Sensual City Studio

INAUGURATION

Happiness is not silent in Shanghai. When a boy is born, or when a happy couple gets married, or when a couple moves into the new home they have bought together , or when a shop opens its doors for the first time… all these events are good reasons to show one’s happiness to the entire neighbourhood and beyond. Rows of red firecrackers are set off, red ornaments adorn the street, and photographs galore are taken.

FEELING SPECIAL 3

We started walking through the lanes, past the many shops. And then, at the junction between the compound and the lilong, a man took out a microphone and started singing. Some people nearby started singing along, too, while others continued to play mah-jong or folded their arms and just listened. We decided to go to the park. It was a hard decision initially, as so many unexpected things were happening in the street and it seemed that even looking away for just a second would mean missing something amazing. I took him by the hand, and we entered the park. He didn’t have to wait long to experience more of Shanghai.
There was a big group of Shanghainese people dancing in couples, and after a while my dad joined them. He was dancing with a woman to music he had never heard before. This became our ritual: we would sit down to eat and then go to the street corner or the park, and then sometimes someone would take my dad’s hand and offer him a folding chair, so that he could sit in the first row and hear that night’s singer more clearly. Othertimes, he would be distracted, and someone would ask him (us) to come back to their home, in one of the lilongs, so that they could explain to us the beauty of the wooden staircase, the spiritual and material value of it, and for how many generations it had served the family. We couldn’t speak Mandarin or Shanghainese, but that was never an issue.
He became like Shanghai: sleepless. And when he had to leave Shanghai, he left behind a whole city that had become a home.

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.

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…

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.

A SHANGHAINESE DAY 2

I imagine what my life would have been like if I had been a native Shanghainese grandmother…  Like the others of my generation, we would all speak the same dialect, and take full advantage of our home, Shanghai. I get up at around 4.30 a.m., and meet known and unknown friends in order to exercise: tai chi fan, tai chi, dancing or a martial art. I could go to the park, to the street corner where the lilong and the high-rise compound meet, or to the deserted pedestrian promenade. An hour later, I tidy up my house, carefully say my prayers to my ancestors, with the help of incense that cleanses both the air and the energies in the house. Breakfast should be salty, as we lose lots of water at night. I wake up the only son of my only son, and help him to get ready for school. I go to the market and prepare lunch; and then I sit and talk to my neighbours about the latest news in the lilong – who has moved in, who has moved out, who has got married and who has died. After lunch, I’d better take a nap.

UNDERWEAR

Buying a bra was a conscious decision. Getting new clothes, shoes, going to the tailor, could all have happened to me at any moment, as spontaneous decisions. Going to buy a bra, somehow, was different.
I went with a friend of mine. We saw some amazing bra systems. Truly ingenious systems. Some seemed to attach to your back with just a single strap, while others featured elaborate patterns of straps that would transform into another, different pattern in order to support the breasts, almost like a piece of origami.
Others didn’t seem to need any breasts inside them, as they were already satisfied with the cotton, gel or water pads contained within them.
I decided to try one of the origami bras, which would subtly tattoo my back with a kind of butterfly motif. Inside the changing-room cubicle, however, I realized that trying on this bra would be more than a simple choice; it would be a major challenge.
I stood there, thinking I had understood the system, only for everything to fall apart when I opened it. I tried to put it back together in every way imaginable, recomposing its intricate form and attempting to fit myself into it, but things didn’t quite work out as I had hoped… and by this time, quite some time had passed. The woman in the shop decided to ask how I was doing. Hearing my answer in bad, breathless Chinese, she decided that she had to come into the cubicle to help me. She looked at me, and then, with a series of almost computational movements, she solved the problem, and I had the bra in place, with everything exactly where it should be. She looked at me and asked if I would like the bra; I simply couldn’t believe what had happened, that someone could just walk in and do that.
Once my friend and I had bought these masterpieces, we both came to the conclusion that this had been a perfect Shanghainese experience. Back in the West, no one would have ever dared to do this – to barge into your cubicle and dress you, essentially – and I wouldn’t ever have allowed it, not by a long chalk. But here, in a city where the borders between public and private aren’t really fixed, in a city whose inhabitants feel at ease everywhere they go, where pyjamas can be deemed the perfect outdoor attire for the day’s activities, where my kitchen is everyone’s kitchen, it seemed normal. The boundaries are drawn differently here.