I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that’s my one fear: that everything has happened; nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again… the future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul.
–JG Ballard
Always wanted to go to Shanghai? Here’s a 360 degree view of The Bund. Set to full screen and it’s almost like you’re there.
This Sunday the Asian Art Museum will be screening two films in a tribute to Ruan Lingyu, the legendary Shanghai film star. Although Ruan was not the most popular star of her day (that honor went to Butterfly Wu, who was elected “Empress of Film” by the city’s fervent moviegoers), her suicide on March 8, 1935 at the age of 25 bestowed Ruan with an immortality that has made her the undisputed icon of Chinese silent cinema. Since her life is well documented elsewhere, and also the subject of Sunday’s second feature, I won’t repeat it here. But I will encourage you to check out the biography written by Richard J. Meyer, Ruan Ling-Yu: The Goddess of Shanghai, which comes packaged with a DVD of The Goddess (1935), her best and most famous film. You can order it from the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.
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Would you like to write for the museum’s magazine, Treasures? We are currently soliciting contributions for our summer issue. Following are details:
What’s going on?
We are interested in hearing about visitor reactions to Shanghai. We will publish the results in the July issue of our members magazine, Treasures.
What kind of commentaries are acceptable?
There are no restrictions on content, except that the Shanghai exhibition must be the subject, and we cannot publish material that is plagiarized, offensive, or libelous. What we would like are thoughtful commentaries that relate to the art on view and visitors’ responses to it. Personal connections to the topic are especially welcome.
Within the first day of the opening of the Shanghai exhibition on February 12, 2010, a public engagement of unexpected proportions with the art on display began. Individuals have been writing up a storm on comment cards, comment books, news articles, and online blog postings that expressed their emotional responses to the good, the bad, and the ugly aspects of the exhibition material. Added to the writings are lots of verbal feedback in various conversations with visitors, stimulating interesting buzz around the museum. I do not want to miss out on this exciting community discussion! This blog series, A Curator’s Notes, is where I will contribute my two cents on, and inside knowledge of, the controversial issues and hot topics presented in Shanghai at the Asian Art Museum.
The way I see it, there are two ways to go: either wear yourself out hitting every event, every screening, and every talk for the SFIAAFF (um, cloning option, please?), or, just deal and hope that the shorts program isn’t as good as it looks. I may be reasonably motivated as far as film goes, but give me one night to see something and chances are I’ll keep my fingers crossed for good distribution luck.
Perhaps for this reason I am grateful for longer-running exhibitions, not the least because I’m lazy, but because I’m a glutton for return visits–especially if they involve something that can be done during my lunch hour.
This afternoon I was watching the final touches being put on the Main Library‘s Korean Comics exhibition. U.C. Berkeley’s Dr. Sung Lim Kim curated the show in the Jewett Gallery, which runs through June 13. Trina Robbins–who will be at the Asian Art Museum for an exciting lecture this June–will be part of an esteemed panel on Manwha for girls on April 8th.
While you’re at the museum, take the elevator up to the third floor to visit the Chinese Center, a drool-worthy collection of books rivaled only by the excellent Shanghai embroideries on view there until May 31st.
It’s no mystery why I rarely leave the neighborhood.
Celestial beauty Gong Li in Shanghai Triad
This coming Sunday, the Asian Art Museum will be screening a double feature — Shanghai Triad and Two Stage Sisters — that provides a glimpse, both on and off the screen, of the violence and social injustice that lay behind the glamorous facade of “High Times” Shanghai and the heroic mask of Revolutionary China.
Shanghai Triad (1995) depicts the power struggles of the city’s criminal underworld through the innocent eyes of a young country bumpkin employed to serve the mistress of Shanghai’s top gangster. While sometimes considered one of Zhang Yimou’s lesser works, the film is quite compelling when seen in the cultural and historical context afforded by the current exhibition.
The film’s gang boss is based on Du Yuesheng, a native son who rose through the ranks of the notorious Green Gang to become the most powerful man in pre-Communist Shanghai. Don’t miss the hanging-scroll portrait of “Big-Eared Du” and fellow gangster “Pockmarked Huang” on display in the exhibit. It provides an amusingly self-reverential counterpoint to the film’s brutal portrayal. As for Gong Li, who plays the gang lord’s glorified sing-song girl, she looks just like one of those radiant “celestial” beauties depicted in Shanghai’s popular calendar art, several fine examples of which can also be seen in the show.
Shanghai Triad: portrait of a tortured artist
For me, the most fascinating character is the silent, but ever watchful, country boy whose dream of finding a better life in Shanghai becomes a cruel nightmare. I can’t help but see him as a surrogate for director Zhang Yimou. During the film’s production, not only was Zhang under intense government scrutiny because of his previous film, To Live (1994), but he was also on the verge of a breakup with his muse and lover Gong Li.
Seen in this light, the final scene of Shanghai Triad is a haunting metaphor for the intense powerlessness Zhang must have felt at that time.
Sunday’s second feature is an inspired choice to follow Shanghai Triad. While Zhang Yimou was censured for his portrayal of the Cultural Revolution in To Live, Xie Jin and his film Two Stage Sisters (1964) were actual victims of that mad era. Now regarded as one of the best Chinese films of all time, Two Stage Sisters was initially branded a “poisonous weed” and — except for select screenings to criticize the film — it remained unseen by the general public until 1979. For the crime of advocating the reconciliation of social classes, Xie Jin was denounced at a mass rally of more than 100,000 people. Although Xie himself survived the Cultural Revolution, his parents were not so lucky. His mother and father both committed suicide.
Two Stage Sisters: sisterhood is powerful
A revolutionary melodrama, Two Stage Sisters follows the personal trials and tribulations of two opera performers against the backdrop of China’s struggle for liberation. United during hard times, the women choose different paths once they achieve fame and fortune in Shanghai. One retires and marries a man she doesn’t love for the promise of a life of comfort, while the other awakens to the injustice around her and organizes the city’s female opera workers. Thanks to Xie Jin’s abiding humanism and emotional sensitivity, the film never succumbs to mindless didacticism or cardboard characterization. While certain scenes, such as the final conversation between the two women, are evidence of outside interference, the heart of the film remains intact: a personal love strong enough to weather the storms of life.
“Green water goes through numerous mountains”
[from the film's opening song]
Let me end by calling attention to the brief but incredibly moving performance by Shangguan Yunzhu as the film’s fading opera star. Shangguan Yunzhu was a popular actress during 1940s. (Look for her on the video monitor in the exhibit’s “High Times” section in a scene from the 1949 film Crows and Sparrows). It’s rumored that she had a brief affair with Mao Tse-tung which led to her persecution during the Cultural Revolution by Mao’s wife — and former film actress — Jiang Qing. In 1968, four years after her final role in Two Stage Sisters, Shangguan Yunzhu jumped from the window of her apartment building, the Normandie. Some say that her ghost, and those of the many others who also leaped to their death, still haunts the historic French Concession building.
Veteran actress Shangguan Yunzhu’s last goodbye
— Contributed by Dave Wells, who writes for Soft Film: Vintage Chinese Cinema.
The steamed dumpling known as xiao long bao, described so evocatively by Olivia Wu elsewhere on this website, is synonymous with Shanghai, and for generations of Shanghainese eating xiao long bao was synonymous with a visit to one particular establishment, the Nanxiang Mantou Dian (Nanxiang Steamed Bun Restaurant). Here, in the historic Yu Garden area of Shanghai, in a second-floor dining room overlooking the nine-turn bridge and the mid-lake teahouse of blue willow China pattern fame, whole feasts are made from nothing more than stacks of dumpling-filled bamboo steamers, accompanied by small bowls of a thin soup.
"Vestiges of a Process: Shanghai Garden" during installation.
Shanghai has been up a little more than a week, long enough for a number of media reviews, blog posts, and general discussion points to emerge. One piece that seems to elicit particular comment is Zhang Jian Jun’s installation Vestiges of a Process: Shanghai Garden (2009).
Down in the shadowy basement and back halls of the museum services division, this is known affectionately as the piece with the bricks. Not just your garden variety red clay bricks, but some 3,000 antique grey bricks taken from the remains of buildings dating to the high-times of 1920s Shanghai, recently demolished to pave the way for new construction.
You have been given entry into the exclusive province of museum installation; as our guest, you are witness to the realization of years of planning and much strenuous labor. An air of expectation is palpable, as always, in the fleeting days preceding an exhibition.
What awaits us is a land at once imaginary and real–Shanghai the concept, the dream–and its rise from a divided, shanty-filled port to innovative megalopolis.
But I want to talk about something you won’t see in the exhibition.
Shanghai’s Hello Kitty House was one of the first images to turn up while I was doing research last year, and although I’ve yet to find anyone who has actually stayed there, I’m willing to believe the place exists.
Thanks to the encyclopedic nature of the internet, I later discovered that the Shanghai subway’s #6 line is also known as the “Hello Kitty Line,” distinguished from other lines by its decidedly femme details (it makes more sense when you see it on the map).
Shanghai represents an imaginary place for me–I’ve never been, but whenever friends return I hear that I’d love the place. Much in the same way early mapmakers set a course over paper without having seen a land’s shores, I’m doing the same to Shanghai. Curators and couriers bring us the proof of another world, and we piece together the idea of a place.
I can’t wait to see what the ephemeral city holds for us.
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