a lesson in construction

workers dormitories

The most peaceful place I have discovered in Shanghai so far has not been the park near ECNU, but a construction site that you can see from above if you look out the window from the top floor of the academic building on campus. A friend and I went to this construction site last Friday as the sun was going down, and I must tell you, it is like being in a completely different world. Behind the white concrete walls that try to keep people out is a jungle of wire, metal, rust and wood. And the strangest thing is that you can't hear any of the traffic that you know is flowing adjacent to the site. It is a nature of its own kind.

Migrant construction workers live in what some call "prefabricated" dorms on the sites. Most are made of metal sheets, and they are reminiscent of trailer homes. The construction site is eerily beautiful at sundown, but it's difficult to imagine what it would be like to live there day after day, waking up to an continuously changing landscape and an ever-growing tangle of scrap metal and garbage. I try to imagine what it would be like to look out from a worker's dormitory and see the highrises lit up in any color you can think of; a bunch of artificial rainbows that light up the night. And then I realize that where I live is just as much a part of Shanghai's skyline as the buildings you see on the postcards. But where I live is hidden behind a concrete wall and a garbage jungle, and where I live is temporary. And it is on these temporary habitats upon which skyscrapers are built.

"If all the people of Shanghai were to gather on the streets, they would have to sit on top of each other."

my bed in my dorm at ECNU

Well, it has been a long while since I have posted on here, and this is the first time I have been really able to connect to the Internet since I arrived. But to be honest, I think it was nice to be disconnected for several days.

My first arrival in Shanghai felt a little surreal, like I was in some sort of a dream-like state. The trip from Shanghai Pudong International Airport to the campus of East China Normal University, where I am staying, can probably represent the transitional Shanghai that I am slowly getting to know. Through the bus windows, I could see highrise buildings trying their best to cut through the thick haze that makes the sky a milky white. When rain, fog, and air pollution mix together, it produces an effect on Shanghai's landscape that is both beautiful and unsettling. The outlines of buildings, windows, doors, frames, and clotheslines stubbornly stick to their actual form, as if the buildings where transformed directly from the architect's draft and on to its upright, three-dimensional position. I think there is something innate in all of us that can know, without having to look very hard, when life is present. I did not have to look very hard through the bus window to see that in those many buildings, almost every room was without furniture, light, a couple, a family. Life did not exist here, at least not yet. 

This, I think, is the image I know I will always look back to when I think about the first time I was introduced to this city. Shanghai is a city in transition; the new is being built and the old is being torn down. Someone here told me that if all of people of Shanghai were to come from the buildings where they live and then gather on the streets, there would not be enough room to fit everyone, and they would have to sit on top of each other. That is a good way to picture a population of 23 million people and counting. Shanghai is growing larger every day, and it is changing in ways both obvious and subtle. It is a Shanghai under continuous construction, and by the end of my four months here, this post probably will not even be relevant anymore. But for now, this city is ruled by cranes.