The sounds of classical flute and piano playing brought me back to my grandparents’ house in the Berkshire mountains of New York where I had spent so much time roaming growing up. I would return from exploring the surrounding woods or gazing at the cattle in fields hearing Bach, Mozart and other classics of Western music as I approached.
We in fact were not in the Berkshires. Instead, we were in Shanghai’s Xuhui district, formerly the French Concession, having taken a few turns from Changshu Lu to Fuxing Lu — a major through street once called Route Boissezon — and from there down a narrow residential lane. The musical sounds did however enrapture the essence of the neighborhood as the Shanghai Conservatory of Music was just a few streets over.
As we turned off of Fuxing Lu the seemingly ubiquitous noises from traffic and people seemed to completely dissipate.
Strolling down the road we could hear conversations inside of homes being held and the sounds of birds chirping, something I don’t think I had experienced before in Shanghai.
Nearing the end of the road was a nook on the right hand-side with three or four more homes even further removed from the overwhelming congestion of the city. We smelled the fish cooking perhaps for an early dinner, and heard faint sounds of music as we walked deeper down the side street. Two houses down I was just able to make out the two golden lions mounted onto the entrance gate to one of the homes. On the outside of each lion were pasted 对联 (dui lian), and structuring the gate were two white pillars on either side connected on top by a pediment. In front of the gate stood two large statues of pixius. The entrance seemed a hybrid of the Western world and China with architecture reminding me of the Greek Parthenon, and decorations uniquely home to China.
The home furthest tucked away in the miniature cul-de-sac seemed especially welcoming to me. The classical music playing as an elderly woman hung her laundry in her front yard from a line suspended by two towering trees created a sense of familial character that I don’t typically feel around Shanghai’s modernly built architecture. The neighborhood showed a more historic part of the city, not just architecturally, however, in regards to lifestyle and culture as well. Much of Shanghai’s metropolitan international identity today is attributed to the rapid globalization that has taken place over the past two decades or so. Nonetheless, this lane predating Shanghai’s global age challenges that assumption.
Even down a historic street separated from the international melting pot that modern day Shanghai has become, the street did not feel completely and authentically Chinese. The pillars of the entrance gate, Western architecture, and sounds of Western instruments playing brought to life the historic colonial influence the Western world has had on China throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
Even though I was far from my grandparents house in the Berkshire mountains back in New York, the fundamental integration of Western culture in Shanghai continues to remind me of the long lasting relations China has had with the Western world.
