中国设计与工程博览会

China Design & Contract Expo, Shanghai

March 29 thru 31, 2007

Cherry Blossom at Dongchang MRT Station on March 29th, 2007

Signs of Spring blooming

Spring but yellow fog warning weekend on March 25th, 2007

The Oriental Pearl TV Tower

The Century Park

The Official Off-site Shanghai Art Fair Map

上海2007道路交通管理信息图

Puxi and Pudong as the Ying and Yang figure ground

In a tour before re-located to Shanghai nearly three years back, the local tour guide spoke about how Deng Xiaoping had also toured and surveyed Shanghai that eventually led to reform and open of China in 1970s or 1980s.

The enjambment hereafter is how geography, geomancy, symbols and linguistic all may inter-relate to each other, as shown in the following:

First of all, refer to the maps. The Pujiang geographically divides Shanghai into Puxi and Pudong. Pujiang is the Huangpu River abbreviated in Chinese; hence, Puxi dues west while Pudong dues east respectively. Denoting Ying or a woman, the term Puxi alliterates or assonates like pussy; similarly, Pudong takes on the Yang or male phallic dong per se. Pu does not denote but rhymes like the four-letter word in some dialects common in the southeastern China, as an obtuse deduction.

How funny!

According to geomancy or some popular folkloric tales, Shanghai is geographically a 'female' or 'ying' oriented city. In many ways still true in this contemporary time, Shanghainese women tend to exhibit culturally strong and dominant characteristics in family roles or social affairs while the men attend to household chores or cooking at home. This is rather different from other parts of China; in turn, it is a chance for others to make conniving and sneering remarks about the submissive characteristics of those Shanghainese men.

Believe it or not! Image as metaphor...

Even geography and human form could possibly exhibit correlationship together with the above generalizations. Check the maps for visuals again. Note a small Suzhou River runs in east west direction, zigzagging its way into the interior. And see how the Pu River bends around and separates Shanghai into Pudong at east or Puxi at west.

Now, look at Pudong. Note the Century Boulevard runs in diagonal direction with Century Park at one end while the other tip points directly at and into the Suzhou River. The Century Park is a large size urban green pocket. The Suzhou River in fact flows east, with floodgates set at interval for tide and river traffic control purposes. From the implication of urban planning, the inorganic Century Boulevard continues in lineal from the organic Suzhou River.

Deliberate or not, this articulated urban planning as man-made urban features on the natural landform somehow conjures visual image of a male reproductive organ. The whole Pudong forms a flaccid, petite, stumpy male phallic figure, and recalling the submissive nature of Shanghainese men. Symbolically, the Century Park is now an external sac or a fertile ground for spermatozoa while the Century Boulevard could possibly be the urethra or urinary tract.

On the other side of the river, the concave land feature of Puxi is now the female reproductive organ, the receiving receptacle fitting the extruded landform of Pudong. As metaphor, the spermatozoa ejected from the tip of Century Boulevard slip slides and wags down west into the interior of Suzhou River or the birth canal.

Keep reading...

Look for an irregular circular ring clearly shown on one of the two maps.

Now travel back in time. Some early forms of calligraphic scripts or writing were carved and recorded on tortoise shells. They are evidences of geomancy or shaman activities for oracle purposes but called tortoise oracles in later time.

Closer to recent era, the ring feature was a moat circumscribing together with the city wall as defense and transportation functions. Now, the moat is gone, filled up and made way for modernization and vehicular uses; it is now the Renmin Road and Zhonghua Road ring roads. The ring road encircles an area of what is called Chenghuang Miao or City God Temple. Together with regional 1920s Shanghai architecture or lifestyle still existing or surviving today, it is an area devoted for booming tourism but infested with cutthroat commercial activities.

Guess what!

Doesn't this ring road resemble a vulva? Is this feature somehow distinctively signifies or implies the dominant social characteristics of Shanghainese women?

Now, go back to Pudong and at the tip end. As the city icon and a gigantic structure, the Oriental Pearl TV Tower is strategically situated as the terminating vista of the Century Boulevard. The Tower structure has a total of eight spheres, the bigger spheres must be functioning as the look out point for panoramic view all around Shanghai while those smaller ones are not known but possibly decorative or used as utilities compartments.

From geomancy insights, they are meaningful. To me, they are none other than the male scrotums, eight big and small sacs. With so many big and small hemispheres, is this Tower erected to counter the maternally dominant society? Is this Tower as phallic symbol and located on Pudong made to balance the female vulva of Puxi? Is the undulating Pu River separating but balancing the yang of Pudong in the east and the ying of Puxi in the west?

Your answer...

Shanghai reached its golden era around the World Wars or immediately before when foreign presence was most intense, and leaving with indelible architectural, economic and cultural marks since. To many foreign entities, Shanghai is more popularly known as the Whore of the East versus the local pride as the Pearl of the Orient. No pun intended or mere historical co-incidence, what is it about regarding all of the above?

Again, what do you say?


Sources
Island 6, Studio Rouge, IFA Village. The Official Off-site Shanghai Art Fair Map. Nov. 2006 – Dec. 2006.
上海2007道路交通管理信息图。驾驶员专用地图。


Jeremy
Hai Shanghai
March 20th, 2007

Bright Light, Big City

Bright Light, Big City: At the Lujiazui MRT Station

Note the top pic showing Lujiazui Financial District of Shanghai, with Huangpu River rolls and bends around; in the pic, a Swiss Cross is the Dongfang Hospital...I live right behind the hospital...where I work (see last pic of the crystal on the wall) is across the street the other way...only 8 minutes walking from door to door. The Lujiazui MRT Station sign board also shows Dongchang Station, the closest station to me.

The posters on the column reveal the lively, energetic, thriving and fashionable new generations The deadly killer of environmental pollution all over China, spitting is an undying and ineradicable habit for generations. Many scholars and others concerned had been, have been and still are pointing out the problem.

Thou shall not spit, love thy environment!

Jeremy

Hai Shanghai

March 20th, 2007