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. [ + ]
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.
[ - ]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 . [ + ]
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.
GREY Grey is an omnipresent colour in the city. It is the colour of the sky as seen by the citizens of Shanghai. [ + ]
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.
[ - ]FAKE BUILDINGS The first long day in Shanghai was long in terms of time, but the more it passed, the more we tended to forget about it, being brought back to reality only by occasional biological reminders: hunger, thirst and the need to go to the toilet. At a certain point, it became obvious that I was not in fact a superhero, but merely human. [ + ]
FAKE BUILDINGS
The first long day in Shanghai was long in terms of time, but the more it passed, the more we tended to forget about it, being brought back to reality only by occasional biological reminders: hunger, thirst and the need to go to the toilet.
At a certain point, it became obvious that I was not in fact a superhero, but merely human. The message my body was sending me was loud and clear: “Hey, it’s time to go to the toilet!” But where? Whom should I ask? How does it even work here?! I panicked.
After seeing my pained face, a friend said to me, “Let’s go together; I’m bursting too.” We decided to go to the building that looked the newest, where we would ask to use the toilet. My friend assured me that “there’ll be a Western toilet there for sure. You know… one with a seat…” We both walked determinedly at a brisk pace.
Then we saw it: a marble building, all clean and shiny, with a blue glazed façade. We were in the centre of Shanghai, after all.
We opened the door, entered the foyer, and… well, there was not much to see.
It was still a rough construction site.
Despite this surprise, we still really needed to go. So we asked the porter. He pointed at a wooden box within this huge, empty building. It turned out there were no Western toilets after all, or indeed anything remotely similar.
Since then, I have stopped trusting façades.