At the top of every edifice, there’s something funny going on—a pointy or flashy or revolvy item. Favorite motifs are cocktail olive and pickle-on-a-spike. The skewered ovoid shapes culminate in the unbelievable Oriental Pearl TV Tower, 1,400 feet high, with massive geodesic globes at middle and bottom. It looks like a Russian Orthodox church of the twenty-eighth century or a launch vehicle for a pair of Houston Astrodomes or a humongous shish kebab that lost everything but two onions in the barbecue fire. And omnipresent amid all the frenzy of Shanghai is that famous portrait, that modern icon. The faintly smiling, bland, yet somehow threatening visage appears in brilliant red hues on placards and posters, and is painted huge on the sides of buildings. Some call him a genius. Others blame him for the deaths of millions. There are those who say his military reputation was inflated, yet he conquered the mainland in short order. Yes, it’s Colonel Sanders. In some ways, Shanghai is the familiar, homogenized world city. The restaurant at my hotel was decorated with a “Stampede ’97” theme. The waitresses were dressed in denim hot pants, checked shirts, boots, and Stetsons—the world’s only five-foot cowgirls who bow when you order a cold one. A mechanical bull had been installed across from the salad bar. One inebriated Japanese businessman got on it. And right off again. Yah-hoo. Of course, if you want to feel like you’ve really traveled, Shanghai offers some experiences of the patently exotic kind. I went with some friends to what looked like the worst pet store ever. Inside was a wall of terrariums full of fat, angry poisonous snakes, hissing, pulling hood boners, and making wet bongo noises when they tried to strike through the glass. This was, in fact, a restaurant on Shanghai’s Huaihai Road. Spécialité de la maison: cobra blood. One of the more expendable waiters opened the hinged front of the cobra case and pinned a four-foot serpent with a forked stick. He pried the critter out of its home, grabbed it beneath the head, and scuttled off to the kitchen, holding the thrashing reptile aloft as though it were a living string of furious bratwurst. A few minutes later, the fellow emerged with a tray of brandy snifters, each filled with bright, gory liquid, plus an extra glass holding the contents of the snake’s gallbladder. Bonus. There’s a ritual involved in drinking cobra blood. Of course. There’s a ritual involved in most very silly things. You have to get four males together and
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