Taikang Lu

So while we were in Shanghai, we decided to take a visit to a place where Tammy had been in the past Taikang Lu. I had never been there and was interested in seeing the area so we hopped on the Metro and headed to Taikang Lu. There was a shop there that I wanted to see that we called the propaganda shop. I was hoping to find photos or posters of Lei Feng (see my post on ObamaMao to get some background on Lei Feng, or of course just do a search on your own) and see what else was available at this shop.

Taikang Lu is in essence a group of narrow alleyways that branch off Taikang Lu (Lu = Road so Taikang Lu = Taikang Road) which contain a multitude of shops and restaurants. We had an overview map of area because it could be like a rat maze (who moved my cheese?) but the area wasn’t so large that you could not locate an exit or get too turned around (unless it was happy hour). There were three main alleys with small corridors in between. There were photo print shops, (which sold photo prints of China/Chinese that you might see from National Geographic in black and white). There were prints of artwork (some very odd) and of course the obvious postcards and souvenir type photos for sale (along with a map of the Taikang Lu shopping district). There were shops with the obligatory Chinese souvenirs (that we can find in Suzhou for much, much cheaper price), some with slightly different stuff but the prices were a little high so we looked but didn’t touch. There were small restaurants throughout the complex that served food from all over the world so that was interesting to see. From the outside, it didn’t appear that these places could serve more than 6 people but they had a second floor that could allow for much larger groups of people. Tammy and a group of friends ate at one of the Thai places on their last trip to the area.

The place we came to see was the propaganda shop. This place sold a lot of the Mao stuff, shirts, cups, posters, lighters, etc. In addition, they sold many other things like poster reprints from magazine ads for Chinese products. These were interesting to scroll through and see all of the advertisements. We had seen many similar ads in the museum under the Pearl Tower so we at least knew that the reprints weren’t just for the foreigners and suckers (or maybe they were). They also had the ObamaMao shirts which they tried to sell to us but I told them I already had one (I mean who wouldn’t want one?). We asked them if they had Lei Feng posters but they said that Lei Feng was too good for posters. Odd. It was a strange statement to hear since they had Mao posters everywhere (Mao wasn’t “too good” for posters, hmmm). Then as we look around, we do find at least one Lei Feng item. A old style butane lighter. What does that say to you? I think it’s a little bit of a contradiction (too good to print but okay to use his image for cigarettes) but then again, what do I know? Some of the posters they had were really simple prints (10 RMB each, buy 6 get one free) but others they had were more complete and were better replications of the real posters (starting at 200 RMB). We looked through the good posters and found many that were a little disturbing for a US citizen. One was of Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution. In the center of the image were two representations of the US that were being punished by the masses. There was another poster about Taiwan and the US. There were others of course but these two stood out from the others in my mind. Other color posters contained the flowery images of Mao surrounded by the masses of citizens (from all corners of the country), the majority of posters were like this. It was very interesting to see all the different depictions of the workers, citizens in all of these posters from the Cultural Revolution. It may have happened some time ago but looking at some of the posters, you could almost feel the purpose behind the drawings. It was an interesting shop and a place I will return to in a future trip to Shanghai (after all, you can never have enough of Mao).

The other shops kind of paled in comparison to this shop but they were still interesting. We stopped into a leather bound book shop where we got one of the leather bound notebooks and I picked up an interesting mouse pad that might have belonged at the propaganda shop. There were several other shops we walked through and browsed but we didn’t find much else that peaked our interest. Upon leaving the alleys, we noticed a car across the street surrounded by a hoard of Chinese. We looked again and noted the car was a Rolls-Royce. There were a handful of cops around the car and a lot of Chinese taking photos and walking around the car. They were obviously waiting to see who owned the car. Tammy and I talked about walking towards the car like it was ours but we decided to just move on (after I took my photos). We headed back to the Metro (as opposed to hopping in the Rolls) to zip back to the hotel for our evening hors d’oeuvres (never pass on free food & drinks).