon check-in, I was given a business card with the hotel address in Chinese and a simple map showing its location. On the flip side, the Chinese names of common destinations, like the airport, were written so you could just show the card to a driver and point to your destination.
In my room, there was a folder on transport in the city. It also listed everything in English and Chinese as well as the approximate price. I was shocked when I saw that the suggested price for a cab from the airport to the hotel was far more than what I had paid. Remembering that he had even switched the meter off when he stopped at a hotel, probably to ask directions, I wished I had given the driver a much bigger tip.
The General Manager at the hotel was an engineer by trade, but since it was hard for companies to get people to move to China, he had been offered a GM position thanks to his long tenure in hotels.
One of the first things he noticed, he said, was how lazy the engineering team was and how little they did. Even though they had painters, electrical engineers and other tradesmen on staff, whenever something needed doing properly, it was contracted out. Since he knew a good deal about the subject matter, he started to question the practice and question his team. Why would an outside painter be better than one employed by the hotel? It turned out there was no reason. It was just the way things were done. The laziness his staff showed wasn’t even laziness. It was a lack of pride, a lack of purpose, and a lack of knowing that they could change things on their own.
Once they caught on and started to build their self-esteem up, the need for outside help disappeared and, the GM told me, the quality of work from the “lazy, incompetent, useless staff” he had been told were employed at his hotel was a much higher quality. Through a small bit of empowerment, they had morphed into capable, competent, service-minded hospitality staff. He was immensely proud of them.
“Just wait, China will soon be known for high-quality production”, the German GM said.
Sunday morning in Shanghai was wonderful. The sun was out and although it was between Christmas and New Year’s, it felt like Spring. I went for a walk, from my hotel on Nan King Road down past as many old, historic sites as I could find. At some point, I noticed I was being followed. I could see his reflection in the windows I passed. A shorter man, who looked to be a fair bit older than me and wearing what looked like a Western-style baseball cap. I could feel him getting closer and then all of a sudden he was right beside me.
I looked at him, and raised my pace a bit. He kept up. The cap was a NY Yankees cap.
I stopped.
He stopped.
“Hello” he said in English.
“Hello”
“Where you from?”
“I live in Norway”
“Oh! Where in Norway?”
“Oslo”
“Ohh! Where in Oslo? In the centre?”
“Close enough”
“Ohhhh! You know Trondheimsveien?”
Of all the people in Shanghai, and there were a lot of them even back in the 90s, this man chose to follow me. Not only that, but he knew of a Chinese restaurant a few short blocks from where I lived. He said he had relatives there.
I offered to take his picture or take a greeting back to the restaurant. His smile faded a bit and he said no. If I went there, he said they probably wouldn’t be there, he said. (I expect they were illegal immigrants employed on slave labour contracts.
The man spoke very good English and told me that he learned it while a merchant sailor.
“China is changing,” he said. “It will be very good! I walk around all day talking to tourists to learn English better. We need to communicate better. It will be very good!”
In the short weekend I was there, my trip to Shanghai taught me some valuable lessons.
Not everyone Shanghais you in Shanghai, not even every taxi driver.
Chinese are people just like us. Pride and purpose can drive performance.
China was changing and the Chinese wanted to communicate.
It took about 15 years before I revisited Shanghai. The flight I arrived on landed at a new airport in a new part of the city. The lineup at immigration was huge but moved extremely quickly and efficiently. When I handed my passport to the border control officer, a panel on the counter flipped up and said: “Rate my service”. Below the text were smiley face buttons like the ones you sometimes see in Western airports, but in restrooms instead of at immigration counters.
After immigration, I followed the signs to the maglev train station. I inserted my credit card, a ticket was issued and less than 45 minutes after the wheels of the plane had touched the tarmac at the airport, I was exiting the station and walking toward my hotel.
The next day, I had breakfast with friends at a brand-new, expensive InterContinental Hotel. Looking around the busy breakfast room, I asked my friends if they could guess the most noticeable difference compared to my previous visit to the city.
None of them could.
15 years prior, the breakfast room would have been full of Americans, Australians, Japanese, British, Germans, French and other international visitors. On this occasion, we were the only foreign-looking people in the room. Everyone else in the room looked to be mainland Chinese.
Just like the man in the baseball cap had said many years previously, China was changing. He would have said it was good and that’s how it felt to me too.
Another twelve years have passed since that visit.
China is still changing. The world is changing, but it doesn’t feel as good.
I struggle to comprehend why humans battle for influence over small plots of land here on the single inhabitable planet we have access to.
We place dehumanizing labels on large groups.
“Americans, Chinese, Communists, Conservatives, Jewish, Muslims, Christians”.
What would it look like if our pride was driven not by flags but by our common interest in unselfishly improving the one thing we all have in common?
The planet we call home.
May the Year of the Dragon be good to us all.
Stay safe, Always Care
Written with the clarity of hindsight, the accuracy of a faded memory, and countless creative liberties, 87 Stories is a journal of how my gap year lasted four decades, made me an emigrant, an immigrant and gave me a life I never dreamed of.
In addition to my love for writing, I’m an educator and a consultant with a passion for hotels, hospitality, and keeping people safe during their travels.
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Fascinating that you got to see all of that change over time!