Visited the just-starting Shanghai Biennale at the Art Museum, off the People’s Park – for those who care about the very avant-gardiste end of the art movement...
Coffee at Kathleen’ 5 on the rooftop of the museum – great view of the surrounding city skyline...
Meandered in the maze of lilongs (alleys) off Taikang road (in the former French Concession), full of small, if not tiny, boutiques and restaurants; in search of souvenirs for Cynthia’s colleagues at the office – settled on nifty packages of Chinese herbal teas at the Zhenchalin Tea shop. Lots of photographs shops around as well; great shots of Shanghai but can’t decide on one to bring back…
Visited Expo 2010 – the Consulate had arranged for “easy access” at a few pavilions. Saw the Canadian one (of course); Germany and the EC/Belgium ones. Canada compares well – very “Cirque du Soleil”! Personally, I preferred the NFB piece – Glimpses, a film by Jean-François Pouliot, and for which brother Normand is credited for the visual conception. http://onf-nfb.gc.ca/medias/download/documents/pdf/GLIMPSES-Press-kit.pdf Hosted at the pavilion by former music contact in LA, Jennifer Price! Had lunch at the Peruvian pavilion – a good suggestion from one of the hostesses at the Canadian pavilion! Missed out on the China pavilion – not feeling well and returned to the hotel, having crossed over to the other side of the Expo on the Puxi side by ferry… (Below, inside the Canadian Pavilion)
These are the dying days of Expo – this is the last week. The Chinese officials are very happy: the objective has been met – more than 70M visitors! No one ever doubted that it would – just a matter of how many people you can “bus in” from all over the country! Actually, we are a bit jaded when it comes to such events, but for the majority of the Chinese, especially the younger ones, it is a unique opportunity to discover “the world” – I just have to think what Expo 67 represented for me at the time…
Cynthia is immersing herself in the history of the Bund: reading Peter Hibbard’s book, providing a detailed account of each building. We went to visit the entrance hall of the former HSBC headquarters that still dominates the Bund with its huge copula, the site of the Shanghai Government in my days as CG here, now lodging the Pudong Development Bank. Fascinating mosaïque inside the copula! Totally preserved thanks to the Communists’ earlier obsession of covering anything that reminded of the colonial past of Shanghai – I had been many times in that building in my official capacity then, never to see any of that!
The “revitalization of the Bund” has gone beyond the Bund, and has extended to the immediate area. An interesting project is going on in the streets just at the back of the former British Consulate and the newly built Peninsula Hotel, near Suzhou Creek: the Urban Renaissance Project or RockBund where buildings along the streets of YuanMingYuan and Huqiu are being revamped as part of the redevelopment project – the Y.W.C.A., the Lyceum and others, notably the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS) which has been turned into a smart museum and exhibition hall for local contemporary artists. RockBund, (http://www.rockbund.com/index.htm) obviously a contraction of Rockefeller and Bund – for which the Rockefeller Group International is acting as the Master Developer, a name that finds its roots back to John D. but is in fact now a subsidiary of the Japanese Mitsubishi Estate Company Ltd (http://www.rockgroupdevelopment.com/china/shanghai.html). The project originally was said to be completed by Expo 2010 – that is a target that was not met, and there is still a way to go…
(Below, a shot of Pudong, at night, from across the Huangpu, at the Peace Hotel)
October 26, 2010
Post Scriptum, Toronto, November 6, 2010
Saw today, Jia Zhang Ke's film featuring Shanghai, "I wish I knew" at the TIFF Lightbox. Shot in 2009 and beginning of 2010, it was launched at the Cannes Festival last May. Excellent! Here is what the director had to say about it then:
En observant de près, les changements historiques de la Chine à travers mes films depuis plus d’une décennie, mon intérêt pour l’histoire s’est accru. Il m’est apparu que la plupart des problèmes de la Chine contemporaine ont un ancrage profond dans son histoire. En Chine continentale tout comme à Taïwan, la vraie nature des événements survenus dans la Chine moderne ont été cachés, dissimulés par le pouvoir. Comme un orphelin angoissé à l’idée de découvrir ses origines, j’ai ressenti l’urgence de savoir ce qui se cachait derrière les récits familiers de l’histoire officielle. Comment les individus ont-ils réellement vécu ces événements récents ?
Je me suis donc rendu avec ma caméra à Shanghai afin de retrouver la trace des habitants qui ont quitté la ville pour Taïwan ou Hong Kong. La plupart des destins des personnages qui ont construit la Chine moderne sont liés à Shanghai. Les événements qui ont bouleversé la ville ont eu un retentissement national et ont marqué douloureusement et profondément la vie des habitants qui sont partis.
J’espère que I Wish I Knew dépassera les querelles politiques (qu’il s’agisse du Parti Communiste Chinois ou du KMT, le Parti Nationaliste Taïwanais) afin de toucher au cœur des souffrances du peuple chinois. L’histoire de Shanghai est émaillée d’un lexique de termes historiques compliqués : de «colonie» au XIXème siècle à «Révolution» au XXème; de la «libération» de 1949 à la «révolution culturelle» de 1966 puis à la «réforme» de 1978 et «l’ouverture» de Pudong en 1990. Ce qui m’intéresse principalement, ce sont les significations cachées derrière ces termes abstraits au travers des individus qui ont été les victimes des diverses politiques et les détails oubliés de leurs vies.
Alors que j’étais assis face aux protagonistes de mon film et que je les entendais raconter si calmement un passé tellement effrayant, j’ai réalisé que ma caméra capturait ce «rêve de liberté» qui brillait encore dans le fond de leurs yeux. Et cela m’a ému jusqu’aux larmes.
Jia Zhang Ke
