Breaking Into the American Dream

So, a few weeks ago, my former roommate Jillian Corey came to visit for a weekend. She was one of my three roommates from the first semester; although she went home for the Chinese holiday break during the month of February, she came back to China in March, but this time to Beijing, to pursue another semester of study. Finally she came down to visit, and amongst other things, we had one particular goal, which was to go break into the American Dream.

You'd be forgiven if you were wondering what I'm talking about. I read about this amusement park here in Shanghai called "American Dream" park that was opened up back in 1997. It apparently went bust extremely fast, resulting in a derelict landscape that is just too rife with jokes for its own good. There was a single picture of it online, and I thought it would probably justify a visit.

Jill was down, so we looked up directions on Google Maps and tried to go find it after a bit of other sightseeing to other parts of Shanghai she never got around to during her time here. From what we had seen online, it looked like it was basically walkable from the nearest metro station, so we weren't too concerned.

Turns out, though, it was pretty far away from that metro station. It was on the 4400 block on this one street, and after 15 minutes of walking, we realized we were only at the 400 block. So, after a bit more walking just to confirm our place along this throughway, we decided we had no choice but to find a taxi.

We found ourselves under a monumental morass of concrete overpasses, though, so before hitching a ride, I took a couple of pictures of that:

Then we did hop into a cab, and told him the address. His reaction was a bit like, "You're not from around here, are you? Why the hell would you want to go out there?"

He actually had never heard of that amusement park; even if he had, its not likely he would have found it very interesting. Spirit of adventure is in short supply here. Now, it didn't take a genius to know that going 40 blocks along the road would take a while, but he still kept second guessing us, and ultimately said, basically, "its not my fault if you can't find this random place you're looking for". I had tried to find the Chinese name of the park to see if it would ring any bells, and tried to explain to him what the place was; he's always lived in Shanghai, and has even been driving taxis for quite a few years, but he had no clue. So we basically just had to tell him to shut up and drive.

The sun went totally down, and we got a bit gloomy about the situation. We started passing all manner of factories, even for things that I never would have thought have factories, like elevators, right next to a playing cards factory, etc. We reached where the address was supposed to be, but couldn't really see anything we were expecting; there appeared to be a ocean-themed park with a big lobster statue on the top. We had actually driven past where the address should be, and the taxi driver explained to us that it would be too much of a hassle for him to circle back around, so we had to walk back a little bit. The space beyond the lobster park was rather dark, but we didn't know what else to do, so we walked in that direction.

Sure enough, it was the American Dream Park. At this point we didn't really know what our plan was, but we knew we wouldn't be able to get in legally, so we took a tour around the perimeter.

In between the two theme parks, and down a ways along the drive way, was a sole security guard in a little booth, controlling a gate through which cars could pass to who knows what else. It was the only source of light in the area, and though it was a good couple hundred meters away, it still caused us to be a bit leery; we did our best to duck behind trees and the like to obstruct us from the guard's vision.

Of course, there shouldn't be anything wrong with walking up to the front of the park, but we'd rather not attract any attention at all, if it were possible to avoid. Anyway, by the time we got up to the front of the park and out of the guard's line of sight, I was ready to take a couple pictures, so here they are, in all their apocalyptic glory:

That second picture is hard to understand, but I didn't have much to work with. That was a series of old broken down booths, though for what purpose I'm not sure, as there appeared to be another ticket office in the building's facade. Nevertheless, they sure looked like they'd be the place that tickets would be sold.

Anyway, we went around to the side to see what we could find, to see if there'd be any way in. There were a couple of doors, but of course they were all locked up. One had a light on behind it, so Jill tried to see if she could provoke anything, but to no avail. This meant that we figured we were in the clear for trying to sneak in, at least, if the only lit up room was nonetheless vacant; we just had to figure out how.

We settled on going back to the front gate. Jill found a spot in the bars that was curved enough to potentially squeeze through; she was able to. I, however, simply have too big of a frame, and I couldn't make it in. So, we decided to split up, and she'd try to make her way over to the room with the light on, and let me in.

I went back over there to wait for her, and took some pictures of the side of the building while I waited. They're not that interesting, but help to serve the story, so here they are:

This here shows the corner of the park's facade. The shorter roof in the front is the part that I thought also looked like a ticket office, aside from those booths, and had a locked door on this side here.

This is the same building, just a little to the right, and you can easily see the door behind which there is at least one light turned on. This is where I was waiting while Jill fooled around inside.

A few minutes passed by, and I could hear her making some progress through the area a bit, but not so clearly. I started to wonder what was going on, and I also thought that perhaps she'd be feeling a bit nervous in there by herself, so I called her, hoping to at least keep her in touch while trying to get this done.

She didn't answer at first, but called me back immediately after. She talked me through what she was doing; apparently it seemed as though the way into the room with the light was cemented up, and she was having trouble trying to find another way.

At that moment, I noticed in the distance to my left two men walking towards me. They didn't have the look of officials, but they still were the only other ones out here, and so I kept on the alert. I told Jill that they were approaching me, and that I'd keep an eye on them. As soon as they got close enough, I told her they were certainly not security. They passed by me without paying me much attention, but then started walking towards the locked door of that place that I thought might also be a ticket booth.

As they approached it, I saw their hands go for their pockets in the distinctive way they do when fishing for keys, and told Jill that this was the case. At the same time, approaching from the same way in the distance, was a security guard on a motor scooter.

I told Jill she needed to get out, and quickly. I also told her that I'd try to distract the security guard, at least, who seemed quite keen on me. I walked away from the site, back up the street towards the lobster park, staying on the phone with Jill the whole time, banking on the security guard not speaking English. I kept my tone friendly and cordial, as if there was nothing going on, figuring that if I talked to Jill in any sort of rushed, panicked way, that it might somehow clue them in. I didn't look back, and didn't even look at the security guard as he slowly rolled along next to me as I walked away from the American Dream.

Jill made it back to the front gate, but didn't dare to exit. Before she had made it there, I had been able to notice that those two other guys had in fact entered that office, and turned on another light, and Jill knew of it too.

When I made it to the driveway into the parking lot, the security guard turned to the right to head back to his little post, and I kept on walking out like it weren't no thang. When I got back to the highway, I started walking down back towards the American Dream park, with the embankment in between. It was a narrow one, but it had enough trees and such that I figured I'd be pretty well out of view. I got back over towards my original position, more or less, at least in terms of line of sight, and told Jill what I could see.

At that point, she had made a break for it out of the gate, and into one of those decrepit ticket booths, and was still hiding there waiting for my advice. I told her that as far as I could tell, she really had only one option, which was to duck walk under the windowsill of the office where those two guys were. Crazy as it sounds, that's exactly what she did.

And guess what? It worked.

So I told her to keep walking slowly around the corner of the park and back towards where we first were investigating the locked doors on the side, and we met back up there.

At this point, I figured we were pretty safe, and I still wanted to get some pictures from the front of the place, so I had us walk back up the highway towards the driveway again, and entered in broad view there, walking right up towards the front of the park with my camera out, trying to make my intentions clear.

Soon, the security guard putted out on his little motor scooter again, right up to us, still not saying a word. I kept doing my thing, disregarding him; then a couple of dogs approached. I was a bit nervous about this, but tried to not let it show, but when I saw the dogs, I realized I didn't have anything to worry about.

This little pup might be a bit scary in a couple years, but for time being, he was just cute. At this point, I figured I might as well say hi to the security guard. The first thing he said? (In Chinese, of course)

"You know, if you came here in the daytime you'd probably be able to take better pictures."

The guy was a big lovable bear of a security guard with a Mike Tyson kind of voice. I wanted to pinch his cheeks. From the sound of the way he talked, I think its possible he might have just let us into the park if we only asked. I could be totally wrong, but there it is.

Anyway, I took his photography advice and chatted lightly while snapping off a few more pictures, laughing inside my head about the ridiculousness of the situation, then said goodbye and exited for real, this time.

This is another picture of the front of the park, of course. The lit up room to the right side is the one where the two guys went into, and those windows were the ones Jill had to duck walk under.

All in all, it was a pretty absurd scenario, but hey, we knew that from the premise, the premise of breaking into the American Dream.