Shanghai

The second installment of posts of catching up from being without internet while in Shanghai and Beijing. Scroll down to see the one on Xi'an.

Anyway. Shanghai.
We stayed at a really expensive hotel here; the rooms were very nice, and we were up on the twenty third floor. This provided a very nice view, though things were rather cloudy and foggy while we were in Shanghai, and the air is always a bit hazy because of the smog.
The city is big. Like, really really big. It covers an area at least five times as that of downtown Philly, and is covered in skyscrapers for that area as well (the surrounding suburbs only add to this area). It is also a fairly new area; many of the buildings are only fifteen years old or less. The city went through a boom of building in the early nineties when the Pu Dong area was made into a Special Economic Zone, which allowed foreign trade and money to pour into the area. The city has an absurd ammount of skyscapers. Rather than having one main 'downtown' area with the concentration of skyscrapers, there are blocks of skyscrapers throughout the city.

The city sheer size of the city and reocurrance of the same theme (namely, lots of skyscrapers and upscale clothing shops) made the city feel somewhat homogeneous at times. I know this is at least partly due to the relatively short time we had to explore a very huge city. Still, it made the city less endearing to me than Beijing is becoming for me.

Anyway, some fun sights:
We went and saw Dr. Sun Yat-sen's house. It was fun, it has lots of interesting stuff. The funniest part was the end, where it had a tv playing a short video tape on Dr. Sun's life and funeral, with extremely dramatic music. It was obvious that at this point every Chinese person was supposed to be weeping openly with revolutionary pride.
We also went to the house where Zhou Enlai lived and which acted as the Chinese Commmunist Party diplomatic headquarters during its negotiations with the GMD during the 1920s until 1940s. Like Dr. Sun's house, it was in the French foreign concession; the foreign concessions and international zones were often used by political dissidents (as well as outright criminals) as refuges from the Chinese government and police, as China had no sovereignty in these areas (they couldn't even move police or troops through without the permission of the administrating foreign municipal governments).

Zhou Enlai was one of the early and important member of the CCP. He was its head for a brief period during the early 30s, but was replaced by Mao Zedong in the mid 30s during the Long March. He remained extremely important to the party. He went to college in France and was very well educated and well spoken, not to mention very classy, and as such became the most important diplomat for the CCP and later the People's Republic of China. He was the only top party member to not have been seriously criticized or disgraced in some way (perhaps one could claim this distinction for Mao too; though Mao was eclipsed at times- Zhou never lost his position, probably largely because he was so indispensible in his role in mediating the CCP's negotiations with the outside role). He also never got involved too deeply in the inner politics or philosophical bickerings of the party. He is certainly the CCP leader who most interests me; I admire him a lot because, completely independent of any consideration of political philosophy, he was undeniably a man who devoted his entire life to the cause he believed in and the service of his country, and asked for very little in return.

Both Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong died in 1976 (in that order). When Mao died, his body was preserved and put into a huge mausoleum (or, as Prof. Pong calls it, a MAOsoleum). His death brought about a lot of public unease and nervousness; he was the central figure in Chinese politics for over twenty five years. Appropriately, only a few days after his death an extremely strong earthquake hit china and completely leveled one city and caused damage in several others.
Zhou Enlai was not put in any mausoleums. He was quietly cremated, as were most CCP members (the CCP had realized China's population issue and most agreed to be cremated, to avoid having the dead crowd out the living). What did happen, however, was very remarkable for a Chinese political figure: For days after his death, there were mass public mournings. People crowded in squares to mourn his death. It got so bad in some instances the police were called in to clean up the momentos left for him in efforts to calm people down. No other top party member has been mourned in this fashion.
When Mao died, China trembled. When Zhou died, China wept.

OK, off to do some homework and collect my thoughts before writing more.