Our Shanghai music season has officially begun.
The Sandra Shen recital last week was actually free, but we now have tickets that cost actual money, for a piano recital in an actual Shanghai concert hall, this coming Saturday night. In fact, the name of the hall is, precisely that: "Shanghai Concert Hall." It's on our very own street (Yan'an Road) but some distance east of here, over in the People's Square area. It's an ornate, European style hall, built in 1930, and it's reputed to have great acoustics. We are going to hear a Canadian pianist born in Vienna, Anton Kuerti, playing Mozart, Haydn, Schumann, Mendelssohn, and Beethoven.
Miles has a quick trip this week — to what is supposed to be a beautiful resort island off South Korea. I was originally going to go, but I'm going to skip this one, partly because we couldn't get a cheap air ticket for me, partly because I'm still a little pooped out on travel from our recent trip to those interior Chinese provinces, and partly because I really want to make some progress on a certain composition I've been working on. So he's going to make it a real quick trip and come right back in good time for the recital Saturday.
All of Shanghai appears to be back in town now, after the combined, eight-day 60th Anniversary National Day / Autumn Moon Festival extravaganza.
The eight day period actually ended officially last Thursday, but many people appeared to take Friday off as well, so as to have an extra three-day weekend to recover. This "recovery" phenomenon has been taken notice of officially with articles about it in the China Daily, with specific advice about eating light after all the holiday meals, what to do about insomnia if it strikes just as you need to rest up, and the like.
It was really eerily quiet last Thursday and Friday, less so Saturday, almost normal yesterday, and now it's back to the usual level of cacophony and energy today. Jack-hammering by night on Yan'an Road reappeared Saturday night, and right now there is a veritable rhapsody for automobile horn and pneumatic drill being performed right outside my window as I type this up above it all on the 31st floor.
I've written a bit about this energy and bustle before, but I've probably failed to convey properly just how intense the combined effect of it is. I'm not even sure I can convey it properly. An unvarnished description of our stretch of Yan'an Road might help, though.
Our part of Yan'an Road is a double-decker affair. The lower part is at street level. At the widest part, just in front of our building, made a bit wider than "normal" by some dedicated turn lanes, you have 6 lanes each way, and they are usually quite full of vehicles, straight across, except perhaps in the slackest time of the day, or at night. As I've written before, lanes here are quite wide, wide enough for a smidgen more than 1.5 car widths, so that people can driver centered on a lane or centered on a lane dividing line. This lower level carries the traffic that is willing to be patient with stopping every couple of blocks or so to wait at a very long traffic light. Or that isn't patient but just hasn't made it to an entrance ramp that goes up to the express lanes above yet. You can tell the patient from the impatient by horn usage. People honk with no discernible purpose, just to let off the steam that rises up from the kettle where they are stewing their soup of impatience.
The lights are very long, partly because it takes quite a long time to cross all of that real estate as a pedestrian, at those places where this is sanctioned, and partly because once you've got all the traffic stopped, you may as well keep it stopped long enough for all other officially opposing traffic to have its opportunity to go. Of course it takes even longer than it should to cross because, once your green light comes, you find yourself pelted from several directions with all the traffic that doesn't obey traffic lights or rules at all, full stop — in fact, this traffic appears to wait for the precise time when pedestrians have just got their green signal to go themselves, knowing that the cars are (mostly) stopped — this traffic consisting of the bicycles and motorized cycles. Some of the motorized cycles are especially eerie because they are not gas-powered, and are consequently nearly silent. This leads to some heart-stopping moments as a pedestrian, as you suddenly see one of those quiet motorized cycles barreling down, aiming directly at you, and you had no advance warning because of their silence. That silence will be broken, at the last moment, when the driver of that quiet motorized cycle beeps its rather pathetic, chihuahua-pitched, horn at you mercilessly, because you are in his or her way.
The express lanes up at the top level occupy four lanes each way. Again, the top level is mostly full at rush hour, less so in between. This upper level is much like a freeway, except that all on- and off-ramps take you to a different level.
At "major" intersections, such as the meeting of Yan'an Road and Jiangsu Road near us, pedestrians are banished from the street level entirely by fence railings just high enough to make it impractical for anyone but an acrobat to get over. Pedestrians then get their own dedicated interchange, in the shape of a quadrilateral with curved corners, on its distinct level, midway between the street level lanes and the express level lanes. You climb steps up to that level and descend from it on steps. (Shanghai is not yet a friendly place for the disabled pedestrian.)
Finally, while you are walking on the fairly narrow sidewalks along side of any of the major roads, such as Yan'an or Jiansu Road, you must be constantly vigilant, because bicycles and motorized cycles (including the silent kind) frequently use the side walks whenever they are too lazy to use the street. This starts out with a kind of legitimate rationale, since these side walks provide the only "official" parking spaces for these vehicles. It is intended that the driver dismount to park, but very few do, and actually many more than those who are parking, or who have just left a parking space, use the side walks.
Perhaps you get a kind of picture.
I could also attempt to describe the really huge interchanges of the subway system, such as at People's Square, where three lines come together, but this is simply beyond my powers of description.
All of the energy implied by this traffic and other activity boils up every day. And this isn't just in our neighborhood, but everywhere in the city.
All this seething energy can't help but have its effects. We are lucky to live 31 floors above it all, but that is only an insulation layer, not an isolation chamber.
I definitely notice its effects in the rather frenetic music I've been writing here. It is very busy stuff, churning with notes every which way. I keep trying to comb through it, pruning out thickness and complexity, but the notes just keep coming.
But don't misunderstand. Here's where you hear me saying in my best "Seinfeld" voice: not that there's anything wrong with all this energy....
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