Sensual City Studio

A SHANGHAINESE DAY 1

Anything can happen anywhere in Shanghai. Within its flat landscape, ideal for cycling, are superposed numerous layers of matter, human realities and emotions – a landscape that can be easily broken down or built up in this metropolis, where motion is the only constant, and where the juxtaposition of time, space and its actors are agents of both the city and its motion  .
Everything moves. Lynch said that there are static parts of the city and there are mobile ones: citizens. However, here in Shanghai, the static parts disappear, are relocated, recreated, created, all at once. In a very short period of time, you can find yourself living in a different city, without having crossed any threshold.
The mobile parts, actually, are the parts that are most adaptable and which embrace change, as something that was meant to be. The citizens circulating around the city sometimes view the place they live as a small town: a town where everyone knows their neighbours, the stallholders on the market, and their evening dancing partner; a village within the city, where some of their family members moved to join them in an effort to make their dreams come true; a village where I can be myself – a Shanghainese.

FEELING SPECIAL 2

I told my dad that he had better rest, so that we could go to the park at around 7 p.m. He didn’t know why I was so excited about showing him a park at that time of day. But he soon noticed me looking outside my window and taking pictures.
He joined me. He saw the sudden transformation of the very same street we had been walking along just few hours earlier.
The street corner, the footpath, the whole lilong was all lit up. I recall him saying that this was the “Cinderella time” of day. Seemingly out of the blue, there were four times as many people walking around as there were earlier that very same day. People were selling glowing objects, clothing, phones… every imaginable – and unimaginable – item.
The footpaths were full of people, looking for their favourite food stand. Everyone in the towers would come down into the street, into the lilong or to the park nearby, and the residents of the lilongs would come out on to the street and walk to the park.
My dad opened the door and asked me, “What are we waiting for?”

WALLS AND PATHS

Many books have been written about the typologies of the built space in Shanghai, in terms of form, in terms of function and even in terms of the absence of both. Many have dissected its built forms and subdivided them into many categories. But we can all agree that Shanghainese walls are both impermeable and porous, solid and fragmented, opening and closing gaps in the city.
In the Chinese tradition, it is written that ghosts cannot walk along paths that turn around corners. Furthermore, they have to take on the form of the bridges in Chinese gardens in order to cross the ponds they straddle.
In Chinese philosophy, a walk through a garden should command all of a person’s attention, as there is only one time and one space: the here and now. The lack or presence in a given dimension of railings, which are more decorative than functional, is to exalt this dimension of being. Being lost in one’s thoughts can result in one  falling into a pond… in the here and now.

THREE-DIMENSIONALITY

Every turn you make, every step you take, however fast or slow you travel  , you cannot fail to notice that Shanghai, despite being flat, is a highly three-dimensional city. When you take a taxi at night, you climb up and over and down so many bridges, flyovers and junctions, some as high as a ten-storey building. All the buildings display a cross-section of their living innards to the outside world. The light flooding in and shining out of their windows exposes the lives of their occupants to the random passengers of a car, just for an instant. I, sitting in the back of the taxi, get a glimpse of these lives, and it is then up to me to either abandon these memories or imagine the possible lives that these people lead.

CHILDREN RIDING PARENT-CONTROLLED PURPLE ELEPHANTS

A whole range of things have been adapted into Chinese culture; it is well known that the Chinese embrace change and development rapidly.
Lactose is better assimilated by the younger generations, and so there are now some very tall men and women in China.
But the Chinese are not only getting taller: it seems they are becoming wider, too. McDonald’s and KFC have been widely accepted and welcomed in China.
Nowadays, China is reaching record-breaking levels of obesity: there are fat camps and fat-reduction hospitals where parents can send their only child to lose all those extra pounds.
In ten years, China’s childhood obesity rate has doubled, with the greatest gains made in urban areas, owing to more Westernized dietary habits combined with more sedentary lifestyles, with more and more kids spending time in front of their computers and playing video games instead of going outside and getting some exercise.
According to recent official figures in China (2012), more than 12% of the nation’s children are overweight, representing some 120 million individuals under the age of 18.
This trend is partially due to a loss of neighbourliness and community spirit  . Children have no brothers and sisters, and instead of living in an open environment such as the lilong where there are other children to play with, their typical living environment is an apartment on the 30th floor, with only Mum, Dad and/or Grandma and Grandad for company.
As a result, parents take their children down to ground level – home of the shopping centre and the market place. Then, using a remote control, they set in motion the newly bought purple elephant, or giraffe, upon which the child is sitting comfortably, so that parents and children alike can happily eat their ice cream in peace.