Today, I had to go to Shanghai’s outlying industrial districts to put some items in storage. The only eventful thing that happened dealing with the storage was that I could do everything in English, including signing the contract. I did though get some time to walk around the neighborhood before returning to campus. While I am not wholly sure where in the City I was it was very clear that this area was established under Mao. First, many of the shops and homes had the look of buildings built by workgroups under Mao. From everything I have read, architecture under Mao’s China was a dying art and that is plain to see looking at some of the buildings. The other thing Mao tried to do in Shanghai, that I believe wherever I was had a part in, was turn Shanghai from, as the good Marxists say, a city of feudalists, imperialists, and consumption to a city of production. Factories and other large industrial buildings, like storage centers, were all over the place. While Mao would probably be pleased that there is so much production going on and that many of the factories are relatively new, he might not have been too happy about how they were built. Many of the factories were joint-ventures between a Chinese company and a foreign company. My storage center proudly flew the Bundesflagge und Handelsflagge, the German flag, the factory across the street flew the Stars and Stripes, the American flag right alongside the Five-star Red Flag of the Chinese state. The last interesting thing was that right along the factories was small family farms, a rather strange combo.
1 Comment
Dad
12/16/2016 11:09:51 pm
How did you schlep everything out their? By cab?
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AuthorI am a junior at Juniata College spending a year studying abroad at East China Normal University. Please feel free to join my on my journey to China and beyond. Archives
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