Socialist-shopping in Shanghai
By CNN's Marianne Bray
HONG KONG (China) -- You can buy anything in modern Shanghai. Well, almost anything.
It was a warm August day in China's largest city, once known as the "Paris of the East."
Everywhere I turned in the commercial heart of this Communist country, vendors assailed me with their wares.
At the Duolun Street of Famous Cultural Figures in northern Shanghai -- where China's writers are immortalized in bronze statues -- artists entrenched in renovated Western-style studios scrambled to sell their most expensive calligraphy.
They thrust newspaper clippings in my hands and promised certificates of authenticity.
At the Dongtai Lu Antique Market, a haphazard and jumbled bazaar of mostly fake antiques, an ever-expanding mass of stalls spilled out into dusty lanes.
Clothes drying on bamboo poles fluttered above and the cries of the vendors fought with the clacking of mahjong tiles from open windows.
Savvy stall owners pushed tiny jewelry boxes, copies of the "Little Red Book" and Mao gnomes into my face.
"Bu Yao," ("Don't want") I said in the only mandarin I know, an act guaranteed to bring about a great grin on their wry old faces.
But it isn't just knick-knacks and antiques anymore in this fast-growing city of 16 million people. Grand openings of marble-clad shopping malls have become a weekly event in this metropolis where Armani and Ferrari are the latest arrivals.
 Shanghai is awash with department stores, stylish boutiques, neon-lit arcades and knock-off street stalls. |  |
On the day of my visit, it was for Plaza 66 in the premier shopping street of Nanjing Lu. Black-tie guests sipped champagne in the vast atrium at one end, while a procession of drummers, singers, acrobats and jugglers paraded past Christian Dior, Cartier and Louis Vuitton stores to get to them from the other.
With all of this rampant commercialism, it's hard to forget you are in China; but it's also easy to forget you are shopping madly in the world's largest communist collective.
Once in a while though, you can still inadvertently slip into a calm eddy of the boiling mercantile river, or meet someone who has chosen to sit out Shanghai's merry dance of life and trade.
For me, it was while wandering in the former French concession that I found a vestige of the city's past.
Home to Shanghai's gamblers, gangsters and go-go girls during its 1930s freewheeling heyday -- when European powers carved it up into separate neighborhoods -- this part of town is now a leafy respite from the futuristic pink baubles of Pudong's Blade Runner skyline, and the space-age skyline encircling People's Square.
It was hard to find at first, tucked into a corner of Xintiandi, or the "New Heaven and Earth" -- 30,000 square meters of once dilapidated shikumen, or stone gatehouses, restored by Hong-Kong's Shui On Group into a boutique arcade.
I walked past the English pub, the Japanese dessert house, the French restaurant and the U.S. bistro until I stumbled upon a red and gray two-story brick building. This small island in a capitalist sea was the site where 13 delegates gathered secretly in 1921 to hold the first ever meeting of the Chinese Communist Party.
|  The museum is near a glitzy shopping and dining playgroud for Shanghai's burgeoning rich set. |
Mao Zedong, who later became the "Great Helmsman" of the Cultural Revolution, attended the meeting.
The party grew to become the biggest in the world, with over 65 million members, and ruling the most populous nation on earth.
Locals flock to the party's birthplace to see a vestige of China's past nestled in a leafy corner of its future.
At the entrance to the First Congress Meeting Hall, as the museum is called, a middle-aged couple posed in front of a wall-high red national flag emblazoned with a golden hammer and sickle.
Inside, families pored over Chairman Mao's slippers, belts, combs and toothbrushes.
Children giggled in the next room as they gaped at an enormous pair of Mao's underpants pinned up on the wall.
In the room where the meeting was held, a replica had been built -- life-size wax effigies of the founding members sat around a table scattered with papers, books and tea sets, all in animated poses.
Party propaganda screamed out from plaques on the walls, not only in Chinese but also in English, presumably to help educate foreign capitalists like me: "Overthrow private capital, end class divisions and unite with the world revolutionary movement."
In the last few rooms heading towards the exit, I was taught some history about "British invaders" and the "Western capitalist powers reducing China to a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society" before the nation was rescued by the Communist Party.
Near the exit, perhaps a little incongruously for a museum eulogizing the overthrow of capitalism, I noticed a sign pointing to the "Souvenir Services Department."
Keen for an insight into socialist souvenir shopping with Chinese characteristics, I trundled off to check it out. I wasn't expecting too much, and at first glance, the four adjoining rooms looked like they hadn't been decorated since the party was formed in 1921.
However, there seemed to be a frenzy of activity in front of the glass counters, and as my eyes got used to the dimmed light, I saw icons of the Cultural Revolution, mostly in the form of Mao memorabilia, all for sale in a curiously capitalist fashion.
True to form as a capitalist roader, the first thing that occurred to me was -- it's probably cheaper than the Hong Kong-based Shanghai Tang stores, so let's have a look!
I was right -- Mao lighters, Mao books, Mao pens, Mao plates, Mao badges, Mao buttons, Mao watches and Mao stamps -- all stunning Communist kitsch at a fraction of Hong Kong prices. And this was just Room No. 1. Then it caught my eye, discreetly tucked away on the lower shelf of a dusty glass counter in the corner, a lovely cream retro plastic satchel emblazoned in red calligraphy.
 Pudong, which grew out of former farmland, is home to the 420-meter Jinmao Tower. | |
I couldn't fight my way through the crowd, so I did a quick reconnaissance mission in Room No. 2 and Room No. 3. This resulted in the purchase of five red Mao lighters that played tinny renditions of the Chinese national anthem from two very eager and helpful saleswomen.
They realized that Mao means money and nobody could be that eager unless they were on commission, thinks I.
Moving on to Room No. 4, I bought a large ceramic plate featuring Mao, encircled by the words: "Sail the great sea relies on the helmsman."
But only after my new-found friends -- the saleswomen from Room No. 3 -- shook the guard awake who was asleep in the corner. Apparently, he was also the cashier, and with great pomposity and slow deliberation he wrapped the plate in some tissue paper and a box, while the frenzied crowds whirled around us.
Buoyed by my success, I returned to Room No. 1. With visions of the satchel serving as a quirky cocktail bag, I approached the old man behind the counter and pointed.
I don't know whether it was the last bag, or because I was a foreigner, but he refused to sell me the satchel.
Stunned, I pointed, gesturing at the bag. A crowd gathered. Finally, after several minutes of ever more confusing sign-language, he pulled a key from his pocket and tried to open the counter, but it wouldn't budge.
Pleased, he shrugged, turned his back to me, and went over to serve someone else. Not to be outdone I stormed back to my lady friends in Room No. 3. and gesticulated wildly, pointing over to Room No. 1. My budding tycooness friends eagerly followed me, and I showed them the bag.
| The world-renowned Bund is now home to Michelin-ranked chefs and the Evian Spa. |
They shouted, the old man shouted back. They motioned wildly. The crowd grew.
Suddenly one of the Room No. 3 saleswomen grabbed the key from the old man, inserted it into the keyhole, opened the cabinet without so much as a hitch, and handed the bag for me to inspect.
After a bit of bargaining, the deal was done. I paid her 30 yuan and left, a bit perplexed but happy, nonetheless.
I ended my tour of Shanghai with a stroll along the Bund. Former British banks and trading houses stood in their neo-classical facades, facing off against the towering skyscrapers across the Hangpu River in Pudong.
I carried my new bag proudly, emblazoned as it was with its red calligraphy. As I walked the two kilometers past the Peace Hotel, the Bank of Shanghai and Customs House, I was greeted with the most unusual friendliness. Many of the parading Shanghainese gestured at my bag, smiled, waved and said hello.
Curious at my newfound popularity, I asked the taxi driver taking me back to the Portman Ritz-Carlton what the bag said: "It says 'I love China'," he answered.
At least some Chinese appreciated my capitalist instinct, I thought, as I headed home to Hong Kong.
