Sensual City Studio

MASKS

Coming to Shanghai was an experience for all my senses: my nose would be filled with different smells simply crossing from one street corner to another; my sense of touch was mesmerised by new, different surfaces; my ears couldn’t comprehend most of what was going on around me, as they were bombarded with explosions of different sounds everywhere I went; my tongue was happier than ever before, tasting so many different foods and so many different consistencies, compositions and combinations; the way it looked was often at odds from the way it tasted – and, most of the time, it was my eyes that were happily proven wrong.
Every day, my eyes would be caught up in a symphony of movements and experiences – and, like the weather in any harbour city, the elements would change day by day, minute by minute. I made a promise to myself to observe more attentively, to concentrate on just one thing at a time and breathe it in, as if I were inspecting it. These inspections would sometimes take less than a minute. Sometimes, they would involve a combination of several observations made at different times, while others would occupy a much longer span of time, of relaxation, depending on whether the element was fixed or in motion. In most cases, without willing it, my brain would conduct a series of categorizations – categorizations that in most cases were proven wrong, because even static objects in Shanghai are constantly changing and moving; being displaced, relocated and dissolved.
The way Shanghainese people dressed on a normal day would always arouse my curiosity. Women especially, on a sunny day, would often wear gloves and large hats, carry umbrellas, and also wear masks – and men, too, would also wear masks. Indeed, after living in Shanghai for a while, there was no way I would contemplate riding my bike without a mask; some of my colleagues would not dare to go outside without one. Paradoxically, these layers of clothing that were meant to keep everything me   white, clean and healthy would suppress the senses that were ordinarily revealed to me by Shanghai – the city where it is said   that going jogging is more harmful that not exercising at all, as you simply end up inhaling, even more deeply than usual, the reason the Shanghainese don’t see the stars…

PYJAMAS AND SLIPPERS

For the Shanghainese, there’s no distinction between public space and private space: the whole of the city is their home. However, with  our Western eyes, we search for the boundary between public and private. It doesn’t exist: public is private, and vice versa.
But people are having to fight to keep alive many of the customs that make the Shanghainese so comfortable in this living space of theirs.
On my first day in Shanghai:
– Hey guys, have you seen that guy wearing blue striped pyjamas riding a moped?!
– Yeah, right.
Later:
– Oh! There’s another one, in the supermarket, look!
– Yeah, you’re right! Take a picture!
Later on still:
– Jammies and slippers are everywhere! People wear them when taking a nap outside their homes, taking their children to school, eating, shopping, driving, riding their bikes…

STADIUM

Each of my walks was unique. Even when I started out by walking the same route, it would differ from one day to another. One day something would attract my attention in a much stronger manner than another, effortlessly making the decision of which path to take for me.
This time, I had an early dinner at the lilong. I had a discussion over the bright red shrimps, which I would eat and savour one after the other, with some of my neighbours sitting on the tables in front of the street vendor.
I decided to go for a walk, in order to digest the feast I had just enjoyed.
Now, without noticing, since there are always so many people on the streets at this time, in the early evening I wasn’t focusing much on my walk. Suddenly, I began to wonder whether this might be one of the largest and therefore most crowded renovated streets, and continued to do so for the next three hours.
However, this time I saw more lighting items to be purchased than normally. Binoculars   , items to put in one’s hair, flags and light-up hands. I looked up to see the sky filled with bright little UFOs in every colour of the rainbow, moving up and down the plaza. For indeed there was a plaza in front of me. My gaze shifted, and I saw the stadium, where a concert was in progress. I managed to follow the people, all going in one direction. The concert was sold out; however, they allowed me to come closer, since they thought I must have a ticket; they probably assume a laowai always has one, especially in a crowd of Shanghainese teenagers.
Even afterwards, I didn’t know the name of the band, but I will never forget the view from the top of this megastructure over the city and the football pitch, brightened up by colourful objects and singing citizens.

喜  (xĭ) means « happiness ». 喜 + 喜 = 囍 (shuāng xĭ) – DOUBLE HAPPINESS

Double happiness has a beautiful connotation in Chinese. It is the addition of single entities and its conversion into a double entity. Being double happy became a common expression symbolizing love, since love multiplies when it is shared.
It can be found on nearly every kind of item: rugs, clothes, fabrics, matchboxes, ceramics, doorbells, invitations, teaware, jewellery, cigarettes… These items are placed everywhere, and are essential items for any weddings, birthdays, anniversaries and New Year celebrations.
However, the moment when I really came into contact with this notion was when I solved my first dilemma on arrival in Shanghai, namely the question of what to smoke. At first, I tried the Western cigarettes, which didn’t taste the same as back home – too strong. Later on, I chose the packaging that appealed to me most: a golden packet with the Shanghai TV tower on it… it later proved to be a nice souvenir for friends, but not something to be smoked.
Afterwards, I start asking others and observing what the Chinese would smoke. There were so many different brands, but one caught my eye: a white packet with two red stripes at the top and bottom, with this 囍 symbol in red – a symbol that I had seen somewhere before… the double happiness symbol. It was not as bad as others I had tried before, but after a long night I would lose my voice for a while; this double happiness seemed to be double strength, too. Indeed, it turns out it has 15 mg of tar per cigarette, compared to 10 mg for a Marlboro Red.
After doing some research, I discovered that this cigarette used to be called “Happy Days”, and its literal translation “Red Double Happiness” is a truly Shanghainese cigarette brand created in 1906 by what is not only the oldest but also the biggest tobacco company in the People’s Republic of China.

GREY

Grey is an omnipresent colour in the city. It is the colour of the sky as seen by the citizens of Shanghai. It is the background of most pictures, regardless of the weather, the season or the time of  day.

MIMICS

It is remarkable how you can have long conversations “just” using hand movements, facial contractions, bodily contortions and so forth… You find that there is always a way to communicate… well, maybe… actually, no, not always.
The way Westerners represent drinking with a hand gesture, for instance, might turn out to be the gesture for the number six in Chinese; the number eight might be used for indicating a person or object; and the number ten might mean to be close to someone. Most of these hand gestures correspond to the way we learned to make shadow animals on the walls, with our parents, before going to sleep. The way Westerners usually represent eating doesn’t mean anything to most Chinese people… but you can always keep trying… until the person on the receiving end gets bored and leaves, that is.

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.

GLOWING KITES

The Qingming Festival is a wonderful time to discover what is, in my humble opinion, one of the pillars of Chinese culture. The rituals that take place as part of this festival, whereby everyone welcomes in the spring , are inextricably linked to one theme : transformation.
The transformation of paper matter into real objects in the afterlife, for example.
On this day, however, a more subtle transformation is also supposed to take place: the transformation of wishes and fears into real, tangible   outcomes in this world and in this life.
It was necessary to find a way of transmitting greetings to those loved ones who are now enjoying another life, in another space. For this reason,   it is believed that the Chinese invented kites – especially for this day, in order to commemorate and honour their ancestors, thus fulfilling their duty of filial piety.
Today, kites fly in the daytime and at night.   In the evening, so that messages don’t get lost, colourful lanterns are attached to the kite strings, and the kites are then transformed into a “sacred lantern”. Nowadays, the Shanghainese attach LEDs to the strings and cloth of their kites, so that shapes can be discerned in the sky, reminiscent of formations of clouds that look like real objects, recalling memories of past events. However, most of these lights simply enrich the dark evening sky and bring back the lost stars of Shanghai, just for one night, just for this night.