Me walk pretty one day*

Prob­a­bly the best day of our Shang­hai trip came when we per­sisted in going out for a walk despite the pissy weather, hav­ing had the best laid plans of vis­it­ing the ghetto and other his­tor­i­cally sig­nif­i­cant places dashed by the rain and not know­ing before­hand that a Shang­hainese wed­ding starts at 3pm.

We had just enough time for the old French Con­ces­sion, and although we didn’t man­age to com­plete all the way­points rec­om­mended by our Fodor’s guide­book, our 8RMB visit to Dr Sun Yat Sen’s Shang­hai res­i­dence made it worth the sore feet and damp clothes.

Inside the two struc­tures on the for­mer Rue Moliere (the cur­rent Xiang­shan Road) were well pre­served and well pre­sented bits of Chi­nese his­tory and almost star­tling us were let­ters writ­ten by Dr Sun’s wife and daugh­ter, couched in for­mal tones one would expect of let­ters writ­ten in that era, but in English!

I sup­pose my lim­ited knowl­edge of Chi­nese and Chi­nese his­tory made for a really inter­est­ing excur­sion, and it was not till we got home (and had a decent inter­net con­nec­tion) that I learned more about Dr Sun, and in par­tic­u­lar, why he had so many dif­fer­ent names.

Prior to this Shang­hai trip, all I knew of Dr Sun was that he some­thing like founded mod­ern China, had many houses all over the world (includ­ing Sin­ga­pore), and mar­ried some­one my dad tells me was from Wen­chang, Hainan, where chicken rice was invented. (She wasn’t from Wen­chang, but her father Char­lie Soong was, but that never stops my dad from mak­ing Hainanese con­nec­tions as regards promi­nent peo­ple. E.g. Unbe­knownst to many, the wife of the Cam­bo­dian Prime Min­is­ter Hun Sen is Hainanese. Very use­ful information).

It is just as inter­est­ing that any place in China asso­ci­ated with Dr Sun are the only places in China where the non-communist repub­li­can flag can be seen. Dig­ging around in wikipedia also led me to learn that the first Chi­nese repub­lic wasn’t founded by Dr Sun.

If there’s any­thing this lit­tle walk taught us, it’s that I really have to read and travel more, or else I’ll per­sist in believ­ing that the Hainanese invented pork chops and Russ­ian food, owned the Raf­fles Hotel and built the For­bid­den City.

Pic­ture of other places in the French Concession:

On the grounds of the Rui­jin Bin­guan, for­merly the Mor­ris Estate

*Thank you David Sedaris

iTunes is play­ing an ille­gal copy of China Girl from the album “Amer­i­can Fool” by John Mel­len­camp of which I have the orig­i­nal CD.

Tech­no­rati Tags: china, french con­ces­sion, Sun Yat-Sen, shang­hai, travel