Did you see the date on this one? I left it in there from the morning 22 years ago when the below account was first poked into the digital stream about a place called “China.” It was an attempt to capture a fresh recollection of a visit to one of those exotic places. This one happened to be about the city of Shanghai in what we used to call “Mainland China,” since there used to be several of them.

Hong Kong, still oddly British, was the first of several we had a chance to see, visiting on giant ships of war. I wanted those memories to float down another generation, and through family friends assigned to the soon-to-be-transferred Crown Colony, ensured our older boy got a chance to see the old arrangement before it was gone.

Over the years, we also got to Taiwan, with a stop or two in Beijing when we broke out of the old paradigm of “Free” and “Un-free” Chinas. We teeter now on the notion that there is just one of them that seeks to include us as a satrap in a belt-and-road network that girdles a globe.

Back then, one of the Salts was turning his service in the Pacific to a continuing account of the developments on the western side of the vast Pacific. He called it “Red Star Rising” back then. I can’t recall the specific date for the change to that title, but now it is a past-tense title: “Red Star Risen.”

Here is the way she struck us nearly a generation ago: She lay there below me, enigmatic, her curves and contours lit by the full-silver moon. She was lit in a way that highlighted her charms. For a woman of her age she carried it well. It showed an odd combination of her flesh, and estate jewelry and the flashy brass of her new geometric jewelry. By her subtle shape she showed an elegance of an age we do not now know, though she intentionally showed it. She was an ancient tease, and she knew it. She had been all things to all people in her time, ravished but triumphant against a host of lovers. Tender or abusive as they had been, they were gone and she remained. She was triumphant.

She was Shanghai. I know what I had expected. Something from a Cultural Revolution World of Suzy Wong, a down-at-the-heels version of the Wanchai district of Hong Kong, circa 1980. Instead I was vaulted across the century. Tonight we had stopped in the Pudong New Area and took a high speed elevator halfway up the flank of the third tallest building in the world.

We strolled along corridors of marble and glass and looked north across the Huangpu River to the The Bund, the three-mile stretch of riverfront that was the heart of the European concession. The solid European buildings along the river’s edge had been designed to show the dominance and eternity of the Western Empires. Now the Chinese kept them as a token of a stolen moment, a time when the Middle Kingdom did not rule all before it. As I looked at the decorative lights which outlined the stately colonial buildings I thought of Cho En-Lai, Mao’s great lieutenant from the Long March and later the Foreign Minister of the People’s Republic:

“What do you think of the impact of the French Revolution, Mr. Secretary?” asked the Western press. Cho pulled enigmatically on a Salem menthol filter cigarette. “Too soon to tell,” he said. There was not an ironic bone in his body.

We had arrived just an hour before at the dramatic new Pudong International airport miles away from the city center. It looked a lot like Dulles, save that the arches were not so swept, and the roof seemed more permanently grounded. It was stainless and gleaming and empty. Then we were in a Consulate van, exhausted. Since we left the Embassy in Tokyo I had been discussing- at high decibels- the product of our day’s discussions in Japan with the senior member of the Delegation. I was frustrated, and jet-lagged, and in the stuffy van I fell asleep, finally out of conversation. When I awoke, I was in the New China.

The Delegation was dazed by this stop, too tired and too disoriented to appreciate that the Hyatt was part of the New China, the reality, and the Bund was just part of a historical preservation effort. When we escaped from the Tower, we crossed under the river and made our way to the Regal International East Asian Hotel. It was, too, a marvelous place of rich wood and buffed marble floors. It was thoroughly Western in approach, but if you looked at it askance, you could just catch a not-quite-western proportion, a nuance that says this is something else altogether. It was nearly 10:00pm, but we have but one night in China and damn the fatigue. We agree to meet in the lobby as soon as our bags were delivered to our rooms…..

Where we all waited in the dark as we waited for the luggage cart to hopefully re-unite us with our skivvies and sundries. The door worked on a card-swipe lock. I entered my room, and could tell in the dimness that it was a vast room featuring a lavishly proportioned double bed. And that was all I could discover, since none of the lights worked. I tried all the switches, searched for the master switch, and was growing increasingly frustrated when I found a card-reader near the door. I found if I swiped my room key through the reader, the lights would briefly flash into illumination. It only took me a few minutes to figure out that if I wanted more permanent light, the room key needed to be left inserted.

Later, I discovered I was not the only one who waited in the dark. We decided it was an excellent device to enforce conservation on the profligate Westerners. And it also would be an excellent tool for Security to know when they could come up and search your bags. But that is another story.

Amy-the-Consulate-Escort walked us down Kangping Road, a tree-lined boulevard with bustling all-night barbershops and clubs. The patterned sidewalk, whitewashed walls and the regular trees are familiar to me somehow.

“Hey, Amy” I said “This reminds me of Hanoi.”

She turned to look at me. “Well, it should. This is part of the old French Concession.”

“Oh, I get it.” I said with wonder. “That’s the connection. It wasn’t Vietnam I was seeing and this isn’t China. It is all France. In fact, wasn’t this legally French soil?”

“I can’t talk for the Vietnamese,” said Amy. “But trust me, the Chinese didn’t concede a damn thing.”

There were late model cars everywhere and they willingly stopped for nothing and no one. The boulevard is treacherous for the pedestrian. To keep the cars from driving up on the curb, pairs of shin-high metal stanchions connected by chains have been placed every hundred feet or so. It is treacherous for a group wandering along, looking around and taking.

It is cool but not cold. Chinese kids in dark leather garb were strolling the streets. The cars will slow much less stop. We take our lives in our hands and cross the street at the “Real Love” Disco and 24-hour bowling alley. There is a twelve-foot tall nine-pin blowing array out front.

Dazed amid the confusion, we have to choose between the Bourbon Street, a large Ante-bellum New Orleans-style building, and the Club Old Times. We decide that old times in Shanghai may have more authenticity, and inside the club there is dark wood, tiny tables, and sepia photos of pre-revolution China on the walls. We find a table wedged in the back where we drink Tsing Dao and Tiger beers and eat fried chicken morsels complete with tiny bones and strange puffy fried potato crisps. In the background play the hot hits of the 70s-80s-90s, and not the ones from Nanjing Province. There are few Westerners present and nobody seems to mind.

Later, in the privacy and comfort of my vast bed, I watch CNN flicker across the room. It is past midnight, and we have agreed to rally in the lobby for a brisk jog at 0600. I curse myself for a fool and drift off into sleep as someone talks about Alan Greenspan and what economic numbers really mean…

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