Opinion: Letter From Shanghai

“Mi3” may already be available on the streets of Shanghai, but the censors here in China haven’t yet decided whether to approve the movie for theatrical release. It’s not just about the Oprah couch incident. The film was partly filmed in this city, and that seems to be a strike against it. Word is that censors are worried that the movie suggests a certain lack of competence on the part of Shanghai’s law enforcement, what with all the mayhem depicted. Much to Hollywood’s frustration, only 20 foreign films are allowed in for theatrical release each year. And while the studios once expected China to be their El Dorado -- as did Christian missionaries before them -- the nation’s entire box office last year was in the neighborhood of a measly quarter-billion dollars. Ticket prices are outrageously expensive, another source of frustration for studios. On average, Chinese go to the movies once every five years, which must provide studio number-crunchers with all sorts of dizzying scenarios -- “if only we could get all Chinese to see one movie in the summer and one during the holidays, then....” Meanwhile, the pirated DVD market is estimated to be in the neighborhood of $3 billion. Given that only a few titles get approved for theatrical release, can’t the flood of pirated DVDs be considered a digital-era form of samizdat influence undermining the party? Just a thought.... Communist censors in Beijing do have different standards when evaluating movies for theatrical release, as opposed to releases on DVD (even legitimate). Older party apparatchiks recall using cinema to advance their propaganda, so they still get a bit jittery about the power of watching suggestive material with hundreds of other people, as opposed to watching it at home. So, for instance, “Last Samurai” was rejected for theatrical release, but ok’d for DVD. Not sure whether it’s a go for in-flight entertainment.... On Friday we had lunch with a couple of architects and urban planners, among them Ben Wood, who has recently moved to Shanghai. Wood, an alum of the Rouse Co., which developed Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and a lot of other such projects, was responsible for the Lincoln Ave. project in Miami Beach, and most recently, the refurbishing of Chicago’s Soldier Field. He and another expat architect got into an interesting debate over whether it’s an inherently Chinese yearning to create gated residential communities within cities -- your own version of the Forbidden City -- or whether the trend is a way of aping a foreign vogue. Wood designed a wildly successful retail development in Shanghai, Xintiandi, which preserved the look and feel of a traditional neighborhood in the old French concession area of town. The result is like a Chinese version of The Grove, minus the streetcar. A few blocks away is the house where the Chinese Communist Party was founded, covertly, in 1921. The Founding Fathers no doubt were animated by a yearning to see a Vidal Sassoon salon and a Starbucks established in their neighborhood, and after a long march, their dream has been realized. One of our nights here I met up with an old friend of mine, a law school classmate who heads up the Shanghai office of a big U.S. firm. We dined at Jean Georges on the Bund, the sister restaurant of the New York eatery, and then headed to Bar Rouge, where expats on the prowl mingle with young Chinese yearning to be eurotrashy. The Bund is the old colonial riverfront quarter. The outdoor deck afforded an awesome view of Pudong, the new city rising on the east side of the river. My friend Mark and his fellow expats residing in Shanghai can barely contain their “this-is-history-in-the-making-and-we’re-here-baby” exuberance. And it’s hard to be in this city-on-steroids and not be awed, and humbled, and not realize how silly we Americans are to feel like we live in the center of the universe. That said, it’s important, if hard, for visitors to Shanghai to keep in mind that this city is not representative of the real China, and the still-humble life of hundreds of millions of peasants in the countryside. It’s easy to see how foreign investors come here, eat at Jean Georges, count the number of skyscrapers and Gucci stores, and say “I’m in.” I myself am tempted to divert my monthly paycheck deduction devoted to Tribune Co. stock into a Shanghai-based REIT. But lest you think foreigners here are all about making money, kudos to Burger King for spreading democracy in this communist country. The burger joint posts a playful bilingual “Bill of Rights” on its wall. The English version starts off by saying you have the right to have things your way, and so on, then gets progressively sillier ... “you have the right to laugh until soda explodes from your nose like a broken water main” ... but then, WHAM -- “You have the right to have an opinion on anything.” WHAT?!?! You most certainly do not, not here anyways. Did censors in Beijing approve this? Not sure if the Chinese version of the Burger Bill of Rights next to it tracks the English exactly (I snuck into this fine eatery behind the backs of our paper’s crack China-based staffers). But those characters do seem awfully familiar. Maybe they simply read: “Who would pay full price for Versace?”