The downtown hotel which hosted the squash club I belong to has decided to close the courts, because they do not earn enough money, and change them into something else.
Our club chief, a witty private businessman with two cars and the latest mobile phone, quickly found a new venue - a sports centre next to the Xijiao Guesthouse, a sprawling complex of lawns, villas and woods that is the choicest property in the city and used by Chinese and foreign leaders when they come to Shanghai.
Mao Zedong used to stay there and entertain his women friends in a luxury and comfort he ruthlessly denied to the millions he ruled. In those days, it was like a military area, closed to outsiders.
Nowadays, visitors can stay in its five-star hotel, for US$154 a night for a single room. The sports centre has also been opened to the public but retains its Maoist-era ambience, when it was reserved for the nomenklatura, the small elite at the top of the Communist Party who enjoyed comfortable apartments, servants, good food and imported products, while ordinary people needed ration cards to buy sugar, soap and rice.
The centre is spacious, with dozens of indoor and outdoor tennis courts, a 25-metre swimming pool, two squash courts, running machines and an eight-lane bowling alley. Guests are few and are outnumbered by the staff. 'We are open to the public but do little advertising,' said one woman member of staff. 'Also, our location is bad, outside the city centre. The centre is mostly used by the families that live in the villas nearby. We do not have much to do.'
This is not the whole story, I suspect. The centre belongs to the guesthouse, an important state entity, which is amply funded by the government. This means that, unlike new health clubs financed with bank loans, it is under little financial pressure. Another reason is that the absence of people is part of the appeal, especially in China's most crowded city. In the new order, it is the wealthy - managers of big state companies, bosses of private businesses and those who run Hong Kong, Taiwan and overseas-invested firms - who sit at the top of the pyramid, along with high party and government officials.
