Author’s Note: It is twenty-one years ago this chapter of the Alphabet Cities was fashioned from random electrons. The city in question was Shanghai, a more exotic location than it is now. It is funny to look back across the bridge of age and recall how we traveled this wonderful world. One of the ways to stay alert on a different part of the planet was vigorous exercise with fellow voyagers. Later that same year things would change dramatically on 9/11. But we have run that one together. As we confront another conflict, it might be useful to take a look back and see what concerned us “in between” wars. And a special note to Val, who was our guide…

– Vic

Shanghai Morning

Arose with the alarm clock, space age, at 0545. Still tired. There is Nescafe in little foil pouches. The full moon is still out, though the sky is beginning to tinge with dawn. The jogging party departs at 0730 sharp, with the Consulate people picking us up in the van at 0830. We have two former Infantry officers in the group, one of the Army Ranger flavor and one of Marines.

There is a certain tension and rivalry in these things. I have abandoned ego. I blew my right knee out a couple years ago, result of too much pavement pounding working up for marathons. Running them helped assuage the suspicion that I wasn’t getting any younger. The knee was coming back nicely, thank you very kindly, but I have opted for moderation. My intent is to just go out for ten or fifteen minutes in some random direction and then turn around and come back at a comfortable pace.

But the ritual jog to start the day is part of these delegations, since it may be the only time to see part of the strange city in which you find yourself.

I was prepared. I had 500 milliliters of Nescafe coursing toward my brain and a 500-yuan note tucked in my glove. This is an old lesson hard-learned from jogging overseas. You can get turned around, and the way back turns out to not be. But you can always get a cab, if you have money. And a room key to wave at the driver to get you where you need to be. We left the Hotel lobby and did some cursory stretches. The light was coming up and the morning crisp. Our infantry officers were well clad in GoreTex running suits. I had gloves, a watch cap, thick sweatshirt and jogging shorts. We had wandered to the left of the front door last night, down to the Club Old Times, so this morning we run to the right down Hen Shang Road, toward the Shanghai Library.

We pound down the street constantly looking down, since the pavement is studded with low stanchions to prevent vehicular traffic on the sidewalk. Treacherous. Perhaps a mile down the boulevard we jog under an overpass featuring a street-wide ad for a local cigarette and emerge into a vast plaza where the Fuxing and Hualhai Roads collide.

To our left looms a massive square building whose façade is a bisected glass sphere five stories tall. Diagonally across the ten empty traffic lanes are two giant department stores, gaily colored with banners proclaiming “Merry Christmas” and “Happy New Year Shanghai 2001.” The spirit was festooned all over town- jolly Santas and reindeer-and the locals seemed to be leaving it up for the Chinese New Year next week. We took a couple minutes to drink it all in. It was massive and new and bizarre and optimistic. The dawn was beginning to flood the plaza with orange light. The pollution makes the sky hazy and the heroic geometric shapes of the new skyline emerge slowly as improbably shaped blocks of darker gray.

We took off again, this time at a brisker military pace. I glanced at my watch a few blocks further, lungs beginning to burn a bit, and realized it was only twelve minutes out. That would get me at least my twenty-minute workout, so I bid farewell to the Infantry, who plowed purposefully on into the Shanghai dawn. Crossing back through the Plaza I realized I was passing McDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken shops I do not recall from the way out. Bad sign. I stopped to retrace my steps and find the giant cigarette ad hiding on the other side of a small park. Once more on Hen Sheng Road, with happy feet, and find the hotel.

The Infantry did not. They ran for another ten minutes and got turned around at the same place in the plaza. They forged ahead- “Onward!”- and it took forty-five minutes for them to finally stop and ask some Chinese how to get back. They had to ask several Chinese, since it was mostly Cantonese at this time of the morning. The escort officer who ran along behind them was chagrined, since it would take her longer to get presentable on return to the hotel.

This was a one night stand in China. On return to the hotel, I drank another packet of Nescafe, showered, dressed for success in a dark business suit, packed and bag-dragged it all down to the lobby. I believe in traveling light, but there was no way for it on this trip- we would be in temperate, arctic and tropical climates. The bags went out full and got fuller with each stop. They even began to multiply. It could have been worse. The last time I was in Hanoi, the famous Central Jail (“Hanoi Hilton”) was being torn down, and visitors were presented with bricks as unique souvenirs. Being the junior member on that trip, I wound up carrying a bag containing a major portion of an interior wall. But that is another story.

Downstairs at the Regal International East Asia there was a lavish breakfast buffet of both Chinese and Western delicacies. Rich coffee, eggs, fried cabbage, sausage, bacon, cucumbers, steamed dumplings, hare stew. Some items sampled, most not. After their travail, the Infantry is only minutes late coming down, but they miss the breakfast. We had our bags in the van and waiting for them out front.

The Consulate is a few minutes down the road. It had been a Jardine-Matheson mercantile compound (the prototype for Clavel’s Nobel House) after starting as a Colonial family residence. There is an outside entrance cut into the wall for access to Visa and Consular services. Two People’s Liberation Army Guards flanked it. At the real gate to the compound is a security checkpoint with metal detectors. Within the whitewashed walls was a large rambling home set on a lawn that had to be at least two-acres, bordered by ornamental mulberry trees. Inside, past the glassed-in Marine sentry box, it is old dark wood and stained glass. The reception area featured a large circular table atop a rug with the United States Seal. An oaken staircase led up and around to the business offices on the second floor, and a formal dining room for official functions is through great doors to the left. Except for the Marine in glass, it is all straight out of 1920.

We were scheduled to have two sessions of meetings, one for the senior members of the delegation, and another for us with some Americans from Nanjing. They have been delayed and will not arrive until after lunch. I could dutifully attend a session in which I had no interest, watching PowerPoint Slides on the roles-missions-and-functions of another American Agency in China. Or, I could blow it off and wander around. It would be a pity to travel all the way to Shanghai and have to settle for a couple beers at the Club Old Times, five hours unconscious in a hotel and a twenty-minute jog.

I approached our Senior Staffer and offered up the options. Since we were scheduled to go directly from lunch to the airport, I made the case that someone needed to go shopping for the group. To my delight, the delegation cut me and the Congressional escort loose and we were free in Shanghai for the morning.

We took orders: “Postcards!” “Cute little things!” “Have fun!” As they trudged up the stairs to the conference room we floated back out past the Marine and down into the formal garden. This was better than cutting class in High School. The sun was full up, the sky was hazy-blue and the breeze was fresh and crisp. I had a trench-coat, a broad smile and a pocket full of yuan. I had always wanted to see the Bund close up, and this was the chance of a lifetime. Now, the only thing we had to do was figure out where it was, avoid international incidents, and get back before we lost the group…

What would go wrong?

Copyright 2001 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com