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Unlike Beijing, Shanghai can be awful. If traffic is bad, the queues are worse. People were queuing for up to six hours to get into Expo. The modernisation of Shanghai has been left in the hands of public sector developers, and urban planning and regulation are minimal. There are no new parks and what few trees have been planted are in a lamentable state. While London is 40 per cent parkland, the urban wonder of Shanghai has only a miserable 4 per cent.
There has been a ‘constant battle’ to preserve historic Hangzhou, once the capital of the Song Dynasty and a place of spectacular beauty set on the West Lake two hours north of Shanghai. Like many of the Chinese emperors and potentates, Mao had a villa there, set in 130 acres on the shore of the West Lake itself. In fact, Mao came down from Beijing as he launched the Cultural Revolution. I tried to find the place on a previous visit but was repeatedly told that no such house existed, though I knew it did. Today it is a comfortable guest house and can be visited. Marshal Lin Biao, the general who led the People’s Liberation Army into Beijing in 1949, also had a house further up the hillside. It’s a mansion with underground rooms and passages where the plot to overthrow Mao is said to have been hatched. Lin’s notorious swimming pool, with its two-way mirrors so he could spy on beautiful young maidens, is no longer on view.
Back in Beijing the holiday is over, but still no work is taking place on the huge building site beside my hotel, because a number of tiny hutong house owners are holding out for higher compensation. This has been going on for more than three years, and though it is the government’s responsibility to clear the site — since they have sold it to a developer — public opinion is strong and they are scared to act. Piles of rubble throw up great clouds of dust and in the winter, I am told, ravenous rats swarm the site. Property has become a political football in China as prices rise inexorably and the gap between rich and poor grows ever wider.
In China as in England, house prices are a great worry. Young Chinese women are refusing to marry unless their partners have bought a place, and too many young men just cannot afford it. Recently a TV personality caused a sensation when she announced, ‘I would rather cry in the back of a Mercedes than smile on the back of a bicycle.’ Women in China are very much in the minority — even so, after the age of 27 they find it hard to find a husband.
The day before I leave China, out of the window I watch Lao Wang, a peasant from Anhui province, shaving and washing his hair in a small basin, sitting on a stool beside his precious tool box. Lao Wang mends shoes, bicycles — anything. His wife does the same thing and they live together in a tiny room and send back the small proceeds to their children at university in Henan. Lao is methodical and tidy. The wind from the north is blowing harder now but the sun is still shining and still warm.
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