Personal Log: Adrian Rodd

How could I have forgotten this one? Shanghai, 2007. Most of the city is a mix of decrepit buildings from the 1920s or 1930s on the one hand, and huge skyscrapers on the other. The CBD glistens with tall, ultra-modern buildings: business headquarters and luxury flats for the ludicrously rich. Old quarters built during the era of European incursion are being torn down in a drive to modernise the city and house its expanding population. In this photo, an old quarter from before even the European period has been preserved and renovated, while you can see tall blocks of flats in the background.

This may correspond to what most people imagine Shanghai looks like. In fact, most of it is clogged up with cars pumping pollution into the air. Similarly, in Beijing, there are a great many cars, and very few bikes.

About this photo: We were herded into the shopping district, which makes a poor attempt at replicating pre-colonial China, but basically is just a crowded, modern area packed with tourists and stinking of consumerism. So I slipped out and wandered into the city itself. That photo is what I found just outside the "tourist quarter". While in the tourist quarter, I actually ran into a former student of mine from Sydney! If anyone wants to calculate the odds on that, they must be absolutely staggering...