Fish Bowl Effect

To celebrate a friend’s birthday, we traveled to an unequivocally expat district called Xintiandi. Like nowhere else in China, the area has the feel of a high-end outlet mall (with restaurants and bars instead of Ann Taylor stores) stuffed into the narrow alleyways and brick buildings of traditional Chinese architecture.

Although tens of thousands of foreigners live in Shanghai, in a city of sixteen million that number would barely qualify for its own zip code. Yet, foreigners, lured to the promise of deep fried food and toilet paper in the bathroom stalls, congeal together in what are dubbed expat zones. Gubei, the French Concession, Xintiandi, Pudong, which is for all practical purposes Little America…these areas would be considered base in the giant game of Sino tag.

Last night we gathered in a tiny lounge bar on a side street in Xintiandi. We found our reserved table directly across from a window into an alleyway and began enjoying our first drinks of the night. Natural human curiosity tugged my eyes upward every time someone walked passed the window. Dim and badly backlit, people walking in the alleyway appeared to be barely more than dully colored outlines in the harsh yellow light.

I paused mid-sip when I witnessed the triangle nemesis float across my view: the tour guide flag. I traced the adversary as it turned the corner behind the brick wall of my sanctuary, bobbed across the window to my right, and passed the glass door located slightly behind me.

The tour group trailed behind the flag, completely mezmorized. They were a Chinese tour group so they weren’t getting the Look-How-Western-China-Appears tour, they were experiencing the Look-At-The-Westerners tour. The Westerners in question were us…behind glass enclosures….like exhibits in a natural history museum.

One man actual walked passed the window, came back, and pressed his nose to the glass while ogling the marvels of women drinking together in a bar. With the sickly saffron light shining behind and the fog accumulating on the window from his breath, for a split second I felt throw into a zombie movie where poor lighting is the substitute for state-of-art makeup in presenting zombie creepiness.

Another tour (this time of foreigners) was only a few steps behind and was anxious to witness the wonders of the expat watering hole though this time the nose-to-glass incidences were marginal. Many foreigners just have not quite mastered the staring prowess of the Chinese.

I’ve gotten used to the stares, double takes, and slyly taken pictures. China is still fairly homogenous and with my curly hair, significantly pale skin, and blue eyes, I know I stick out from the masses. I even smile and flash the peace sign for the strangers’ pictures now. Tonight, I reach a level of exhibition not often matched in China’s most developed city; I spent my evening in what is roughly equal to a fish bowl showcased at a popular aquarium.