Post-covid Shanghai

If there is any city in Asia that could lay claim to being impacted by the Covid pandemic more than Hong Kong, it is surely Shanghai. For two months, across May and June 2022, the city of over 25 million was completely locked down to contain the spread of the coronavirus, with local residents trapped inside their homes resorting to trading and bartering to get much-needed groceries and household supplies. Those in critical roles within certain industries, including finance and investment, were ordered by senior management to camp out in office buildings with pallets of cup noodles and other non-perishable food items to wait out the lockdown. No wonder that the city subsequently saw a massive exodus of foreign workers either moving back home or relocating to other regional hubs, Singapore in particular, that had made the prescient decision to live with Covid.

If the Shanghai lockdowns and the broader country-wide travel restrictions limited movement out of the country, it also largely cut off any movement into China as well. There was a time before Covid when Ashley and I would come up to Shanghai every one or two years to visit her sister and her family. Because of the pandemic, it had been over six years since we were last in the city. We don’t often think of China when considering where to travel to next – other than our Shanghai trips to see family our only other holidays in the mainland was a short weekend in Xiamen for a wedding in 2015 and a few days in the stunning mountains and gorges of Yunnan over 10 years ago – but Shanghai is probably where I’m most comfortable as far as Chinese locations go.

Leading up to the trip, two books were top of mind for me. The first was Jonathan Kaufman’s Last Kings of Shanghai, about the rival Jewish dynasties the Sassoons and the Kadoories who became fabulously wealthy off the back of the opium trade in the 19th and 20th centuries and filled the city with their opulent mansions, hotels, and other commercial properties. The legacies of these two families lives on in the architecture on display along Shanghai’s Bund and the former French Concession. I had started it a little bit before my Singapore trip the week before, and so even as we landed at Hongqiao Airport I was still making my way through the book. Reading about the two families and the prominent roles various family members played in creating the famous cosmopolitan Shanghai of old, and seeing their exquisite buildings – long since appropriated by the government and other parties – in person at the same time was a fantastic experience.

The other book was Usborne’s Look Inside Great Cities, a beautifully illustrated flap book that I’ve read over and over again with Miles. There’s a two-page spread on Shanghai featuring Nanjing Road, a popular walking/shopping street that cuts through the heart of the district formerly known as the International Settlement. We wanted to take Miles here to see if he could recognise some of the buildings from the book, but he seemed more interested in riding the little trains that go up and down the busy thoroughfare.

The Former French Concession

One of the defining neighbourhoods of Shanghai to me is the former French Concession. Our first few stays in the city were always nearby, and we used to walk over from whatever hotel we were staying at and wander through its beautiful tree-lined streets, with the ghosts of old Shanghai looming over our shoulders. Here you can find trendy coffee shops, bakeries, and restaurants side by side with century-old European-style villas and estates.

The French Concession was formed alongside the International Settlement in the mid-19th century and became the go-to part of town for wealthy foreigners to settle in. As Shanghai and the rest of China was consumed by war in the 1930s and 1940s, however, first in the Second World War and then by the subsequent civil war, these foreign concessions were swept away and their cosmopolitan denizens scattered to other lands. Years later, only their leafy avenues and stately homes remain, though city has in the ensuing decades taken steps towards becoming a more global metropolis once again.

The quiet streets are perfect for wandering around in, and it’s a kind of urban geography we definitely don’t have much of, if any, in Hong Kong. We grabbed an early lunch at RAC Coffee, a relaxed French cafe/restaurant known for its selection of savoury and sweet crepes, after taking the public metro in from the far western reaches of the city. It was the perfect weather to sit by the window – blue skies and a pleasant breeze, and no humidity.

Panlong River Town

Shanghai is surrounded by a small constellation of river towns that speak to a much older legacy of trade and commerce than the great stone buildings that line the Bund. Panlong is one such town, though not among the more famous or well-known, and it’s main selling point to us was that it was just a few minutes’ car ride from our hotel. There’s not much of a town to speak of anymore, in that nobody actually lives there – instead it has been redeveloped into a local shopping and eating commercial district. It’s nice enough to walk around in, and we had a very decent lunch there, but there’s not a lot of shade provided and the day we went it was unfortunately quite hot and sunny.

Family

As always, our primary reason for visiting Shanghai was family. Covid had put a stop to our nearly-annual visits to see Ashley’s sister and her family, and though they’ve managed to come down to Hong Kong a couple of times since the lockdown was lifted, we had yet to bring Miles and Olive back the other way. We made plans to do some touristy things (see all of the above), but actually most of our time was spent hanging out at home or in neighbourhood cafes and restaurants, passing the time just being present together. Our kids don’t really have cousins close by – one in Shanghai and one in Vancouver – so that part of their childhood, i.e. having cousins to play with and be friends with, hasn’t really been a big part of their lives so far. Seeing them then get on so well with their Shanghai family made the whole trip worth it.