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Jerde then travels on to Shanghai's western suburbs—the site of a mall he's designing for China's state-affiliated Friendship conglomerate. In the Mao era, Friendship was the only department store in the city where foreigners could buy Chinese products—antiques and crafts from all over the country. But Friendship must now compete with better-financed Japanese, Thai and European shopping-mall giants in the race to sell mass retail goods. Part of Friendship's competitive strategy is to build a shopping center more faithful to Jerde's ideas than any mainland mall that has yet to break ground.
Through the scaffolding, the fanciful geometry of Jerde's sprawling village center is only hinted at: the brightly colored faades cheerfully arranged like a giant set of children's blocks, a boulevard wending its way through the project as playfully and haphazardly as a toddler's toy train, the curvature of the walls broken by crooked spires. "It's an outdoor street," says Jerde. "We're going to do a town which the Friendship store is kind of the founder of."
The joy with which Jerde is greeted by the assembled Friendship officials surmounts all language barriers. "This is a big challenge," Bi Derong, the project's manager, says through a translator. "We saw the opportunity for China, and we wanted to be the first in Shanghai."
"I learned a lot of things from Mr. Jerde," says Xiao Shirong, the Chinese architect collaborating on the project. "I decided to have him as a teacher."
"And Mr. Xiao's group has been such a tremendous help to us," Jerde says. "Thank you so much."
Later, Jerde basks in the afterglow. "Did you see how great those people were?" he says. "They were really excited, and they were looking to me almost as if, 'Don't worry, we're not going to let you down.'"
Even after all of his setbacks on the mainland, Jerde is giddy with expectation. Given China's past experiences with foreign exploitation, he can understand why Chinese developers might at first be incredulous about his good intentions, but he is clearly sincere. "If you look at the history of Shanghai," he says, "you see each foreign power trying to become more important than the other guy, so it can be the chief taker." Acclimating a wary client to his firm's ethos can be a squeaky process that requires lubrication. "It's like WD-40 oil," Jerde says. "When we go somewhere new, at first they think we're one of the other guys. But then they realize that what we're giving them are gifts, not demands. And all of a sudden, it's 'Ah ha! It's for us.'" Jerde slaps his palms together as if for the first downbeat of the hootenanny. "Now you're working together at that point, and that's a whole new deal, but you have to go through the whole WD-40 process to get in. That's really a big idea: WD-40!"
A big idea, but perhaps not a dream metaphor for a magazine article. Jerde notices his publicist looking at him again, and musters the sweet smile of a little boy who's overstepped his bounds. "Oh God," he says. "Sorry, Angela."
Heading back to the Four Seasons, Jerde is filled with a sense of the sublime possibility of it all. When a mall truly works, as he believes this one will, he sees it as a deeply enriching experience for all the common folk who venture inside. Whether or not they can afford to buy anything there, they can still partake of the architect's grand humanistic ideal.
The best of what Jerde has to offer, he will give them for free. "When you really get down to it, it's all for them," says Jerde. "You've got to remember that we're all in the service of man."