In the summer of 2010, I returned to Shanghai to see my mother who has Alzheimer. En route from the airport to my parents’ home, Shanghai at a glimpse failed to stir up sufficient aesthetic reaction. The city looked glitzy, dizzy, and inexplicably numbing with neon lights, skyscrapers, cars flashing past en masse. It was hot and humid, typical of monsoon season here. Luxury new apartments or decaying old houses were equalized by one commonality, oozing walls and floors. The old beauty like aged walls, quiet alleys, cobble-stone streets, a vegetable stand abandoned for the night, a dog astray, ship siren echoing afar, poignant smell permeating the night sky....... is a distant memory. At the moment, Shanghai was busy hosting the World Expo and the entire city was transformed into a surrealist bazar with carnival-like fanfare. For this constantly changing metropolis, new means value, and hassling-bustling is accepted as fine entertainment.
Shanghai as it stands now, is a lost place in the guise of rebirth, with a glamorous facade and a rotten soul. Its best moment is either gone or has not arrived yet. My heart wants to believe the latter, but my mind chooses the former. The Shanghai I grew up with already fast forwarded into a Mecca of materialistic pursuits and philistine tastes. Soulless mansions are abundant and cultured visages scarce. Residents and visitors alike are forced to share an alienating community full of vile surprises and banal pleasures. With this unstoppable tide, a sense of being either hopelessly drowned or joyfully immersed sweeps through this city who unabashedly craves for spotlight. World Expo or not, Shanghai today is without identifiable identity, perking on the edge of tolerance, human and environmental.
One afternoon of an on-and-off drizzle, just a couple of days before returning to America, I felt an urge to see the places my family and relatives used to live. I grabbed a camera, and so began a spontaneous sojourn, guided by a faint memory and fueled with arousing sentiment. What I photographed afterwards is a personal memoir of a bygone era, narrated as randomly as this nostalgic odyssey zigzagged through the familiar alleys, streets, buildings and parks. I believe historical urban architecture is of classical statue and perpetual quality, just like ballet and opera, and deserves ardent preservation. Attempt to change, fuse or modernize runs the risk of deviating in the process and ruining it in the end. Old Shanghai, as framed in my memory, is eternal.
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