Sensual City Studio

COLD MEAT 2

It was a sunny morning, but I seemed to be suffering from stomach problems. I still don’t know if it was because of the excitement, or because of the extravaganza of a dinner I had last night with my Chinese friends.
I arrived at the piazza in front of Shanghai Railway Station: a huge, bare piazza. I turned my head to the left, and there was a clock; I looked further to the left still, and there was a huge electronic billboard, displaying everything from advertisements for watches to the weather, as well as the departures and arrivals of trains. The rest… was just people – people everywhere – and a selection of their belongings.
I thought I might need water and something to eat for the road. I decided, for the first time in my life, to buy a Coke. My dad always said that  in case of stomach troubles, the best solution was to drink some Coke and relax;  cola is even good for repairing cars. In the store, I found the Coca-Cola; however, finding something to eat was proving more difficult than I thought. I just couldn’t find something I was able to, or wanted to, eat. In most cases, this was because I simply couldn’t understand what was inside the plastic wrappers containing edible material.

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…

PERSONAL SQUARE METRE

When you   come from the West, many Chinese customs can seem shocking when you   first encounter them in Shanghai – actual culture shocks.
Food, religion, ways of crossing the street, ways of addressing men, women and foreigners, clothing rules and decorum at the table – everything is different. Many questions suddenly present themselves: what things can and can’t I talk about? Then there’s the tactile aspect, too: am I allowed to touch someone? Are they allowed to touch me?
One element that quickly emerges in guise of an answer to some of these questions is space.
When queuing, waiting, taking public transport, buying tickets for the train (or indeed tickets for anything at all), dancing, whatever, remember this: your space is everyone’s space; your square meter of “personal space” doesn’t belong to you alone.

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.

KITCHEN 1

No matter how delicious Chinese food is, and how keen you might be to learn how to make it yourself, DO NOT GO INTO THE KITCHEN! The Shanghainese say that heaven has Chinese food but hell is its kitchen.

DIRECTIONS

I had many opportunities and means to escape my high-rise compound. I could use the metro below my feet or I could go through one of the four doors embedded in the walls surrounding my compound and its garden and swimming pool, allowing me to head in any of the cardinal directions  to discover Shanghai and its ever-changing colours.

I might go towards the wall of a newly demolished lilong, adorned with an architect’s impression   of the forthcoming compound to be built in its place. Or towards a lively existing lilong, with its restaurants and clothes hanging out to dry, a park full of people singing and dancing, or a busy street with its cyclists and mopeds transporting goods across the city.

KITCHEN 2

Walking around Shanghai, it is easy to become obsessed with discovering every street, looking into courtyards, taking pictures and videos of everything, literally everything. Each layer of the city, each smile, each movement of each living being and object, combined with the abstract   aspects of this city, all makes you   drift. Soon enough, you fall in love with their food, present in every corner of the city, so ingrained into their culture. Then, as you move around, you suddenly realize that kitchens in China actually belong outside the house. When I asked why, my Chinese friends would simply reply, “It is dangerous to cook inside; Chinese food is made to be cooked outside.” I keep walking, further and further, and let myself be absorbed by this city, which I start calling home.