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Starry, starry night? Roaring, roaring planes
By Wang Yong |
March 18, 2009, Wednesday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
IT was a bummer that our weekend excursion to a Shanghai suburb, in search of leisure, turned into a "getaway" trip of dust and noise even worse than we experience in downtown Shanghai.
We had hoped to leave behind that urban stew of cars, honking horns, construction sites, grit and pollution.
My wife and I went to Songjiang District on Sunday, lured by the sweet promises of real estate sales people who had such gifts of description and persuasion that they would call a desert an oasis, a ditch a river, and industrial racket idyllic serenity.
It was all about information asymmetry: My wife and I had seldom been to Songjiang District in the past five years since we settled in Shanghai. It SHOULD be a bit more rustic than downtown Shanghai at the very least, we thought.
Moreover, we liked the apartment designs - three rooms facing south, filled with sunshine. What mattered most was that all the apartments would be fully equipped upon delivery, possibly in one year.
Thus, the combination of our scant knowledge about suburban Shanghai and our eagerness to buy a good apartment made us take the bait.
Less than one hour's bus ride took us, part of a group of 40 "prospects," to the "oasis" residential complex. Traffic moved faster on Sunday, otherwise, in weekday rush hours, it would take us forever to commute between our "oasis" and work.
Gorgeous, indeed, were the model apartments we visited. Realtors in dark Western suits were diligent, patient and smiling as they sashayed around us, buzzing with small talk and directing our eyes to whichever corner they wished. My wife and I heaved a sigh of relief after we toured one type of apartment and decided it was what we needed - plenty of space and sunshine.
"How serious is aircraft noise?" I asked a salesman politely. My wife and I had researched and found some online complaints about noise from other residents, but we were not sure.
"It doesn't matter. Shut the windows and it's quiet," replied the clerk, his face a mask of sincerity.
To check it out, my wife and I rambled outside on a small patch of greenery surrounded by a ditch. The ditch seemed a bit murky, but the blazing sunshine soothed us, unlike its weaker downtown cousin that rarely seems to emerge from behind skyscrapers.
My wife shielded her eyes against the sun as she pointed to our favored apartment from a distance of around 200 meters.
Chuckling, she asked me where we should put our tea table and our teapot and cups on that big balcony. "Anywhere you like!" I said, infected by her happy mood. "As long as we can sit and count the stars."
No sooner had I spoken than we heard a crashing sound from the blue, an enormous, ear-splitting roar. We were taken aback.
My heavens, it was a huge airliner flying right over our building, rising at an angle of about 60 degrees. It had just taken off from the Hongqiao Airport. Our dream apartment was directly under the flight path.
Naive hope
Shut the windows and it's quiet? We barked out a laugh at our naive hope - a great apartment, great light, all equipped, and quiet.
Half an hour later, another giant plane rumbled overhead - it drowned the deafening noise of cars and trucks stuck on a major road linking Songjiang and Minhang districts.
"Well, the salesman might not be all wrong," I said in jest. "If we changed our habit of counting stars into counting planes, maybe we could make the noise bearable."
By this time, our upbeat mood in our Sunday excursion was only half gone. Now that the apartment was a lost dream, why not walk around and enjoy the fresh suburban air and green trees?
On we went. We would walk one full hour from Songjiang to the main subway station at Xinzhuang in the heart of Minhang District. Used to hiking 10 hours non-stop in the mountains of Hangzhou, capital city of Zhejiang Province, we set out in strides. But soon we found our feet dragging and our breath short.
All along Xinsong Road that links the two suburban districts were cars and construction sites. Dust, dirt and smoke filled the air, and our lungs.
It wasn't just noise and olfactory pollution. Visual pollution was everywhere, notably in "modern" concrete buildings that mimicked Western architecture.
We saw a shopping complex called "Babylon Life Square" - a heap of barber shops, restaurants, housing agents, car repair shops and banks - which suggested nothing like fabled Babylon and its hanging gardens.
We saw a building that looked like the US Capitol Building, except that there was no space, no greenery, no water.
All along the Xinsong Road there was nothing typically Shanghai. It could be part of any booming Chinese city, without a single Chinese architectural element.
So much for our urban "oasis."
We had hoped to leave behind that urban stew of cars, honking horns, construction sites, grit and pollution.
My wife and I went to Songjiang District on Sunday, lured by the sweet promises of real estate sales people who had such gifts of description and persuasion that they would call a desert an oasis, a ditch a river, and industrial racket idyllic serenity.
It was all about information asymmetry: My wife and I had seldom been to Songjiang District in the past five years since we settled in Shanghai. It SHOULD be a bit more rustic than downtown Shanghai at the very least, we thought.
Moreover, we liked the apartment designs - three rooms facing south, filled with sunshine. What mattered most was that all the apartments would be fully equipped upon delivery, possibly in one year.
Thus, the combination of our scant knowledge about suburban Shanghai and our eagerness to buy a good apartment made us take the bait.
Less than one hour's bus ride took us, part of a group of 40 "prospects," to the "oasis" residential complex. Traffic moved faster on Sunday, otherwise, in weekday rush hours, it would take us forever to commute between our "oasis" and work.
Gorgeous, indeed, were the model apartments we visited. Realtors in dark Western suits were diligent, patient and smiling as they sashayed around us, buzzing with small talk and directing our eyes to whichever corner they wished. My wife and I heaved a sigh of relief after we toured one type of apartment and decided it was what we needed - plenty of space and sunshine.
"How serious is aircraft noise?" I asked a salesman politely. My wife and I had researched and found some online complaints about noise from other residents, but we were not sure.
"It doesn't matter. Shut the windows and it's quiet," replied the clerk, his face a mask of sincerity.
To check it out, my wife and I rambled outside on a small patch of greenery surrounded by a ditch. The ditch seemed a bit murky, but the blazing sunshine soothed us, unlike its weaker downtown cousin that rarely seems to emerge from behind skyscrapers.
My wife shielded her eyes against the sun as she pointed to our favored apartment from a distance of around 200 meters.
Chuckling, she asked me where we should put our tea table and our teapot and cups on that big balcony. "Anywhere you like!" I said, infected by her happy mood. "As long as we can sit and count the stars."
No sooner had I spoken than we heard a crashing sound from the blue, an enormous, ear-splitting roar. We were taken aback.
My heavens, it was a huge airliner flying right over our building, rising at an angle of about 60 degrees. It had just taken off from the Hongqiao Airport. Our dream apartment was directly under the flight path.
Naive hope
Shut the windows and it's quiet? We barked out a laugh at our naive hope - a great apartment, great light, all equipped, and quiet.
Half an hour later, another giant plane rumbled overhead - it drowned the deafening noise of cars and trucks stuck on a major road linking Songjiang and Minhang districts.
"Well, the salesman might not be all wrong," I said in jest. "If we changed our habit of counting stars into counting planes, maybe we could make the noise bearable."
By this time, our upbeat mood in our Sunday excursion was only half gone. Now that the apartment was a lost dream, why not walk around and enjoy the fresh suburban air and green trees?
On we went. We would walk one full hour from Songjiang to the main subway station at Xinzhuang in the heart of Minhang District. Used to hiking 10 hours non-stop in the mountains of Hangzhou, capital city of Zhejiang Province, we set out in strides. But soon we found our feet dragging and our breath short.
All along Xinsong Road that links the two suburban districts were cars and construction sites. Dust, dirt and smoke filled the air, and our lungs.
It wasn't just noise and olfactory pollution. Visual pollution was everywhere, notably in "modern" concrete buildings that mimicked Western architecture.
We saw a shopping complex called "Babylon Life Square" - a heap of barber shops, restaurants, housing agents, car repair shops and banks - which suggested nothing like fabled Babylon and its hanging gardens.
We saw a building that looked like the US Capitol Building, except that there was no space, no greenery, no water.
All along the Xinsong Road there was nothing typically Shanghai. It could be part of any booming Chinese city, without a single Chinese architectural element.
So much for our urban "oasis."
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