Nanjing

When I drove in from the airport yesterday my heart sank.  It seemed like everything I liked about this city was gone.

I first visited Nanjing in 1983 and passed through again in 1984.  During the 1988-1989 academic year I lived and taught here.  In all of that time, it was a city more manageable and quaint than Beijing or Shanghai or Guangzhou.  There were few tall buildings.  The streets were not too wide and many of the main thoroughfares were tree-lined.  It was a pleasant place to walk.  People lived close to the streets, life spilled out of the side alleys.  Small shops and markets were scattered about the neighborhoods.  It had a human scale, a friendly and comfortable feel. 

Imagine my dismay then as a teeming collection of skyscrapers came into view, looming above the maze of highways and flyovers.  As we entered the city, I strained to recognize anything.  The cab driver laughed when I told him I had not been back in twenty years.  There had been so much building and change in just the past five or six years, he said.  Twenty years.  Forget it.

This is a view from the roof top terrace of the Hopkins-Nanjing Center:

None of those tall buildings in the background existed when I was here last.  The tallest of the bunch, too big to fit the frame, will be one of the highest  in Asia when it is done.

I haven't had a chance to take too many pictures (gave a talk today here, which I think went well); so, I don't have shots that convey the haphazard physical features of the place.  In Beijing the building in more regulated, the scale larger and grander, so that block after block, in some areas, unfold in near regimentation.  Here the development seems less controlled.  Buildings are jammed closer together in a crazy jumble.  In many places it is an assault on the eyes, almost like India in its riotous profusion of shapes and sizes and colors.  It is just plain ugly at times.   And that is what saddens me, when I think back to the simpler past.

But I don't want my nostalgia to shape my judgment.  I talk with people here and I get a sense that few would want to return to that past.  Many people live more comfortable lives.  Whatever the neighborhood might look like, they may have more room, an air conditioner (it is broiling hot here in summer), a car (the streets are jammed with them, very much unlike the past), more and more varied entertainment.  Life is easier in many ways and more fun.  That is the payoff for the astonishing economic expansion here, and many people will happily accept the costs - the sprawl, the pollution, the garishness - for the lives they now have.

So change is bad and good.  It creates urban bedlam and happy lives.  It's not clear to me that it's worth it, but I don't have to live here, and when I did live here I lived in fairly privileged circumstances (visiting American professor who was given better living conditions than most Nanjingers).

But let me end with a somewhat more optimistic note.  Tonight I ate at "Joe's".  The original establishment, a small privately-run restaurant run by an inventive and entrepreneurial fellow, was a mainstay for us.  "Joe" (his family name, Zhou) is roughly equivalent to "Joe") would make up whatever dishes you asked for.  The food was good, it was cheap and the company was always buoyant.  He has since moved his business, closer to the Hopkins Center, but he is going strong.  Business is good.  He has seized what opportunities have come his way and he does well.  So much so that he has raised his prices and, no doubt, makes more than he did two decades ago.  I suspect he would not want to turn the clock back, however chaotic his city has become.  Here we are:

 

It's a small place, off the main street.  Some might say a "hole in the wall."  But  the food is good, the proprietor honest, and the value superlative.   So, I can end with a recommendation that hearkens back two decades: when you're in Nanjing, eat at "Joe's."

Comments

[xuan]

Hello, hello, I would like to know where "zhou" is? It seems that you did not mention how to find it.

[Dave Martin]

By comparison, New York is rather recognizable from twenty years ago. Detroit has collapsed in that time.

My only experience in a Chinese-speaking city was a few pleasant days in Taipei.