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[Offbeat]: Slow Boat from China

The ultramarine travels to Osaka - By Ric Stockfis , Jun 02, 09

"Offbeat" is a SmartShanghai column about stuff to look at or do in Shanghai that's interesting or weird (relatively, of course), that doesn't fit anywhere else. It appears weekly, monthly, or maybe even annually, when we're not busy working on other superfluous column ideas.

There's a small shop, somewhere along Dongtai Lu, that sells 1950s maritime navigation charts. Each of them individually numbered; 1:1,100,000 scale. The owner guards them carefully, still haunted by the dozen or so sailors he killed to get his hands on them.

I'm looking at one now -- a gift -- a sticky-tape patched scrap of paper that traces the most direct route here from the Japanese town of Fukuoka. A thick-ruled pencil line stretches all the way across the water. Shanghai pokes its beaked nose in from the west, but the city and the vast country behind it are merely incidental. It is the sea, or rather the seas, that still breathe life into this fading picture: The Yellow Sea, The Eastern China Sea, a drop of the Northern Pacific Ocean; and too the multitude of depth markers laid out like a particularly tricky color-by-numbers; the rocky outcrops of Beehive, Two Brothers, and the Barren Islands; the zig-zag lines at the bottom, plotting the first steps of journeys south to Manila and Amoy.

The names, though, are about the only things that date this map, because the sea-route to Japan isn't merely still operational, it's one you can take yourself any and every Tuesday morning.



The journey starts a short walk north of the Bund, where you board the Suzhou Hao. Save for a brief spell in dry-dock in April, she sails from Shanghai direct to Osaka week-in, week-out. The journey takes 44 hours longer than by air, but as a way to depart Shanghai it's hard to beat -- the Pearl Tower looming large as you motor under the Yangpu bridge, diminishing as you skirt Fuxing Island, blurring as you head north toward the coast, picking your way through the ceaseless traffic, steering clear of the warships. But the river here is more than just a frantic workplace, it's also a sedate residence - you pass almost close enough to steal the laundry hung from resting barges along the entire stretch.



And the place you call home makes more sense from this distance. The Wusong Bar -- the shallow waters where the Huangpu spills out into the Yangtze estuary -- was first dredged a hundred years ago, an act that forever altered the course of the city. As Simon Winchester has it, "The perils of the sand lessened, then vanished altogether. Shanghai duly took her place as the one of the world's great trading cities...". Take a good look as you turn east past Chongming Island; there's very little else to see for the next day and a half.

That time passes almost too quickly, though. Depending on the season, you're either up on deck, sunbathing and reading entire books before lunch, or down below, drunk and hoarse in the karaoke lounge. Food is cheap, beds are comfortable. Your fellow passengers are a peculiar mix of travelling salesmen, high-school students doing field trips on the cheap, and arcade-gaming backpackers -- all united by an absence of urgency.



Events in the outside world take on disproportionate significance - a passing tanker an excuse to rush to starboard windows, sunset from the stern a communal, hour-long spectacle.



It's worth dragging yourself from your bunk early on Thursday morning. If the ship is on course, you're already past Fukuoka and are somewhere on the Inland Sea, the island-speckled lagoon that stretches all the way to Osaka. (And was also the fictional setting for various 8th-century legends, and Battle Royale.) The contrast between one place and the other hits you on disembarking -- slicker shuttle buses, more varieties of canned coffee -- but dissipates as fast as it would had you flown. The sea miles you've clocked up, even while you slept, stay with you a while longer, though. A slight unsteadiness on your feet, mild stomach cramps, an unbroken link with the place you've left behind.



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The Suzhou Hao sails from the International Cruise Terminal (800 Dongdaming Lu) every Tuesday morning at 11am, and arrives in Osaka on Thursday at 9am. Return trips leave from Osaka on Friday at midday, and arrive in Shanghai some time on Sunday morning.

One-way tickets run from 1,400-6,600rmb, return tickets from 2,150-9,950rmb.

Second-class A tickets (for a bed in a 5 person room) are the best value at 1,600rmb one-way / 2,500rmb return. (All prices inclusive of fuel surcharges.)

Tickets never seem to sell out, and you can check-in as late as half an hour before departure.

More information here. More photos (from Gerard Lazaro's flickr stream) here and here.

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