Alex Goes To China

Let me start this critical blog with a preface; Shanghai is an amazing city. Modern, eclectic and fascinating. The people, food and culture are all buzzing energy and humour. The Xiao Chi (particularly a savoury pancake made by street vendors whose name I do not yet know) is to die for and the sights and sounds are amazing. But that said there is still dark sides to the city which are not well hidden. Poverty, lack of basic hygiene and political oppression are rife in Shanghai. In the short 5 days Jo and I have been here we have already witnessed an obvious travesty of social freedom.

Jo and I went for a walk through the French Concession and saw a group of people watching a band with a woman singing a traditional folk song. Everyone was smiling and enjoying the hot, humid evening. This experience up to this point was very pleasant.

But then a stocky man in a white shirt walked through the crowd and went up to the amplifier and started turning the dials. This changed the pitch of the song, but failed to achieve his aim, I later realised, of silencing the music. The crowd started to get nervous, shifting on their heels and whispering to each other. Then two policemen dressed in riot gear (helmets with visors and body armour) pushed through, but stopped at the edge of the circle of people. The woman singing boldly finished her song with a lasting cadence which drew applause from the mildly defiant audience. Once the applause began the policemen stepped forward writing on a pad (I assume it was an infringement notice). The crowd then began to dissipate, yet some bunched around the policemen and protested politely. The man in the white shirt began unplugging things. I wanted to help in some way but failed to think of anything that would not make the situation worse. I was concerned that the scene would escalate and I wanted to get Jo (and myself) away from the scene. Regrettably, I didn’t have my phone on me or I would have photographed it surreptitiously to witness the event.

In some ways the most oppressed members of this situation were the policemen. My optimistic nature hopes that the policemen didn’t want to do what they did. When they waited for the song to finish I detected a sense of regret in their body language. But the fact remains, after Nuremberg – this is no defense. The freedoms of speech and expression simply do not exist in China, not even in modern Shanghai, and while there are still those willing to enforce the status quo the situation will not change.