Thinking about a little History

Good weather brought me outside most of the weekend. It all started on Friday night after a dinner with students from a southern US university. I couldn't find a taxi so I started walking, I walked across the Suzhou River, down the Bund, down Nanjing Road, past People's Park, past Tomorrow Square, past Jingan Temple ... I walked almost three hours to my neighborhood and decided to stop there - I thought there might be a danger of getting into a Forest Gump cross-continental groove. But I got up Saturday and started walking again and didn't stop for seven hours. On Sunday, I rested.

On Sunday I took the bus downtown with the intent of studying in People's Park but I couldn't find a single bench or rock to sit on - they were all occupied. Shanghai folks get there early and sit there all day - I never saw anyone leave. So I went to Pizza Hut overlooking the park and had a little lunch. Looking out the window down Nanjing Road and across to the park I thought about the tremendous changes this spot has seen in the last century. In the early part of the 20th century the large park across the street was the European's horserace track. The street below, Nanjing Road, was the Park Avenue of Shanghai and saw the first big Chinese department stores open up along it in the 1930s. Out the window I can see the Shanghai No. 1 Department Store is still there - old and out of place among all the new skyscrapers. I also see the old YMCA between my window and the old department store. In the late 1960s and early 1970s the old YMCA was used by Mao's Red Guards as a part-time interrogation center. More than a few murders were committed there. Worried family members used to sit in People's Park and stare at the building and hope their children or parents were still alive. There's a lot of history outside the window of Pizza Hut.