Letter from Shanghai!

My beautiful and gorgeous high school BBF Robert Oliver, author of best-selling cookbook Me'a Kai, is currently in China, on a mission from the Kiwi Government to spread Brand New Zealand to the world.  Got a letter from him that I'm posting in here and the best part is ... he'll never know because my blog is banned and blocked in China.  Bahahhaahahah!


Shanghai is amazing. It’s like NYC blended with Bangkok, multiplied by 5,000 with a massive dose of science fiction, served freezing cold, steaming hot, fashionably gorgeous or squalidly fetid, usually both.

I was walking in Xintiandi yesterday ... the Apple Store, Gucci, Cartier ... huge spectacular storefronts, gorgeous Shanghainese women dressed to bits ... HUGE money ... wide avenues with perfect pavements, manicured trees filled with tiny pin lights ... then I turned a corner and was in an alleyway with 1,000s of people wok-cooking on the street, public tv sets, cats and dogs running about (or for their lives), yelling, laughing, the teeming rabble, 1,000 micro-businesses per square inch - all tailors, watch repairmen, moon cake vendors, chickens in cages. It was a bit like India in that everything is vivid and intense, wildly contrasting and all crammed in together. 


I have not found the pollution to be nearly as bad as I expected.

Today I went to Expo. Was feeling very lonely and a bit overwhelmed. Everything is so difficult. I don’t speak Mandarin and the Chinese way is tough so doing everything or anything is a huge challenge. I had to buy band aids today and I couldn't believe anything could be so hard.  Oh Lord, the simplest things are incredibly challenging!! I get lost a lot, needless to say. The place keep reminding me that it’s a city of 23 million people!!!! HHHUUGGEE!!!

... so anyway, back to the story. I went to Expo feeling very lost, lonely and overwhelmed ... when I saw the Pacific Island Pavilion! Dropped in and there they were! Everyone! The guys from the Tahiti booth came running up to me, I knew everyone from the Fijian booth and all the fabulous drag queens running the Samoan booth, and from the Tongan booth came whispering "There’s the author of Me’a Kai"  I could hear them!! And my old friend Bernadette from Fiji turned out to be running the whole Pacific Pavillion. She took my hand and said “Isa, Ropate, so happy to see you. Just you remember, when you're in Shanghai, your Pacific family is just across the river” It was awesome.


And at 2pm the Solomon Islanders came on to dance, and all the other Pacific folks came out and joined in and sung. It was sssooo beautiful. So wonderful to see our lovely Pacific Island people here in all this madness, so far from home yet so intact, so whole, so warm, so real.

Xoxoxxo

Robert Oliver   Author



Photos: Shiri Ram
 
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