Michael David Kwan wrote a wonderful book called Things That Must Not Be Forgotten, about his childhood in China. What follows is not so much that, but rather things that I do remember and treasure. But let's start with a trip into a time warp, one that remains to this day - and in super-modern Shanghai! It undoubtedly too will soon fall to Progress.

It's in an old building that will take you (older) readers back to the days of your youth. In the Natural History Museum (at 260 Yan An Dong Lu, two blocks in from the Bund) you will find, and I quote (from their five kuai ticket): "ANCIENT CORPSE, HISTORY OF ANCIENT ANIMALS AND EARLY HUMAN INVERTEBRATES, FLSH, AMPHIBIANS, REPTILES, BIRDS, MAMMALS."

The museum was founded in 1972 in the once-elegant and stately building that before 1949 housed the Cotton Exchange. Except for some tacky temporary plaster modification, it has hardly changed (or apparently been dusted) since. But on the main floor, where the busy brokers once traded cotton goods, you now find a gigantic dinosaur skeleton, its long neck stretching to the top of the lofty glass atrium. Next to it is the skeleton of a baby bronto (or something similar), and nearby that of a woolly mammoth. Really a rather awesome trio - even if you didn't like the film Jurassic Park.

Remember how old nature museums back home used to feature exhibits like tapeworms and fetuses in bottles, bugs on pins, and displays behind glass of taxidermied animals? Those museums, in the Western world anyway, have long since moved on to more modern display methods. This one has not. It's all there, dusty, shabby, badly lighted, crammed in between temporary partitions and padlocked emergency exits (with their original brass door fixtures intact) in this fusty-musty old building.

I visited with an expat family and we later had a discussion on how it would all be regarded through the eyes of their children. Do they spot its shortcomings, like the general shabbiness and the bad taxidermy, or do they simply see beyond that and enjoy the displays for themselves (as we did)? We came to no conclusion, but we hope the latter.

In another category, one of the things I sometimes long to see again, from the simpler life we lived in China two decades ago, is the old-style hotels in the smaller cities of China (and indeed also in some major ones). I used to say that the criterion of a hotel was whether they brought you two or four of those brightly painted tin thermos flasks full of hot water. In the days before bottled water (yes, there was such a time in China) you immediately took one bottle and emptied it into all the available cups and glasses (usually a total of four) so that you would also have cool water to drink. The rest was also useful, sometimes even for bathing - but if you asked they would bring you an extra four thermos flasks for that.

And of course you carried your own food supplies, not for lunch or evening meals, which could be quite delicious even in the no-star hotels of that era, but for snacks and picnics and onward train rides. I remember once a galfriend and I carefully tucked into our goodie bag before we went to bed one Snickers candy bar each. (These were the height of decadence for us Americans, as they had to be carried back from stateside trips and then kept in the fridge until they were devoured - usually all too soon.)

During the night we did hear a bit of rustling and thumping, the usual night noises in old hotels, but ignored it and went back to sleep. Imagine our horror the next morning to discover that rats had managed to get under the flap of our goodie bag and had eaten, very considerately, about one half of each candy bar. Ughhh, we said as we started to toss the remains into the waste basket. As we held the precious remnants in our hands, in unison we paused. And examined the tiny teeth marks on the candy bars very carefully. Finally, one of us said, "I wonder how long rat lips are?"

While studying the partially chewed bars we discussed rat facial anatomy. We finally came to the conclusion that if the teeth marks stopped here then the lips could not have touched any farther than a centimeter or two beyond, say there. We drew a line on the bars, whipped out the family traveling knife and cut off the bars at the agreed-upon point. We tossed the chewed parts into the waste basket - and ate the rest. Yes, we did.

It's a good thing we had sustenance, as we had a train trip ahead of us, but in soft class and hence relative luxury. For this we bought a bag of (then rare) peaches from a street vendor. In the early 1980's this was the best -- and virtually only. -- thing he had to offer, other than wormy apples. During the night, you guessed it, the usual paper rattling -- but this time I rose up to protect our investment. As I pulled the bag from the overhead bin a rat leaped down onto my top bunk, skittered off and disappeared somewhere into the overhead darkness. Again the bag's contents were only partially eaten, but as we were headed home we decided this time to just toss it all. I mean, there are some limits.

ARTTICLE NO. 2 (already used)

YOU CAN'T GET THERE FROM HERE
(OR AT LEAST IN TIME FOR YOUR APPOINTMENT)
by
Tess Johnston

What IS it with Shanghai these days? Why can't we get anywhere and where are all the taxis? (I ask all the drivers, and they say: "stuck in traffic jams"!) I just returned from a five-week home leave only to find that in my absence Shanghai's traffic seems to have doubled. Then I read that the city government is trying to limit the number of cars on the road - by selling only six thousand new license plates each month. So that's 72,000 new cars a year, right? Some limit.

In the 1980's Shanghai was a much more peaceful city. There were no traffic jams, blaring horns, and choking exhaust fumes to frazzle the nerves. The luxury of automobiles was limited to foreign diplomats and businessmen and we were practically the only people who had them in those days. The good news was that there were of course no parking problems. You drove up to your destination and parked right in front of the door. It does seem a distant dream, nu?

We all had bicycles and rode everywhere, especially on suburban roads on weekends. On the city's streets the only traffic sounds were the tinkle of bicycle bells and the steady swish of thousands of bicycle wheels. You could pedal everywhere and there were convenient bicycle parking lots all over town. I always wondered how you could find your bicycle in the mass of black ones, as there was then only one color and two models -- the Flying Pigeon and the Forever, as I recall -- but riders always somehow located the one they rode in on (or maybe they traded up?).

Taxis were few and they did not cruise, so you had to book them at the major hotels and order them far in advance. If you ran out of energy walking between hotels, say along Nanjing Lu from the Peace to the Park (which were practically the only two hotels there were at that time) then you were out of luck as there was no easier option.

Before the Bund roadway was widened there was a parking lane running right down the middle of the street. Once I parked there to run a brief errand. On hot days in that crime-free era I always left the windows open and of course never locked the car. Imagine my surprise upon returning to see a young Chinese man sitting in my sporty Pontiac. (In Shanghai I have owned five cars, Japanese, Polish, French, Chinese and American -- but it was the racy American one that got all the attention.)

In any other country I would have immediately cried "Thief!" -- but in China in those days I wasn't even worried. The young man was smiling broadly as his friend photographed him in "his" car. They then traded places and snapped some more shots. When I walked up with my keys in hand they looked a bit embarrassed -- and then relieved when I offered to photograph both of them together, leaning against the side of the car, smoking their cigarettes. I am sure these sophisticated poses later impressed their families (or girlfriends?) back in the provinces. I was happy that my car could contribute to such a worthy goal.

By the way, those Shanghai license plates that are so limited, guess what they cost? At the "sealed-bid" (hmmmmmĄ­..) auction they are now costing around RMB 37,000 each. You would think that would be the limiting factor, but apparently not; even at that breath-taking price there are many more bidders than there are plates.

As choke points on the elevated highways now cause long tail-backs at all the exits, I suspect the old Shanghai residents living downtown will look back on the simple and "good old days" with longing. Caught in the inevitable daily traffic jams, I certainly do.