Semester 1

Chapter V: Arts and Fakes (September 29 – October 03, 2016)

In Shanghai, you do feel smaller because everything is bigger. While in my hometown, the standard residential building is around 5 stories, here it’s like 30. Plus all the skyscrapers. I pretty much neglect subway and go everywhere by bike – that gives me a real feeling of how gigantic the city actually is and also probably ruins my health big time.

Last Thursday, I visited a short films screening in a venue named The Market. It’s a little arena with some bistros and cafés inside. There were filmmakers from U.S. or Russia along with locals and they showed 6 movies that ranged somewhere between mediocre and plain bad. No edginess, no controversy, 3 dimensional characters nowhere to be found... That’s quite weird, cause those qualities are in fact exactly something shorts can and should do. Well, at least I noticed they do vegan burgers at one of the joints over there…

On Friday, we checked a club named Mirror. The deal was the same as the last week. Free entrance, free vodka. Music was little better than the last time, the club was much smaller but the segregation applied to the same extent. It’s quite interesting that in these mainstream clubs, many DJs are females. The criteria is probably very strict though – model chick with some tattoos. Over the evening, she played some hip hop and slid all the way to fucking EDM. Later on she was replaced by a guy who switched it back to rap. The audience was fairly generic again but it was a quite acceptable for a hangout. I got home after 5...

On Saturday, I checked the Power Station of Art, a super famous exhibition place that displays mostly contemporary art (on the way there, I got my first haircut in China – yay!). The place used to be an actual power station and it was rebuilt into a gallery space. They did a great job on that and it obviously attracts hundreds of people each and every day. Current exhibitions touch plethora of topics, from abstract paintings, comics or architecture, all the way to performances. As a part of one piece they even served french fries. You can go to a terrace on the 4^th floor and check surroundings, construction sites, arenas and skyscrapers. There are spots for kids to play, there’s plenty of space and all of it feels very comfortable.

Since the Xuhui campus does not have a gym and I’m not willing to pay downtown prices for those, I take what’s available. There’s an athletic track on the campus and right by side of it, there are some racks. This kinda forces me to switch my work out to using my own body weight and since the weather is still very summerish, so far I enjoy that. I go there like every other day.

Apart from that, I managed to check another event over the weekend. On Sunday, I went to Jingan Sculpture Park at Beijing Road to check an exhibition of statues from artists from all over the world. The park isn’t that big but it gives you a Central Park vibe. It’s really well maintained, grass is short and green, lots of trees all around with all the skyscrapers emerging on the background. What I loved about the whole thing was the fact that it really serves as a functional public space. The statues are mostly metal and are disseminated all over. Oh, there’s a magnificent hay fox sitting in the middle of all of it. Anyway, people just sit in the grass talking and chilling, children run around jumping from one statue to another, touch every art piece they want to – this is how it’s supposed to be done.

Since there’s a holiday happening this week, I believe I’ll have more opportunities to check what’s on. Seems to me that it’s quite a lot.

Highlights:

• Meeting a 15 year old girl in the gallery. It was a nice talk but damn… Realizing that you can actually have a solid conversation with someone literally half your age kinda hurts…
• Hiphop collective playing in a park right across the main street from Jingan Temple. Me and my friend grabbed a beer and listen to those guys (and a girl) rapping in Chinese for about two hours. They had a big ass speaker, played beats from their smartphones and actually rapped pretty well. The point is – police were all over the place but did not attempt to shut them down. I can hardly imagine this kinda of freedom at 9 PM in Europe. It felt awesome.
• Han City – the first fake market I checked around here. It’s a cyberpunk looking place in at Nanjing Road stretched over 4 floors. Feeling like buying branded electronics, glasses, clothes, suitcases or whatever the fuck you want? All 100% authentic...