Longtang

The word bund means an embankment or a dam and comes from the Urdu (ancient Hindustani) word band. The term underwent some (British, German) colonial transmutations, and bunds were built throughout Central Asia, India, China, and Japan. But the patriarch of all bunds is The Bund in Shanghai, a one-mile long stretch of boulevard lining the left bank of the Huangpu River. The Waitan (outer bank), as the Chinese call it, is actually a piece of Zhongshan Road lined with art-deco and neoclassical buildings dating from the early 20th century, Shanghai’s golden era as a colonial port city. 

The buildings along the Bund were large banks and hotels, neglected during Mao’s cultural downsizing. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, the Chinese government wanted Shanghai to become a tourist hub again, so the Bund was restored. Today its towering concrete buildings are full of high-end boutiques and restaurants. Gilded doors open onto shops selling Dolce & Gabbana leather, Alaska Salmon, and Murano glass. The objects seem to confirm that Shanghai is a true metropolis, no different from New York, Paris, or Milan.

The Bund’s finery is not a fine enough sieve to remove the clutter and angst of a first-world city still third-world in spirit. Policemen shoo away beggars and peasants in front of the luxury stores. Across ten lanes of traffic, a boardwalk abuts the water. This is the territory of the Chinese. They are usually not Shanghai natives, and they parade beneath wilted parasols, dragging along their children in split-crotch pants. Moving south on Zhongshan Lu, clean facades and neon lighting give way to the aluminum shutters of produce warehouses full of broken pallets, bicycles piled high with flattened cardboard, and crushed watermelons that flew off the truck. There are houses here, too—one-story, single-family huts that once lined the major boulevards of Shanghai’s French Concession but are now relegated to forgotten pockets within the city. The houses are crammed along narrow, twisted alleys called longtang, some of which are only wide enough for one car. Residents here might boil water for baths. Few people who take cabs to the Bund realize that the longtang neighborhoods still exist in Shanghai, less than a mile away.

On a recent summer evening, two friends and I wandered into one of these longtang. I was equipped with a camera and tripod. The day had been soggy and oppressive, typical of summer in Shanghai. Doors were thrust open along the longtang, the residents scattered outdoors. Older people in their pajamas lounged on lawn chairs, cooling themselves in the breeze. Shirtless young men smoked and tinkered at their bicycles. There were no street lights, so the only available light was from open doorways. Egged on by my companions, I set up my camera and tripod at one end of the alley to capture the scene. At first, people yelled at each other jokingly: “Get out of the way, or you’ll be caught on film!” Slowly, they began to cluster around me. Young men and little children jostled each other as their circle tightened.

For a while, the tone was amicable. I smiled politely, adjusting my camera meter to the dark. My Caucasian friends stood in the background, saying little and going unnoticed, I thought. Within minutes, nearly every head turned in my direction. Suddenly a middle-aged woman pushed to the front of the crowd to stand beside me. She cried out, “We have new buildings in China, stop taking pictures here!”

The crowd stared at my friends standing on the curb. Defensive murmurs rippled around. The woman continued in her warbling Shanghai dialect, “Are you going to carry these pictures to America and embarrass your own country? How could you do that, little girl? No one will ever gain respect for us!” Her outcries excited the crowd; I could feel people’s breath on me. I stood my ground for a few more shots, crouching over my camera.

At one point, somebody said, “Maybe she doesn’t understand Chinese?”

“Of course she understands,” snapped the woman. “She’s Chinese!”
The crowd was pressing closer. I grabbed my tripod and camera. My friends and I hustled back onto Zhongshan, alongside the speeding traffic. “That’s right, get lost!” they cried after me. “Your American friends can’t hear us, but you can!”

My friends and I wandered back to the Bund, where the Yan’an expressway pours traffic onto the glorious, lighted strip. Beggars were bedding down on a pedestrian overpass.

China and the Chinese insist on a backwards narcissism, an overstatement of recent developments in hopes that the glow from the new glass buildings or a thousand luxury products will somehow undo or ameliorate the past 50 years of hardship. This is the legacy of the Cultural Revolution, the government’s attempt to remove class: a hyper-awareness of the growing pains of a developing nation. The people who stopped me from taking pictures were afraid to expose their old longtang simply because it was old, though the longtang itself seemed comfortable and seasoned, never having been jackhammered or bulldozed.