Not even the sprawling ocean of Shanghai can protect tourists from the spectre of Brian Cowen, writes MICHAEL HARDING
I LOOKED OUT my Shanghai hotel window on Monday morning at 7am. I was on the 21st floor and Brian Cowen was on the TV telling the world that Ireland is broke. Opposite me, another hotel, like a cliff of glass, reached 40 storeys into the sky, and I could see into rooms where the curtains were open and people were coming from their morning showers, staring blankly out windows.
I saw a naked man at one window, and beside him, another man in a dressing robe. They were gazing at the smoggy city below us, the tiny cars on the highways, and the sprawling ocean of humanity that is Shanghai.
Then the naked man sat down and the other guy rested his hand on the naked fellow’s shoulder, as if to comfort him; perhaps they too were watching Cowen on CNN.
To look at Shanghai from a skyscraper is like gazing into an ocean for the first time, and trying to imagine all the possibilities of hope in that deep, because China is an ocean teeming with humanity, and what could be better than that?
And being one among so many in that wall of glass gave me a sense of belonging, similar to what gannets probably feel on Skellig Michael.
I headed into town to meet a friend, past neon screens dancing with Chinese calligraphy – though I might as well have been looking at cobwebs, because I can’t read Chinese.
Everywhere there were bicycles and scooters and giggling girls and old men on street corners selling watches and handbags.
There was a man crawling along the pavement near Jing’an Park. He had only one leg, and it was deformed, and he dragged it behind him, like the tail of a fish. Like a swimmer doing butterfly strokes, he flung his torso forward, all the while pushing his begging bowl ahead of him and trying to get into the centre of the pavement so that it was difficult for people to ignore him.
On Nanjing Road two prostitutes spoke to me. One was middle-aged, the other a bubbling teenager with purple lips, her black hair in a bun. Clearly they thought I was a pure eejit if they expected me to go down a dark alley with them just because they admired my hair, pulled my beard, and remarked on how enormous my feet were.
“Everything about you is so big,” the little one said, with a kind of cartoon innocence, which she had probably picked up from movies about girls who work the streets.
I felt so relieved when they went away that I fled into Jin’an Temple, where I lit incense sticks and went up to the Shrine room and had a moment of time-out, kneeling on a cushion while people around me did prostrations. One old man looked like Mao Tse-tung, and it crossed my mind that there is at least one thing to be grateful for in this life; and that is that Mao never became Taoiseach of Ireland.
In Jing’an Park an old man with grey hair and beard sat on the pavement and played a small two stringed instrument with a bow. White chalk covered the instrument like snow.
On Yan’an Road a white wedding limo was changing lanes when it bashed into the side of a Volkswagen Bora. The Volkswagen ended up in the flowerbeds, its side torn asunder and a clump of potted plants on the bonnet. The bride and her party got out and sauntered over to the park, smoking and laughing and taking photographs. Police arrived and made sketches of the scene and argued with the two drivers.
Finally, on Jingling, a street of musical instruments, and old rusting bicycles that must have been around since before the time of Mao, I found my friend.
She gave me a painting of a plum tree, blossoming in winter, which signifies strength and fortitude.
Then I walked back to my hotel, through the streets where women with masks swept the leaves and old men pushed carts laden with oranges, and a woman in a scarf beat the dust out of a carpet that hung between a lamppost and a traffic light. I wanted to ask them all did they know how distressed poor old Ireland is, or had they seen the news. But some of them might not even have a TV. And, even if they did, I guess that very few of them would know who Brian Cowen was.