Of Shanghai, Shoe Designers, and Pop-Culture Philosophy.

*note: in reference to my recent post, I want to clarify my comment about the one-child policy, in case my sarcasm went unnoticed: thanks to the one-child policy, my two younger brothers have not been able to gain citizenship because they are the 2^nd and 3^rd children in this family. As a result, they go unrecognized by the government, and for all legal technicalities, do not “exist.” This fact is one I deeply am moved and angered by. These two children, though only 4 and 6 years old, have enough brain-power and energy to run their own country. They deserve more, and I’ll stand by them with all the strength I have. Just wanted to clarify…

Anyway…

…Christmas finally came, and with it, adventures in a Chinese amusement park. That’s right. My family and I spent our Christmas Eve day in Shenzhen’s famous (apparently) Water Mountain Park, complete with roller-coaster and zoo. I guess I had originally imagined that we’d somehow be spending the day with my Chinese family, doing Christmassy things like, say, opening gifts… or spending time as a family (well, families), talking to one another about Christmases come and gone… I think I’d imagined a fireplace somewhere in there…

But, no! We spent the day at an amusement park, chatting, laughing, eating, drinking, roller-coaster-riding… Not your typical Christmas. We had an absolutely marvelous time, and the day will always remain a wonderful memory.

On Christmas day itself, my cousin Rachel joined my father and mother and I for a day in Hong Kong. It was fantastic, just to sit and talk about all things China, to catch up, and to learn a few extra Chinese phrases from Rachel, who happens to be taking Mandarin lessons. Family is a wonderful thing, and it takes leaving your loved-ones behind to truly realize just how much the words “I love you,” (words we often take for granted, especially in a “family” context) really mean. I’m so, so incredibly lucky, and I wish from the bottom of my heart that each of my friends could know the joy and the preciousness of having a family that shares love the way mine’s been blessed to. I’m blessed to grow up with people like this. I’m just utterly blessed. I’ll put it that simply.

So, I’m sure, you can understand that it was quite difficult for me to wake up the next morning and realize that I’d be leaving them. Again.

But, adventure called, and I had another train to catch. Rachel and I would leave Hong Kong that morning and travel to Shanghai. So, the morning flew by in a flurry… packing and repacking and breakfast and travel itineraries and phone calls… and suddenly we were in the lobby and we were hugging our farewells…

…a mere 6 hours later, I was in a taxi with my cousin marveling at the Shanghai skyline.

Shanghai. Now that’s a city. If Beijing is Washington D.C., Shanghai is New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas all rolled into one intriguingly tumultuous bundle of fascinating architecture, fashion, taxis, art, coffee-shops, hotels, party-goers, drug-dealers (sadly), antique-markets, peanut-ice (delicious, I promise!), high-prices…

The list goes on.

Shanghai is the type of city one has to spend years in to truly get the feel for. I was only there a week, and felt so overwhelmed by the end of it all that my brain nearly popped. But Shanghai itself can’t seem to leave my mind; there’s definitely an energy to that place that’s intoxicating.

Rachel and Kyle, her brother, are my cousins. Both live and work in Shanghai, and I can’t even begin to describe how inspiring they are as human beings. Rachel deals in advertisement for luxury brands in China, and Kyle works for an architecture firm… the same architecture firm that recently finished designing (with his considerable influence) the new Shanghai tower. Look it up. It’s quite impressive!

Most of our week together flew by in one high-energy, caffeinated blur. (I mean caffeinated quite literally. In addition to being brilliant and hilarious, my cousins both have an almost worrying obsession with coffee, and I suspect that their cappuccino-craze is contagious.) As for the high-energy… oh, the stories I could tell! So many interesting people! So many interesting places!

We spent one of the first nights of my time in Shanghai at a dinner party in a posh shoe designer’s flat… complete with professionally graffiti-ed walls, a techno beat, low lighting, strange furniture (the dining table, for example, was composed of brightly colored mannequin legs), cigarette smoke, and an incredibly spoiled pug-dog named Pooka… or Pucci… or Charles… I can’t remember. Either way, the dinner party itself was an experience. I met such fascinating people (one of whom I’m pretty sure is connected with the Chinese mafia… but that’s a story for another time) I met people who spoke with accents from anywhere between Brazil and London… Vancouver and India…

I loved it. It was a new world. Not one I desire to live in, but I certainly don’t mind dropping in for a visit now and then.

The following nights of my time in Shanghai (including a wonderful and memorable New Years Eve) passed similarly among brilliant and infinitely interesting social artists. At 16, I was exposed to I lifestyle I’ve only ever seen on TV, or read about in airplane magazines… people dancing, drinking, smoking, gossiping for the camera… all with a vocabulary denoting something enchantingly intellectual underneath the makeup or the martini, depending on who you talked to. While there’s a certain charm to the lights and the drama, this is a lifestyle I’d never choose for myself… I don’t think I could handle it… it’d be like trying to flamboyantly dance a tango while balancing four books and a teacup on my head. Throw my faith in the mix, and you’d have a disaster.

I am glad I was exposed to this type of lifestyle now, rather than later. I feel like, as a young person out and about in the world, I’m able to grasp a different perspective on things… like… the high school party scene, for example. At home, I just accepted it. But now, at the risk of sounding cynical, I feel as though I’ve learned, in a very realistic sense, that there’s truly “nothing new under the sun.” People utterly intoxicated by pride, fear, scandal, and yes, even alcohol, are the same whether they’re 16, or 65. The only thing that differs is perhaps the amount of elasticity in the skin around their eyes.

Shanghai taught me so much. And perhaps the most important thing it taught, or rather reminded me of, was that it doesn’t matter. All I need to do is see beyond all of that. To see beyond the outward show, beyond the drinking and the clothes and the intellectual lingo… to think and act beyond that, and think on the heart of a person, even if that heart happens to be broken.  Because, a person’s heart, who they really are, is the only thing that matters.

Because the heart is where God lives. And loves. And what could be more important or exciting than Love?

Well, to put it simply, Shanghai was an adventure. (I think you can probably tell that clearly enough by my long and impassioned tangent). Among the art galleries and the New Year parties and the architecture and the coffee shops and the long taxi-rides… I think perhaps my favorite part was merely spending time with my cousins. I loved getting to know them both better, getting to watch them interact with each other and those around them, seeing their depths and joys and strengths and loves and hates… You should know that I’ve grown up with Rachel and Kyle, but our time in Shanghai really showed me their personalities and their spirits in ways I’d never seen before. I made some marvelous memories, and came away knowing each a little better. I love them both dearly, and without them, my time in Shanghai wouldn’t have come even half as close to the marvelous pack of escapades I remember. So, thank you Rachel and Kyle, and thank you God, for that grand new chapter in my Chinese epic. I won’t ever forget it. 

(P.S. Also, thank you, Stenson and Wynston, for making my second day in Shanghai the most hilarious of my life!)

(P.P.S. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, I met some family friends of my cousins while I was in Shanghai, and I thought it fair to give them a shout out. I know that this little blog isn't exactly Facebook, but I couldn't resist)