Shanghai Sea Slack

If Slack is somewhere between hysteria and lethargy, between intensely intricate and sleepless joy of 'work' and the equally intense lethargy you experience when you lay out in a room full of feather pillows, 'mood' music and an endless stack of post-WWII comic books, it can also lie in that motion between two points, A and B, that the normals call 'travel.' My slackful commute is between two Asian megacities, Osaka Japan, where I work and live 9-10 months of the year, and Shanghai China where my wife, a native there, and I own an apartment where we have parked the in-laws and where we plan to live when we do finally move.

I'm lucky enough that the two cities are served by an ocean going ferry line which allows me and my family to escape the misery of air travel with its lines, searches, x-rays, metal detectors, profiling, delays, fuel surcharges, rattling aircraft, drunk pilots... One ship, one line, no delays and I can even bring a ray gun in my carry on although I might have to explain that it is an old movie prop perhaps. The good ship Hao Suzhou makes its way through the Inland Sea between the main islands of Honshu and Shikoku, a stone soup of little depopulated fishing islands and quarries, with villages that are best known to westerners who have seen that Bond movie where James gets a little plastic surgery and is dressed up as the tallest, ugliest japanese fisherman in history. Then its through the narrows at Shimoniseki, a straight less than a mile apart, and out to the open sea where for the whole next day you have an interrupted, 360 degree view of the flat ocean, reminding you that, yes, this silly planet that the Xists will eventually bid for at auction, is mostly water, a second atmosphere where King Neptune still hides, along with Aquaman, the whales, and the stuff you flushed down the bog last week.

Nine times out of ten the seas are as smooth as a public park pond, although this trip some heavy swells have 1st-timers running for the bags the crew have set out for the seasick. The boat rarely fills up as it makes its money mostly on cargo, and the passengers are usually Chinese, with the rest Japanese, either elderly or college age travelers, with a handful of western backpackers on their way to the Great Wall, Xian, or Tibet. Depending on my mood I either leave them in peace or banter with them about all things Chinese over duty free beer dispensed from Kirin vending machines, an appliance unknown outside of Japan. I tell them to get up early the last morning for the approach up the Yangtze, that fantastic sights await. Invariably, the next sunrise I suit up with the extra layer of foul weather gear I've brought; watch cap, gloves, windbreaker, but they are asnug in their bunks and I have the foredeck all to myself.

The great Yangtze river runs brown 20 miles out to open sea, like the Amazon, the great rusty silt of Asia filling up the undersea canyons, a mighty force of nature. Container ships line up for their approach, but we have priority and we settle into the sea lane. The air tingles with unseen energy, the captain visible in the flying bridge conversing with shore, and before long landfall is made, the mainland to port and the giant delta islands to starboard, and we begin our passage past every sea craft known to man; tugs, dredges, tankers, coastal lighters, delta ferries, Chinese navy frigates and subchasers, container behemoths too big for the Panama canal and my favorites, the mid-sized barges, the pickup trucks of the waters, with a single cabin/wheelhouse where the crew can usually be seen cooking, washing, or swinging lazily in hammocks, the hold filled with lumber, balast, giant gunny sacks filled with Dobbs knows what or perfect pyramids of coal with destinations spray-painted in white kanji characters.

The rudder pulls to port and we leave the Yangtze and turn past an old English-style lighthouse into the Shanghai River, the Huangpu where on both banks the switched on Chinese economy hums 24/7. Shipyards welders clamber over new craft of all kinds, giant cranes load and unload containers like so many Lego blocks, drydocks offer services for those in need of overhaul and the air is heavy with the smells of paint and oil, not for the faint-hearted. Ship names like 'City of Parnassus,' 'Golden Voyage,' 'Rapid Enterprise,' 'Baltic Maiden,' recall the day when a champagne bottle shattered bubbles on their bows and they slid into the channel amid cheers and confetti. The immense shipyard overhead crane at the Hudong works reminds me that my apartment likes just out of sight and that I'll soon be home. The skyscapers of Pudong come into sight, the space-age ones you may have seen, the Jin Mao tower and the Pearl TV spire, then the massive Huangpu bridge and finally the waiting dock next to the new Cruise Ship terminal on the North Bund. The crew sets to work, hausers with lead plumblines thrown to shore and secured and the liner is winched slowly landward, the end of the voyage. On the right stands the old Bund, nostalgic with its line of Gotham City-like buildings all from the 1890s-1930s, preserved and refurbished, reminding us that Shanghai was created by foreigners and that after a revolutionary hiatus, they have been allowed to return and reclaim their niche as investor, traders, and fortune-seekers.

China, at last, done over a leisurely two days. I've done it so many times I have a frequent passenger card, good for a 1/2 passage every 4 trips. The only delays is the quarantine authorities who interview the captain and officers over cigarettes and tea in the karaoke lounge for a hour before a mobile gangway/staircase rattles into position and we step onto shore to regain our land legs. Slack seas indeed.