老外看中國:上海 16年前沒有香檳和魚子醬
Would you want to stay here 16 years back？
By Janet W.S Suryasta-Cheung
I remember in 1989 my parents told me I was to move from my little house in Leeds, UK to a place called Shanghai. Shanghai？ Excuse me, where is that？ Every weekend I knew that my mum would take me to Mac Donalds for a Fillet o Fish as a treat. That was about to all change.
I arrived in Shanghai back in the days of Liang Piao （ Ration tickets） and FEC （ Foreign Exchange Currency）。 It was strange to me why we were not allowed to buy rice, flour and sugar without these little blue, orange and yellow tokens. Since there were very few toys to buy or anything I could read or watch on TV my mum would give these to me to play, in a way sort of like monopoly money. Till this day I still have some of them left, now they would be considered part of history for China and part of my childhood history as well.
In 1990 they opened the first KFC along the bund. By now I was able to speak mandarin, and had grown accustomed to finding bricks and sticks to build forts with my friends. There really wasn't much else to do, besides riding my bike to the Zoo which was right next to my house in Long Bai Hong Qiao. Hong Qiao was a deserted area, no development and surely not the glamorous little self contained city that it is today. Walking into KFC, I thought I would finally have a little piece of home. I asked kindly and excitely for French fries, pointed enthusiastically at the photo above the cashier. I was answered with “sorry that is just a photo, we don't have fries”。 Slightly heart broken, I decided that Mashed Potatoes would do me just fine, after once again pointing to the photo to the left of the French fries, I was replied with “NO that also is just a photo for decoration”。 Feeling more and more despair, I realised it was chicken or chicken or nothing at all.
How times have changed since then. Now you can walk along the streets and be greeted with KFC, Mc Donalds, the newly opened Burger King, on every single available corner.
I went to school in SAS （Shanghai American School） back in the day when it was still located in the No.3 Girls school on Jiang Su Lu. There were just a handful of us lost children, that had moved from Western cultures, into something very alien. I specifically remember there was only one 9th grader. The poor guys year book photo was of him and himself only. We had a small play ground, and our cheerleading group used tree branches as pom poms. I have been told that there are 1 or 2 teachers still left in shanghai from back in the day. However now they are teaching in a state of the art campus, known around the world. Our small little niche of foreigners has turned into a full bloom world that resembles and almost surpasses some of the best universities around.
When I left Shanghai in 1992 I never looked back and thought I would ever return. I cherished the memories I had, and the friends I had made, but this was all before the times of MSN and AOL chat programs. The promises to write letters drizzled over the years, and soon enough I lost contact with anyone and everyone I knew. I never imagined that after 13 years of moving around finishing middle school, high school and University I would find myself sitting here in the midst of Lu Wan Area. Baby im back, and boy have things changed.
Shanghai now is the place where people flock to for business, vacation and to gain an “experience”。 Each day I am bombarded with friends from all over the world, asking for advice on how to get to shanghai and stay here. Visitors that come always come back, friends that leave, always find a way to return. Had you asked people over a decade ago if they wanted to stay in shanghai, the majority would have said they wanted to leave as soon as possible. But these days, foreigners are buying up apartments and houses, heavily investing money here, and trying to build actual lives here. Its amazing and beautiful to have seen the city progress into what it is today. A central part of Asia that people must visit if they are anywhere in the “East”。
Pudong has changed from Padi fields and empty barren land, to the futuristic city filled with buildings that are architecturally challenging. The pearl TV tower looks like something out of a comic book. I once sent a photo of it to a friend in New York, and he asked me if I had been playing on Photoshop again, he simply didn't believe it was a real building. Hong Qiao has become Team Taiwan and Foreigners glorious haven, with supermarkets that resemble the ones in their home countries, and housing complexes that could have been shifted straight from Spain. Long gone are the times of separate currency for foreigners, long gone are the times where people sat and waited to leave Shanghai. Now it is all about how to stay and make a life here for themselves.
Having left Shanghai in 1992 from the old Hong Qiao airport where even the trolleys could only be used from getting out of a taxi to the main entrance of the airport, I returned to something out of this world. Landing in PVG （Pudong） I walked out into a city that I no longer recognised. It was almost as if I had never been to this city before in my life. I am glad to say that I have returned to Shanghai, and I am glad to say that I have had the hard experience of how it was before the times of Champagne and Caviar.來
我記得那是在1989年，父母告訴我，要將英國利茲的家搬去一個叫上海的地方。上海嗎？不好意思，那是哪兒？在英國的每個周末，媽媽都要帶我去麥當勞。所有這一切從此都要開始改變了。
我到上海的時候，還是有糧票和外匯券的時代。當時我覺得很奇怪，如果沒有這些藍色、橙色和黃色的代幣券，為什么就不能買米、面粉和糖呢？由于那時在上海幾乎沒有什么玩具可買，也沒有什么我能讀的書，當然也沒有電視，媽媽就讓我玩這些彩色的紙。直到今天，我仍然保留了一些，現在它們被當成中國歷史的一部分，當然也是我童年記憶的一部分。
1990年上海外灘有了第一家肯德基。此時我已會說普通話，同時也已經習慣用磚塊和棍子，和朋友一起建造堡壘。那時真沒什么可做的，除了騎著自行車去公園玩，這個公園就在我所住的虹橋附近。那時候的虹橋一片荒涼，沒有發展的跡象，當然更沒有今天這樣的五光十色。
有一次在餐廳，我很興奮地點了法式燒烤，并狂熱地指著收銀臺后掛著的照片。但是我所得到的回答是:“對不起，這只是照片，我們不提供法式燒烤。”我的心受到了些微地打擊，好吧，那就點土豆泥吧！我再一次指向照片，這次的回答是:“不，那只是照片裝飾而已。”
時光飛逝，十里洋場已經大變樣兒了。現在你沿著馬路走，到處都是肯德基、麥當勞，還有新開的漢堡王（Burger King），在每一個街角幾乎都有它們的身影。
我曾就讀于上海美國學校，這里活躍著一群有些迷失的美國小孩，他們從西方文化進入到另一種截然不同的文化中去。 我們有一個很小的操場，啦啦隊用樹枝當作熒光棒來加油。有人告訴我，仍有一兩個當年的老師還住在上海。然而現在他們在一個藝術院校執教，在世界都很有名。而我們念書的學校，已經變成了一個非常熱鬧的地方，甚至幾乎超過了周圍最著名的幾所大學。
當1992年我離開上海時，我從來沒有回憶過什么，也不認為還會再回來。我珍惜這段回憶，和此時所交的朋友。但這些都發生在MSN這樣的聊天軟件出現之前，分手時通信的承諾說了一遍又一遍，但很快我便失去了和朋友們的聯系。我從來沒有想到，在四處完成了初中、高中和大學的13年后，我竟然身處上海盧灣區。寶貝，我回來了，天啊，這個城市已經天翻地覆。
今天的上海是一個人們因為做生意、旅行和獲取某種“閱歷”，而聚集在此的地方。每天我都被世界各地的朋友團團圍住，他們用各種問題炮轟我，詢問如何到達上海并留在這兒。游客來了之后還會再來，離開了朋友總是想方設法地回來。10年前如果你問人們，他們是否想留在上海，大多數人一定會說他們想離開，越快越好。但是今天，外國人在這里大規模置業和投資，試圖在這兒建立真正的生活。能看見這個城市進步成今天的模樣，是一件讓人興奮和美好的事情。
浦東從一個寸草不生的地方，變成一個未來派的城市，充滿了各種富有挑戰性的建筑。東方明珠電視塔看上去就像一本漫畫書中的形象。我曾經送了一張電視塔的照片給住在紐約的朋友，他問我是不是用photoshop做出來的圖片，他根本不相信這竟是一座真的建筑。虹橋已成了外國人聚居區，這里有許多和他們的國家類似的超市，住宅區的風格也可能從西班牙移植而來。外匯券的時代一去不復返了，人們迫不及待地想要離開上海的日子一去不復返了。對外國人而言，現在的一切就是如何留在這兒，并在這兒開創新生活。
降落在浦東機場，我走入這個我不再認識的城市。就好像在這之前我從來沒有來過這個地方。我很高興地說，我回到了上海，我也很高興地說，在沒有香檳和魚子醬的時代，我曾有過那么一段艱難的經歷。
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