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The Bund, the magnificent old waterfront promenade, is decaying, but is as imposing as ever in the pre-smog morning light. The ornate colonialist skyscrapers now house party and government offices. Gone from hi front of the old Hongkong & Shanghai Bank are the bronze Britannic lions. Another old bank has been transformed into an absorbing museum of ancient art. The Peace Hotel, built as the Cathay by Sir Victor Sassoon hi the mid-1930s and now the premier hostelry for Western visitors, is creaky and listless, but it can still mount a banquet worthy of an Emperor. At a school hi Shanghai's Yangpu district, 34 exquisite young voices rehearse a song that turns out to be pure Maozart: We Follow Our Chairman. In a nearby room at the Children's Palace, a finely tuned orchestra of eleven-year-olds, playing traditional Chinese fiddles, flutes, dulcimers, string drums and mandolins, bursts out with My Old Kentucky Home. More than 1,000 children a day study the arts and sciences at this school "hi order to achieve modernization." Carefully selected from ordinary schoolrooms, they return to regular classes after a year of intensive instruction and impart their skills to other kids.
A hour's ride from downtown Shanghai is a teeming farm called the Hsinching People's Commune. It is a model establishment, or it would not be on the F.F. itinerary. As the buses arrive, all hands of all ages are out to greet them, all smiling and hand-clapping (it beats weeding). The F.F.s, after Ni haos! and handshakes, are waved toward basins of cool water and stacks of fresh towels. Then they troop in for the Brief Introduction, the ritualistic prelude to any tourist attraction.
The Hsinching commune, like any farm within hundreds of miles of Shanghai, exists to meet the city's insatiable appetite. Its 2,330 acres are planted mostly with vegetables, though the commune also raises rice, wheat, animal fodder and some livestock. The peasants are particularly proud of their plump chickens, which they say are of a Chinese breed; in fact, they are White Leghorns and (appropriately) Rhode Island Reds.
Hsinching has a population of 21,626; the peasants privately own and cultivate 8% of the land. The commune has a busy, fair-sized hospital staffed by 30 nurses and 40 paramedics, "barefoot" doctors: its bare-toothed dentist boasts that every last piece of equipment was made in Shanghai.