CONNIE WANG
汪 晗
| B.ARCH ’16 | RISD | WINTERSESSION 2015
READING THE CITY S h a n g h a i T h r o u g h A L i n g u i s t i c L e n s
四
三
二
一
语 言 的 形 态
语 言 的 价 值
语 言 与 规 律
语 言 与 文 化
目 录
TABLE OF CONTENTS 3
o1. LANGUAGE AS CULTURE
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o2. LANGUAGE AS ORDER IN CHAOS
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o3. LANGUAGE AS A COMMODITY o4. LANGUAGE AS AESTHETICS
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上 海
BEIJING
SHANGHAI
IN TROD U CTI ON Language is a mode of communication between humans across all cultures that encompasses a form, meaning, code and context. It is “the primary grid of things, as an indispensible link between representation and things… [which] imposes upon them the forms of order implied by the continuity of time.” (Foucault, 1966) In the typography and semiotics of Chinese characters, where typography is the input and semiotics the output, the creation and interpretation of the characters and language can both be looked as the cause and effect of an efficiency that is now inherent in the culture. The value of a character is derived from its literal and sociocultural context, in which the visual language of the Chinese character because of its diagrammatic and pictographic quality altogether becomes a mode of communication with drastically different efficiencies than Germanic languages. The efficiency of a city, which can be addressed from the horizontal scope of everyday traffic patterns and street signs to the vertical scale in the growth of the skyline, as an urban phenomenon will be studied in the context of Shanghai,
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China, where there are high densities nested within large rural zones. With heavy western influences rapidly infiltrating into the city, there is a clear juxtaposition between the east and west parts of Shanghai in terms of city planning and an urban fabric that is highly rich and interesting to investigate. The east side of the Huangpu River (黄浦江), also known as Pudong (浦东), is the newly constructed Central Business District that was once farmlands; the west of the Huangpu River, also known as Puxi (浦西), is the ‘old Shanghai’ still consisting of the traditional Jiangnan architecture and Lilong housing typology. This clear separation between the two grounds of Shanghai is apparent because of a shift in urban density and visual understanding of ‘traditional Chinese architecture’ versus ‘westernized buildings’. The rapid westernization of Shanghai makes an interesting argument for the role of language. Avoiding drawing direct correlations between language and urban design intent, the two will be studied simultaneously in hopes of a further understanding in how an efficiency in the Chinese language translates into an urban landscape and its experienced culture, and in what ways can language manifest itself beyond its basic function for communication.
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LANGUAGE AS CULTURE
语 言 与 文 化
Rendering by Gensler
The disparities between different languages, and the specific nuances that only exist in a single language suggest that language can be a manifestation of culture and vice versa. This socio-cognitive level of studying and understanding ‘language’ is known as Cognitive Linguistics (CL). Cognitive Linguistics examines the relation of language structure to elements outside of language itself, such as cognitive principles and human categorization. This research aims to explore the merits of the Chinese language beyond its capacity as a tool to communicate information, as it becomes not only a visual culture within an urban environment, but also a determinant of the behavior and cognition of people that identify with a specific culture. Cognitive Linguistics exists on the basis of three principles (Croft and Cruse, Cognitive Linguistics, 2004): 1. It denies that there is an autonomous linguistic faculty in the mind. 2. It understands grammar in terms of conceptualization. 3. It claims that the knowledge of language arises out of language use. This indicates that linguistic ability is not different than the rest of human cognition.
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Cognitive Linguistics argues that language is both embodied and situated in a specific environment. According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, language and cognition mutually influence one another, where both are embedded in the experiences and environments of its users. This entails that linguistic categories and usage can influence thought and certain non-linguistic behavior. A large part of Cognitive Linguistics provides reasoning behind cultural behaviors and norms; this is particularly apparent in the streets of Shanghai and the flow of people. Specific to drivers on the roads of Shanghai, a left turn is known as “大转”(Dà Zhuǎn) which literally translates to “big turn” and a right turn is known as “小转”(Xiǎo Zhuǎn) which translates to “small turn”. The usage of such terminologies, however, is only applicable to drivers when making a turn on the road, and not pedestrians or bicyclists. This strongly emphasizes the role of a Conceptual Metaphor in the communication of drivers, or between a passenger and a driver, that an idea or concept, in this case the direction of turning on a street, is only understood in terms of another conceptual domain, and is often perceptually based. (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980) The term ‘big term’ and ‘small turn’ is defined by and indicative of the distance it takes a car to travel when making a turn. Because drivers in Shanghai drive on the right-hand side of the road, when making a left turn the driver would have to travel a larger distance in comparison to making a right turn as depicted in Diagram 1.
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西藏南路
South Xi Zang Road
新闸路
Xin Zha Road
大转
北京西路
West Beijing Road
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北京东路
East Beijing Road
小转
Diagram 1 Intersection of East Beijing Road and South Xizang Road, a commercial area in the city center known as People’s Square (人民广场), depicting the spatial logic in relation to Chinese terms used in Shanghai, especially amongst taxi drivers This term has taken over the usage of ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ when giving driving directions.
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The substitution of using the terms ‘big turn’ and ‘small turn’ is far more direct and efficient because the understanding of ‘left’ and ‘right’ is far more abstract in that it is a learned sense of direction, whereas the understanding of big and small is correlational and can be spatially understood through experience. Due to the speed of driving, drivers are often expected to make quick judgments, making it relevant for the development of such terminology for communication. However, walking at the speed of a pedestrian, wandering around the streets of Shanghai, using ‘left’ and ‘right’ is the right way to communicate when giving or asking for directions. These characteristics suggest that language is based on the understanding of a specific human’s perception as frame of reference driven by an anthropocentric outlook. The way in which an individual can be perceived as the determinant and framework for the specificity in the application of a language is akin to a language’s role as a framework for such cultural manifestations. These language cues in the means of transportation within Shanghai do not solely exist on roads, but also Shanghai’s now largest mode of transportation— the metro, or subway.
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From its initial Line 1 opened in 1993, to the 16 lines built today, the massive increase in area and distance the metro covers show interesting patterns in the naming and placing of metro stops, that is reflective of the modernization and cultural shift of Shanghai. The first few metro lines to open, notably Line 1, 2, 3 and 4, targeted the inner city area, connecting some of the most prominent street and landmarks. The later development of the metro system grew in parallel to the governments outlook for Shanghai in having satellite specialized towns or hubs outside the city center, and heavily focused on connecting these ‘industrial hubs’ or ‘nature developments’, such as recreational parks and rural sceneries. Because of this next level strategy of metro planning, a pattern in the naming of metro stops started to shift as well. In Diagram 3, the stops highlighted in green are metro stops that are named after individual iconic landmarks or a cluster of them such as 豫园(Yù Yuán) the Yu Gardens, or 陆家嘴(Lù Jīa Zuǐ), the first highly developed area in the Pudong. The stops highlighted in purple are stops based on streets that are landmarks itself that hold characteristics that are equivalent to and represent what a building now means to Shanghai, such as 南京西路 (Nán Jīng Xī Lù), West Nanjing Road.
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N
CHONGMING ISLAND 崇明岛
JIADING 嘉定
BAOSHAN 宝山
CITY CENTER 市中心
QINGPU 青浦
NEW PUDONG DISTRICT 浦东新区
SONGJIANG 松江
MINHANG 闵行
FENGXIAN 奉贤 JINSHAN 金山
Diagram 2 Zoning of Shanghai (2014)
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Diagram 3 Shanghai Metro map (2014) Consisting of 16 lines total with a circle line within city center. From the initial Line 1 and 2 in 1993, Shanghai’s metro system expanded drastically over the last decade.
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People would congregate on these streets for its shopping, its bars, and the life of it. It shows a cultural shift in time where the streets were the life of the city, inexhaustibly rich, filled with vitality, diversity, and fullness of life (Berman, 1988)—and this perhaps still remain true—but there is a new understanding of a landmark, where the glitzy mall and the glass-curtained skyscraper becomes the destination and meeting point, rather than the street. The concentration of “the street” lies in the city center, where the metro aimed to connect these areas as it does now for major developments outside the city; as the metro system grew, there no longer exist the development of new street culture. It is apparent that the metro lines aim to connect new landmarks, labeled in blue, that oftentimes extend all the way to the very outskirts of Shanghai, such as 松江 (Sōng Jīang) on Line 9 and 嘉定区 (Jīang Dìng Qū) on Line 11. These landmarks set the boundaries, hugging the larger Shanghai area. All the unhighlighted metro stops on the map are merely fillers in order to make the main locations accessible to the public, and is always named as ____ 路(Lú), placed in the middle of a road because it makes sense in terms of pedestrian distance to place a metro stop in this location. The street becomes the mediator between the two structures, the neutral zone.
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I am just passing by.
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LANGUAGE AS ORDER IN CHAOS
语 言 与 规 律
Line 7
I found something so incredibly beautiful about a city, when I studied Language. When experiencing a city, one can think of it as though reading a book—reading between the lines like understanding the fishing and port history of Shanghai, breezing through paragraphs like experiencing the 石库门 (Shí Kù Mén) or French Concession neighborhoods, or caught up in a particular sentence or word like staring at the beauty of the bund. As a metaphor, the idea of a city as a piece of text, allows us to understand and appreciate a cityscape as “something [that] has a grammar, vocabulary, and syntax which can be read in terms of culture.” (Duncan, 1990; Gristwood, 1999) But to err on the side of caution, rather than directly imposing literary techniques and characteristics as a way in which to ‘read’ a city, it is merely the borrowing of such methods that allows for a balance between guidance for analysis and breathing room for fluid thought—the liminal space between order and chaos. ‘Language’ and the ‘city’ both have a certain structure and underlying principles on which it builds upon, thus naturally it can be spoken about very similarly; it is not in the least surprising that the words and language used to talk about the constructs of language is almost identical to the language being used when talking
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about a city. However, it was beyond the basic foundations of a language that ever captured the life of a city. Rhythm, however, rhythm is a result of a language and the life of a city. It is the order in which people move throughout the city, an organized pattern in the chaos of public transportation in Shanghai. Previously in Diagram 2 depicted a clear central core in Shanghai’s city development, and a tendril-like strategy to connect the larger Shanghai area. Visually, the shift in density and spatial organization on the map suggests that there should be a similar disparity in ‘experiential density’, the congregation and flow of people; and there was. For two days, I was a ‘rhythmanalyst’—a term I only later discovered, and robbed me from the luxury of identifying that what I was doing at the time was something perhaps meaningful. Rhythmanalysis stems from an approach where urban environments can be read and analyzed as a kind of phenomenology of daily rhythms (Lefebvre, 1996). According to Henri Lefebvre, a French theorist that developed this concept, urban places are “polyrhythmic fields of interaction” shaped by repetitive social practices and events which overlie natural or seasonal cycles. And there I was, on the train, observing what might be the most “repetitive social practice” possible about the urban life in Shanghai—riding the metro to and from places.
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I took two different lines, Line 2 on a Wednesday and Line 7 on a Thursday, from start to end, and got off at certain ‘significant stops’—stops that have iconic landmarks or transfer stops. These two lines were constructed at different times and serve different purposes that were ultimately reflected in the ebb and flow of people and the pattern in the landscape surrounding the metro stations. Line 2 went in operation in 2000, where as Line 7 began in 2010, thus from its placement it reflects the change in Shanghai’s metro planning strategy. From Diagram 4, Line 2 cuts through Shanghai horizontally connecting two airports, the Hong Qiao airport in Puxi and the Pudong International Airport, and is perpendicular to the Huang Pu River. Line 7 on the other hand sets out to connect two outer city areas where it begins at the northern edge of Shanghai in 宝山 (Bǎo Shān) and runs along the direction of the Huang Pu River crosses over to Pudong through the 2010 World Exposition site (后滩 Hoù Tān) in Shanghai where ist terminates in the New Pudong District.
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宝山区
Bao Shan District
黄浦江 Huang Pu River
静安寺 Jing An Temple
闵行区
Min Hang District
虹桥机场 Hong Qiao Airport 浦东新区 New Pudong District
龙阳路 Long Yang Road
浦东机场 Pudong International Airport
后滩 Hou Tan
Diagram 4 Shanghai Metro map (2014) of Line 2 and 7 distinctively cutting through Shanghai from East to West on Line 2 (2000), and North to South on Line 7 (2010).
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Both lines cut through Shanghai’s city center, and intersect at 静安寺(Jìng Ān Sì), Jing An Temple, one of the oldest structures in Shanghai, originally built in 247 AD and later relocated to its current site, in the middle of the city, in 1216 during the Song Dynasty, and 龙阳路 (Lóng Yáng Lù), the transit stop to catch the Maglev Train that takes you straight to the Pudong International Airport. Diagram 5 depicts the flow of people within a specific car, where the increase in one unit indicates a general increase in people in the car relative to the prior metro stop. According to Diagram 5, the mapping of people is indicative of its planned intention, in that peaks occur at ‘significant stops’ (transfer stops and landmarks) and generally in the city center since a metro’s main goal is to increase accessibility to these areas. However, there was more than just the rhythm of people, there was the rhythm of time and space. The time between stops increases in relation to the distance in which the train
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runs outward from the city, as it naturally should since it is more dispersed based on a lower population density. Perhaps this was not apparent when the difference was half a minute or a minute, but gradually the slow passing of time became apparent. Constantly looking at the map I knew I was travelling further and further away, but it was then did I really ‘feel the distance’ and the change in rhythm—notably the passengers were all asleep. And when there wasn’t just pure silence on the train as we traveled deeper into the suburbs, there were moments of chatter in dialects incomprehensible and in volumes inconceivable that also seemed to fade in an out with certain rhythm. The shift in dialects, the way people dress, mannerisms, and even the things they carry with them are all indicators of distance in relation to the city center or a specific location. The further out of the city, the more diverse the passengers on the train, the less recognizable Shanghai seem to be.
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后滩 Hou Tan - Line 7 2010 World Exposition Site
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2
4
9
13
3
1
6
2 16 LINE 7 龙阳路 花木路
锦秀路
芳华路
高科西路 耀华路
杨高南路 云台路
后滩
长清路
东安路
常熟路
昌平路
龙华中路 肇加浜路 静安寺
PUDONG
镇坪
长寿路
CITY CENT
浦东
市中心
9AM
1
469 7 16 LINE 2
川沙
海天三路 浦东国际机场
凌空路
远东大道
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创新中路 广兰路 张江高科 世纪公园 世纪大道 陆家嘴
华夏东路 唐镇
金科路
龙阳路 上海科技馆 东昌路 南京
3 4
坪路
新村路
行知路
场中路
岗皋路 大华三路 大场镇
南陈路
祁华路
刘行
上大路 上海大学 顾村公园 潘广路
美兰湖
罗南新村
TER
PUXI 浦西
10
1 8
7
4PM 11 3 4 10
人民广场 静安寺
中山公园 威宁路
淞虹路
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虹桥火车站
京东路 南京西路 江苏路 娄山关路 北新泾 虹桥2号航站楼 徐泾东
SIGNIFICANT STOPS
Diagram 5 Metronome Line 7 + Line 2 on significant Thursdays
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The two metro lines can be read in two ways depending on the passengers’ perspective. The first as suggested in Diagram 6, is where there is an expansion on two ends of the line, where the roads are significantly wider, it is significantly emptier in terms of buildings and people when exiting the station, and the sky can be seen from a distance. This is a holistic view: the compression and release of the train, of Shanghai, that I experienced when riding the train from end to end. The second perspective stems from an everyday passenger—one that takes the train from a somewhat secluded area, a residential area, and into the city center or vice versa as shown in Diagram 7. It is always compressed if said passenger follows the schedule of the average working class citizen working a 9am-5pm job, and in Shanghai perhaps 9am- 7pm is a more accurate schedule. In reality, these passengers would rarely experience the compression and release as shown in Diagram 6 because they are always travelling at roughly the same time as everyone else travelling into or out of the city
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FRESH AIR
MOTORCYCLE 摩托车 TAXIS
“FRESH” AIR
WIDER ROADS
PEOPLE ABOVE AGE 50
TRICYCLE 三轮车 TAXIS BLACK TAXIS
黑车
WHERE ARE THE NORMAL TAXIS?
SUBURBS 郊区
9AM DENSE ENVIRONMENT CROWDED TRAINS
CITY CENTER 市中心
PEOPLE PEOPLE ON PHONES PEOPLE BELOW AGE 50
POLLUTION TRAFFIC NOISE
THE TAITAI’S, BUSINESS MEN, TRENDY TEENAGERS & TOURISTS.
DOES IT EVER END? PROBABLY NOT.
CITY CENTER 市中心
SUBURBS 郊区
Diagram 6
8AM SPACIOUS ENVIRONMENT CROWDED TRAINS
SUBURBS 郊区
Diagram 7
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The interaction between people, time, and space can be so drastically different when one understands a city’s choreography of the everyday experience. It was not so much that the metro experience was a chaotic one, if anything it was mindlessly repetitive and natural. People moved like a school of fish; you go down to take the train and up to exit the station; if you’re interchanging between lines, you are given one interchange path to walk through. You really did not have to think so hard to get to places, you just had to move. Anytime you stopped, you broke the rhythm. Always shocked by the emptiness of the metro station, but explained by the time of day. Time makes sense of the emptiness that is shaped by the space and its inhabitants. The concentration and densities of characters, words, and language appears to pulse through the city with us.
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People are just passing by.
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LANGUAGE AS COMMODITY
语 言 的 价 值
田子坊, Tian Zi Fang
In the streets of Shanghai, the use of any language or characters, as opposed to graphics or logos, as means of both advertising and ‘selling’ to customers remains extremely common and effective. It serves two primary functions that are distinct to ‘language’ and ‘characters’, given that language suggests a “coherent communicative system” where as ‘characters’, when used for its aesthetic purposes, does not imply any semantic coherence. The first function is a practical one, where a signage with language holding certain content serves to communicate specific information directly to the customer. The second of language occurs when language acts as a material manifestation that is “imbued with social [and cultural] meanings” (Leeman and Modan, 2010) and becomes a ‘visual language’; it responds to and is indicative of a Chinese customer’s cultural consumer habits. The use of language and characters beyond its basic purpose to communicate information to the consumers now has an aesthetic and visual value in which “language [becomes] a visual index of ethnicity that, when linked to various products, places and experiences, contributes to the commodification of culture typical of symbolic economy” (Leeman and Modan, 2010) In this portion of the research I will look at two characteristics of language use in a commodified space. The first is the dialectical relationship between the use of Chinese and English language
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in commodified spaces, and secondly, the symbolic functions of language when paired with specific design elements and its role in the definition or construction of a built urban environment. The agglomeration of text in a public or social space becomes a kind of topography of the urban environment—this is known as the city’s Linguistic Landscape (LL). As China’s most international or westernized city, Shanghai, there is a very strong presence of both English and Chinese text within a public space, along with smaller instances of other languages such as Japanese and Korean in specific areas such as residential neighborhoods that have a high concentration of the Japanese or Korean population. It is because of the rapid ‘westernization’ or ‘internationalization’ within Shanghai that makes Shanghai an incredibly interesting model to study for its Linguistic Landscape. The duality between English and Chinese signage, naming, and branding, in a sense is parallel to the duality between the foreign and local market—although it is not a direct correlation where foreign industries only use foreign languages and Chinese industries only use the Chinese language. If anything, it is quite the opposite, where foreign companies entering Shanghai seek to rebrand themselves for the Chinese market, and the local industries like to brand themselves to appear ‘western’ and ‘international’. This is
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apparent in the two images below, where Image 1 is a typical Starbucks outlet in Shanghai, where both the English and Chinese name of the brand is present with a similar font style and identical color, positioning, and size of the signage. The use of English or Chinese language have become so specific to the context in which the store is located that certain Starbucks Coffee only acquire Chinese signage, and other locations only English. Not only is the signage an indicator of how ‘westernized’ an area is supposed to be in Shanghai, but the staff’s ability to speak English paired with the language of signage further increases the westernized aura of a particular chainstore. This micro-level branding is not uncommon to Shanghai— many food and beverage franchises such as McDonalds and KFC also adopts the same kind of specificity. The implications of the use of language suggests that neighborhoods and their possible economy could be altered or defined largely by the frequencies and repetition of both visual and verbal language within the environment.
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Image 1 Starbucks Coffee, People’s Square Outlet Photography by Tim Garret
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Though the choice of English or Chinese signages may be grounded by context, sometimes the translation between languages are can be more arbitrary, and othertimes quite an intelligent play on words and culture. The Chinese name “星巴克”(Xīng Bā Kè) comes from the way “Starbucks” sounds in English; this is a common method of rebranding for the Chinese market for many international companies such as the American fast-food chain ‘McDonalds’ as “麦当劳” (Mài Dāng Láo), the French cosmetic department store ‘Sephora’ as “丝芙兰” (Sī Fú Lán), the Japanese clothing store ‘Uniqlo’ as “优衣褲” (Yōu Yī Kù), and the Swedish furniture store ‘IKEA’ as “宜家” (Yí Jīa). Image 2 shows a signage of a local up and coming fashion label that is branded as the designer’s Chinese name 班晓雪(Bān Xiǎo Xuě), but in Pinyin—the Chinese phonetic system using Latin alphabets. This is common to many up and coming brands from China as shown in Image 3. These are all local designers and labels that have recently opened up at a new mall development at 新天地 (Xīn Tīan Dì), Xintiandi, to promote young local talent in the fashion industry. This is a classic study where the language use in commodified spaces is both defined by the space itself, but yet also construct and add value to it, which I will expand further in the next section. Although these
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Chinese names are derived from its phonetic similarity, the choice of specific characters sometimes has embedded meanings that are not apparent in the English name. This is due to the fact that many different Chinese characters can sound exactly the same, and the combination of words becomes important when rebranding in Chinese. The examples listed above also indicate another interesting
Image 2 Ban Xiao Xue outlet at Xintiandi Style
Image 3 Other brands that inherent the same branding strategy
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characteristic of Chinese rebranding that is culturally specific in that most of the Chinese rebranded names consists of two or three characters, identical to the number of characters in a person’s name in Chinese such as 王小明 (Wáng Xiǎo Míng) or 张亮 (Zhāng Liáng) (These are two common Chinese names used in educational textbooks). Using the previous examples listed, the Chinese name for McDonalds and Starbucks does not imply anything about the company or what the brand sells; however, the translation for Starbucks, 星巴克, is somewhat more sophisticated than that of McDonalds, 麦当劳, in that ”麦 当劳” is only a phonetic translation where the three characters individually, and as a combination does not carry much meaning to the brand, but the name”星巴克” is a combination of ‘星’ and ‘巴克’, where ‘星’ is a semantic translation as it means ‘star’ and ‘巴克’ (ba ke) is a phonetic translation of ‘buck’. The more advanced rebranding is representative in the brands Sephora, Uniqlo, and IKEA, where each of the three Chinese names is indicative of the brand’s selling point. Sephora’s “丝芙兰” are three characters commonly used when describing beauty products and is adjacent to the Chinese perspective of beauty—丝 means silk or silky, while 芙 and 兰 are both flowers of extreme beauty perceived by the Chinese.
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‘Uniqlo’ as an English name is derived from “Unique Clothing”, a common Japanese way of branding from creating new short-form words; however, when rebranded into Chinese, ‘ 优衣褲’ literally means “good quality shirts and pants”, or in short “excellent clothes”. IKEA is an acronym that consists of the founder’s name ‘Ingvar Kampard’, the farm he grew up at ‘Elmtaryd’, and his hometown ‘Agunnaryd’ in Sweden; in Chinese, however, the rebranding “宜家” means “suitable for home”, and the term ‘宜’ is most often associated with ‘便宜’ which means ‘cheap’ or ‘afforadable’. Despite how it markets itself, furniture and household items from IKEA are considered to be expensive for the average family in Shanghai. Perhaps if you say it or see it enough, it could create an illusion for the consumer since the words do hold meaning, literally screaming “this is made for YOUR home!”
Image 4 Sephora (淮海中路), IKEA (徐汇), Uniqlo (南京西路)
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Although this method of rebranding can be said for most international food and fashion industries in Shanghai, major luxury fashion goods such as Gucci, Prada, and Louis Vuitton remain outliers. These brands do have a Chinese name that is oftentimes also a phonetic translation in which the locals would use, however only during daily conversation amongst themselves. Upon interviewing a few local shoppers along 淮 海路 (Huai Hai Road), one of Shanghai’s major luxury shopping areas, they all responded that with such high-end luxury fashion brands, everyone will know and want to say its name correctly, mostly to seem ‘international’, ‘knowledgeable’, and ‘rich’. Since a name signifies status and culture, perhaps this is why many local brands go straight for an English or Western sounding brand name, and would sometimes even go to the extents of phonetically translating it back into Chinese with characters that contain no meaning. The diversity and pairing of languages used in these commodified areas heightens the impression of Shanghai as an international or ‘mixed-culture’ city as a result of the lack of a strong ‘Chinese visual culture’ both in language and in aesthetics. The second importance of language stems from the context in which it is being used. Language as a visual culture is not
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only used to “frame public space and attract consumers of goods and services, but also to legitimize the appropriation of that space by private and commercial interests” (Zukin, 1998). Language now holds symbolic functions and the power to shape and construct social spaces. The combination of culture, products, and services are now marketed as an ‘experience’ oftentimes mandated by the city government. The use of language is paired with design or architectural elements that serve as a vehicle to “spatialize the commodification of culture” (Leeman and Modan, 2010); these areas in Shanghai have become ‘themed’ shopping and entertainment districts such as 城隍庙(Chéng Huáng Miào), Cheng Huang Temple or “The City Temple of Shanghai”, 新天地, Xintiandi, and 南京东 路 (Nán Jīng Dōng Lù), East Nanjing Road, targeted towards both tourists from other countries and Chinese tourists coming from outside of Shanghai. All three places were originally constructed at different points of time in Shanghai’s history and also were commercialized at different times. These are three most significant examples in Shanghai that exemplifies the combination of language, culture, and architectural design elements, in creating a commodified urban space—“a city for sale”. All three designations, despite its drastically different function, appeal, and vibe all contains a Starbucks Coffee outlet, 星巴克咖啡.
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Image 6 shows the Starbucks Coffee outlet in the Cheng Huang Temple that would otherwise be unrecognizable to a nonnative Chinese reader as a Starbucks outlet if it was not for the Starbuck’s mermaid logo on the left. The name “星巴克咖啡” is even written as a traditional Chinese signage and moreover, written from right to left as done so in the Ming Dynasty when Cheng Huang Temple was built. This is drastically different from the typical Chinese Starbucks signage shown in Image 1 in order to match the aesthetic of the commercial space of the Cheng Huang Temple. Although selling a foreign product, this particular Starbucks serves to remain providing ‘western’ goods, while assimilating into the cultural aesthetic. The ‘cultural validity’ of the aesthetic of this particular Starbucks is heightened by the surrounding local Chinese businesses as shown in Image 5, showing the signage of Shanghai’s most famous 小笼包 (Xiǎo Lóng Bāo) or soup dumpling store, 南翔 馒头店 (Nán Xiáng Mán Tóu Diàn). Although oddly written from left to right, different than the Starbucks signage in writing order, it is identical in aesthetic. This Starbucks Coffee outlet can be contrasted with the other two in Xintiandi and East Nanjing Road based on target customers and the commodified space. Xintiandi’s distinct 石库门 (Shí Kù Mén) architectural style has turned the original residential area into one of the most popular shopping and dining and entertainment areas in
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Shanghai. Built in the 1920s, the Shikumen architecture represents the harmonious combination of the Eastern and Western cultures reflective of the Shanghai today. Its commercial direction now is also reflective of this “Xintiandi experience”, where there is a fusion of Eastern and Western fashion boutiques, restaurants, and bars. The dominant language on their signage is indicative of the store or restaurant’s associated culture as shown in Image 8 for the Italian restaurant Va Bene and Chinese restaurant 夜上海 (Ye Shanghai). The Starbucks Coffee outlet in Xintiandi has only its English signage, and its classic mermaid logo.
Image 5 Nanxiang Mantou, Cheng Huang Temple outlet
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Image 6 Starbucks Coffee, Cheng Huang Temple Outlet Chinese only signage
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Image 7 Starbucks Coffee, Xintiandi Outlet English only signage
Image 8 Starbucks Coffee, East Nanjing Road Outlet English and Chinese Signage
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Similar to Cheng Huang Temple and Xintiandi, East Nanjing Road, the Fifth Avenue of Shanghai, constructed initially as a part of the Shanghai Race Club in 1845 and later rebuilt in the 1900s as a commercial area extending for 1.6km long has a distinct aesthetic of large flashy store signage that illuminates brightly neon at night. It houses both international and local brands and restaurants, attracting also both foreign and local tourists. In this case, however, the Starbucks Coffee outlet has both its English and Chinese signage; the incorporation of both languages is actually the most typical of all the Starbucks Coffee outlets so to appeal to both the local and foreign clientele. Many other Chinese brands along Nanjing Road also include the use of both English and Chinese signage for this specific purpose Due to the common usage of bilingual signage in most public spaces, it becomes difficult to identify a dominant language culture within Shanghai. The fact that most of the retail workers or servers in these commodified spaces speaks both English and Mandarin and sometimes ‘Shanghainese’, the local dialect, further heightens the impression of ‘globalization’ within Shanghai. The mix of languages in our urban environment constructs a distinctive visual understanding of
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how ‘international’ Shanghai has become and will continue to move towards. Despite different purposes in language use, one thing remains constant, the logo. Logos and symbols have remained a constant in most commodified spaces across franchises and businesses. If logos are utilized as the neutral bearers of information, void of direct cultural implications, representing only itself, does that make for a more effective commodified space? As graphics and visual icons become more and more apparent in our urban environment, we have become less responsive to words, and more sensitive towards logos. Could then a commodified space that is completwely void of any indication of language still identify culture? If you took language out of the whole equation, completely removed it from East Nanjing Road, which city are you in now? Any city. Language grounds a culture in a commodified space
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Neon signage on East Nanjing Road
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LANGUAGE AS AESTHETICS
语 言 的 形 态
豫园, Yu Garden
Shanghai is both the experiencing of the past and the living of the present. From its horizontal expansion of the city since the opening as a treaty port to the world in 1843, and the rapid vertical growth of the city across both sides of the Huang Pu River (黄浦江), the literal translation of time, growth, and zoning is marked both on the map and in the daily experiences within the city. The horizontal space and time experienced through movement, and the vertical thrust of the city obstructing our horizontal movements. Pause. Push. Pull. The pause of the hand. The push of the brush. The pull of the ink. These are movement patterns of the mind and hand, but also a way of observing and experiencing the city through the lens of Chinese calligraphy. Chinese calligraphy is a spatial practice, combining the orthographic design of Chinese characters with motion. The stroke order works as a certain set of rules to which a calligrapher can work within, this is not only the structure and framework for writing, but it also minimizes the inconsistencies and repetition. The stroke order comes from a counter balance of the previous stroke—if the first stroke is horizontal, the next normally follows vertically or diagonally,
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compositionally building up the character over time, maintaining perfect balance within the imaginary square.
The art of calligraphy, however, is in the control of timing, knowing when to pause, when and with how much force to pull, and when to pause again. Many factors surrounding a calligraphers environment affects the mark he makes, from the consistency of the ink over time to the emotions of the calligrapher, therefore every mark is unique and every piece created is unique. There is a time and place for each mark— that is when and where creativity happens. The hand moves in the x- and y-axes in all three directions, horizontally, vertically, and diagonally, within an imaginary square grid divided up as shown below. The Z-axis is controlled by the hand, moves up and down in relation to the paper.
Diagram 8 Depiction of the stroke order of the character 福 (Fú) meaning ‘fortune’. Note the direction of strokes and its order, always to counterbalance the character.
Diagram 9 Standard Chinese calligraphy grid known as ‘米字格’ because the word ‘米’ looks like the divisions. The beauty of a character is determined by the ratio of ink to white space within a specific division. This image reads: 东 dōng, 西 xī, 南 nán, 北 běi, 中 zhōng (East, West, South, North, Center).
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Writing is a three dimensional gesture: a brushstroke now records the hand gesture, going beyond the two-dimensional graphic, but also the up and down motion, pushing and lifting the brush. Within a certain set of rules and order, space and time, structure and arrangement, the aesthetic of Chinese calligraphy is born. Because of its strong visual organization, it is important to write clearly and correctly, but it is also of utmost honor and respect to write beautifully. Chinese characters have remained pictorial, diagrammatic, and
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representational, however, it functions beyond the recording of an image or form, it is a recording of time and ‘energy’, otherwise known as 势 (Shì) or ‘strength’ in the Chinese culture. If Chinese calligraphy is an experiential process in which the uniqueness of the product relies heavily on the different nuances in environmental charges surrounding the calligrapher, perhaps then could we talk about architecture similarly? If so, what kind of architecture?
Diagram 10
The history of Chinese character ‘马’ (Mǎ) Script styles from left to right: Oracle 甲骨文, Bronze 钟鼎文, Seal 篆书, Clerical 隶书, Cursive 草书, Semi-cursive 行书, Regular 楷书
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Meandering throughout Shanghai, the appearance of the city makes it pretty obvious that this is a ‘young city’—the tall skyscrapers reflecting the infinite shades greys of the sky with occasional hints of blue, the newness of the old Shikumen architecture, and renovated street facades with precisely planted and manicured landscaping that lead into the depths of the Lilong housing are all traces of age. Historically speaking, Shanghai is a young city; however, there are some beautiful ancient gems sprinkled throughout the city, perhaps walled in for preservation, but nonetheless standing gracefully for us to experience. The deliberate design interventions, the perfect curation, and the role of the subject are all elements present in calligraphy and the traditional Chinese garden. They both require an understanding of the material, its characteristics and context, while being able to portray an element of surprise and awe. The Yu Garden (豫园) is the most famous traditional Chinese garden in Shanghai, built in the Ming Dynasty as a private garden for the Pan family and later open to public in 1961. It is located next to the Cheng Huang Temple or “City God Temple” also constructed around the same time period, however, it gradually became a targeted tourist destination, as mentioned before, a commodified space. The area surrounding the garden and temple became a food and retail market area with architecture that mimics the aesthetics of houses and
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streets during the Ming and Qing dynasty as shown in Image 9. There is a certain beauty in understanding the garden as a purely experiential design. The Yu Garden, shown in the map below, does not seem to have a master plan or a clear logic in spatial organization. Though the product may seem disorganized, it appears as an accumulation of precise forms built around experiences. Often disorienting, the totality and cohesion of the garden comes from all the elements within the garden: the static being the rock gardens (假山 jiá shān), the bridges, the narrow corridors, and the fluid being the pond, the koi fish, and the perfectly placed and manicured plants. Like Chinese gardens, the art of calligraphy lies in the process and experience, where the product is an accumulation of intentional, precise, and aesthetically driven curation. The experience of a Chinese garden contains principles within calligraphy, where there is a movement followed by a slight pause of a back stroke to mark an ending of a stroke (回勾收笔 huí gōu shōu bǐ), a brief pause for the calligrapher to recollect himself, and likewise when experiencing a garden, to pause and take in the designed view. It is a series of compression and expansion of spaces, determined by these designed vignettes.
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Image 9 Traditional Chinese gate entering the Cheng Huang Temple. The threshold between a tourist destination and a residential neighborhood
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Exterior facade leading up into the te two follows th
Image 10 e of stores and restaurants emple. The whole block or he same design aesthetics.
Image 11 Map of the Yu Garden and its respective views
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The Yu Garden has five main views or moments of pause, marked out on the map above where there is normally a perfect balance in the scenery consisting of rocks, plants, water, and architecture. Even every threshold when moving in and out of the physical structures within the garden, frames a harmonious and picturesque view. These moments of pause is always connected by the narrow corridors or bridges, insisting on moving people through because of its dimensions. It is not a place to linger for there is nothing to see within the corridors, but it withholds a promise that at the end of this experience there will be a perfect view waiting to be seen. I do want to note, however, that a bridge is not like a corridor, as I would think a horizontal stroke cannot do what a diagonal stroke can. Though both strokes are able to balance out the verticality of any character, giving it a sense of gravity and weight, the diagonal stroke at one balances but simultaneously creates a force, adding dynamism and movement of the eye. The bridge lacks the ability to bring focus to a central point, but gives the gift of totality.
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Image 12 Inside the Yu Garden
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Image 13 Corridor in Yang Shan Hall leading up to the first garden
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Image 14 Jade Water Corridor
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The totality and individuality of a single character, is not determined by the space outside of itself but rather the spaces inside. It no longer is bounded by the gaps between the words, a design element that is crucial to the aesthetic and reading of Chinese calligraphy.
The Chinese art of calligraphy can be considered a prime example of dynamism at work within a configuration because, in the case of each ideogram copied, a particular gesture is converted into a form, just as a particular form is equally converted into a gesture. In this schema the figure produced and the movements producing it are equivalent. - François Jullien Although within the context of the garden itself, there is poetry and depth, the context in which it, the outside context is far cry from dimensions of the traditional garden and art of calligraphy. Approaching this ‘complex’ is like slowly getting hit by a rickshaw driver in 2015—you see the rickshaw driver approaching, but you are distracted in your own thoughts, wondering why a rickshaw is still on the streets in this day and age, struggling to analyze its authenticity and before you know it, you are on the floor and he is unapologetic. This neighborhood has essentially no context to belong to but its own. Its architecture is in stark contrast compared
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to its environment, its function completely different than its surroundings, heightening the almost kitschy tourist experience. Within the area, you see slithers of modernity creeping in, especially with the occasional newly built Shanghai Tower in the background, constantly reminding you that this is in fact 2015 Shanghai. The clashing of the experiences is like combining different styles of calligraphy, from the clarity of the Qin Dynasty clerical script (隶书 lìshū) to the expressiveness of the Han Dynasty cursive script (草书 cǎoshū), in one word or even one piece of writing—the paper: the city, the world, and the characters: the buildings, the parts—it is unnatural and distasteful. Is there then not a way to create a transition of aesthetics, containing the essence of the two periods, taking both the literal and experienced time into consideration, an assimilation of the old and new cultures, as one would in calligraphy, to create a sense of balance, harmony, and agreement of the spaces within and without. Perhaps this does exist. It is the city, containing objects within imaginary and abstract boundaries, the harmony not apparent immediately, but in totality a perfect calligraphy. Calligraphy, while layering strokes one on top of another is a two-dimensional art that portrays depth without perspective. The word itself is in two-dimensions, yet it represents four. Our built environment, the city—a language that reads the imprint of time.
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