Head On, one of the large-scale installations at Cai Guo-Qiang's "The Ninth Wave,� the first solo show at Shanghai's Power Station of Art.
Museum Madness Shanghai’s race to become China’s cultural capital is being spearheaded by a slew of new public and private museums, but have the main players put the proverbial cart before the horse?
photo: ©corbis / profile
by max crosbie-jones / photographs by kitti bowornphatnon f proof were needed that the Shanghai authorities are pushing the boat out when it comes to art museum building, it arrived, slowly but surely, on August 8th. On this hot (and auspicious) summer’s day, people lined The Bund, the city’s historic waterfront, to catch sight of a modern-day Noah’s Ark inching down the Huangpu River. Loaded with lions, zebras, tigers and other miscellaneous toy animals, the vessel was en-route to the Power Station of Art, a former industrial building turned state art institution similar in scope and ambition to London’s Tate Modern. The occasion: the opening of “The Ninth Wave,” a huge solo exhibition by the celebrated, wolf-hurling installation artist and pyrotechnics specialist Cai Guo-Qiang. And there was more art-spectacle to come. That evening, fireworks whiz-banged into the air, releasing billowing green clouds that hung over the river like so many question marks. Inspired by China's environmental degradation, Cai’s waterside spectacle didn’t just showcase a new tentpole show. It also exemplifies the institutional brio, showboating and capital driving China's museum building boom, or “museumification” as some call it.
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The Long Museum's main hall.
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Opened in 2012 to host the Shanghai Biennale, the Power Station of Art has, probably due to its lack of a permanent collection, been struggling to attract crowds and find a role for itself ever since (the Cai GuoQiang show is certainly a step in the right direction). And its not the only one. Other public museums appear to have been built on little more than the “build it and they will come” principle too. Further down river, in the Pudong district, sits the China Art Palace, a monumental, upside-down trapezoid with 166,000 square metres of floor space spread over five floors. Originally built to house the China Pavilion for the 2010 Expo, it languishes empty for much of the year, its vast interior expanse only being fully utilised during similar blinkand-you'll-miss-'em spectacles. Both are bloated indicators of a wider trend. All over China, in its second and third-tier cities as well as Beijing and Shanghai,
museums devoted to the display of cultural artifacts and art – most of it mainland Chinese – are being opened in earnest, and at a rate (386 in 2011, 415 in 2012) that is hard to square given the footfall. Not just public museums, founded as part of the government's aggressive plans to upgrade culture to a “pillar industry,” but private ones, too. A few weeks earlier I visited the latest in a slew of private art museums to have opened in Shanghai: the Long Museum West Bund and Yuz Museum. Both are, in typical Chinese style, immense. Both are founded by rich contemporary art collectors. Both occupy plots in the West Bund, Shanghai's new state-sponsored “cultural corridor,” which spans more than five unremarkable miles. And, despite being packed full of more art than you can shake a copy of Freeze at, both were so bereft of life I would have jumped had a mouse squeaked. Yet, despite there clearly being
a long way to go before they are firing on all cylinders – and drawing crowds – both of their founders see promise, and there are good reasons to agree with them.
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ive it five years and lots of people will be coming here,” super collector Wang Wei tells me as we sip tea in her swank meeting quarters located above the Long Museum West Bund. Founded by her and her husband, the billionaire business mogul Liu Yiqian, the first branch of the Long Museum – a brutalist structure in the Pudong district – opened back in 2010, and today houses the couple’s collection of Mao-period art and ancient antiquities. According to Wang, the new West Bund branch (a disused factory cleverly repurposed by Shanghai architect Liu Yichun) will – barring the occasional exhibition of international art – house their enviable collection of Chinese traditional, modernist and
contemporary art. Its inaugural show, “Re-View,” which had a six month run that began on the March 28th opening day, was a memorable show. Memorable, not so much for its cohesiveness as for the centuryspanning breadth of the 350-plus works on show, all from their own collection. To explore the bounds of its curving concrete walls was to be in the company of the greatest artists China has produced in its long and tumultuous history (when Wang says, somewhat immodestly, “there are no big gaps in my collection,” I can only nod in agreement). Entering the vast main hall a five-metre-tall calligraphic work by Gu Wenda could be found facing Xu Bing’s even more towering Art for the People, and panels by word-play-loving conceptualist Wu Shanzhuan. Further on, classical realist and new wave painters of the eighties were well represented, with works including two of Wang’s personal favourites, Chen Yifei’s Thinking of History at My
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All over the country, museums devoted to the display of cultural artifacts and art – most of it mainland Chinese – are being opened at a rate that is hard to square given the footfall.
Wang Wei.
Space and Shang Yang’s Boatmen of the Yellow River, as well as He Duoling and Ai Xuan’s seminal 1984 work The Third Generation (in it a woman clad in red stares out from a crowd, a solemn symbol of a time when hope for open expression was emerging). The same goes for auction-house hot-tickets such as Zeng Fanzhi, Zhang Xiaogang and Yue Minjun, and important contemporary sculptors such as Xiang Jing. And this was just the main hall. Down in the basement the three-part show gave way to 20th Century modernism: expressive landscapes, portraiture and still-lifes by the likes of Zhang Daquian. And then came classic ink scrolls from the Song, Ming, Qing and Yuan Dynasties, each one unfurled in a glass case to reveal some graceful, refined depiction of landscapes, birds or mythical creatures. Among them was the work that has created much controversy in recent months: a Song Dynasty (9601279 AD) calligraphy letter that
He Duoling and Ai Xuan's The Third Generation.
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the couple paid over 50 million yuan (US $8.2 million) for at a Sotheby’s auction, but one prominent scholar claims is a 19th century forgery, much to the couple’s chagrin. A more exhaustive survey of Chinese painting could barely be imagined, let alone executed. For Chinese art fans, this was an exhilarating show that, with its thematic tugs between Western and Chinese, ancient and modern, tapped into a growing appetite among young Chinese for nostalgia, for linking the unsentimental present with a once ignored past. The question is: can the Long Museum keep the quality up while covering its mammoth costs, and becoming a serious art-world player? While filling it with art shouldn’t be a problem given their buying habits (recent acquisitions include works by Mona Hatoum and Olafur Eliasson, and a tiny Ming porcelain cup for $36.3 million), there are question marks over how the Long Museum will operate going forwards. Barring special promotions for tour groups and opening till 9pm during a series of summertime events, not much is yet being done to attract audiences: “The collection is our advertising,” Wang says. Then there is the top-down curatorial structure. Three guest curators were enlisted to put “Re-View” together, but they all answered to Wang. She is described as chief curator on her business card but is, by her own admission, a collector who buys what she likes first and foremost. However, while it may be a source of concern for curators to hear her say, “Each exhibition belongs to me. I have my idea that I will pass on to a curator who will coordinate and cowork with me,” she does at least have a vision that suggests the Long Museum is no mere vanity project.
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The Yuz Museum's Great Hall.
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During our meeting, she speaks at length of future plans: of tie-ups with Paris’ Grand Palais, artist summits, youth education programmes, and bringing in international artworks and curators. She also speaks of wanting to, “build a bridge between the West and China, to bring Chinese art to an international audience, and bring back the Western arts to a Chinese audience.” Above all, it is her hope that the Long Museum will, by 2017, have become “a top-tier art museum in the world.”
uch a dream is not beyond the realm of possibility, especially if that spirit of mutual co-operation extends to the other monster museum just up the road: Indonesian-Chinese super collector Budi Tek’s Yuz Museum. When asked how he felt having competition on his doorstep back in January, Budi told the reporter: “We’d like them to be closer, we’d like more museums to be here” – a pragmatic response given the difficult journey that lies ahead. With the West Bund still offradar, even for most Shanghainese,
Zhang Huan’s Buddha Hand.
two art museums rather than one can only be a good thing. It also makes sense, given that, contentswise, the two museums can hardly be said to be stepping on each others toes. Unlike Wang, who covets mostly domestic oil paintings, Budi is a fan of large installations by international as well as Chinese conceptual artists. The reason, as he told The Telegraph recently, is “because they are so big, they are difficult to house and transport, and they are difficult to sell. That makes them cheaper to buy.” Debut show “Myth/History” is, among other things, a jawdropping showcase of many of them. Beckoning you in to the Yuz’s enormous ‘Great Hall’ – a former aircraft hangar spanning 3,000 sqm – is Zhang Huan’s copper Buddha Hand. From then on, every few steps brings you to some dramatic installation: Made in Company’s Calm, a bed of rubble that undulates like a water bed; Yang Zhenzhong’s discombobulating orchestra of clattering massage chairs; two works
by Adel Abdessemed, including Telle mere tel fils, two airplanes lovingly entwined; Xu Bing’s Tobacco Project, a tiger print rug comprised of over 660,000 upturned cigarettes; and most impressive/unnerving of all, Sun Yuan and Peng Yu’s Freedom, a metal cube with a high-pressure hose inside that whiplashes into life, violently spraying water in all directions. Radiating off from the Great Hall are also five more galleries devoted to minimalism and, similarly albeit more concisely to the Long Museum, a who’s who of contemporary Chinese painters. Exploring it all, my conclusion was that if the Long Museum offered the sweeping art history lesson, then the Yuz, with its more progressive conceptual works, offered the wow-factor. Keep it up, I thought, and together these two museums have the potential to be like two planets that orbit the same sun but never collide, their combined gravity pulling in more matter (art, talent, audiences) than they could ever hope to alone. Ultimately, though, their
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gravitational pull in an increasingly competitive art universe might have as much to do with external forces as their own internal ones. While the Yuz and Long Museum West Bund’s programming and management structure will play a large part (“As a private museum we don’t want to lose the colour of Budi Tek, but the Yuz needs professional management,” a Yuz spokesman confided to me via email), their success will likely depend just as much, if not more so, on whether the government sticks to its part of the deal. As well as incentives and tax refunds, both were lured to the West Bund with promises that it would become Shanghai’s art and culture hub (and that, Wang reveals, the government would bear the costs of advertising it as such across mainland China). But
Choe U-Ram's Custos Cavum.
Chinese contemporary paintings and installations occupy most of the Yuz's seven galleries.
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though some of the key pieces in that master-plan are imminent (to name just one, the first edition of the Westbund Fair of Art & Design took place in late September), that still looks a way off. Officialdom’s sensitivity about exhibitions that broach history and politics could also be an issue going forwards. And then there's the wider public’s appetite for contemporary art – still an unknown quantity in a land where art education in schools is scant. “They say it takes ten years to cultivate a tree and a hundred years to cultivate a person. How many years does it take to cultivate the life artistic?” writes Budi in the guidebook to “Myth/History.” In Shanghai – as in China at large – that question mark looks set to hang like a stubborn cloud over the art museum movement for some time to come.
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lady of leather Tenacity has paid off for Allessandra Facchinetti. After a few much-publicised hiccups she’s found the perfect creative match in Tod’s. by bek van vliet / photos courtesy of tod's
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llessandra Facchinetti looks like a Greek goddess. Her georgette off-the-shoulder dress – a design from her debut Spring 2014 collection for Tod’s – is cinched at the waist with a leather wrap-around belt and accessorised with a headband of gold laurel leaves. She’s the very embodiment of the Tod’s woman – modern, sophisticated and elegant. Tonight’s dinner in a swish Hong Kong restaurant is hosted by the brand’s charismatic chairman Diego, his brother and vicechairman Andrea Della Valle, and attended by an enthusiastic group of local Tod’s employees – self-proclaimed Della Valle “children.” All are here to celebrate the end of a whirlwind tour of tier one cities across China and Hong Kong to introduce the latest Tod’s collection for Fall 2014. Allessandra’s first readyto-wear collection for Tod’s was unveiled last year at Milan Fashion Week. It was the first full ready-to-wear collection for Tod’s women and therefore a much-anticipated event. Would Allessandra be able to capture the essence of the Tod’s woman? Could she do justice to the brand’s 40-plus-year heritage? Much to the relief of many, what floated down the runway that September was an effortless, lighter-than-air collection – look after look of graceful, feminine, perfectly tailored pieces. The collection was universally fêted – a casually elegant representation of the modern Italian woman, with references to the archives that made it unmistakably Tod’s. The success of the collection was even sweeter in light of the tumultuous turns Allessandra’s career had taken prior to Tod’s. These events had caused waves of controversy to ripple through the fashion industry. Her appointment as Gucci’s creative director after Tom Ford left ended abruptly when her designs were deemed too derivative of Ford’s. Then there was her appointment at Valentino, succeeding the man himself – a
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stint that ended after only two seasons, her collections in this case not derivative enough for the maison. Now, having seen the critical and commercial success of her designs for Tod’s, Allessandra can settle in and shift her focus to maintaining momentum and developing her own design identity within the brand. The Fall collection for Tod’s reflects the change of season in warm autumnal hues, the same attentive tailoring and more of the buttery Italian leather for which the brand is so well known. It’s this collection Allessandra is promoting around the region and why she’s being toasted tonight, surrounded by triumphant Della Valles raising glasses and making high-spirited in-jokes. This high-glamour event might seem typical of the luxury Italian fashion industry, but it comes at the culmination of months – and in the Della Valle family’s case, decades – of hard work. As a Fall offering, this latest collection is not as light and breezy as the first. Elements of Spring, however, remain; there’s continuity between the seasons. Allessandra confesses she spent considerable time working sporty aspects into the tailoring – “sporty” and “tailored” are two elements that run throughout the unwritten Tod’s manifesto. “First, I think about the trench I want, the coat I want, the pants I want, without really thinking about the total look,” the designer says, pondering her creative process. “I think the combination between those was the biggest challenge for this collection. There are also many references from the past and from the present – that was the big contrast in the collection. You can see it in the colour story and you can see it in the metal details I used to make it a little bit more urban and contemporary.” References to the past are a must for any heritage brand – not only to their own archives, but to the tradition of
In some cases, you look a little more sophisticated when you’re on flats. It’s so much more modern and more interesting.
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For me, details make a big difference, especially when you work on classic items. In the end they can completely change your perspective. craftsmanship and artisanal goods. In the case of Fall 2014, the inspiration came from Venice – from a Venetian carpet, to be specific, something Allessandra saw on a trip to the historic city. “I redesigned the carpet and then did an extension of the pattern for the bag and for the leather suit,” she explains, adding that the actual carpet itself was replicated and used to decorate the runway when the collection was unveiled in Milan. “I tried to translate everything. For me, in the end the inspiration involves alot of aspects; not only the clothes, but everything.”
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esigners for major houses must always be considerate of the brand’s DNA, while still infusing collections with enough personality to avoid being seen as overly derivative or prescriptive. For Allessandra, whose past work has been accused of being both derivative and not derivative enough, this manifests in her work for Tod’s in small but important details – a pin, a fringe, a new range of colours. Working with iconic products such as the Gommino loafer, she sought to personalise the designs not only for herself but for the wearer. One key feature of the Fall collection is the spilla – the pin. “With the Gommino, I was thinking I would love to one day personalise the shoes in a way that could be done at home. I was taking a pin and I said, ‘OK, maybe I can just take the fringes and pin them on the Gommino and see what happens.’ That comes from a very instinctive movement, and I think it’s a very interesting point to play with.” The wearer can adorn the Gommino with some object, she says, something out of your personal wardrobe or a piece of jewellery. “There are many ways you can play with that and design it. It is just a simple object you can use to pin whatever you want.” The D-Cube bag is another iconic piece Allessandra has imbued with her sense of playfulness. She’s reintroduced the bag in a check pattern – also borrowed from that carpet
in Venice – rich plum-hued leather with white stitching, and a fluffy royal blue one in check-printed mink. It’s also now available in new sizes, including a micro version – the “snack-size” of designer bags that fits just a credit card and keys. Being cube-shaped, this design looks prim and straight-edged, but the leathers that make it are luxuriously pliant. “It looks rigid but it’s not,” says Allessandra. “It’s super soft and sportif, so it’s practical and when you fill it with your personal stuff you really see the leather and the softness.” Tod’s, which was born on the strength of its supple Gommino driving moccasin, is famous for its leather goods, bags included. And since bags are always close to a woman’s heart – often literally – Allessandra gave us a new item to covet: the Flower Bag. Inspired by the fluid forms of a vase – also spotted in Venice – the new tote, which was introduced in Spring and further explored for Fall, really showcases the brand’s premium leathers. “I was attracted to the shape of the vase,” recalls Allessandra. “There was a femininity, like a soft movement that reminded me of the softness of leather. From that idea I said, ‘OK, maybe I will try to study the volume for a bag.’ And this is the way it came out. So the movement, by the way, became like a pocket of the bag, so I tried to combine all the practical things a bag needs to be into something that could be soft and romantic.” Designing for a brand that made its name in shoes throws up some interesting challenges. For Allessandra, it means reversing her creative process and starting her collections from the shoes up. Every look she creates has to support Tod’s legacy – its footwear – rather than focussing on apparel and treating shoes as an accessory or an after-thought. In the past, she’d always designed clothes first then shoes. “Obviously this time it’s exactly the opposite,
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and kind of new for me. It seems like a normal thing, but in the end completely changes your process. To be sure about the shoes then think about the rest – it’s difficult in the beginning, but then you discover it’s much easier.” Proportions of key pieces of apparel – say, a jacket – are far easier to gauge when you already have the shoes in place. Knowing an outfit must match with flats also helps inform the style of the clothes, hem lengths and pant widths. “Even now, when I’m beginning to work on the next season, I think about the shoes I want to wear with it.” Flat shoes are the common thread that weave together each Tod’s look. For some reason, designing high-fashion flats isn’t a priority for male designers, which is what makes Tod’s collections so exciting for women. For some, a pair of flats might not seem like a worthwhile investment – they’re not flashy enough, or they’re too casual to be considered luxury, but this is a misguided opinion. “In some cases, you look a little more sophisticated when you’re on flats,” says Allessandra. “It’s so much more modern and more interesting.” For the Tod’s woman flat shoes are invaluable. “You can wear sandals and high heels, whatever, but if it doesn’t work with flats it doesn’t work. It’s a waste of time.” To make Tod’s iconic flats even more appealing to women, Allessandra introduced some new colours. “In all the designs I do I try to translate femininity,” she says. “Even if the collection has a contrast that is much more androgynous and unisex – because the Gommino in a way is very unisex – I try all the time with colour and details to get a more feminine touch.” he casual, sporty aspect of Tod’s apparel comes through in its extreme wearability. Though the Fall collection appears well-structured and dramatic with its high-collared jackets, fur trims, and leather in myriad forms, the pieces are
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never restrictive nor uncomfortable. The materials are supple, the forms made for movement. The attitude of the Tod’s woman, too, is relaxed and centred. It’s refined but not elitist, favouring modernity and minimalism over glitz and glam. If Allessandra has been able to tap into this persona, it’s because she shares many of its characteristics. She’s been told more than a few times that her designs for the label felt like they’d always existed, that they fit precisely what people had imagined the Tod’s woman would be like. Her predecessor – Derek Lam, who was creative director for six years – designed a capsule collection for the brand in 2005 but was never given reign over ready-towear. He left quietly in 2012 with no formal explanation. Allessandra is not sure why her union with Tod’s has worked out so favourably while her prior appointments did not. “It could be the chemistry, it could be that I’ve known this brand for a long time,” she ponders. “Maybe it’s because I’m Italian and I have sort of an idea of designing and getting the quality of the things.” Having studied at an art school, focusing on architecture and sculpture, Allessandra is in good stead to create those strong, structural pieces and minimalist architectural shapes. Her manipulation of materials and textiles shows an understanding of the fluidity of fabric. You can’t help but keep returning to the softness of the leather and the intricate patterns laser-cut into flowing, petalshaped forms. This knowledge of modern techniques used on traditional textiles is what Allessandra brings to the brand. “Definitely there is a sense of detail, research and experimental technique,” she says. “I add all my experience into the materials and the products that [Tod’s] already had. For me, details make a big difference, especially when you work on classic items. In the end they can completely change your
In all the designs I do I try to translate femininity, even if the collection has a contrast that is much more androgynous and unisex.
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When you travel a lot over Europe or America, you see, in a way, all the same things. When I come here I can see something different.
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perspective. I think research and detail are the most important things I do in my processes. I spend so much time really to get things right and try new things.” At the same time, she’s careful not to be too experimental. Tod’s is a heritage brand, after all, and its offerings should instil confidence in the buyer. The natural aspect of Allessandra's designs can’t be sacrificed for the sake of modernity, no matter how tempting it is to work with cutting-edge techniques. “Sometimes there are new technologies that help me develop new things, but in a way I like the fact that when you touch it, you feel confident it’s not like too weird or too experimental – you know what I mean? I try all the time to really stop myself at just the right point of experimentation.” For Allessandra, clothes should also always be comfortable and practical. In all her Tod’s looks, she tries to replicate the feeling of wearing a T-shirt and jeans. “I don’t want to think too much about what I wear – I decide to wear something at the moment I put the things together I want to wear.” Like any big brand, Tod’s has often opted in the past for high-profile celebrities to be the face of its campaigns. These identities give consumers an idea of how the brand would like to position itself – who it’s trying to appeal to, what lifestyle their demographic enjoys and who they would like to identify with. Tod’s women have included Gwyneth Paltrow, Sienna Miller and Anne Hathaway. The idea is of an independent, down-to-earth spirit with classic styling and conventional good looks. Now that Allessandra is essentially in charge of crafting the Tod’s woman, who could she see as representative of the brand? “I have to say I like the idea to be more open,” she says, “to just try to catch the best part of the things I see and the people I meet without being focused on one idea or woman. Maybe one day it will come up and someone could represent
us – obviously there are so many beautiful women – but I think at the moment I like to be more open. It could be a person from the past, from the present, young, less young, but with the way I approach the beauty, the elegance, I prefer to not really say.” This philosophy of openness, of an allencompassing brand, is echoed in Allessandra’s opinion on style. “As much as I do what I do, I always like to see somebody wearing something their own way, combining it differently into their own style. You have to concentrate on yourself.” od’s is experiencing great success across Asia, in particular China and Hong Kong. Having travelled the region promoting the Fall collection, Allessandra has had a chance to see what fashion is like in this part of the world. She’s seen first-hand the differences in fashion as a form of self-expression in places where big luxury brands have none of their original cultural context. “When I come here I can see something different,” she says. “When you travel a lot over Europe or America, you see, in a way, all the same things. Here, I think there is such a young, interesting reality that gives you a really interesting perspective about what people wear, how they feel and what they like." Now back in Italy and working on her next collection, Allessandra will not only be developing ready-to-wear, she’ll be helping the brand expand its digital presence and moulding its in-store identity. There’s also the possibility of branching into lifestyle products – her work could literally include anything, she says. As for her legacy – creating an iconic Tod’s item, like the Gommino – what would she like her lasting impact on the brand to be? “I think the lifestyle,” she says, “the way I present things; there is such an interesting world around it. I don’t want to be remembered for a pair of pants or shoes, but the feeling of the ‘world’ – the experience that you can imagine behind all that.”
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Angkor Wat, as it stood in 1932.
Decoding the Eighth Wonder
Often cited as the Eighth Wonder of the World, Angkor Wat continues to impart its mysteries, even as the edifice itself begins to disappear. by lary wallace he tops of the temple’s towers are meant to resemble lotus buds, implicitly concealing within their bulbous shape the full flowering of the Hindu spirit. In the 12th-century days of Angkor Wat’s founding, the main tower stood as centre, both literal and figurative, not only of the temple itself but of the very seat of the Khmer Empire, along with all the many other religious monuments occupying this part of Siem Reap. To build Angkor Wat, they hauled heavy hunks of laterite, stacking it and fitting it and trusting it to hold even without the adhesion of mortar. The temple held, and it holds still. Since 1863, it’s been prominently pictured on Cambodia’s national flag, and millions visit every year. It’s one of the marvels of the known world — frequently nominated as an unofficial Eighth Wonder — a remarkable triumph of engineering, labour, craftsmanship, and artistry. The central temple and its four surrounding towers are meant to mimic the topographical layout of Mount Meru, Hinduism’s home of the gods. It stands 65 metres high, this central tower, and, besides its smaller satellite towers, is accompanied by gallery halls and enclosure walls and, beyond those, an enormous moat. Its name translates to “City of Temples,” and its geographical immensity justifies the name, more than two square kilometres of man-made construction ascending ever vertically
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Detail from “The Churning of the Sea of Milk.”
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even as it expands in all directions horizontally. To walk through it is to recreate Hinduism’s triple-stage journey to enlightenment, from the crossing of the sea (symbolized by the moat), the crossing of the sacred mountain ranges (the enclosure walls), and finally the scaling of the sacred peaks of Mount Meru (the lotus-bud sanctuary towers), whereupon nirvana is attained and salvation secured. The elaborate carvings covering Angkor Wat’s walls were done on sandstone quarried 30 km to the north and then stacked before the laterite in blocks that had been sanded smooth, made to appear as a single solid surface. It tooks tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of workers to accomplish this. The artists who then carved these sandstones were not granted the luxury of making mistakes. To celebrate the god Vishnu and his faith, scenes from Hindu mythology were depicted. It was Vishnu who’d overseen the gods and demons as they churned the Cosmic Ocean, producing as they did so the
sacred elixir of immortality. This scene is depicted in Angkor Wat’s outstanding tour de force, “The Churning of the Sea of Milk,” a bas relief display that’s part of a much larger mural, stretching for about half a mile. It is the longest continuous mural in the world; and the temple that houses it, one of the world’s oldest religious structures. There are so many nuances and mysteries to explore, so many codes to decode and ciphers to decipher, they seem to be literally endless, the way time itself is endless. It’s a temple that holds enigmas or secrets within its every crease and crevice, as if these mysteries were the missing mortar that kept it standing and that keep it standing still. And now, as it decays from age and deteriorates from visitor traffic — from the product of its own popularity — Angkor Wat’s secrets have not ceased; they’ve only accelerated, as if, in their erosion, they’re circulating more quickly for the summoning.
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he most recent summoner of secrets is Noel Hidalgo Tan, a Ph.D. candidate in archeology at the Australian National University. In 2010, he was volunteering at an excavation, between his master’s and doctoral studies, when he discovered faint black and red markings on some of the walls at Angkor Wat. He photographed these images, which existed to the naked eye as really nothing more than vague suggestions of images. Although he believed there may have been something there, he “was operating under the assumption,” he tells me, “that this was not a new discovery at all.” Then he took his photographs home, submitted them to digital processing, and realised this assumption had been incorrect. It was not the first time he’d discovered paintings. He had, in fact, discovered some 640 of them Aerial map of Angkor Wat indicating, in red, areas where Tan discovered paintings.
There are so many nuances and mysteries to explore, so many codes to decode and ciphers to decipher, they seem to be literally endless. Angkor Wat holds enigmas or secrets within its every crease and crevice, as if these mysteries were the missing mortar.
Digitially enhanced image of a boat painting Tan discovered on an outer wall of Angkor Wat.
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just the year before, at the Gua Tambun cave in Malaysia. This was five or six times the number previously believed to exist there. Tan discovered them using a digitalenhancement technique called decoloration stretch analysis, a process commonly used in rockart research. His success at Gua Tambun encouraged him to apply similar methodology to the trace pigments found and photographed at Angkor Wat. The way it works — according to a paper on his findings published in Antiquity that Tan would later coauthor with three of his colleagues — is by applying “a mathematical algorithm to digital images, transforming an image expressed in RGB colour-space (Red-GreenBlue, the typical way colour is expressed in digital cameras) into alternative colour-spaces, while at the same time replacing similar colours with different ones and maximising the contrast between them. We primarily used the LRE and YBK algorithms, useful for highlighting the red and black
pigments respectively. The process results in a false-colour image that renders faint pigments visible, even those that are indistinguishable to the naked eye.” Tan believes the paintings he discovered were likely overlooked because most viewers’ eyes are drawn to the nearby bas-relief carvings instead, and because of the very low lighting in the cruciform antechambers. Also, many stray markings are dismissed as probable vandalism, a very prevalent phenomenon at Angkor Wat. The paintings appear to date from the 16th century, the socalled middle period of Angkor Wat’s existence — after the Khmer Empire, when the temple was restored and converted to Buddhist use. They depict gods and animals, boats and architecture. Tan has employed various methods of dating. Primarily, he has used iconography. He knows, for example, that a European-style masted ship that’s depicted comes from the 16th-19th century. There are also hundred-year-old
photographs in existence of some of these paintings. Carbon-14 dating is a possibility, but only if the pigments prove, on further inspection, a product of plant resin. If Tan’s findings, photos, deductions, reasonings, estimations, and speculations are all correct, then these phantom paintings could very well be rare artistic artifacts from a period when Cambodia was very much in transition — when old political orders were being overturned and new religious faiths adopted. This would also make them some of the very earliest temple paintings in post-Angkor Cambodia. Tan tells me that “some of my colleagues tell me that my interpretation is too convenient, which I accept — but it’s the best guess we have so far.” History can be chased, but it cannot always be captured. It can be glimpsed and gained-on and run through a very bright light,but history, somehow, has a knack for remaining elusive.
hen King Suryavarman II first commissioned the construction of Angkor Wat, he also commissioned the moat that surrounds it. It would have taken literally thousands of workers to dig up all that sand and silt, roughly 1.5 million cubic metres worth. This moat, in its original manifestation, absorbed rainfall and helped distribute it throughout the city via a network of underground channels, helping Angkor become a power of farming and commerce. It was meant as protection against military invasion, yes, but it was also employed in the service of irrigation. Whatever its purposes, it’s doubtful Suryavarman II could have foreseen its future role in protecting Angkor Wat against nature’s intrusion. It’s doubtful he could have foreseen that, upon the temple’s near-abandonment in the 16th century, this moat and its 190-metre width would help preserve the temple by protecting it from the ever-encroaching jungle. But when it comes to protecting Angkor Wat from traffic and from
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time itself, there’s only so much the moat can do. It wasn’t until the French adventurer-scientist Henri Mouhot came to visit in the 1800s and published his notes that Angkor Wat became popular as a tour destination for Westerners. It had already been written about by a Westerner, almost 300 years earlier, when a Portuguese monk named Antonio da Madalena published an account of his visit. And before that, it had been written about during the reign of the Khmer Empire, by China’s Zhou Daguan, whose text has survived and is studied still. But Mouhot’s were the words that made it a must-visit site for anyone travelling in Cambodia. It remains a heavily trafficked tourist destination. This is certainly a desirable circumstance, to an extent. Cambodia wants its crown jewel
to be admired. The worry is that so many will come to see Angkor Wat that eventually there will be no Angkor Wat left to see. “It can’t be good,” one travel writer has observed, “to have thousands of tourists running their fingers over millennia-old sand stone carvings.” Last year there were more than two million visitors, with the first-quarter visitors this year even higher than last. If you factor national visitors into the sum, you can add another 750,000 or so to the annual total. The temple’s overseers have begun limiting the occupancy of the major towers to 100 visitors at a time. A spokesperson for the Authority for the Protection and Management of Angkor and the Region of Siem Reap (APSARA) tells me that a more elaborate Tourism Management Plan has Patrick Kersale studying stone temple carvings in Cambodia.
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Re-creation of a harp used in Angkor as a musical instrument.
been designed, in cooperation with UNESCO, and will soon be implemented. Meanwhile, the World Monuments Fund has recently completed a four-year mission to rebuild the colonnade roof. Efforts like this are frequently underway to restore various parts of the temple to a state resembling their original design. The tourists will always arrive, trodding and touching and leaving historic traces of their own. The pollution of their vehicles will continue to linger and lodge in the ruin’s surfaces, some of it managing to make it all the way up into the clouds, whereupon the rains will come and bring it all back down on the temple one last time. These are some of the challenges of preserving history. s long as history is preserved, there will be not just those who, like Noel Hidalgo Tan, are discovering new remnants of its record, but those who, like the folks at Cambodia Living Arts (CLA), are re-creating some of the history
depicted in that record. CLA is currently engaged in a program called Sounds of Angkor that will have them putting on a series of performances throughout Asia, beginning in November, recreating the music of 7th-century Angkor (predating Angkor Wat itself by some five centuries), and then bringing it up to the 16th century. Overseeing the program is a French ethnomusicologist named Patrick Kersale, who has sold his house to fund this project with around US $100,000 so far. Six years ago he began his research in earnest, identifying and analysing the evidence found at Angkor Wat, as well as other ruins and relics of that same era and area, interrogating iconography, stone inscriptions, true archeological objects, and ethnology. “The carvings,” he tells me, “are well-preserved. Because we have a lot, we can cross[-reference] the information. Some, like in Bayon, give us good information. Others, not.” Tan, in his own research, has revealed paintings of musical
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Kersale’s endeavour is of course a testament, in part, to the eloquence of those stories Angkor Wat’s sandstone carvings still have to tell. It belongs in the company of those of countless other cryptographic archeologists.
instruments. In the paper he published on his findings, he writes of discovering, in the south cruciform chamber, “a scene depicting the Khmer pinpeat, a musical ensemble made up of different gongs, wind instruments and other percussion instruments. Among the instruments portrayed that are identifiable are the hanging gongs, the kong vong (gongs set in a semi-circular frame), roneat (metal or bamboo xylophones) and the sralai (reed flute).” The pinpeat, as Tan tells us, “can still be seen” — and heard — “in Cambodian life today,” but rebuilding these musical instruments and putting on musical concerts in the original styles is a much different phenomenon — a much rarer and more-difficult kind of cultural undertaking. Kersale says the Sounds of Angkor project is “for the Khmer people,” that he wants to enable them to know about this musical history and be proud of it, and that hopefully Cambodian culture, notoriously depleted
during the Khmer Rouge, will be able to “revive” itself. The instruments Kersale is re-creating include harps, drums, zithers, cymbals, gong chimes, oboes, flutes, and conches. Asked how he plans to re-create the precise sounds these instruments made, to say nothing of the original musical structures they played, Kersale responds that once you’ve re-made an instrument, you’ll have at least 90 percent of its original sound, guaranteed. And even though it’s true that no musical scores from this period exist, “most of the music in the countryside of Cambodia has been stable for a long time, [consistent with] the lifestyle. If you look at the bas-reliefs of lifestyle in Bayon, nothing has changed from the 12th century. I don’t say it’s the same music, but maybe the same structure — like the structure of the family, for example.” ersale’s endeavour is of course a testament, in part, to the eloquence of those stories Angkor Wat’s sandstone carvings still have to tell. It belongs in the company of those of Tan and countless other cryptographic archeologists — past, present, and, one hopes, future. Simply by observing — and, yes, sometimes touching — the relative depth-ofrelief in various carvings, one can discern whether a design is from the 12th- or the 16-century era of Angkor’s history. There are also extensive Sanskrit etchings in the sandstone reliefs, helping scholars affirm Angkor’s deep Indian influence, already suggested in the names of many of its kings. Then there’s the so-called dinosaur carving, found at the nearby temple of Ta Prohm, inspiration for theories of the highest-calibre crazy. This carving, about the size of your hand, is often overlooked even by guided tours. It depicts what many believe might just be a stegosaurus, although most consider it to be a
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boar or a rhino or (Tan’s estimation) a pangolin. It has what look like dorsal plates protruding from its back, but these, most likely, are palm fronds from what’s supposed to be the picture’s background. If this image really was intended to depict a dinosaur, then only two explanations possibly make sense. Either the ancient Angkorans were working from a fossil discovery of their own, or, more plausibly, it was carved by a modern-day visitor, perhaps a member of one of the many film crews — such as that of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider — that have taken over the site these last 15 years. But no explanation is nearly as satisfactory as that of simple mistaken mammal identity. Which isn’t to say Christians haven’t enlisted the carving in defense of Creationism, proof-positive that humans and dinosaurs emerged on Earth Carving at Ta Phrom, near Angkor Wat, believed by many to depict a Stegosaurus Photo: Harald Hoyer.
Re-creation of conch shells used in Angkor as musical instruments.
together and existed here as recently as a thousand years ago. (Never mind that no non-aviary dinosaur fossils have been found from a period pre-dating the Cretaceous, some hundredmillion years ago.) It’s also been used to suggest that extraterrestrial lifeforms in fact built the ancient temples of Angkor. Although the idea of ancient aliens is probably no less plausible than anything you’ll hear from a Creationist, it too has a wacked-out weirdness about it that’s easy to dismiss. The enigmas that emerge from these temples and towers, continually and without cease, will continue to engage. These mysteries will always exist in the cavernous crevices, for as long as the cavernous crevices themselves exist, imparting their secrets in a whisper, faintly audible.
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The Shortcut to Love ? While many young Shanghainese are too busy to find love in China’s most populous metropolis, their parents aren’t. No wonder Shanghai’s marriage market is the largest in China. by top koaysomboon, photographs by chakkapan im-aree hanghai’s People’s Park is the equivalent of Bangkok’s Lumpini Park: a lush, urban recreational landscape where urbanites can enjoy their leisure activities. Every day, the park is packed with runners jogging around, grannies practicing Tai Chi, and lovers murmuring to each other in the quiet, isolated corners. But on weekends, something is different. Mothers and fathers from districts all around Shanghai converge on the park’s northeast entrance to engage in an unusual but crucial activity: looking for potential spouses for their children. There are a few hundred people, and thousands of advertising leaflets hanging everywhere — on trees, on walls, off of umbrellas, in hands. Designs range from the simple, a white piece of paper with Chinese script, to the elaborate, colour-printed and plasticcoated. Looking closer, each of them features information on
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a particular person: name, age, date of birth, gender, education, height, weight, family status, salary, car, and home-ownership. “Male. Native Shanghainese. Born in March 1979. 173cm tall. University degree.” “Female. Born in June 1989. 164cm tall. Good looking. Working at IBM. Owns a house.” “Female. 160cm/49kg. Looking for a man born during 1977-1982, with 170-175cm height.” Some of these profiles are so flattering they could be entries in a competition for the city’s most eligible bachelor. “Parents have a very high standard,” one Chinese woman explains. “For example, a man must have a good job, a good salary, his
own residence, and own a car. Otherwise their profile will be ignored.” he Shanghai Marriage Market, or Rénmín Gõngyuán Xiãngqîn Jião (literally meaning “People’s Park’s blind-date corner”), is said to have been started in 2004 by a small group of parents personally advertising their kids’ profiles on a Sunday. More and more people participated, until it became so popular that match-making agencies became involved and made it an official event taking place every Saturday and Sunday afternoon. Even the Shanghai municipal government supports the event, hosting the official marriage market
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annually at the town’s exhibition centre. Even if you’ve heard about this, you might be surprised at the sheer size of the weekly match-making event, which takes place from noon until around 5pm. To walk through the whole gathering would take you at least a halfhour. And if you really want to check out profiles, it will of course take much longer. Some leaflets bear photographs of those profiled. Many of those pictured are so good-looking, you wonder why they have any trouble finding the right fish in this huge ocean. For some of the kids, the answer is: they already have, it’s just that their parents don’t know it yet. Many don’t even realise they’re being advertised. “It’s kind of embarrassing,” says
Many of those pictured are so good-looking, you wonder why they have any trouble finding the right fish in this huge ocean. For some of the kids, the answer is: they already have, it’s just that their parents don’t know it yet.
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Rebecca Ye, a 30-something hotelier. Many of them are actually dating without telling their parents, not to mention that some of them prefer same-sex dates. “Most of the parents of people in my generation come to this market without telling their children,” explains Carrie Du, a native Shanghainese public relations executive. “My mother came here once, like a year ago, and we still get anonymous calls from other parents!,” Du says, laughing. There are two types of profiles on display: those that are created directly by the parents, and those that are managed by match-making agencies. The latter normally get the best spots in the park. Du says that her mother came here unintentionally, but ended up paying 100 RMB [around 550 baht] just to get Du’s profile listed. That’s just a starting fee; the agencies are charging a lot more if you need
them to arrange “meetings” with a short list of guys. And because there are roughly three times more female personal advertisements than male, the fee for a woman to get listed is slightly higher. Good guys are considered rare items here in Shanghai. According to the Chinese government’s population statistics, there are 33.8 million more men than women in China. “But in Shanghai, there are more women than men,” Ye explains. She adds that most of Shanghai women these days are working for good wages, and enjoy pampering themselves with luxury goods, beauty treatments, and visits to art galleries. Marriage is no longer the final goal of life. “It’s not that we don’t want to get married, but it’s difficult to find a good guy!” That worries the parents, born and raised with the traditional mindset that a
woman should get married before the age of 30 and the younger, the better. What makes it worse is that the generation we’re talking about is the product of the Chinese government’s one-child policy, a population-control strategy that allowed each family to have only one child. The policy was introduced in 1979 and had been enforced until 2013. Not only did the children of this generation absorb all the pressures of their family’s expectations; they were nurtured to be rather selfcentred. And that’s seldom good for a relationship. “You know, the divorce rate in China is so high because couples who were match-made by parents cannot stay together — they’re too full of themselves,” Ye explains. People from the single-child generation are also raised without siblings. Most of them have trouble approaching or dating, let alone living with, another person.
Learning that most Chinese girls are embarrassed to be advertised, we ask Du how she felt upon learning of her mother’s attempt to find her a husband. “At first I was a bit mad, but after a while I started to understand her concerns,” replies Du. “Still, I don’t go there myself,” she laughs. However, as her generation is so big, some of her friends actually follow their parents to the market. “They feel annoyed, but still, they’ll go. Some of them.” The Shanghai Marriage Market is only one of a few attempts to boost marriage rates and population growth in China. The nationalpopulation growth rate has continuously declined, from 12% in 1978 to 5% in 2012, which concerns the Chinese government. It only recently relaxed the one-child policy so that now parents can have up to two children. The Shanghai municipal government hosts an
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Because there are roughly three times more female advertisements than male ones, the fee for a woman to get listed is slightly higher. Good guys are considered rare items here in Shanghai.
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annual match-making event, the Shanghai Annual Love and Marriage Expo, at a local exhibition centre. In the run up to the third edition last year, more than 18,000 participants registered. Come around 5pm at the People’s Park, the Sunday strollers and browsers are packing up their stuff, ready to go home. Rubbish and leftover food are everywhere. In one corner, a young lady stands blushing behind her mother, who is having a conversation with another adult, a male. His son stands coyly behind his back. The two children eventually exchange phone numbers and their parents smile. Could this be a match made in heaven?
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Shanghai Flavours In a city of conspicuous progress, the old flavours still taste the sweetest. by max crosbie-jones / photographs by kitti bowornphatnon
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Shanghai future and past: the Pudong business district and The Bund face-off across the Huangpu River.
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hen on a short break in Shanghai, there are many visual signposts that point, in no uncertain terms, to the city’s modern reinvention. Some of the most unmistakable include seeing bottles of imported Belgian beer being served in old tenement lanes that have been gentrified within an inch of their lives; and kicking back in hip cafés in the tree-lined French Concession, alongside locals dressed in chinos and Oxford shirts and clearly partial to their zucchini cake and tall lattes. However, if there’s one scene that sticks in the mind from my recent visit it was the group gathered outside a toy shop in the Old City, much of which is a pedestrianised shopping area modeled on late Qing Dynasty architecture. The crowd itself wasn’t remarkable, but their neck-craning reaction to a vendor giving a demo of his merchandise, a remote control drone, was. They stood rapt watching his display of thumbpushing prowess, as he sent it soaring high up over the classically upturned roof eaves, and then brought it back to his feet. Then came the spontaneous applause. Here, I thought, is the perfect illustration of modern Shanghai – a place where the thrill of the new literally soars above the old. Forget the books you’ve read, the films you’ve seen. Old Shanghai – the sepia-tinged one that lives in the popular imagination – no longer exists (and probably never did). In recent decades, many of the throwbacks to the “Paris of the East” – the louche, noirish backdrop to a glut of Orientalist fictions – have disappeared almost completely. What you now have instead is a homegrown and somewhat vainglorious symbol of modern, global China: a city of 24 million social climbers, most of whom eschew nostalgia unless it’s been given a 21st-century gloss.
For some visitors this can be unsettling. In every city a disconnect exists between the myth and the reality. However, in Shanghai, a city whose name alone is enough to whip up intoxicating images, but whose overseers are hell-bent on shaping it into a blueprint of Sino-modernity, that disconnect often seems more pronounced than it is usually. Where once stood old, peeling lane communities where children played and grandpas argued over mah-jong moves, now you find “urban eco-landscapes” and world-class architectural feats: shiny conference halls, high rises, and bourgeois dine-and-wine spots. Newspapers once devoted to tales of vice – of mob bosses, card sharps, hookers, and pick pockets – now report on mundane first world matters, from the new Hermès concept store to Mr. Bean dancing with old folk in the park. Rundown dockland areas are now high-minded cultural districts boasting swish contemporary art museums, smooth tarmac and neat topiary. And where once there was just red earth, now there is a vast, pell-mell underground network where locals look on scornfully as mainland tourists struggle to navigate the turnstiles or find the right coins. Not everything is change. History has been sidelined, yes, but not all of it flattened, thankfully. Mao Zedong, of all avowedly unsentimental antiimperialists, is partly to thank for that. On May 10th 1949, shortly before his Red army advanced on the city, he told them that “Shanghai should be seized with art but not by force.” No heavy artillery was to be used in the liberation; they were to pounce delicately, as if “catching mice in a china shop.” Partly this was to keep causalities low, but Mao was also pragmatic enough to realise that, while the Westerners and their
A typical shikumen back alley.
influence must be purged, some of their confections could be put to good use. Today, that preservationist principle lives on. The past can stay when the past doesn’t stand in the way of the march of progress; when it can be co-opted by – and confer a flattering light on – officialdom. And so it is that the stone edifices that line The Bund – this treaty port city’s Huangpu River-hugging promenade – still stand, protected under heritage laws. These grand, heavy buildings built on foreign capital and the principles of neo-classical or Chicago-school architecture, look as stately and imposing and as alien as ever, but now serve a very different purpose from the past. Formerly the headquarters of imperialist banks, lavish hotels, or seamy pleasure palaces, today they are Shanghai’s tourist jewels, housing foreign-owned bars and restaurants, or the international outposts of banks and businesses. In other words, these old totems of decadent Western imperialism
are now stout emblems of something else – the authority’s grace and internationalism. Also spared from the demolition frenzy (a process that was ramped up in the run up to the 2010 Expo) have been some of the early 20th-century tenements, which are known locally as shikumen, or stone-gate communities. One of the best known, Xia Tian Di, or “New, Heaven, Earth,” was propelled into the spotlight in 2003, when a $170 million overhaul overseen by the American architect Benjamin Wood saw it being heralded as one of China’s few heritage success stories. “I disdain preservation,” he told the reporter Ron Gluckman. “I don’t believe you should proclaim things dead and turn them into museums. I believe you should breath life into places.” That’s a noble enough mission, especially as he managed to retain a flavour of Old Shanghai in the process. But the question is, at what price? Hundreds of families were evicted to make way for what
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Triumphant wall reliefs at The Bund’s People’s Heroes Monument.
Many of the throwbacks to the “Paris of the East” – the louche, noirish backdrop to a glut of Orientalist fictions – have disappeared almost completely. What you now have instead is a homegrown and somewhat vainglorious symbol of modern, global China.
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A shikumen community in Jing’an District seen from above.
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A typical, flâneur-style jaunt might find you trotting along busy streets, past impromptu conclaves, and in amongst quiet alleys lined with some of the few historic lane houses that do still serve as humble homes.
Exhibition posters at M50, Shanghai’s contemporary art district.
replaced them: chain concessions, trendy bars and restaurants, and fashion boutiques. No one in the new Shanghai appears to remember them or the thousands of others like them – they’re too busy knocking back their bottles of Paulaner or buying scented candles. here, then, can one find a truer flavour of Shanghai? According to the assorted Shanghai Tourist Board pamphlets gracing the hotel lobbies and tourist booths, each boasting airbrushed photos and breathless prose, the answer is usually: in the bowels of some state museum. Charmed by cheongsams? Hit the Shanghai Textiles Museum, where a history dating back to the Han Dynasty is unraveled before your eyes. Interested in learning about Shanghais’ status as the cradle of China’s film industry? The state-of-the-art Shanghai Film Museum, on North Caoxi Road, is filled with interactive multimedia installations that introduce you to the greats (as well as old movie posters and
magazines that recall Shanghai’s alluring take on Modernism). There are tours too, of course, some of which offer a pitted history that touches on the Opium War and treaties that led to the establishment of Shanghai’s International Settlement and French Concession. Others channel the dangerous glamour of the bygone. The Gangster Tour, for example, introduces participants to early-20th-century Shanghai’s most illustrious troublemakers, including the leaders of the much mythologised Green Gang, “Big Eared” Du and “Pockmarked” Huang. But while these can pass the days, more intrepid visitors find they are better served by heading out on foot. A typical, flâneurstyle jaunt around, say, Xuhui or Jing’An district, might find you trotting along busy streets, past impromptu conclaves, and in amongst quiet alleys lined with some of the few historic lane houses that do still serve as humble homes. Here, amid the squeaking bicycles and laundry lines, you
will find the socio-cultural themes defining Shanghai’s (and China’s) rapid development playing out in real time, not preserved in aspic. Set out with some microhistory or former resident in mind and the rewards can be just as rich. That could be by seeking out the Art Deco buildings designed by Hungarian-Slovak architect László Hudec, including the “Grand Theatre,” widely regarded as the best cinema in the Far East on its completion in 1933, and the 24-storey Park Hotel, the tallest building in the city from 1934 right through to 1958. Or by plunging down the leafy longtangs (lanes) of the former French Concession where Eileen Chang, author of Lust, Caution and Love in a Fallen City, grew up. Or, if feeling really ambitious, by seeking out what’s left of the old Shanghai-Hangzhou railway track that a young J.G. Ballard, after fleeing from the Japanese prisoner-of-war camp that he and his parents were interned in, once strolled along. Speaking of the late Ballard, one of the city’s most famous international former residents and the author of one of its most
famous novels, Empire of the Sun, he was unperturbed to learn of the rapid changes afoot. On being asked what he thought of his childhood home, 31a Amherst Avenue, being turned into a restaurant, he replied: “Let’s hope it’s a McDonald’s or a KFC. In an odd way it’s quite reassuring that everything has changed so much.” Was he being deliberately obtuse? Hard to say. What is certain is that, although he hadn’t lived there for decades, Ballard articulated a spirit that visitors do well do bear in mind. Why be surprised that a metropolis that invented that cliché – where East meets West – and survived wars, revolutions, waves of immigrants, fluctuating international influence, and a long rivalry with Beijing, is still given to reinvention? Shanghai was a place of stop-start flux then, so why not now? No, rather than dwelling 239 on the insensitive treatment of the past, better to live in the moment, as everyone else does. Revel in the swanky malls. Get lost in the labyrinthine underground networks and walkways. Visit the hushed art galleries. Seek out the effete bars and pockets of grungy bohemia. And, perhaps most enjoyable of all, eat where the Shanghainese eat. or many, Shanghai’s culinary delights leave the most satisfying aftertaste of all. If so inclined, one can spend long lunches and elongated dinners at fine-dining institutions such as M on the Bund, a purveyor of old-fashioned, “foamfree” comfort food located at No.5 The Bund. This is a place where a well-dressed cross-section, from Thai royalty to expats and the middle class, comes to sup while taking in the Art Deco throwback glamour and superb views. Out of its windows you can take in the full panoramic sweep of the waterfront, watch boats sail slowly past, and eyeball the towers of Pudong – Shanghai’s sleek, helterskelter vision of the future – on the far shore.
Chinese food is divided into four great provincial cuisines – from subtly flavoured Cantonese to funkily spiced Sichuanese – and nowhere else in the country offers them in such diverse, dynamic abundance.
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The Glamour Bar at M on the Bund.
But if you didn’t come to Shanghai for slow roasted lamb and pavlova then you needn’t go near a single white tablecloth. Chinese food is divided into four great provincial cuisines – from subtly flavoured Cantonese to funkily spiced Sichuanese – and nowhere else in the country offers them in such diverse, dynamic abundance. From street stalls serving peasanty classics (think fried dumplings) to fresh markets (think seasonal fruits like the yang mei, a sort of furry Chinese strawberry that fizzes on the tongue) and clamorous food courts, the grazing options are enticing and seemingly endless. “We try everything,” says Jacqueline Qiu, the executive chef of the Andaz Shanghai Hotel, summing up the young Shanghainese sense of culinary adventure. That said, for her – and
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A steamed dumpling seller in the Old City.
many other locals – the best sorts of places are the no-frills ones that serve the old-school dishes that, as she puts it, “our parents prepared for us when we were young.” Places such as Guang Ming Cun, a fourstorey food store on Huaihai Road that handmakes bite-sized nibbles such as pancakes and qingtuan, a green rice ball that typically arrives stuffed with red bean paste. Other must-try Shanghainese delacies include xiao long bao, those pillow-soft hot-soup dumplings that, to be enjoyed properly, need to be dipped into brown vinegar and shredded ginger before being cautiously pierced and then sucked; and their twin brother shengjianbao (pan-fried steamed buns), be they spiked with some huangjiu (Shaoxing) wine in some swanky dim sum eatery, or freshly fried on the street in a cast-iron skillet (and promptly wolfed down on the spot). Meals here are raucous, communal affairs taken around round tables. A typical dinner might consist of plates of drunken chicken (served, like many dishes,
cold), braised eggplant, steamed hairy crab, fried noodles, and sautéed green beans, to name just a few ubiquitous local staples. But, on a night out, the locals might just as readily plump for Hunanese or Sichuanese, “the spice girl among Chinese cuisines,” as Fuchsia Dunlop writes in her gutsy, chopsticks-first survey of Chinese cuisine, Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper. Restaurants such as Donghu Road’s Sichuan Citizen do the latter with aplomb, whisking out plates of enthusiastically spiced dishes to tables of chattering diners. A cheaper and plainer form of comfort food is also served in the old cai fan (vegetable rice) shops that still dot parts of the old town and French Concession. These simple bowls of rice cooked with veggies were once the go-to sustenance for the millions of migrant labourers who fled in from the provincial mainland to eke out a hardscrabble living. That this defining flavour of the city is disappearing fast is just one more example of how Shanghai doesn’t do sentimental.
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A dilapidated residential building in the International Settlement.
Chinese up-and-comers As mega-cities like Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou mature, attention, capital and tourists are shifting to second-tier cities. These historic towns teeter on the edge of 21st-century greatness.
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Chengdu In the past two years Chengdu has seen more changes than in the past two decades. The city of some 14 million residents, most famous for its role in the 200-year Shu Kingdom and fluffy pandas, is now the fastest growing city in Western China. In 2013 the world’s largest-ever man-made structure, the New Century Global Centre, opened in Chendu’s new commercial district. It’s so huge that you could fit four Vatican cities under its roof. Earlier this year, luxury mall Lane Crawford opened its first Chengdu store, following hot on the heels of “Le Petit Théâtre,” Christian Dior’s first fashion exhibition in China back in May. And last month, a luxury hotel brand from New York, The St. Regis Hotel, opened its fifth property in China at Chengdu’s downtown. But despite rapid development, Chengdu (for now) manages to successfully maintain an enticing balance between new money and quality of life. Local traditions, a relaxing ambiance and natural environment, not to mention the fiery Sichuan cuisine, are all well preserved while the city’s aggressive waste and pollution management policies have led to its being ranked the most livable city in China by the Asian Development Bank.
Wuhan To many Chinese, Wuhan is one of the old grandpas of Chinese cities: an old metropolis that commands respect. Its history stretches back some 3,500 years – before Nanjing and Beijing were even a glint in their Emperor’s eyes – and is still being written, the local government currently forging ahead with plans to redevelop Wuhan into a world-class global destination by 2050. Vast amounts of capital have been poured into this city of 10 million, resulting in numerous infrastructure and property developments standing side-by-side with well-preserved historic buildings. One of the most talked-about is Chuhe Hanjie (or Chu River Han Street), a waterfront project that opened to the public in 2011 to celebrate the centennial of the Xinhai Revolution (the overthrow of China’s Qing Dynasty). Chuhe Hanjie is the first phase of a cultural zone development that involves restructuring and redecorating ancient buildings on the banks of the Chu River, the aim being for it to become a commercial and cultural district comprised of shops, restaurants, art galleries, show stages and a recreation park. Futuristic bridges that connect both river banks will also span the divide between the old and new Wuhan.
Hangzhou In the middle of this month, more than 600 economists, industrial leaders, entrepreneurs and government representatives will gather at the Hyatt Regency in Hangzhou for the China Global Investment Summit to talk global commerce, business challenges and e-commerce trends. On the face of it, the capital of Eastern China’s Zhejiang Province might seem an odd choice for such an international talking-shop, but the truth is that Hangzhou is at the vanguard of such developments. Currently, it is preparing to launch an online free trade zone, following a similar initiative in Shanghai. The city of seven million people, beautiful lakes and historic pagodas is also no longer merely a weekend getaway destination for Shanghainese; it’s fast gearing up to become a new business hub in Eastern China. In July, Hangzhou’s art scene also welcomed the opening of its first private art museum. Housed in a converted 1960s train depot and factory, the T Museum will focus on contemporary art. Local fashion designers are also making waves, following in the path forged by JNBY, a Hangzhou-born fashion brand which started in 1994 and now has more than 500 shops around the world.