{"id":978,"date":"2012-05-15T10:23:48","date_gmt":"2012-05-15T15:23:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/?p=978"},"modified":"2025-05-30T11:56:38","modified_gmt":"2025-05-30T16:56:38","slug":"the-new-and-the-old-in-shanghai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/2012\/05\/15\/the-new-and-the-old-in-shanghai\/","title":{"rendered":"The New and the Old in Shanghai"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had almost started by saying we were touring the \u201cold,\u201d which is the Jade Buddha temple\u2014built in 1928\u2014when I realized we\u2019d visited the Yu Yuan \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a>(the Yu garden) which dates from the 16th<\/sup> century, and spent almost two hours in the Shanghai Museum, where I lingered in the bronzes, some of which go back to 2500 BC, and the beginnings of the Chinese state.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be perverse and stick with my first thought, because \u201cold\u201d tends to be no later than the early 20th<\/sup> century, especially in the area where we are \"\"<\/a>located.\u00a0 Our guide said there are 3 working Buddhist temples in Shanghai (population 23 million), and the Jade Buddha is the most visited.\u00a0 One (and this is so PRC) was moved to make way for a metro station and reconstructed. The third one is quite a distance from the Bund, but was featured in a lot of postcards from a hundred years ago.\u00a0 We passed it once, but our guide pointed out that it was a prison camp area under Japanese occupation, and thus is not on most tour agendas.<\/p>\n

Our guide did one of the best jobs in explaining Buddhism that I\u2019ve had in a long time, and especially the differences between the Buddha, Bodhisattvas, and Arhats.\u00a0 She compared it to Phds, Masters, and College graduates, an analogy I finally understand.\u00a0 The main Bodhisattva (serious disciple who has learned and stayed behind to help people) is the Guan Yin, whose transformation, documented in the Shanghai Museum, and I hope over time at the Buddhist caves I will be seeing in Datong after the students leave.\u00a0 The Guan Yin started as an Indian man (all the Buddhas are male), but I think it was the Empress Wu, the only woman to rule China, who made him into a her.\u00a0 The museum exhibit also (bear in mind that it is a little Sinified) noted that in becoming Chinese (which happens if you\u2019re here long enough, as our students will see in the mosque in Xi\u2019an), it became more compassionate.\u00a0 The Guan Yin is popular especially among women because they pray to her for children.<\/p>\n

She was also excellent in explaining the layout of the Buddhist temple\u2014with its halls, drum tower,and bell tower, etc.\u00a0 Our students will get other opportunities in Xi\u2019an to see another temple (an OLD one), and I hope to compare and contrast it with the Tibetan temple in either Beijing or Chengde.<\/p>\n

The secular version was the Yu garden, once the centerpiece of the third Shanghai city of the old days\u2014in addition to the French Concession and the International Settlement, there was a Chinese city.\u00a0 The wall around it has long since been torn down, and the rest of the area rebuilt as a \u201cChina \"\"<\/a>town,\u201d but there is no mistaking the wealth of the Pan family which built the garden originally, or the authenticity it represents in furniture, layout, gardening, and especially the juxtaposition of rocks (many with interesting shapes, some piled together to make hills) and ponds\u2014together the characters for mountains and water equal scenery.\u00a0 As one of the students noted, facing a man-made pond filled with huge goldfish and a hill that at one time was the highest in flat Shanghai (it is on the Yangtze River delta), \u201cI could really study for finals here.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s one of my favorite places in Shanghai, partly because no matter how crowded it is, the use of space gives you the illusion of solitude\u2014in a city of 23 million people.<\/p>\n

The surrounding \u201cChinatown\u201d offers a wealth of shopping, eating, and other experiences, such as the Temple of God, which is a Taoist (an indigenous religion that has somewhat amalgamated with Buddhism) temple; I\u2019ve bought reproductions of the International Settlement coins there over time, as well as xiao lung bao, a Shanghai dim sum, tea, chopsticks, and lots of whatnot.\u00a0 Every time I think the boundary of gauche has been reached, I go back to the Yu garden area and discover how inventive is the mind of man.\u00a0 Today, the touts were trying to sell us a roller skate that goes on your heel, and has only two wheels.\u00a0 We managed to escape, at least the wheel man, with pocket books intact.<\/p>\n

That Shanghai has a museum is in itself a change from the first time I came here\u2014or rather that it\u2019s open is a change.\u00a0 I first saw materials from the Shanghai museum in Chicago when a traveling exhibit came to the Field \"\"<\/a>Museum (I believe) in the lovefest that followed ping-pong diplomacy.\u00a0 But it was always closed when I started coming to Shanghai.\u00a0 In the 1990s, the Shanghai government (remember, I mentioned it was this period when Zhang Ze-min, who had been mayor of Shanghai, replaced Deng Xiao-ping as China\u2019s leader) built a number of new edifices in People\u2019s Park (which had been the race track in the International<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Settlement).\u00a0\u00a0 One was the art museum,\u00a0 in the old clock tower; another was the museum, where our guide supplied us with an audio guide.\u00a0 Although I\u2019d been to the museum before, I\u2019d never bothered with the guide.\u00a0 It was very useful in the two exhibits I spent my time in\u2014sculptures and bronzes.\u00a0\u00a0 In addition, the gift shop is first rate, especially in books.\u00a0 I was a little surprised to see some books for sale which I know in the pre-1990s period would have been banned.<\/p>\n

What really showed me the contrast between the old new China and the new new China was a boat trip we took tonight on the Yangtze River.\u00a0 I\u2019ve done the trip, but not recently, and never in the evening.\u00a0 It was unnecessary because there were few lights at night in China, a country notoriously power \"\"<\/a>poor. And poor as well.\u00a0 The old Bund was lit up now\u2014and there were enough new skyscrapers to confuse Shanghai with Hong Kong, although Hong Kong\u2019s setting is unmistakable.\u00a0 Shanghai doesn\u2019t have the Peak, but it certainly has the location as the financial center and main entry and exit point for the trade from central China along the Yangtze River.<\/p>\n

Speaking of the old and the new, the bus took the old back to the hotel, and the new to Xintiandi, a trendy area, to continue their exploration of Shanghai.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had almost started by saying we were touring the \u201cold,\u201d which is the Jade Buddha temple\u2014built in 1928\u2014when I realized we\u2019d visited the Yu Yuan (the Yu garden) which dates from the 16th century, and spent almost two hours in the Shanghai Museum, where I lingered in the bronzes, some of which go back … Continue reading “The New and the Old in Shanghai”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mayterm-india"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=978"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9097,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978\/revisions\/9097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}