March 4, 1984
By CHRISTOPHER S. WREN, The Times bureau chief in Peking.
The noise and bustle of the 12 million inhabitants of Shanghai, China's industrial and commercial center, can jolt visitors, and anyone searching for Oriental serenity will not find it there. The city's origins as a fishing village vanished under concrete long ago, and Shanghai now suffers virtually every contemporary urban ailment, including water and air pollution.
But beyond the grimy facades of once elegant buildings lining the Bund, the promenade along the Huangpu River, throbs China's most fascinating and romantic city. The honking, bell-clanging din intimidates some visitors into viewing the metropolis from behind the glass of an air-conditioned bus. But if you are curious and willing to flow with the crowds, the rewards of this deceptively Western-looking city can make Shanghai the high point of a trip to China.
The Old Town
When the Western colonial powers divided Shanghai into concessions in the latter part of the 19th century, they left intact the walled old town where many artisans and traders lived. Even after the wall was torn down in the early 20th century, Westerners were warned against venturing into this quarter without a bodyguard. Today the worst that can happen is to get lost.
Some package tours omit old Shanghai because tour buses get stuck in the narrow, winding streets. But through your hotel you can arrange a taxi to take you there for a couple of dollars and wait for you for about a dollar an hour more.
From the parking lot of the Shanghai Old Town Restaurant, walk a minute or so down Fuyou Road and turn right into arcades housing 100 small specialty shops.
At glassed-in food stalls, you can watch cooks prepare snacks like fat- steamed dumplings (baozi) stuffed with meat or vegetables, and you may sample them by queueing up with the other customers. As you wander past people in faded denim, schoolchildren in red pioneer scarves and soldiers on furlough, you will emerge at a small square pond at the center of which an ornate five-sided teahouse, called a wuxinting, stands on wooden stilts.
Cross over to the teahouse on a bridge that zigzags to keep out evil spirits. (Any sensible soul knows that such spirits can only travel in a straight line.) The teahouse is a good spot to rest and have a cup of Dragon Well tea, costing about 8 cents. As you enter, buy a chit for tea, coffee or cocoa at the cashier's booth. The first floor is open from 5:30 to 11:30 A.M. and from 1 to 4 P.M. (For reasons best known to the management, the teahouse closes for lunch.) The second floor, which affords a better view, is open from 7:30 to 10:30 A.M. and from noon to 4 P.M.
As you cross to the other side of the lake, you can have your picture taken by a young photographer. Bystanders probably won't mind if you ask them to join you. Four photographs cost $1.40. They will be mailed to you if you pay a little extra for postage.
If you have dismissed your taxi, you can get back to familiar territory by walking east along Fuyou or Renmin Roads for about 20 minutes. Notice that because the interiors of the small, two-story houses lining the way are cramped, domestic chores spill out onto the street. Housewives flush out nightsoil buckets or scrub kitchen utensils. Itinerant barbers give haircuts, and men congregate around carts to play cards or kibbitz. It's one of the best shows in town.
Chinese Garden
On the north and east sides of the Old Town pond is the Yuyuan or Happiness Garden, covering five acres and dating from the 16th century. It employs the classical elements of water, trees, rocks and waterside pavilions and has an artificial hill of limestone with a small cave. It also has at least 30 halls, pavilions and towers. Yuyuan was the headquarters of an unsuccessful peasant rebellion in 1853. Today it is favored by honeymooners. It closes for lunch, so arrive before 11:30 A.M.
Boat Ride
If you sail a dozen miles to Wusong where the Huangpu converges with the Yangtze, you will see another side of Shanghai: a major port clogged with sleek steamers, rusty freighters, warships, barges and sailing junks. The round trip takes four hours and costs $6 on the upper deck where foreigners are encouraged to ride. Tickets are sold at the wharf on the Bund just north of the Peace Hotel.
Hotels
Visitors to Shanghai usually have no choice as to where they stay. The China International Travel Service allocates rooms, of which there has been a chronic shortage. But several hotels are worth requesting because they are landmarks.
The Peace Hotel, known as the Cathay before the Communist takeover in 1949, offers the best location, overlooking the Bund and the Huangpu River. The rooms are old, the carpets worn, the bathrooms reminiscent of a neglected rent-controlled apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Worse, the management has sealed off the grand staircase, preventing a fast exit in case of fire. Yet its reputation as China's finest hotel of prewar days lingers. A room for two: about $40 a night.
The Jinjiang Hotel, a complex of buildings in a garden of the old French concession, also retains some of its former elegance in its panelled walls, parquet floors and leaded windows. Rooms for two range from $21 to $30 a night.
The Shanghai Hotel, a 30-story high-rise, was opened last autumn. Its location, near the Shanghai Exhibition Hall, is less central, but rooms are tidy and the young staff tries hard to please. A room for two costs $30.
Restaurants
Shanghai cuisine offers excellent seafood, though the preparation can be oily. The Old Town Restaurant at 242 Fuyou Road specializes in steamed crab, carp and stewed turtle. The Yangzhou Restaurant at 308 East Nanjing also features Shanghai- style cooking but includes dishes from neighboring Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. For spicy Sichuan cuisine, try the Sichuan Restaurant at 457 East Nanjing Road or the Luyangcun at 763 East Nanjing Road. Milder Cantonese food is served at the Xinya Restaurant at 719 East Nanjing Road and the Meixin at 314 South Shanxi Road. Chinese patrons can dine well for less than $5 a person, but foreign visitors are usually charged a higher, fixed price of $10 to $15 a person, which covers a set dinner.
Though Shanghai boasts more than 600 restaurants, the best are invariably crowded, so a reservation is essential. Bear in mind that few Chinese restaurants stay open after 7:30 P.M.
If you prefer to order a la carte, go to the eighth-floor dining room of the Peace Hotel. The service can be slow and surly, but from a window table you can pass the time watching ships on the river. Some Western expatriates favor the dining rooms of the Park Hotel, across from the People's Park, where one specialty is shrimp sauteed in egg whites.
Shanghai is the only Chinese city with a tradition of Western cuisine. The Hong Fangzi, or Red House, at 37 South Shanxi Road was called Chez Louis in the old days. Young men take their dates there to show off with a knife and fork. The restaurant is known for its baked clams ($2.50) and vanilla souffle ($3). Quasi-French entrees like sole meuni ere range up to $3.50. The Jinjiang Club, in the old French Club on Maoming Road, offers candlelight dining to live classical string music or old Western pop songs. Most entrees cost about $3, indifferent steaks about $6. For a flaming finale, order omelet Vesuvius ($3), a type of baked Alaska set ablaze with a sorghum liquor called maotai.
Nightlife
Shanghai's nickname - Paris of the East - faded with the change in government 35 years ago. An evening's entertainment now consists of an acrobatic circus with a performing panda or Shaoxing, a stylized form of Chinese opera originating in eastern Zhejiang province. The nearest thing to the old cabarets is the ground-floor bar of the Peace Hotel, where a jazz combo of old Chinese musicians tootles up a nostalgic repertoire of Dixieland and blues.
Souvenir
If you want to take home more than the usual snapshots, visit the photo shop on the second floor of the Shanghai Hotel, where you can dress up in Tang Dynasty costumes and pose against a selection of ancient backdrops. A portait taken by the studio photographer costs $5.
Shopping
Like other Chinese cities, Shanghai has the usual Friendship Store selling mementos and other goods for hard- currency certificates. It is worth visiting the store at 33 East Zhongshan Road to look at wares not available in other cities, including locally made silk cloth and hand-carved wooden figures, such as a boxwood chess set for $58. The store has an annex filled with brush paintings and calligraphy on silk scrolls and another devoted to antiques.
One of the best selections of antiques in all of China, however, can be found in the antiques and curios store at 218-226 Guangdong Road. Prices are high, especially for furniture and porcelain, but everything bears a red wax seal, which is necessary for export. The store is accustomed to shipping purchases to the United States. Among more modestly priced objects are $20 pendants made from shards of Ching Dynasty porcelain.
East Nanjing Road is Shanghai's busiest shopping thoroughfare. Follow it west from the Bund to the No. 1 Department Store at 830 East Nanjing Road, which offers the widest selection of Chinese-made consumer goods, ranging from bicycles to shoelaces. Some good buys are blue cotton sweatsuits and white T-shirts emblazoned with Chinese characters representing ''Shanghai,'' corduroy shoes and slippers, canvas tote bags, workers' jackets and caps, local textiles and toys. The store handles 150,000 customers a day. Most of them are as fascinating as the merchandise. Joining In
If you find yourself in Shanghai on a Sunday, you may want to go to the People's Park to share your knowledge of English with the several hundred residents who for five years have been gathering after 7:30 A.M. just inside the main gate on West Nanjing Road. Some of those practicing English are young factory workers making up for the education they missed during the cultural revolution. Others are older people preserving the English they learned in missionary schools. If you can't find the group, wander around and it will probably find you. In return for your help with the fine points of grammar, someone may invite you home or offer to act as your guide.
Another opportunity to participate occurs along the Bund every day from dawn to 7:30 A.M. Hundreds turn out to practice the slow art of tai jiquan (shadow boxing), and no one will mind if you join in. If you want to watch something livelier, look for the young men practicing wushu, China's original version of the martial art of kung fu.
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