30 July, Action-Man, Shanghai

Let me draw for you a picture of the Shanghai streets. On both sides of the Yangtze River, collosal scrapers loom over busy streets. To the west of the river is the old business center, Puxi, with the downtown core and the famous Bund, a rich avenue of colonial waterfront buidlings. Pleasant parks and clean streets fill the city. But the main thing is the towers. Everywhere and all the time, since 1989, new metal mammoths have risen out of the ground, soon to be filled with lights and noise and thousands of beating hearts. To the east of the river is the newly-developed Pudong district.

The Chinese seem to never cease in this rapid growth, and it seems they will never fail to suceed. The government is clever. When they began to build the new city centre in Pudong, across the river, they offered to pay half the citizens' rent to live ther. Soon, the buildings and streets filled. Pudong snowballed; more and more people wanted to move to the new, hip city. Now, the government has withdrawn its money, but the people still come. The inner city has effectively doubled in size.

You see, the Chinese are more adept to adapt than most of the rest of the world. In some ways, they are even more capitalist than America itself. China has shot up, dare I say, like a weed in the last ten years. But does this weed have roots? With 1.3 billion people, it's hard to say no. But only time will tell.

Drew