Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Bowling Birthday Cake
The city and the desire
Gianna
to Gianni, who engages in long walks, dances and talks through two cities contemporary and irreconcilable that jostle and vie for attention all the time. The first is mature, experienced, uncouth, malleable, does not show his intimate demeanor in daily actions, chooses the second outlandish clothes and inscrutable logic of the closet before going out, is hospitable, offers shelter and satisfaction to the various whims and needs. The second is young, proud, vain, petulant, angular, slavishly following rules and codes that do not know the meaning, dazed and unsteady walking on high heels who can not tame, is flirtatious but embarrassed at the time of uncertainty, is inevitably crowded out and naked in front of unusual behavior.
Experts advise not to spend much time with the two simultaneously, because when they meet their reaction is unpredictable.
The city and the name
Pagura
After traveling four days to the east, the astonished traveler can see the silhouette of hermit crabs. The city, a modern version of a legendary metropolis of the fertile plains of the Middle East, is screwed onto itself in the eye. Pagura What is special, and that has earned this unusual title is that inside the city is now empty. It its shell is made purely of many elevated roads which become entangled to form a solid concretion, that the city itself, as those animals that are busily building a house around and after a while 'go away, has abandoned the his fate, choosing to move to lands more attractive. Many of its inhabitants do not yet have been noticed, and they continue undeterred to compete and collide in a struggle with no holds barred, in search of the exit that leads them to the house that they could no longer find.
How Much To Change Name On Title
Thirteenth Fourteenth missive missive
"Drain the pasta a bit 'before then otherwise overcook! "," Stir counterclockwise, as determined by the position of the stars, "" Do not you know the garlic !!!". Two
poor unfortunates struggling with Volcanic intent on making a meal for a cheerful and fracassone family of Chinese living in one of lilong surroundings. Tell the heralds that the lunch was established during the crossing of lilong done a week earlier, stopped by an unexpected break and chat about sediola asylum-size first grade (the scribe was not present at the time, referring to authoritative sources).
After lengthy preparations, leave the compound with abundant rations of pasta ("Short, who is best!) Sauce with ad hoc and routine for the demanding palates of China, supported by delicious strawberries and cream tarts prepared by Armelle.
cross roads between curious glances, and then we ran into one of the shady streets and caciarone repeating always the same in lilong . Maybe now the Chinese are no longer expected, but welcomed us with enthusiasm, increasing the size of the ad hoc table (0.8 to 0.85 square meters more or less) with stunted wings of wood. The cutlery are soon brought specially set aside for the autarkic bamboo sticks, and begins the ceremony for the payment of orange juice with noble chemical origins on toast with approximately every 3 minutes (probably a method of measuring the time of ancient tradition ...).
jaws work, when suddenly emerged from a door the grandfather (or what purports to be) in order to vest as soon as he sees us greets, returns to his mansion and comes out with the homemade noodles with soup full of species that would made the joy of Linnaeus. It tasted a bit hesitant, 'and immediately we have another tomato-based soup with onions, meat of different origin DOS (name of unknown origin, ed). The Volcanic he dives headlong, praising the flavor, only to regret it an hour after the time to say goodbye. In the meantime, took turns at the table a number of neighbors and onlookers, including the likely long-haired wife of the grandfather (grandmother to his friends) with impeccable pajamas walking. Because of our dining en plein air the road was almost blocked, and more than a few booming centaur was forced to take alternative routes. The company Cerberus alternated sudden orders to leave by invitation to taste the dishes, making it guess what were the relations and ties in the neighborhood.
comes the moment of sweet, Armelle start cutting slices assistance of priceless old woman who insists on wanting to help by trying to cut with chopsticks. Upon reaching the sixteenth toast (I dare not imagine what if you could combine chemical drank juice instead of wine), and after lengthy disquisitions on our hypothetical age and glaring laughter every two to three, salute the happy company, promising future editions of the banquet in the street.
After a long and hazardous training in the cave of Master Huang Huazheng, it's time to prove myself. Reported by Huang I go to a wholesaler where you supply the hotels, and I go out with machetes Chinese Kitchen, a tool capable of gathering food from the wok chef's hat and coat, and an enviable invoice. Armelle kindly gives his kitchen for my experiments, and six other diners are the guinea pigs and assist my first steps in the glittering world of Chinese cooking. After a long and painful supply to the supermarket, where they sell among other things turtles, water snakes and crayfish and belligerent ugliest thing I've seen in my life, we go on a crime scene. Selected dishes for the evening: Xia ren dou was (tofu with peas and shrimp), Shuang Chao gu (two types of mushrooms with oyster sauce), Jiachangdoufu (tofu "conflict" in batter with pork and peppers) and Shu Qiang xia ren (shrimp with soy sauce). In the kitchen there is a hellishly hot, the bathroom in the meantime a tube well in hot start to think of spraying and water vapor, perhaps convinced to be part of a Finnish sauna. I must say that I found a little 'bad times, and guests have to wait to the bitter end (the first course arrived at twenty to eleven ...) but thanks to the help of Manuela, hired as an assistant for the occasion, finally I've gotten enough. I sit at the table, and seems to have just emerged from a workout with Rocky Balboa ...
Monday, June 4, 2007
Replacement Suitcase Feet
Communication culinary service
By popular demand (of grains are safe, other mouths good guess even I know ...) here's recipe of some sort (I did not understand what kind of style is exactly Cinacittà) of rice in Cantonese directly dictated by the dreaded Huang Huazheng.
Abstract: I will mention that all the ingredients, except eggs are cooked / blanched first, preferably steam. Well, well heated wok (or skillet for those who did not have the wok), beat two eggs, put three tablespoons of olive oil (approximate, put rice depending on how you follow the timeless wisdom for eggs idem) then pour the eggs, then the rice, fry briefly, then add all other ingredients (Huang suggested the Satan peas, shrimp, carrots and mushrooms, if you do not find those wacky Chinese used like those you prefer), salt and pepper to taste, stir, taste it (if it is edible in prison without going through the street) and serve on plates. People who like a sprinkle of fresh chopped chives for garnish. Apparently it's quite simple. For those interested
sizzling new photos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ludusc/
Attentive readers will have noticed that in the group photo is not Japanese, meanwhile slaughtered by ourselves during the course to prepare a succulent and spicy Sichuan recipe. I would have preferred to enjoy during the course of the silent majority and the most insightful comments, sacrificing the Australian, but I lost the votes, the second best parliamentary tradition. The death has been replaced by that the Renata czech.
Good digestion all
Chong 
By popular demand (of grains are safe, other mouths good guess even I know ...) here's recipe of some sort (I did not understand what kind of style is exactly Cinacittà) of rice in Cantonese directly dictated by the dreaded Huang Huazheng.
Abstract: I will mention that all the ingredients, except eggs are cooked / blanched first, preferably steam. Well, well heated wok (or skillet for those who did not have the wok), beat two eggs, put three tablespoons of olive oil (approximate, put rice depending on how you follow the timeless wisdom for eggs idem) then pour the eggs, then the rice, fry briefly, then add all other ingredients (Huang suggested the Satan peas, shrimp, carrots and mushrooms, if you do not find those wacky Chinese used like those you prefer), salt and pepper to taste, stir, taste it (if it is edible in prison without going through the street) and serve on plates. People who like a sprinkle of fresh chopped chives for garnish. Apparently it's quite simple. For those interested
sizzling new photos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ludusc/
Attentive readers will have noticed that in the group photo is not Japanese, meanwhile slaughtered by ourselves during the course to prepare a succulent and spicy Sichuan recipe. I would have preferred to enjoy during the course of the silent majority and the most insightful comments, sacrificing the Australian, but I lost the votes, the second best parliamentary tradition. The death has been replaced by that the Renata czech.
Good digestion all
Chong
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
What Specific Contribution
Cities and the dead
Cesidio
Cesidio What makes different from other cities are building facades. They have no windows or gables of stone or carved wood frames. The walls have never been covered by a thin plaster, or have never known the warmth of the rays of the setting sun. Ubique resistant structures of bamboo planted their claws on the buildings, and have gone with insistence to the most remote depths of the city. It is said that these structures serve as a bridge between the world of the living and the dead, who, having plenty of free time and bored in the dark underground engage in those activities are preferred by the inhabitants of Cesidio in life, or spy, listen and speak ill of others. The cavities of the tubes are used now as the intricate periscopes, now as amplifiers of chatter and whispers, sometimes as channels of the pneumatic post, in which compact balls of assumptions, speculations and intrigues revealed chase each other madly. Every time one of these balls, pushed by the pressure of words and sounds, pops out from the ends of the structures, injuring the unwary passers-by walking nearby, or exploding into thin strips of colored paper, which, once deposited randomly on the structure, form the ' only decoration of the buildings that the inhabitants of Cesidio like.
Thin cities
Leodora
If I had not glimpsed the letters engraved on the gleaming pendant, I would not have realized that I came across Leodora, a city that can not be visited, which may not be covered, but can only be met and admired, before the young girl who wears it disappears carry away. The city is slippery, multifaceted, chameleon, assumes with sudden mood swings seemingly random appearance of jewelry and women's clothing. Soft, impalpable, like a warm shawl fine, suddenly shrinks, it boils down to a hard stone, cold and multifaceted. Moments and the girl wearing a simple tunic, simple and austere, that during the day become a full skirt and saucy, in whose folds lie the secret formulas that the protracted spell. This makes the city go along with the climate and the environment in which it is brought, that go along with elegance and enhances the features. Leodora has no inhabitants, but she herself lives in the imagination of those who want to meet her and in memory of those who can not forget.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
How To Remove Thule Rack
Eleventh Twelfth missive missive missive
First installment of a vainglorious and arrogant appendix to "Invisible Cities" by Italo Calvino. Hypothetical accounts of Marco Polo Khan, returning from Shanghai tireless dawn of the twenty-first century.
prologue from "Invisible Cities"
"It is said that Kublai Khan believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his, but certainly not the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater curiosity and attention than any other messenger or explorer of his.
In the life of the emperors there is a moment which follows pride in the immense breadth of lands we conquered, the melancholy and relief in knowing that soon give them up to know and understand, a sense of emptiness that comes over us an evening with the smell of the elephants after the rain of ash and sandalwood that cooling in the brazier, a vertigo that shakes the storied rivers and mountains on the backs of tawny planispheres, rolled one over the dispatches that we announce the recent landslide defeat to defeat enemy armies, and scrape the wax seal of King never heard of begging advancing the protection of our military in exchange for annual tributes of precious metals, tanned hides and tortoise shells: it is the desperate moment when we discover that this had seemed to us that the sum of all wonders is an endless collapse nor form, that corruption is too ingrained for our scepter to offer protection, that the triumph over opposing rulers made us heirs of their long decay. It is only through Marco Polo, Kublai Khan was able to discern, through the walls and towers destined to crumble, the watermark of a design so subtle as to escape the bite of termites. "
First
guide cities and the sky
Miranda
Arriving at
Miranda is on flat ground during the day a great chessboard of shadowy rectangles, fresh or dusty, secluded or transparencies, wrinkled or wheezing. These are nothing but the projection of the many roofs that make up the city, suspended in midair second inscrutable laws. Sharp and treacherous, soft and packed, histrionic and lumpy, smoky and laconic, the roofs form an archipelago of solid thick and indecipherable incunabula, called by its inhabitants Miranda. Every day, when the sun starts to drop, you start with a noisy team of long hooks to unroll the sheets that are squatting on the roofs. Each sheet has a different warp and weft, in some bright rivulets flowing from above, others take on the appearance of an incomplete puzzle, many nests are colonized by unstable rubber canvas. Only when the sheets are rolled out, and with insistent beeps forewarn their arrival on the ground, the soil is indifferent shared in streets and squares, courtyards and secret gardens. The night brings guidance and direction to the inhabitants, shelter and certainty, until, at sunrise, the relentless team rewinds towels, and shrinks in a sleepy endless shadowy rectangles of Miranda. 
First installment of a vainglorious and arrogant appendix to "Invisible Cities" by Italo Calvino. Hypothetical accounts of Marco Polo Khan, returning from Shanghai tireless dawn of the twenty-first century.
prologue from "Invisible Cities"
"It is said that Kublai Khan believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his, but certainly not the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater curiosity and attention than any other messenger or explorer of his.
In the life of the emperors there is a moment which follows pride in the immense breadth of lands we conquered, the melancholy and relief in knowing that soon give them up to know and understand, a sense of emptiness that comes over us an evening with the smell of the elephants after the rain of ash and sandalwood that cooling in the brazier, a vertigo that shakes the storied rivers and mountains on the backs of tawny planispheres, rolled one over the dispatches that we announce the recent landslide defeat to defeat enemy armies, and scrape the wax seal of King never heard of begging advancing the protection of our military in exchange for annual tributes of precious metals, tanned hides and tortoise shells: it is the desperate moment when we discover that this had seemed to us that the sum of all wonders is an endless collapse nor form, that corruption is too ingrained for our scepter to offer protection, that the triumph over opposing rulers made us heirs of their long decay. It is only through Marco Polo, Kublai Khan was able to discern, through the walls and towers destined to crumble, the watermark of a design so subtle as to escape the bite of termites. "
First
guide cities and the sky
Miranda
Arriving at
Miranda is on flat ground during the day a great chessboard of shadowy rectangles, fresh or dusty, secluded or transparencies, wrinkled or wheezing. These are nothing but the projection of the many roofs that make up the city, suspended in midair second inscrutable laws. Sharp and treacherous, soft and packed, histrionic and lumpy, smoky and laconic, the roofs form an archipelago of solid thick and indecipherable incunabula, called by its inhabitants Miranda. Every day, when the sun starts to drop, you start with a noisy team of long hooks to unroll the sheets that are squatting on the roofs. Each sheet has a different warp and weft, in some bright rivulets flowing from above, others take on the appearance of an incomplete puzzle, many nests are colonized by unstable rubber canvas. Only when the sheets are rolled out, and with insistent beeps forewarn their arrival on the ground, the soil is indifferent shared in streets and squares, courtyards and secret gardens. The night brings guidance and direction to the inhabitants, shelter and certainty, until, at sunrise, the relentless team rewinds towels, and shrinks in a sleepy endless shadowy rectangles of Miranda.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Monday, May 14, 2007
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Wedding Arch Home Depot
Shanghai Ninth letter
Two snapshots from the front. Before instant
The blade is sharp, sturdy knife and comfortable grip, the victim lies helpless, the blow down relentlessly. Shanghai, an afternoon of a wet day in May, at the end of the alley was a French concession.
No, there is the account of a murder. I enrolled in a course of Chinese cuisine, four lectures, and grand master of ceremonies Huang Huazheng, four followers, specifically an Australian, a Japanese, a Frenchman and an Italian, as in jokes. The kitchen, the scene of my debut on the stage of oriental cooking, is wedged between graceful plane trees and cottages with a pitched roof. No time to go and already I find myself with a blue apron, bowl, knife and slaughter chicken leg with unprecedented ferocity. Huang is quite young, will take decades, but he already knows more of the devil. The Australian seems to say just one word, "lovely!" (pronounced high-pitched voice and enthusiastic tone), and thus also known as the embarrassed chicken leg, which for the occasion blushed. The Japanese is quite skilled with the blade, hopefully does not come with a katana next time.
The first lesson includes three Shanghainese cuisine, the order Ju jiang gu (chicken in soy sauce), Xia ren dou was (tofu with shrimp and peas), Hongshaodudang (fish not identifiable, I would like cod with soy sauce, a bit 'different from above). For those who do not know tofu is a mainstay of Chinese cuisine, is made with vegetables, and can assume different shapes, colors and textures are very different from each other. At the time I have tried at least ten types different.
Overall I've gotten pretty good, sometimes it's a bit 'difficult to disentangle between the different sauces and remember the correct order in which pay in wok (Chinese frying pan) sizzling, unforgiving and Huang threatened corporal punishment in the case error. To give an idea, the ingredients for the fish are, in addition to the pulp of the pack animal, ginger, chives, soy sauce, dark (need to give more color), light soy sauce (very salty), hoisin sauce (thick consistency, I have not figured out how to do it, maybe mushrooms ...), sugar, Chinese cooking wine, salt, black pepper, flour, sesame oil, Chinese vinegar.
However, the first rule, when the wok fry a light emitting smoke and the oil temperature is suitable. Second, Chinese vinegar and sesame oil still in the end, but rather volatile. Third, ginger cut into diamond-shaped, which is more chic. Fourth, process the tofu (which has the consistency of a pudding in this case) with great delicacy and prudence, the penalty of that melted and the raspberries and whipped by Huang.
Next lesson, if I understand correctly, spicy Sichuan cuisine. Expected peppers, fire and flames.
Second Instant
The seat is comfortable, it's dark outside, a little 'sleepy, the relentless slide image with a fast pace. Shanghai, one night of a cool May evening, the parties to Beijing Lu.
No, not at the cinema. I'm on a taxi, I just finished dinner with Silvia and Nicola, I'm returning to the peaceful campus. Here are some taxis in Shanghai in the headrest of the front passenger seat a screen the same size as those that are also well documented in many aircraft. I was thinking of something else, when suddenly, after the ritual chant that sponsors a number for the booking of restaurants and bars, the screen turns on and catches my attention. What goes on the air gives a fairly accurate idea of \u200b\u200bthe pervasiveness and persistence of the megalopolis which leads the media campaign to communicate self-image of a modern world city . In recent years only in Barcelona I saw a similar care and attention to communication and branding the city.
So, back to the video: title "Taxi people", then black screen, a white line drawing of the silhouhette skyscrapers of Pudong, part music with pounding rhythm and a series of images of fashion shows, and the uninhibited pleasure-Chinese youth and that he attended the West's busiest nightclubs, dutifully listed, then the focus shifts on the tree-lined streets of the former French Concession. From here we move to the south-east, the area where you will the expo and I visited a few weeks ago. In the distance, the steel mills still in operation, while in the foreground, in the middle of the tabula rasa recently created, show some children happy with their designs made with colored pencils and markers. As in the famous Spielberg movie, the background is black and white, dark, only the children and in particular the designs of the city who think they are colored. The message is quite clear: after the Expo the city's future will be brighter.
Then you go to a fashion shop and accessories, interviewing two young peers, the camera moves with the familiar style "seasickness" now in vogue for a while 'on us too. Here then a series of tips on how to dress up to attract attention, admiration and envy of his fellow citizens to parties and social occasions. At regular intervals, starting with the deadlift abstract graphic, very common in TV channels like MTV.
Advertising Site enjoyshanghai. Ranking of the music videos of success, with veeejay in order to submit. A wheel follows a video that reminds Carbonari meetings taking place in the living rooms of the home, also Italian, to present some products (such as Tupperware, etc...) Here Allen and Cher, fully dressed, show the wonders of recent cosmetic products come from the west. A poor and unfortunate model, it seems their friend, is a guinea pig, and eventually comes out somewhat proven by exhausting session aesthetics. The use of certain products for the person here is still relatively new, I still remember the expression between the eyebrows dubiously el'incuriosito few weeks ago when I asked Chinese boys of my age can buy a deodorant. On the other hand there are others unknown to us, such as bleaching creams for the face, of which Michael Jackson probably would be a great consumer if he lived here.
One more spot of the Expo, this time the attention shifts to the attractions of the city (skyscrapers, Xintiandi, the old French Concession, the bridges over the Huangpu ...), which transformation in the area you are going to add. In the next block a young presenter, comfortable in a kitchen with a modern, minimalist design, gives a quick cooking lesson. One would expect any particular recipe, but after a few minutes the result is a fruit salad with yogurt, eaten at breakfast. This is presented as an alternative to the traditional Chinese breakfast, which is very often an almost complete meal with rice and milk, sour and salty foods, vegetables and sauces of all kinds. Hence the whole loop starts again.
Recipients of the videos are clear enough: tourists and Westerners living and working here and the new Chinese middle class which is radically transforming the city, both physically and with regard to lifestyles and daily routines. Any occasion, even a short taxi ride, it is good to inculcate the New Word. Lovely! 
Two snapshots from the front. Before instant
The blade is sharp, sturdy knife and comfortable grip, the victim lies helpless, the blow down relentlessly. Shanghai, an afternoon of a wet day in May, at the end of the alley was a French concession.
No, there is the account of a murder. I enrolled in a course of Chinese cuisine, four lectures, and grand master of ceremonies Huang Huazheng, four followers, specifically an Australian, a Japanese, a Frenchman and an Italian, as in jokes. The kitchen, the scene of my debut on the stage of oriental cooking, is wedged between graceful plane trees and cottages with a pitched roof. No time to go and already I find myself with a blue apron, bowl, knife and slaughter chicken leg with unprecedented ferocity. Huang is quite young, will take decades, but he already knows more of the devil. The Australian seems to say just one word, "lovely!" (pronounced high-pitched voice and enthusiastic tone), and thus also known as the embarrassed chicken leg, which for the occasion blushed. The Japanese is quite skilled with the blade, hopefully does not come with a katana next time.
The first lesson includes three Shanghainese cuisine, the order Ju jiang gu (chicken in soy sauce), Xia ren dou was (tofu with shrimp and peas), Hongshaodudang (fish not identifiable, I would like cod with soy sauce, a bit 'different from above). For those who do not know tofu is a mainstay of Chinese cuisine, is made with vegetables, and can assume different shapes, colors and textures are very different from each other. At the time I have tried at least ten types different.
Overall I've gotten pretty good, sometimes it's a bit 'difficult to disentangle between the different sauces and remember the correct order in which pay in wok (Chinese frying pan) sizzling, unforgiving and Huang threatened corporal punishment in the case error. To give an idea, the ingredients for the fish are, in addition to the pulp of the pack animal, ginger, chives, soy sauce, dark (need to give more color), light soy sauce (very salty), hoisin sauce (thick consistency, I have not figured out how to do it, maybe mushrooms ...), sugar, Chinese cooking wine, salt, black pepper, flour, sesame oil, Chinese vinegar.
However, the first rule, when the wok fry a light emitting smoke and the oil temperature is suitable. Second, Chinese vinegar and sesame oil still in the end, but rather volatile. Third, ginger cut into diamond-shaped, which is more chic. Fourth, process the tofu (which has the consistency of a pudding in this case) with great delicacy and prudence, the penalty of that melted and the raspberries and whipped by Huang.
Next lesson, if I understand correctly, spicy Sichuan cuisine. Expected peppers, fire and flames.
Second Instant
The seat is comfortable, it's dark outside, a little 'sleepy, the relentless slide image with a fast pace. Shanghai, one night of a cool May evening, the parties to Beijing Lu.
No, not at the cinema. I'm on a taxi, I just finished dinner with Silvia and Nicola, I'm returning to the peaceful campus. Here are some taxis in Shanghai in the headrest of the front passenger seat a screen the same size as those that are also well documented in many aircraft. I was thinking of something else, when suddenly, after the ritual chant that sponsors a number for the booking of restaurants and bars, the screen turns on and catches my attention. What goes on the air gives a fairly accurate idea of \u200b\u200bthe pervasiveness and persistence of the megalopolis which leads the media campaign to communicate self-image of a modern world city . In recent years only in Barcelona I saw a similar care and attention to communication and branding the city.
So, back to the video: title "Taxi people", then black screen, a white line drawing of the silhouhette skyscrapers of Pudong, part music with pounding rhythm and a series of images of fashion shows, and the uninhibited pleasure-Chinese youth and that he attended the West's busiest nightclubs, dutifully listed, then the focus shifts on the tree-lined streets of the former French Concession. From here we move to the south-east, the area where you will the expo and I visited a few weeks ago. In the distance, the steel mills still in operation, while in the foreground, in the middle of the tabula rasa recently created, show some children happy with their designs made with colored pencils and markers. As in the famous Spielberg movie, the background is black and white, dark, only the children and in particular the designs of the city who think they are colored. The message is quite clear: after the Expo the city's future will be brighter.
Then you go to a fashion shop and accessories, interviewing two young peers, the camera moves with the familiar style "seasickness" now in vogue for a while 'on us too. Here then a series of tips on how to dress up to attract attention, admiration and envy of his fellow citizens to parties and social occasions. At regular intervals, starting with the deadlift abstract graphic, very common in TV channels like MTV.
Advertising Site enjoyshanghai. Ranking of the music videos of success, with veeejay in order to submit. A wheel follows a video that reminds Carbonari meetings taking place in the living rooms of the home, also Italian, to present some products (such as Tupperware, etc...) Here Allen and Cher, fully dressed, show the wonders of recent cosmetic products come from the west. A poor and unfortunate model, it seems their friend, is a guinea pig, and eventually comes out somewhat proven by exhausting session aesthetics. The use of certain products for the person here is still relatively new, I still remember the expression between the eyebrows dubiously el'incuriosito few weeks ago when I asked Chinese boys of my age can buy a deodorant. On the other hand there are others unknown to us, such as bleaching creams for the face, of which Michael Jackson probably would be a great consumer if he lived here.
One more spot of the Expo, this time the attention shifts to the attractions of the city (skyscrapers, Xintiandi, the old French Concession, the bridges over the Huangpu ...), which transformation in the area you are going to add. In the next block a young presenter, comfortable in a kitchen with a modern, minimalist design, gives a quick cooking lesson. One would expect any particular recipe, but after a few minutes the result is a fruit salad with yogurt, eaten at breakfast. This is presented as an alternative to the traditional Chinese breakfast, which is very often an almost complete meal with rice and milk, sour and salty foods, vegetables and sauces of all kinds. Hence the whole loop starts again.
Recipients of the videos are clear enough: tourists and Westerners living and working here and the new Chinese middle class which is radically transforming the city, both physically and with regard to lifestyles and daily routines. Any occasion, even a short taxi ride, it is good to inculcate the New Word. Lovely!
Sunday, May 6, 2007
Rates Of Respiration Of Reptile
Eighth letter
A slight wind shakes the leaves from the north, some leaves glide cautious outlook on the table prepared in half the wide sidewalk. Spring in Beijing. I sip my Yanjing Beer, while Beppe Grill (stage name, ed) is doing the styling with the hair dryer the unfortunate ordered skewers of our hungry neighbors. It seems almost to be in Buenos Aires, at any moment I expect a curvaceous porteña quit the tobacco shop, indolence Latin American benevolent around the streets and makes a warm blanket to Beijing that jovial down in his pajamas and slippers to drink and talk with friends.
Coming from Shanghai, one almost has the impression that Beijing is a huge village: trees everywhere, almost no one honks while driving, in some areas not seen on the horizon even a tall building and the people seem much more relaxed and willing to stop talking. Mind you, Beijing is the capital of the world's most populous state, is simply cut off (just just think they are building on the seventh ring ... ring road around the city), and also here, particularly in areas of recent expansion, the office towers sprouting like mushrooms and the compound. But ... a doubt creeps. Perhaps due to the very wide streets and the unperturbed flow of people and resources, or obsessive geometric and urban planning of each element, the largest in the most minute, the fact remains that the strange feeling you have is that of a city afterlife, where the inhabitants do not deal with common and frenetic activity, unstable trading, commerce and everyday subterfuge, but repeated with the cadence unflappable precision mysterious rituals thousands of years.
along the trails and stopping in the pagodas of the Summer Palace seems almost to be in one of the elegant and balanced Chinese paintings from the imperial period, scoured every inch of ice by greedy consumers. The compact and monochrome
hutong, old popular quarters of the distant ancestors lilong Shanghai, have retreated in search of safety around the shores of the lakes Hou Hai, and any red door, guarded by the ubiquitous national flag, suggests parallel worlds and forgotten stories. Hugo Pratt would have been here countless short discount from which to start the Maltese to yet another adventure, or just him sipping tea and playing mahjong with a wise old man.
Tiananmen Square, under siege from public buildings and huge and ungainly impregnated with insightful historical mood, seems the wrinkled skin of an elephant covered with tiny flies and annoying. The heavy tail, with the regularity of a pendulum, pushes them towards the three doors giving access from the south to the Forbidden City. I walk the middle, it was once reserved only to the emperor, I would cut off his head for that. Now times have changed, and the huge portrait of Mao watches over his father's noisy swarms. The yellow color of the Emperor, and red dominate, symmetry and repetition here are absolute laws, repeated like a mantra that expands from the Buddhist temples, refreshing and shady oasis polychrome. Another law that applies is that of one-way pedestrian rather bizarre in a country where everyone behaves in the streets as if they were a large pasture, and there's no way to convince the brigade inflexible (adjective and name here highly interchangeable , ed) to make an exception to the rule (usually Italian you say ...).
Exhausted at the right point to be sacrificed, then we move to the Temple of Heaven. The complex of monuments, the temple proper follow another temple surrounded by the famous Echo Wall circular altar, where the emperors and priests held their good luck rituals.
The buildings are arranged in a rigid and traditional north-south axis and are connected by the Via Sacra high above the ground.
Evenings in the meantime we have spent in the company of Sylvia and Angela, two Italian girls that we met in Shanghai and Beijing to have stopped working. The absolute star of the dinner was the roast duck, Beijing's famous culinary specialties, accompanied by generous helpings of other tasty dishes. The evenings are often then proceed to San Li Tun, an area famous for its bars and nightlife. In this context, Beijing leaves something 'to be desired and the comparison with Shanghai is merciless.
last day following, after having a look at construction sites of the structures for the next Olympics, we go to the Midi Festival, which is the main reason why we have come to Beijing during the week of national holiday (otherwise worthy choice for someone who is of sound mind).
The Midi Festival, held for some years during the first days of May, is the largest and most important festival in China. There are five boxes of different sizes, the groups involved are Chinese and international, ranging from Scandinavian black metal Caribbean ethnic music, from punk to electronic music of China International. The average level of performance was pretty good, and some concerts have been very intense and of excellent quality. The best aspect of the festival, regardless of the music, the atmosphere is very relaxed and positive you breathe, very different people (from punksenzabbestia young ladies in heels and miniskirts, young Chinese to European metalheads vintage men) live for several days, sharing the same music and the same spaces. It is also possible to camp for four days with their own tent, but only negative, the concept of public showers struggling to make inroads. Maybe next year will
advice ... then comes forward to one of the most insidious traps that await tourists in China: the Great Wall. During the trip I find that one of the three companions of misadventures Bergamo, Danilo, already spotted sumptuous Easter dinner in Shanghai, knows my countryman Luigi, as working for the same company, and often saw in Hong Kong. There are numerous pitfalls and challenges to overcome along the way: the reckless bus with air conditioning and speaking guide at the wrong times (twenty minutes after waking up ...) and is silent when it should say something, the notorious state factories for tourists, in 'order to jade, where they teach to distinguish jade from the original plastic and glass, and ceramics that, during the tour where workers on their lunch break you free ride merrily rations between tools of the trade regardless of sleepy tourists. To our great luck we have avoided the most feared of all, that is the laboratory of Chinese traditional medicine, in which a worried doctor usually diagnostic strange diseases, disorders and imbalance of yin and yang as it happens only treatable with expensive herbs and potions who are present there.
In a sequence worthy of the legendary Fantozzi trip to Postojna Cave, then we get to the paradise of the allergies to pollen, which is the entrance to the valley of Ming Tombs: an avenue of more than five hundred meters, in which alternate rows of willows and colossal statues of animals and mythological characters, wrapped in a soft storm of white lint. This pleasant avenue is also called Sacred Way: remarkable translation of the flyer, which was indicated as Scared Way. Perhaps they wanted to warn us of danger. Hence the Chinese traditional lunch: to signal the waiter handyman, able to make pretty good espresso but also unparalleled seller of one of those items where he felt the lack: a cross between a match and a zippo. With very full belly, the guide will leave the foot of the Great Wall, Mutianyu section for accuracy. Between gasps, snorts and sweats overcome the steep climb and reach the coveted goal: the view is magnificent, every step we make this the effort made in the past centuries to build and maintain efficient, and a pair of China really wants to follow us at breakneck speed calling loudly to make a picture with us in the West. Nice to feel ten pounds of freshly caught trout from the lake and photographed for the enjoyment of future generations.
We are now the last day, and Silvia Angela invite us to breakfast in their room. The apartment, shared with two other pairs of Chinese, is located in one of the traditional settlements built for danwei (work units) in recent decades. The six-story buildings are surrounded by trees and small spaces for commercial activities or group functions, such as parking of bicycles operated by an elder of the place. It is the second time later in an apartment inhabited by Chinese, was the first time in a new compound in Shanghai, and I must say that the difference is pretty obvious: the common areas (bathroom and kitchen) apartment in the old Beijing rather leave something to be desired, but the services atmosphere enjoyed by the citizens are much more comfortable than the modern compound shanghaiese.
From their room, plastered with posters from the previous tenant soft porn heartbreaker, we move to the famous flea market Panjiayuan, where I led a long and fruitless negotiations with a seller of old drawings and paintings. Needless to say, as between the various stalls of the extensive market is everything and more, including bizarre and large stone tools for female masturbation probably of the Ming period. At that time the vibrations were still manual.
Along the way back we see the huge construction site for the new CCTV tower designed by the IMO. Now it's late, and Angela Silvia salute and return to the glittering Clacsonville. 
A slight wind shakes the leaves from the north, some leaves glide cautious outlook on the table prepared in half the wide sidewalk. Spring in Beijing. I sip my Yanjing Beer, while Beppe Grill (stage name, ed) is doing the styling with the hair dryer the unfortunate ordered skewers of our hungry neighbors. It seems almost to be in Buenos Aires, at any moment I expect a curvaceous porteña quit the tobacco shop, indolence Latin American benevolent around the streets and makes a warm blanket to Beijing that jovial down in his pajamas and slippers to drink and talk with friends.
Coming from Shanghai, one almost has the impression that Beijing is a huge village: trees everywhere, almost no one honks while driving, in some areas not seen on the horizon even a tall building and the people seem much more relaxed and willing to stop talking. Mind you, Beijing is the capital of the world's most populous state, is simply cut off (just just think they are building on the seventh ring ... ring road around the city), and also here, particularly in areas of recent expansion, the office towers sprouting like mushrooms and the compound. But ... a doubt creeps. Perhaps due to the very wide streets and the unperturbed flow of people and resources, or obsessive geometric and urban planning of each element, the largest in the most minute, the fact remains that the strange feeling you have is that of a city afterlife, where the inhabitants do not deal with common and frenetic activity, unstable trading, commerce and everyday subterfuge, but repeated with the cadence unflappable precision mysterious rituals thousands of years.
along the trails and stopping in the pagodas of the Summer Palace seems almost to be in one of the elegant and balanced Chinese paintings from the imperial period, scoured every inch of ice by greedy consumers. The compact and monochrome
hutong, old popular quarters of the distant ancestors lilong Shanghai, have retreated in search of safety around the shores of the lakes Hou Hai, and any red door, guarded by the ubiquitous national flag, suggests parallel worlds and forgotten stories. Hugo Pratt would have been here countless short discount from which to start the Maltese to yet another adventure, or just him sipping tea and playing mahjong with a wise old man.
Tiananmen Square, under siege from public buildings and huge and ungainly impregnated with insightful historical mood, seems the wrinkled skin of an elephant covered with tiny flies and annoying. The heavy tail, with the regularity of a pendulum, pushes them towards the three doors giving access from the south to the Forbidden City. I walk the middle, it was once reserved only to the emperor, I would cut off his head for that. Now times have changed, and the huge portrait of Mao watches over his father's noisy swarms. The yellow color of the Emperor, and red dominate, symmetry and repetition here are absolute laws, repeated like a mantra that expands from the Buddhist temples, refreshing and shady oasis polychrome. Another law that applies is that of one-way pedestrian rather bizarre in a country where everyone behaves in the streets as if they were a large pasture, and there's no way to convince the brigade inflexible (adjective and name here highly interchangeable , ed) to make an exception to the rule (usually Italian you say ...).
Exhausted at the right point to be sacrificed, then we move to the Temple of Heaven. The complex of monuments, the temple proper follow another temple surrounded by the famous Echo Wall circular altar, where the emperors and priests held their good luck rituals.
The buildings are arranged in a rigid and traditional north-south axis and are connected by the Via Sacra high above the ground.
Evenings in the meantime we have spent in the company of Sylvia and Angela, two Italian girls that we met in Shanghai and Beijing to have stopped working. The absolute star of the dinner was the roast duck, Beijing's famous culinary specialties, accompanied by generous helpings of other tasty dishes. The evenings are often then proceed to San Li Tun, an area famous for its bars and nightlife. In this context, Beijing leaves something 'to be desired and the comparison with Shanghai is merciless.
last day following, after having a look at construction sites of the structures for the next Olympics, we go to the Midi Festival, which is the main reason why we have come to Beijing during the week of national holiday (otherwise worthy choice for someone who is of sound mind).
The Midi Festival, held for some years during the first days of May, is the largest and most important festival in China. There are five boxes of different sizes, the groups involved are Chinese and international, ranging from Scandinavian black metal Caribbean ethnic music, from punk to electronic music of China International. The average level of performance was pretty good, and some concerts have been very intense and of excellent quality. The best aspect of the festival, regardless of the music, the atmosphere is very relaxed and positive you breathe, very different people (from punksenzabbestia young ladies in heels and miniskirts, young Chinese to European metalheads vintage men) live for several days, sharing the same music and the same spaces. It is also possible to camp for four days with their own tent, but only negative, the concept of public showers struggling to make inroads. Maybe next year will
advice ... then comes forward to one of the most insidious traps that await tourists in China: the Great Wall. During the trip I find that one of the three companions of misadventures Bergamo, Danilo, already spotted sumptuous Easter dinner in Shanghai, knows my countryman Luigi, as working for the same company, and often saw in Hong Kong. There are numerous pitfalls and challenges to overcome along the way: the reckless bus with air conditioning and speaking guide at the wrong times (twenty minutes after waking up ...) and is silent when it should say something, the notorious state factories for tourists, in 'order to jade, where they teach to distinguish jade from the original plastic and glass, and ceramics that, during the tour where workers on their lunch break you free ride merrily rations between tools of the trade regardless of sleepy tourists. To our great luck we have avoided the most feared of all, that is the laboratory of Chinese traditional medicine, in which a worried doctor usually diagnostic strange diseases, disorders and imbalance of yin and yang as it happens only treatable with expensive herbs and potions who are present there.
In a sequence worthy of the legendary Fantozzi trip to Postojna Cave, then we get to the paradise of the allergies to pollen, which is the entrance to the valley of Ming Tombs: an avenue of more than five hundred meters, in which alternate rows of willows and colossal statues of animals and mythological characters, wrapped in a soft storm of white lint. This pleasant avenue is also called Sacred Way: remarkable translation of the flyer, which was indicated as Scared Way. Perhaps they wanted to warn us of danger. Hence the Chinese traditional lunch: to signal the waiter handyman, able to make pretty good espresso but also unparalleled seller of one of those items where he felt the lack: a cross between a match and a zippo. With very full belly, the guide will leave the foot of the Great Wall, Mutianyu section for accuracy. Between gasps, snorts and sweats overcome the steep climb and reach the coveted goal: the view is magnificent, every step we make this the effort made in the past centuries to build and maintain efficient, and a pair of China really wants to follow us at breakneck speed calling loudly to make a picture with us in the West. Nice to feel ten pounds of freshly caught trout from the lake and photographed for the enjoyment of future generations.
We are now the last day, and Silvia Angela invite us to breakfast in their room. The apartment, shared with two other pairs of Chinese, is located in one of the traditional settlements built for danwei (work units) in recent decades. The six-story buildings are surrounded by trees and small spaces for commercial activities or group functions, such as parking of bicycles operated by an elder of the place. It is the second time later in an apartment inhabited by Chinese, was the first time in a new compound in Shanghai, and I must say that the difference is pretty obvious: the common areas (bathroom and kitchen) apartment in the old Beijing rather leave something to be desired, but the services atmosphere enjoyed by the citizens are much more comfortable than the modern compound shanghaiese.
From their room, plastered with posters from the previous tenant soft porn heartbreaker, we move to the famous flea market Panjiayuan, where I led a long and fruitless negotiations with a seller of old drawings and paintings. Needless to say, as between the various stalls of the extensive market is everything and more, including bizarre and large stone tools for female masturbation probably of the Ming period. At that time the vibrations were still manual.
Along the way back we see the huge construction site for the new CCTV tower designed by the IMO. Now it's late, and Angela Silvia salute and return to the glittering Clacsonville.
Saturday, May 5, 2007
What's Good With Salami
Beijing Shanghai New photos
Latest photos before the Beijing ...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ludusc/ 
Latest photos before the Beijing ...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ludusc/
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Lung Inhalation On The Job Fo Lung Inhalation
Seventh letter
Shanghai is a metropolis that has always invested in its own image, and often have built or modified in accordance with specific intent and direction. Many centuries have been the singers, and multiple media.
The first were probably the shuo shu, the tramps and poor singers of late imperial China. Laura McDaniel, in his paper Jumping the Dragon Gate recounts the fortunes of this form of entertainment, Pingtan, in the thirties: "The astonishing leap in social status Among Shanghai-was exemplified by storytellers Xiaoqing Xue and many others is inextricably linked with immigration to Shanghai, with the development of the city of Shanghai with Itself and the Emergence and conscious creation of a modern urban identity specifically Associated with Shanghai. [...] Electricity enabled the owners of establishments Their storytelling houses to light well past sunset, Thus introducing the possibility for additional storytelling performances every day—as well as the whole concept of Shanghai as the “city that never sleeps” ( bu ye cheng ), with all of the powerful cultural resonances that that entailed.
[…] As pingtan storytelling became increasingly associated with the cosmopolitanism and refinement of Republican-era Shanghai, the language used in common stories was sanitized and standardized. Aspirations to refinement also led Shanghai’s guild-affiliated storytellers to sanitize the content of their stories. […] The people who listened to pingtan storytelling over the radio were markedly different from the lower-class rural migrants who had formed the backbone of the genre’s clientele until the late nineteenth century. These new listeners were overwhelmingly from Shanghai’s upper classes (only the wealthy could afford radios), and they tended to be educated. In addition, this new storytelling audience was ethnically diverse. Shanghai in the 1930s and 1940s was home to migrants and sojourners from all over China, and radio broadcasts served to unify them all. […] For pingtan to appeal to Shanghai’s wealthier, more cosmopolitan, upwardly mobile population, its language had to be made accessible. This accessibility was achieved initially through published transcripts of popular stories. […] Shanghai’s successful pingtan storytellers helped further define the new community of urbanites by making increasingly sharp distinctions between “urban” and “rural.” In their stories and songs, most pingtan performers gave Shanghai an image of opulence and modernity. Of course, such images were far from accurate descriptions of everyday reality in Shanghai, but they were presented to listeners as a Chinese version of the “American dream”—part of a package to aim for or even acquire simply by association if they stayed in Shanghai long enough. The tourism industry was clearly key in promoting Shanghai as the “Pearl of the Orient,” a city of luxury and excess to be coveted by outsiders, but these images quickly found their way into popular media and entertainment. Storytellers represented the Shanghai identity to Their listeners as naturally envied by All Those who lived outside of Shanghai But Also as Within the reach of newcomers to the city. "
addition to the storytellers, singers zealous of the Shanghai of the thirties were the writers of the group New Perceptionists named. They described in their novels the glittering nightlife, bars, restaurants, brothels, free love, dance halls, and above all the casinos and clubs where they sang and performed the fascinating stories of the protagonists starlettes and symbols of a lifestyle and Western values. Mu Shiying So wrote: "The buildings lie in slumber That are standing up, raising Their Heads, and shedding Their gray pajamas. The river flows east again, Huali, Huali (water flows, water flows, ed.) The factory's sirens are roaring. Singing a new life, the destiny of the people at the nightclub. Shanghai has woken up! Shanghai, built this heaven in hell. "
After 1949 Shanghai was considered by the new government as a city sinful, vicious, a bastion of bad habits capitalist West. The action of standardization, "disinfection" and selection of memory and language, previously initiated by the storyteller, became even more pronounced and radical tone. A particular form of "education" yiku sitian , prese piede. Wing-chung Ho ne fa una vibrante descrizione: “Literally, yiku sitian means ‘recalling past bitterness, in order to savour the sweetness of the present’. It was essentially a peculiar appropriation of ‘the bitter past of poor people’ by the state, in order to orchestrate support from the masses for its authority. In the Maoist period, the notion of yiku sitian quickly became a narrative structure widely recognized and used both in the official discourse and in everyday conversation. Yiku sitian obviously required narrators who could present themselves as revolutionary subjects, meaning that the narrators must ‘really’ possess a bitter past, I know the emotion of Gratitude That Could Be Expressed persuasively in 'speaking bitterness'. In other words, a revolutionary 'thought-based education' required to 'revolutionary people' to make it 'complete. "
This continued until the period of the reforms intended by Deng Xiaoping. Again quoting Wing-chung Ho: "The status of the capitalist Has Been reinstated as the impetus of national progress. Indeed, to be an entrepreneur is to be Described as admirably adventurous. Among the populace, Such a sentiment is Often implied in the discourse of local 'xiahai' (Literally, 'plunging into the sea'). Rather Than the socialist ethos which emphasizes egalitarianism, class struggle, adherence to particular political doctrines, and distinctions between ‘friends’ and ‘enemies,’ the official media now eulogize the virtues of economic progress as inscribed in the new official terminology such as ‘gaige’ (reform), ‘fazhan’ (development), and ‘gaibian’ (change). No longer holding on to iron-clad doctrines that assure people of a preset destiny, the state has effectively de-linked individual fate from the Maoist, or from any monolithic, discourse of the past. The residents are faced with the competition and the attendant ups and downs of the free market economy. This means that, after a break with the state and monolithic appropriation of the past, the residents whose past had been homogenized in the Maoist period have accumulated heterogeneous experiences in their subsequent individual, differential encounters in the reformist past. One consequence is that these differential experiences of the residents in the reformist past have exerted complex, and sometimes awkward, effects on the ways in which they think of the past. These ways in which they think of the past have led them to the present; that is, they have affected the ways in which they have appropriated the past.”
Dal 1978, la nuova politica di apertura ha portato anche grandi cambiamenti nel linguaggio e nelle tematiche trattate nei film. Una nuova generazione of directors, after living on their skin the Cultural Revolution in the late sixties, has revolutionized Chinese cinema. Among these is one of the most famous Zhang Yimou: in his film Shanghai Triad are incisively analyzed the complex relationship between the contemporary and the cosmopolitan Shanghai of the thirties and the ways of acquiring and perception of the latter part of today's inhabitants of city. So
interprets Christine Boyer, in his essay Approaching the memory of Shanghai : "Consequently, memory renegotiating May Not Involve Recollecting ITS Most modern Shanghai in accurate form, But In Its Most Powerful Forms That lit the future, That retell stories with a twist. To return to the glorious city of Shanghai, to its most cosmopolitan decade of the 1930s, may be a gesture that aims to undo the fare of remembering as an after effect of the Chinese Revolution, but it may also be a way of assuaging anxiety over China’s renewed openness to both Western capitalism and Western culture. […] But Zhang Yimou retells these dance hall stories with a difference. Instead of presenting the city as a multi-layered space, criss-crossed by various economic and cultural forces, and juxtaposing pieces of urban texts from mixed genres and media in a cinematic collage, as the New Perceptionists prescribed, Shanghai Triad projects new ways of perceiving the cinematic city that are flat, confined and simplified. It is the ideological power of a mythical modern Shanghai that Zhang Yimou projects as a twice constructed illusion; once by the New Perceptionists and again in a retrospective mode by those who are nostalgic for cosmopolitan Shanghai. By placing this goddess on display, both the city and the actress, and exhibiting her as an illusion, Zhang Yimou underlines the cruelty that emanates from this double vision. […] From the outset he offers the spectator painted backdrops and reflected images. No shot of Shanghai is intended to directly lure and entrap the gaze.[…] This yearning for pre-revolutionary modernity attaches itself to a retrospective gaze. By presenting modern Shanghai as an image or object to be looked at, it captures the spectator in a trap. Zhang Yimou wants to invert this gaze, to deflect this trap. In the opening scenes the viewer is being told that this film will be about reflected images.[…] All direct views of Shanghai are blocked from sight. These reflected images tell the spectator that something has to be renegotiated: whether it is the relationship of the present to the past, or of the East and the West.[…] Whatever it is about the past that fascinates the gaze, it cannot be approached directly.[…] Approaching the images of old Shanghai only can be done through mirrored reflections. Of course, this portrayal is all about the gaze, that knowing the past can only be understood as a kind of mirroring.[…] Thus, the trap of the gaze supports the fantasy that one can understand or regain the lost cosmopolitanism of Shanghai might have expressed in the 1930s, or re-ignite the allure that once held the New Perceptionists captive, but this desire that sets up modern Shanghai as an exotic other cannot be fulfilled directly; it cannot appear as a point of reference to anticipate what Shanghai is in the process of becoming. What was is no longer. Thus, the mirrored reflections, and the constant shift of the camera’s point of view, become metaphors for resisting the gaze that believes in projected images.”
Oggi un sentimento di nostalgia permea frequentemente prodotti e forme di comunicazione molto diffusi, come serie televisive, canzoni, riviste e quotidiani. Wu Jing ha trattato questo argomento nel suo saggio Nostalgia as content creativity : “Three key historical periods vie for nostalgic appropriation in popular cultural forms. They are the revolutionary past, imperial China (particularly the Qing Dynasty) and the short experience of colonial modernity in Shanghai during the early 20th century. They find expression in TV drama, pop music, theme restaurants, mass circulation magazines and film. Images of past glory and aspirations confront each other as they define the ‘Chinese route’ that has led to the present, and presumably will lead into the future.[…] But their appropriation illustrates the potential for creativity, not only in the business strategies of commercial culture, but also in the social imagination and design for a new China. In addition, three social forces – the political establishment, cultural entrepreneurship and grass-roots popular memory – participate in shaping the specific formulation of nostalgic content. Nostalgia is a modern trope. Nostalgia steps in to help us cope with the turbulence of time, to manage change and make sense of it, through a symbolic denigration of change and a wishful return to the stability of the past. Nostalgia seems to be a social tool to abort or deflect threats of identity discontinuity – that is, when a society is unsure of itself, it resorts to nostalgia as a form of escape.[…] China’s quest for modernity, along with its drive to modernize, has been under way for more than a century. If one word could describe the dominant cultural sentiment during the 20th century, it was ‘radicalism’. For most of the 20th century, eagerness for change preoccupied the mind of China’s cultural workers. Nostalgia was just too much of a luxury. Sporadic calls for looking back and slowing down were ridiculed and drowned out in the spirited chorus of modernization.[…] Popular sentiment began to exhibit signs of impatience and suspicion. Significant parts of the population had grown up in a very different social environment. When the promises of reform – which had secured a general consensus at the beginning – did not actualize as expected, phantoms of the past returned, or were repackaged to wrestle with the disturbing state of contemporary life.[…] Popular curiosity towards a mystified past in a time of uncertainty, combined with the commercialization of content, converges in a ‘rediscovery’ of history. With characteristic commercial manipulation, historical narratives are injected with a heavy dose of melancholy and sentimentality, quite appropriate for nostalgic invocation.[…] This renovation has, in fact, placed implicit blame on the revolution-dominated history of modern China, which ended the supposed self-contentedness and graceful status of old Shanghai. In the renewed effort to connect China to the worldly process of modernization again, old Shanghai becomes a possible mirror image for a future China. The nostalgic caressing of a once-existing modernity drives home the following questions: Was there an internal drive to modernity in China? Did semi-colonial Shanghai offer an indigenous example of modernization? Is Shanghai a viable model of urban modernity for other parts of China? What can we learn from Shanghai’s urban experiences seen through the lens of mass culture? Can we rest assured that we are already modern, given the existence of cultural Shanghai, so that we don’t have to worry about being left behind in the global modernization race?”.
Quel che è certo, è che nelle torbide acque dello Huang-Pu è difficile trovare una risposta a queste domande, e lo sguardo vaga esitante e inquieto da una sponda all’altra… 
Shanghai is a metropolis that has always invested in its own image, and often have built or modified in accordance with specific intent and direction. Many centuries have been the singers, and multiple media.
The first were probably the shuo shu, the tramps and poor singers of late imperial China. Laura McDaniel, in his paper Jumping the Dragon Gate recounts the fortunes of this form of entertainment, Pingtan, in the thirties: "The astonishing leap in social status Among Shanghai-was exemplified by storytellers Xiaoqing Xue and many others is inextricably linked with immigration to Shanghai, with the development of the city of Shanghai with Itself and the Emergence and conscious creation of a modern urban identity specifically Associated with Shanghai. [...] Electricity enabled the owners of establishments Their storytelling houses to light well past sunset, Thus introducing the possibility for additional storytelling performances every day—as well as the whole concept of Shanghai as the “city that never sleeps” ( bu ye cheng ), with all of the powerful cultural resonances that that entailed.
[…] As pingtan storytelling became increasingly associated with the cosmopolitanism and refinement of Republican-era Shanghai, the language used in common stories was sanitized and standardized. Aspirations to refinement also led Shanghai’s guild-affiliated storytellers to sanitize the content of their stories. […] The people who listened to pingtan storytelling over the radio were markedly different from the lower-class rural migrants who had formed the backbone of the genre’s clientele until the late nineteenth century. These new listeners were overwhelmingly from Shanghai’s upper classes (only the wealthy could afford radios), and they tended to be educated. In addition, this new storytelling audience was ethnically diverse. Shanghai in the 1930s and 1940s was home to migrants and sojourners from all over China, and radio broadcasts served to unify them all. […] For pingtan to appeal to Shanghai’s wealthier, more cosmopolitan, upwardly mobile population, its language had to be made accessible. This accessibility was achieved initially through published transcripts of popular stories. […] Shanghai’s successful pingtan storytellers helped further define the new community of urbanites by making increasingly sharp distinctions between “urban” and “rural.” In their stories and songs, most pingtan performers gave Shanghai an image of opulence and modernity. Of course, such images were far from accurate descriptions of everyday reality in Shanghai, but they were presented to listeners as a Chinese version of the “American dream”—part of a package to aim for or even acquire simply by association if they stayed in Shanghai long enough. The tourism industry was clearly key in promoting Shanghai as the “Pearl of the Orient,” a city of luxury and excess to be coveted by outsiders, but these images quickly found their way into popular media and entertainment. Storytellers represented the Shanghai identity to Their listeners as naturally envied by All Those who lived outside of Shanghai But Also as Within the reach of newcomers to the city. "
addition to the storytellers, singers zealous of the Shanghai of the thirties were the writers of the group New Perceptionists named. They described in their novels the glittering nightlife, bars, restaurants, brothels, free love, dance halls, and above all the casinos and clubs where they sang and performed the fascinating stories of the protagonists starlettes and symbols of a lifestyle and Western values. Mu Shiying So wrote: "The buildings lie in slumber That are standing up, raising Their Heads, and shedding Their gray pajamas. The river flows east again, Huali, Huali (water flows, water flows, ed.) The factory's sirens are roaring. Singing a new life, the destiny of the people at the nightclub. Shanghai has woken up! Shanghai, built this heaven in hell. "
After 1949 Shanghai was considered by the new government as a city sinful, vicious, a bastion of bad habits capitalist West. The action of standardization, "disinfection" and selection of memory and language, previously initiated by the storyteller, became even more pronounced and radical tone. A particular form of "education" yiku sitian , prese piede. Wing-chung Ho ne fa una vibrante descrizione: “Literally, yiku sitian means ‘recalling past bitterness, in order to savour the sweetness of the present’. It was essentially a peculiar appropriation of ‘the bitter past of poor people’ by the state, in order to orchestrate support from the masses for its authority. In the Maoist period, the notion of yiku sitian quickly became a narrative structure widely recognized and used both in the official discourse and in everyday conversation. Yiku sitian obviously required narrators who could present themselves as revolutionary subjects, meaning that the narrators must ‘really’ possess a bitter past, I know the emotion of Gratitude That Could Be Expressed persuasively in 'speaking bitterness'. In other words, a revolutionary 'thought-based education' required to 'revolutionary people' to make it 'complete. "
This continued until the period of the reforms intended by Deng Xiaoping. Again quoting Wing-chung Ho: "The status of the capitalist Has Been reinstated as the impetus of national progress. Indeed, to be an entrepreneur is to be Described as admirably adventurous. Among the populace, Such a sentiment is Often implied in the discourse of local 'xiahai' (Literally, 'plunging into the sea'). Rather Than the socialist ethos which emphasizes egalitarianism, class struggle, adherence to particular political doctrines, and distinctions between ‘friends’ and ‘enemies,’ the official media now eulogize the virtues of economic progress as inscribed in the new official terminology such as ‘gaige’ (reform), ‘fazhan’ (development), and ‘gaibian’ (change). No longer holding on to iron-clad doctrines that assure people of a preset destiny, the state has effectively de-linked individual fate from the Maoist, or from any monolithic, discourse of the past. The residents are faced with the competition and the attendant ups and downs of the free market economy. This means that, after a break with the state and monolithic appropriation of the past, the residents whose past had been homogenized in the Maoist period have accumulated heterogeneous experiences in their subsequent individual, differential encounters in the reformist past. One consequence is that these differential experiences of the residents in the reformist past have exerted complex, and sometimes awkward, effects on the ways in which they think of the past. These ways in which they think of the past have led them to the present; that is, they have affected the ways in which they have appropriated the past.”
Dal 1978, la nuova politica di apertura ha portato anche grandi cambiamenti nel linguaggio e nelle tematiche trattate nei film. Una nuova generazione of directors, after living on their skin the Cultural Revolution in the late sixties, has revolutionized Chinese cinema. Among these is one of the most famous Zhang Yimou: in his film Shanghai Triad are incisively analyzed the complex relationship between the contemporary and the cosmopolitan Shanghai of the thirties and the ways of acquiring and perception of the latter part of today's inhabitants of city. So
interprets Christine Boyer, in his essay Approaching the memory of Shanghai : "Consequently, memory renegotiating May Not Involve Recollecting ITS Most modern Shanghai in accurate form, But In Its Most Powerful Forms That lit the future, That retell stories with a twist. To return to the glorious city of Shanghai, to its most cosmopolitan decade of the 1930s, may be a gesture that aims to undo the fare of remembering as an after effect of the Chinese Revolution, but it may also be a way of assuaging anxiety over China’s renewed openness to both Western capitalism and Western culture. […] But Zhang Yimou retells these dance hall stories with a difference. Instead of presenting the city as a multi-layered space, criss-crossed by various economic and cultural forces, and juxtaposing pieces of urban texts from mixed genres and media in a cinematic collage, as the New Perceptionists prescribed, Shanghai Triad projects new ways of perceiving the cinematic city that are flat, confined and simplified. It is the ideological power of a mythical modern Shanghai that Zhang Yimou projects as a twice constructed illusion; once by the New Perceptionists and again in a retrospective mode by those who are nostalgic for cosmopolitan Shanghai. By placing this goddess on display, both the city and the actress, and exhibiting her as an illusion, Zhang Yimou underlines the cruelty that emanates from this double vision. […] From the outset he offers the spectator painted backdrops and reflected images. No shot of Shanghai is intended to directly lure and entrap the gaze.[…] This yearning for pre-revolutionary modernity attaches itself to a retrospective gaze. By presenting modern Shanghai as an image or object to be looked at, it captures the spectator in a trap. Zhang Yimou wants to invert this gaze, to deflect this trap. In the opening scenes the viewer is being told that this film will be about reflected images.[…] All direct views of Shanghai are blocked from sight. These reflected images tell the spectator that something has to be renegotiated: whether it is the relationship of the present to the past, or of the East and the West.[…] Whatever it is about the past that fascinates the gaze, it cannot be approached directly.[…] Approaching the images of old Shanghai only can be done through mirrored reflections. Of course, this portrayal is all about the gaze, that knowing the past can only be understood as a kind of mirroring.[…] Thus, the trap of the gaze supports the fantasy that one can understand or regain the lost cosmopolitanism of Shanghai might have expressed in the 1930s, or re-ignite the allure that once held the New Perceptionists captive, but this desire that sets up modern Shanghai as an exotic other cannot be fulfilled directly; it cannot appear as a point of reference to anticipate what Shanghai is in the process of becoming. What was is no longer. Thus, the mirrored reflections, and the constant shift of the camera’s point of view, become metaphors for resisting the gaze that believes in projected images.”
Oggi un sentimento di nostalgia permea frequentemente prodotti e forme di comunicazione molto diffusi, come serie televisive, canzoni, riviste e quotidiani. Wu Jing ha trattato questo argomento nel suo saggio Nostalgia as content creativity : “Three key historical periods vie for nostalgic appropriation in popular cultural forms. They are the revolutionary past, imperial China (particularly the Qing Dynasty) and the short experience of colonial modernity in Shanghai during the early 20th century. They find expression in TV drama, pop music, theme restaurants, mass circulation magazines and film. Images of past glory and aspirations confront each other as they define the ‘Chinese route’ that has led to the present, and presumably will lead into the future.[…] But their appropriation illustrates the potential for creativity, not only in the business strategies of commercial culture, but also in the social imagination and design for a new China. In addition, three social forces – the political establishment, cultural entrepreneurship and grass-roots popular memory – participate in shaping the specific formulation of nostalgic content. Nostalgia is a modern trope. Nostalgia steps in to help us cope with the turbulence of time, to manage change and make sense of it, through a symbolic denigration of change and a wishful return to the stability of the past. Nostalgia seems to be a social tool to abort or deflect threats of identity discontinuity – that is, when a society is unsure of itself, it resorts to nostalgia as a form of escape.[…] China’s quest for modernity, along with its drive to modernize, has been under way for more than a century. If one word could describe the dominant cultural sentiment during the 20th century, it was ‘radicalism’. For most of the 20th century, eagerness for change preoccupied the mind of China’s cultural workers. Nostalgia was just too much of a luxury. Sporadic calls for looking back and slowing down were ridiculed and drowned out in the spirited chorus of modernization.[…] Popular sentiment began to exhibit signs of impatience and suspicion. Significant parts of the population had grown up in a very different social environment. When the promises of reform – which had secured a general consensus at the beginning – did not actualize as expected, phantoms of the past returned, or were repackaged to wrestle with the disturbing state of contemporary life.[…] Popular curiosity towards a mystified past in a time of uncertainty, combined with the commercialization of content, converges in a ‘rediscovery’ of history. With characteristic commercial manipulation, historical narratives are injected with a heavy dose of melancholy and sentimentality, quite appropriate for nostalgic invocation.[…] This renovation has, in fact, placed implicit blame on the revolution-dominated history of modern China, which ended the supposed self-contentedness and graceful status of old Shanghai. In the renewed effort to connect China to the worldly process of modernization again, old Shanghai becomes a possible mirror image for a future China. The nostalgic caressing of a once-existing modernity drives home the following questions: Was there an internal drive to modernity in China? Did semi-colonial Shanghai offer an indigenous example of modernization? Is Shanghai a viable model of urban modernity for other parts of China? What can we learn from Shanghai’s urban experiences seen through the lens of mass culture? Can we rest assured that we are already modern, given the existence of cultural Shanghai, so that we don’t have to worry about being left behind in the global modernization race?”.
Quel che è certo, è che nelle torbide acque dello Huang-Pu è difficile trovare una risposta a queste domande, e lo sguardo vaga esitante e inquieto da una sponda all’altra…
Implantation Bleed Seen On Ultrasound
Sixth letter
Sul palco Thurston e Lee stanno incrociando guitars as two Musketeers in a duel defining moment, Kim is lost in concentric worthy of a dervish dances, while the volcanic, a little 'sickly but always in the forefront, is perched on the comfortable chairs of red velvet, and probably hoped that not fall on his head or Chinese wild pieces of gilded stucco because of the noise. Thanking
a collegiate manager or just used a little expert, Sonic Youth are holding their second concert in the Shanghai Concert Hall on Chinese soil. He goes into a scene of numerous, intriguing and contradictory events of contemporary Shanghai: Sonic Youth is one of the most famous, influential and noisy rock band in the world, the heroes of the indie scene roaring '80s New York, the Shanghai Concert Hall, built in 1930, before becoming an elegant concert hall was the site of Shanghai's most famous films of the thirties, of which the fine decorations are silent witnesses. It almost seems that, ironically, one of the most important of which is still recognized as the world's most famous metropolis, New York, to contribute in a city of historic temples of entertainment, to revive the glory of what was the city with the most exciting nightlife in the world, Shanghai, defined by Abbas as "a dream of Europe even more glamorous Than Europe Itself."
The game he is playing Shanghai at the global level to re-become a world city is played on several fronts: financial and urban are the two most obvious, but do not forget to third, equally important aspect, namely the construction of imagery and image city. The three issues are closely intertwined and interdependent, and often those choices that seem that they should cover only the urban policy, such as the transformation of modern lilong in gated communities, but have deep motivations and repercussions in the sphere of the collective.
Abbas, in his article Play it Again Shanghai. Preservation in the Global was, makes a clear analysis " Preservation in Shanghai, however, is motivated by something quite different from the usual pieties about “cultural heritage,’ given the city’s quasi-colonial past, could only have been ambiguous. It is motivated more by anticipations of a new Shanghai which will rival the old than by tender feelings for the old. In other words, preservation is not just a question of the past remembered, but something more complex: the past allows the present to pursue the future. So while the return of Shanghai to pre-eminence will depend in the first place on hard economic and political factors, it will also depend to some extent on memories of what the city once was, as it is the latter that will create the new Shanghai, as will and idea. As we shall have occasion to see, these memories are selective. If preservation in Shanghai has certain unique features, so too does development. Shanghai today is not just a city on the make with the new and the brash everywhere; it is also something more subtle and historically elusive: the city as remake. […]“Historical continuity”, then, is not a solution to the problems of the present, it is more a symptom of how the present appropriates the past for its own purposes. Only in a minor and ineffectual way does preservation in Shanghai ameliorate the excesses of a building boom. Its real importance lies elsewhere. Rather than being a corrective, preservation in fact contributes to Shanghai’s building boom in ways that require further analysis. In the first place, the economic importance of preservation cannot be underestimated. Invoking a continuity with a legendary past—no matter how ambiguous that past may be — enhances the city’s attractiveness, gives it historical cachet and, hence, allows it to compete for foreign investment and tourism on more favourable terms. It creates symbolic capital. At the same time, preservation may lead to the revitalization and gentrification of old, run—down areas of the city. The economic role of preservation can be even more precisely contextualized when we map it into the tensions inherent in China’s socialist market economy, which since late 1978 has created a private sector within a socialist state. This new private sector has consistently out—performed the state in the marketplace. In this context the state’s interest in preservation, via municipal policy; makes a lot of sense. It is an implicit assertion of the state’s involvement in and contribution to the future development in Shanghai, a way of mediating between the need of the state for legitimacy and the demand of the private sector for profitability. […] That last note on “culture” may perhaps be the most important, as it marks the site where China’s socialist market economy hooks up with the problematics of a global economy. If one of the negative tendencies of globalization is to blur differences, then any sign of “cultural difference” becomes a precious commodity. Preservation in the global era therefore assumes a new meaning. Globalization of the economy implies the importance of culture as itself a valuable commodity. Recreating Shanghai as a City of Culture then means, in an important sense, creating it as a series of spectacles that is marketable; and the spectacle, to recall Guy Debord’s classic formulation, “is capital accumulated to the point where it becomes image”. The spectacle of Shanghai produces a delirium of the visible that erases the difference between the old and new. The listed buildings on the Bund and the brand new skyscrapers of Pudong do not so much confront as complement each other on either side of the Huangpu river, because both “old” and “new” are simply different ways of recreating Shanghai as a City of Culture in the new global space. In Such A space, cultural and historical issues can be fused, and confused, with Political and Economic Interests. Because of this it is Precisely That was urban preservation in the global can not be seen as a Purely specialist concern, nor can it be seen in isola-tion from other urban and social phenomena. "
The city administration was aware of 'importance of symbolic capital in Shanghai has, and is resolutely oriented towards a re-ostentatious policy making, re-packaging. Feelings and nostalgia as metaphors, mirror, reflection, are highly topical, the Huang-Pu, following the incredible and rapid transformation of Pudong, has suddenly transformed from the eastern border of the city, major tourist attraction, the real axis monumental place of refined and complex interplay of historical and geographical references. In his paper that compares the different destinies of two cities as Moscow and Shanghai, Philippe Haeringer effectively summarizes these concepts: "Shanghai's folly is unquestionable, for it stems from a Clearly Identifiable public project. To produce in ten years one's futuristic double, starting from a situation ossified for More Than Half A Century, is no small task. The Fact That Took form as this new image on the east bank it Appeared to Be That Reflected back onto the west bank of the aging, Erasing it with equal haste, Makes it all the more exorbitant. As a result, ’pragmatic’ Shanghai was compelled to construct itself a fresh double in order to offer a real new environment to its basic population, too flesh-and-blood for this game of mirrors played with global stakes. This third Shanghai, constructed at the same time as the second, forms a sort of sensible thick solid concrete ring round the first. All this is the product of exceptional political determination that should evidently be ascribed to the persistence of a strong government, in this case Communist.”
Ciò che stupisce è proprio la determinazione e la consapevolezza degli amministratori. Nel suo Brodies report , Borges dichiara: “L’immagine della città we have in our mind is always a little late ", that the imagination often struggles to keep pace with the changing reality. Here, however, imagination and transformation chase and overtake each other constantly. In a megalopolis where there are still huge problems of urban planning to deal with, not without the simultaneous development of a policy that brings Shanghai to be a modern "City of Culture", not only to the preservation of the past, especially with respect to present and future. The ambitious objectives ("Better City, Better Life") for the Expo are an example, but also happens to come across statements worthy of Cedric Price and his battle for a lifelong learning . In 1999, Mayor Xu Kuando saw "Shanghai as a city learning to new ADAPTS Which Circumstances", then made this statement following a program that would dwarf the most progressive administrations Western
In the future,
• Learning will Become fashionable. Learners will be mostly self-directed.
• Learning will be a core function of the whole city. • City will
Authorities Establish an atmosphere for innovation. Innovation will be a corollary of daily life.
• Laws will guarantee the individual's basic rights to learn. Authorities will make use of a broad range of resources for learning-much More Than in other cities. •
learning organizations will be built in all parts of the city. Shanghai must
• Become an ecological and healthy city. In Addition, there must be a Harmonious Atmosphere Conducive to learning.
• Citizens Should Live in a Civilized and cultured manner.
• There must be openness and willingness to embrace multiple and advanced cultures in the context of an international city.
• Learners Should Be intrinsically motivated. Shanghai needs an inner motivation study system.
From what I see every day, in this case the imagination (or rather, the program) is somewhat ahead of urban life, but it would be great if the same speed that characterizes the physical transformation of the city were to be applied also to the increase and improvement of the possibilities offered daily to the public. 
Sul palco Thurston e Lee stanno incrociando guitars as two Musketeers in a duel defining moment, Kim is lost in concentric worthy of a dervish dances, while the volcanic, a little 'sickly but always in the forefront, is perched on the comfortable chairs of red velvet, and probably hoped that not fall on his head or Chinese wild pieces of gilded stucco because of the noise. Thanking
a collegiate manager or just used a little expert, Sonic Youth are holding their second concert in the Shanghai Concert Hall on Chinese soil. He goes into a scene of numerous, intriguing and contradictory events of contemporary Shanghai: Sonic Youth is one of the most famous, influential and noisy rock band in the world, the heroes of the indie scene roaring '80s New York, the Shanghai Concert Hall, built in 1930, before becoming an elegant concert hall was the site of Shanghai's most famous films of the thirties, of which the fine decorations are silent witnesses. It almost seems that, ironically, one of the most important of which is still recognized as the world's most famous metropolis, New York, to contribute in a city of historic temples of entertainment, to revive the glory of what was the city with the most exciting nightlife in the world, Shanghai, defined by Abbas as "a dream of Europe even more glamorous Than Europe Itself."
The game he is playing Shanghai at the global level to re-become a world city is played on several fronts: financial and urban are the two most obvious, but do not forget to third, equally important aspect, namely the construction of imagery and image city. The three issues are closely intertwined and interdependent, and often those choices that seem that they should cover only the urban policy, such as the transformation of modern lilong in gated communities, but have deep motivations and repercussions in the sphere of the collective.
Abbas, in his article Play it Again Shanghai. Preservation in the Global was, makes a clear analysis " Preservation in Shanghai, however, is motivated by something quite different from the usual pieties about “cultural heritage,’ given the city’s quasi-colonial past, could only have been ambiguous. It is motivated more by anticipations of a new Shanghai which will rival the old than by tender feelings for the old. In other words, preservation is not just a question of the past remembered, but something more complex: the past allows the present to pursue the future. So while the return of Shanghai to pre-eminence will depend in the first place on hard economic and political factors, it will also depend to some extent on memories of what the city once was, as it is the latter that will create the new Shanghai, as will and idea. As we shall have occasion to see, these memories are selective. If preservation in Shanghai has certain unique features, so too does development. Shanghai today is not just a city on the make with the new and the brash everywhere; it is also something more subtle and historically elusive: the city as remake. […]“Historical continuity”, then, is not a solution to the problems of the present, it is more a symptom of how the present appropriates the past for its own purposes. Only in a minor and ineffectual way does preservation in Shanghai ameliorate the excesses of a building boom. Its real importance lies elsewhere. Rather than being a corrective, preservation in fact contributes to Shanghai’s building boom in ways that require further analysis. In the first place, the economic importance of preservation cannot be underestimated. Invoking a continuity with a legendary past—no matter how ambiguous that past may be — enhances the city’s attractiveness, gives it historical cachet and, hence, allows it to compete for foreign investment and tourism on more favourable terms. It creates symbolic capital. At the same time, preservation may lead to the revitalization and gentrification of old, run—down areas of the city. The economic role of preservation can be even more precisely contextualized when we map it into the tensions inherent in China’s socialist market economy, which since late 1978 has created a private sector within a socialist state. This new private sector has consistently out—performed the state in the marketplace. In this context the state’s interest in preservation, via municipal policy; makes a lot of sense. It is an implicit assertion of the state’s involvement in and contribution to the future development in Shanghai, a way of mediating between the need of the state for legitimacy and the demand of the private sector for profitability. […] That last note on “culture” may perhaps be the most important, as it marks the site where China’s socialist market economy hooks up with the problematics of a global economy. If one of the negative tendencies of globalization is to blur differences, then any sign of “cultural difference” becomes a precious commodity. Preservation in the global era therefore assumes a new meaning. Globalization of the economy implies the importance of culture as itself a valuable commodity. Recreating Shanghai as a City of Culture then means, in an important sense, creating it as a series of spectacles that is marketable; and the spectacle, to recall Guy Debord’s classic formulation, “is capital accumulated to the point where it becomes image”. The spectacle of Shanghai produces a delirium of the visible that erases the difference between the old and new. The listed buildings on the Bund and the brand new skyscrapers of Pudong do not so much confront as complement each other on either side of the Huangpu river, because both “old” and “new” are simply different ways of recreating Shanghai as a City of Culture in the new global space. In Such A space, cultural and historical issues can be fused, and confused, with Political and Economic Interests. Because of this it is Precisely That was urban preservation in the global can not be seen as a Purely specialist concern, nor can it be seen in isola-tion from other urban and social phenomena. "
The city administration was aware of 'importance of symbolic capital in Shanghai has, and is resolutely oriented towards a re-ostentatious policy making, re-packaging. Feelings and nostalgia as metaphors, mirror, reflection, are highly topical, the Huang-Pu, following the incredible and rapid transformation of Pudong, has suddenly transformed from the eastern border of the city, major tourist attraction, the real axis monumental place of refined and complex interplay of historical and geographical references. In his paper that compares the different destinies of two cities as Moscow and Shanghai, Philippe Haeringer effectively summarizes these concepts: "Shanghai's folly is unquestionable, for it stems from a Clearly Identifiable public project. To produce in ten years one's futuristic double, starting from a situation ossified for More Than Half A Century, is no small task. The Fact That Took form as this new image on the east bank it Appeared to Be That Reflected back onto the west bank of the aging, Erasing it with equal haste, Makes it all the more exorbitant. As a result, ’pragmatic’ Shanghai was compelled to construct itself a fresh double in order to offer a real new environment to its basic population, too flesh-and-blood for this game of mirrors played with global stakes. This third Shanghai, constructed at the same time as the second, forms a sort of sensible thick solid concrete ring round the first. All this is the product of exceptional political determination that should evidently be ascribed to the persistence of a strong government, in this case Communist.”
Ciò che stupisce è proprio la determinazione e la consapevolezza degli amministratori. Nel suo Brodies report , Borges dichiara: “L’immagine della città we have in our mind is always a little late ", that the imagination often struggles to keep pace with the changing reality. Here, however, imagination and transformation chase and overtake each other constantly. In a megalopolis where there are still huge problems of urban planning to deal with, not without the simultaneous development of a policy that brings Shanghai to be a modern "City of Culture", not only to the preservation of the past, especially with respect to present and future. The ambitious objectives ("Better City, Better Life") for the Expo are an example, but also happens to come across statements worthy of Cedric Price and his battle for a lifelong learning . In 1999, Mayor Xu Kuando saw "Shanghai as a city learning to new ADAPTS Which Circumstances", then made this statement following a program that would dwarf the most progressive administrations Western
In the future,
• Learning will Become fashionable. Learners will be mostly self-directed.
• Learning will be a core function of the whole city. • City will
Authorities Establish an atmosphere for innovation. Innovation will be a corollary of daily life.
• Laws will guarantee the individual's basic rights to learn. Authorities will make use of a broad range of resources for learning-much More Than in other cities. •
learning organizations will be built in all parts of the city. Shanghai must
• Become an ecological and healthy city. In Addition, there must be a Harmonious Atmosphere Conducive to learning.
• Citizens Should Live in a Civilized and cultured manner.
• There must be openness and willingness to embrace multiple and advanced cultures in the context of an international city.
• Learners Should Be intrinsically motivated. Shanghai needs an inner motivation study system.
From what I see every day, in this case the imagination (or rather, the program) is somewhat ahead of urban life, but it would be great if the same speed that characterizes the physical transformation of the city were to be applied also to the increase and improvement of the possibilities offered daily to the public.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Ways To Increase A Late Period
New photos
New photos of Shanghai on
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ludusc/
Note: Due to unfortunate weather conditions in which they were taken, the contrast is in many photos been increased to show you something, the colors a little postcard-80s are due to this. some I have not touched, I think you will notice the difference ... 
New photos of Shanghai on
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ludusc/
Note: Due to unfortunate weather conditions in which they were taken, the contrast is in many photos been increased to show you something, the colors a little postcard-80s are due to this. some I have not touched, I think you will notice the difference ...
Baby Footprint Angel Tattoo
Fifth letter
Ancient Chinese proverb:''In heaven there is paradise on earth there are Suzhou and Hangzhou.''
We are near the famous and beautiful Lake of Hangzhou, it's Sunday morning, the sun shines high in the sky, pagodas, trees and boats in the eye: the calm before the storm. Cleverly placed by a subtle strategist, probably mindful of the teachings of Sun Tzu (author of the legendary 'Art of War , ed), a legion of speakers camouflaged among the trees start to croak at the same time, spreading the four winds of the pleasing melodies 'immortal The Voice, aka Frank Sinatra. Drawn like bees (perhaps bears is more appropriate ...) from honey, swarms of tourists with strict cap one color (especially welcome in fluorescent orange considered perhaps in keeping with the blue waters and green fields) and driving with overactive flagpole (the flag would be simplistic to call it) and microphone in order overwhelm us munching on an endless variety of food. It would be naive to think that in a populous country like China as a famous tourist resort can be quiet at the same time.
trying to escape the mob, take refuge on top of the Lei Feng Pagoda, recently rebuilt by the will of the administration, where you have a complete view of the entire valley and of modern and livable city of Hangzhou. Observing the behavior of tourists, mostly Chinese, is walking through the park having an almost overhead from the pagoda, one has an impression sufficiently clear: for them the landscape is a backdrop, a picturesque watercolor that answers age-old laws of composition of elements. More tortuous paths, plants carefully selected and approached for coloring and fragrance, soft forms shaped rocks, ponds, bridges and trails zig zag on the water. In some places, as probably the most symbolic, they are even already prepared the boxes oriented so that the committee can take the picture I remember enjoying the best picture and background suited to their aesthetic.
As for landscapes and memories, the day before, from the Lower Friuli good, I had a strong feeling of déjà vu , when plowing with other students of Tongji channels of Xixi Wetlands, I found the atmosphere of the mouth of the Star and the Marano lagoon, with reeds, ducks, and the buildings are very similar to our own huts covered with reeds. Here, however, the establishment Jeremiah, wolf who eats glass lagoon to the delight of tourists, were replaced by the hard working stills of rice wine, then drink liquor sold or served in earthenware containers over the counter for a taste. After a problematic
lunch, exhausted by bus back to Shanghai, the highway is three lanes and modern, our driver is probably arguing with the girlfriend on the phone and continued undaunted to overtake on the right along the hard shoulder and boldly trumpeting the horn when it comes an unexpected break in a place that would be simplistic to define roadside restaurants. After leaving the highway and tracks a few miles, we enter a huge parking lot of tourists clogged by courier. Some stores provide the food and beverage always hungry Chinese (I have not understood how to be so thin with everything you eat ...), but the highlight of the bathroom situation is reached: here you find many of the groups of tourists to previously encountered Hangzhou, arranged in a long snake, orange hats still a kick in the head, and the guide mark slogan directed this time not with their thirst for knowledge, but to calm the impatient bladders. The well-known Dante's circle of incontinence.
A couple of days later, then returned to the campus, through the cafeteria of the department, I seem to see a familiar face, I approach and recognize Liam, an English architect who studied in Edinburgh during the time I spent there in Erasmus three years ago. We salute you, start telling us what we did in the meantime and find out that it is in Shanghai for dell'Archiprix workshop, held for a week in the ground floor of the Department of Architecture. The next day, after having made him try the delicious meal, we went the most famous district for "creative" among those recently established by the M50.
Outside, painted on a wall along the road leading to the entrance area, there is a curious mural depicting a man with a bowler hat, reminiscent of the ruddy Germans caustic paintings by Grosz. Within the district there is a mixture of old colonial buildings, industrial buildings restored and new buildings, the works exhibited in galleries are not of particular interest. The place definitely more charming area is a large expanse of uncultivated margins of the Suzhou Creek (a river that flows a few miles later in the Huang Pu), where a few colonial buildings stand for the most part abandoned. Across the river is a huge gated community, the contrast is very strong, the atmosphere resembles that of alienating some urban voids of Berlin, and surprised that such a wide area and central and escape the relentless work of reconstruction of the city.
During the evening, after having doubted their existence for weeks, we went to some places a bit 'less elegant and expensive (for the local standard) than usual, when there were, raising my surprise, many Chinese young people. Until that day it seemed there were large differences in the way of understanding free time between me and my Chinese peers, and I was a bit 'relieved to see them dance electronic music, hip hop or rock and having fun with friends as you do in the world.
I followed a bit 'developments in the work of various groups during the workshop Archiprix, and, with few exceptions, the prevailing attitude was: the sword in defense of lilong , the praise and appreciation to the intense and colorful street life, the condemnation of gated communities, the attempt to propose or to invent new types of housing alternatives. Personally I am not a supporter of gated communities, but often I try to wonder why this model so successful settlement evidence around the world, sensing the fascination that the simplifications and radical concepts often carry with them.
During the workshop, it seemed to me rather than motivations often naive and unaware of the reality in China were moving the compact group of "anti-compound", a position well described by Adrian Hornsby in an annex to the latest issue of Urban China " In China it's Becoming an urban cliché to Have a group of foreign theorists agonized standing on the sidelines wringing Their hands (about control, coordination, speed, and Harshness of change, etc.). while undeterred and highly successful Developments plow right past Them. The trouble Is that Within the Chinese context, the scale and pressure of Urbanization is Completely mismatched to western notions of "sensitive development." In fact, the Entire Western rhetoric of "preserving a sense of place," and offering "well-thought out responses to the existing urban fabric" Becomes nonsensical When presented with the reality of a new city nation. "
In the same annex shows interesting part of the research group of the Dynamic City Foundation, which among other things is playing an anonymous online survey that has as its theme the idea that one has of his living conditions in China the year 2020 ( The questionnaire can be found at the site http://www.china-at-home.org/ ). In this brief text is a selection of responses from citizens, often known as the ideas are quite confused, there is a general desire to cities with more public spaces and green, even if you do not specify the good quality products, and tend to want their cake and eat it too. An answer but I was particularly struck by his frankness and lucidity, and I think it can be understood as a "manifesto" of those who want to live in a compound: "My dream for 2020 is to Have my own apartment in a tower, with western accommodations. I would like to fit it out with all western furniture. I tend to go for decadence was to my financial position in life. As for life in the city, it will depend more on shopping public places and how to decorate your own apartment. Most of public city life will be replaced by the fear of provincial unrest gone wild in our cities. And the pollution awaiting our weakened lungs outside. So the interior of our buildings will be what remains of our city life, or how to fit out your apartment; this will be the new shopping. Oops, that’s my negativity creating a protective cocoon or just a nightmare. But my true dream is too idealistic and altruistic to be true, green spaces, lively public life, and environmental standards. But lets be honest, this capitalist/communist hybrid has yet to bring good things to the average Chinese citizen. Political unrest, an unhealthy environment, and rampant consumerism, will only plague Chinese Citizens us. So All We Have to dream for is a nice place to live. Negative yes, But honest. So sell me your development rendered with comfort, traditional Chinese serenity, and large fence to keep the negativity outside. "
It seems to be back to a nineteenth-century conception of the city, when there was widespread segregation and partitioning, and members the different classes and you could see almost even crossed: you often naively romantic and nostalgic idea of \u200b\u200bthe ancient city as a place of harmony, coexistence and muted contrasts. Benjamin, describing the Paris of the nineteenth century., Describes the phenomenon of the obsessive attention to the house with his usual elegance: "The city as a landscape and as a room. [...] The intérieur is not only the universe but also the custody of a private citizen. Living means always leaving traces, and they purchased in the ' intérieur, a particular importance. They invent liners and covers, cases and cases in quantity, which is imprinted the traces of everyday objects. "The almost compulsive obsession for the furnishing and the mania for home care are very common among today's residents of gated communities, as well as green spaces are often used and understood more as a kind of relaxing panorama / diorama in which to enjoy the convenience of the sofa and as places to be utilized in direct contact with the ground (the attitude is not so different from that taken by tourists to Hangzhou). Other
pleasant evenings during the week: the first with the volcanic and other friends at the Shanghai Grand Theater in Piazza del Popolo to the Bizet's Carmen, then in the days following a dinner with breathtaking views of the Bund and the Jinmao Tower with Liam Dutch journalists and other architects, completed with a long chat in the magnificent park is located in the Face bar, and the birthday party of a co-worker of Nicholas held at a bar with elderly neighbor particularly restless.
then Saturday I had the opportunity to go on the site where the facilities are preparing for Expo 2010 with five students of prof.Lou. After a long bus ride from Tongji to the southern part of Pudong, we crossed some of the edges of residential neighborhoods in transition, meeting numerous people who walked the dog wearing pajamas and slippers (there apparently is a status symbol morning walk with his faithful canine companion). With appropriate permissions, then we are able to enter directly in the area, where there are still important and huge factories in the coming years will be designed to be dismantled acciaerie, shipyards, depots. The
Our presence has attracted the attention of Li, friendly and talkative guardian of one of the accesses, which is readily offered to accompany us in our exploration. After exiting the lungs rather dusty and suffering from the steel and after a hearty lunch nearby, we walked a few miles south, to go to interview a friend of a student and his family. Xiang, her dad and her mom Xiaocao Caimin, like many other families, lived in the area where the Expo will be held. Their house was demolished, for which I was given a new and a bit 'larger purpose-built in a gated community on the outskirts of the city. During the conversation, family members said they were fairly satisfied overall, confirming perceptions and phenomena often studied and discussed in detail in many sociological studies on the inhabitants of the compound (the easing of relations between neighbors, the difficulty of nell'usufruire public and commercial services are often remote and poor, the satisfaction of a cleaner environment and more green, but often underused, etc.).. During the walk within the compound I had confirmation of how often people respond with great flexibility and practicality to design choices or administrative "unhappy" is not very sensible to subdivisions very large and completely fenced with a single entrance, and in fact the bars are torn in places by residents to provide more access for pedestrians, green spaces and paths are monotonous and too often "designed" and consistent are not used by the inhabitants, and in many points can be noted paths formed by the continuous passage outside prone areas, bars, walls and fences provide security more emotional than real, and nearly all say they are useless in preventing thefts and any other crimes.
Salutati Xiang and his family, we got back to the north, and after crossing the Nanpu Bridge, which gives the impression of being in a huge roller coaster, we reached the foot of the Lupu Bridge, which cuts almost half the area of \u200b\u200bthe Expo. Here we got a lift, and after climbing 367 steps (the guide has pitted along the way an infinite series of numbers and records set by the bridge, such as bolts 5974 that guarantee the union of the two sides of the steel , which is the longest in the world) we reached the top of the colossal structure. Accomplice in the day, very warm and humid, and the resulting haze particles mixed with incredible amounts of pollutants, the view from the bridge could be a version of the XXI century the famous painting "The Wanderer above a sea of \u200b\u200bfog" by Caspar David Friedrich. Only from here can make clear how extensive the area of \u200b\u200bthe Expo: the complicity of the mist, you can barely see the Nanpu Bridge, which marks the eastern boundary of the area, but it is shocking that the surface in just three months has been completely razed to the ground on the southern bank of the Huang Pu, east and west of the Lupu Bridge. Only a few buildings are and will be preserved, an infinite number of trucks and cranes can be seen moving away from the hustle and the timing of an organized squad of ants. It is even more impressive to think that the shipyard on the north shore, now swarming with workers in the next few years will be completely dismantled and turned into a harmless park.
comes time to get down:
The Guide and I into that hidden road
we turned to return to the noisy world
and without care of having any rest
went down, he first and I second, so
ch 'i'
photographed the beauteous things that brings light to a target round.
So we went out to breathe the particles. 
Ancient Chinese proverb:''In heaven there is paradise on earth there are Suzhou and Hangzhou.''
We are near the famous and beautiful Lake of Hangzhou, it's Sunday morning, the sun shines high in the sky, pagodas, trees and boats in the eye: the calm before the storm. Cleverly placed by a subtle strategist, probably mindful of the teachings of Sun Tzu (author of the legendary 'Art of War , ed), a legion of speakers camouflaged among the trees start to croak at the same time, spreading the four winds of the pleasing melodies 'immortal The Voice, aka Frank Sinatra. Drawn like bees (perhaps bears is more appropriate ...) from honey, swarms of tourists with strict cap one color (especially welcome in fluorescent orange considered perhaps in keeping with the blue waters and green fields) and driving with overactive flagpole (the flag would be simplistic to call it) and microphone in order overwhelm us munching on an endless variety of food. It would be naive to think that in a populous country like China as a famous tourist resort can be quiet at the same time.
trying to escape the mob, take refuge on top of the Lei Feng Pagoda, recently rebuilt by the will of the administration, where you have a complete view of the entire valley and of modern and livable city of Hangzhou. Observing the behavior of tourists, mostly Chinese, is walking through the park having an almost overhead from the pagoda, one has an impression sufficiently clear: for them the landscape is a backdrop, a picturesque watercolor that answers age-old laws of composition of elements. More tortuous paths, plants carefully selected and approached for coloring and fragrance, soft forms shaped rocks, ponds, bridges and trails zig zag on the water. In some places, as probably the most symbolic, they are even already prepared the boxes oriented so that the committee can take the picture I remember enjoying the best picture and background suited to their aesthetic.
As for landscapes and memories, the day before, from the Lower Friuli good, I had a strong feeling of déjà vu , when plowing with other students of Tongji channels of Xixi Wetlands, I found the atmosphere of the mouth of the Star and the Marano lagoon, with reeds, ducks, and the buildings are very similar to our own huts covered with reeds. Here, however, the establishment Jeremiah, wolf who eats glass lagoon to the delight of tourists, were replaced by the hard working stills of rice wine, then drink liquor sold or served in earthenware containers over the counter for a taste. After a problematic
lunch, exhausted by bus back to Shanghai, the highway is three lanes and modern, our driver is probably arguing with the girlfriend on the phone and continued undaunted to overtake on the right along the hard shoulder and boldly trumpeting the horn when it comes an unexpected break in a place that would be simplistic to define roadside restaurants. After leaving the highway and tracks a few miles, we enter a huge parking lot of tourists clogged by courier. Some stores provide the food and beverage always hungry Chinese (I have not understood how to be so thin with everything you eat ...), but the highlight of the bathroom situation is reached: here you find many of the groups of tourists to previously encountered Hangzhou, arranged in a long snake, orange hats still a kick in the head, and the guide mark slogan directed this time not with their thirst for knowledge, but to calm the impatient bladders. The well-known Dante's circle of incontinence.
A couple of days later, then returned to the campus, through the cafeteria of the department, I seem to see a familiar face, I approach and recognize Liam, an English architect who studied in Edinburgh during the time I spent there in Erasmus three years ago. We salute you, start telling us what we did in the meantime and find out that it is in Shanghai for dell'Archiprix workshop, held for a week in the ground floor of the Department of Architecture. The next day, after having made him try the delicious meal, we went the most famous district for "creative" among those recently established by the M50.
Outside, painted on a wall along the road leading to the entrance area, there is a curious mural depicting a man with a bowler hat, reminiscent of the ruddy Germans caustic paintings by Grosz. Within the district there is a mixture of old colonial buildings, industrial buildings restored and new buildings, the works exhibited in galleries are not of particular interest. The place definitely more charming area is a large expanse of uncultivated margins of the Suzhou Creek (a river that flows a few miles later in the Huang Pu), where a few colonial buildings stand for the most part abandoned. Across the river is a huge gated community, the contrast is very strong, the atmosphere resembles that of alienating some urban voids of Berlin, and surprised that such a wide area and central and escape the relentless work of reconstruction of the city.
During the evening, after having doubted their existence for weeks, we went to some places a bit 'less elegant and expensive (for the local standard) than usual, when there were, raising my surprise, many Chinese young people. Until that day it seemed there were large differences in the way of understanding free time between me and my Chinese peers, and I was a bit 'relieved to see them dance electronic music, hip hop or rock and having fun with friends as you do in the world.
I followed a bit 'developments in the work of various groups during the workshop Archiprix, and, with few exceptions, the prevailing attitude was: the sword in defense of lilong , the praise and appreciation to the intense and colorful street life, the condemnation of gated communities, the attempt to propose or to invent new types of housing alternatives. Personally I am not a supporter of gated communities, but often I try to wonder why this model so successful settlement evidence around the world, sensing the fascination that the simplifications and radical concepts often carry with them.
During the workshop, it seemed to me rather than motivations often naive and unaware of the reality in China were moving the compact group of "anti-compound", a position well described by Adrian Hornsby in an annex to the latest issue of Urban China " In China it's Becoming an urban cliché to Have a group of foreign theorists agonized standing on the sidelines wringing Their hands (about control, coordination, speed, and Harshness of change, etc.). while undeterred and highly successful Developments plow right past Them. The trouble Is that Within the Chinese context, the scale and pressure of Urbanization is Completely mismatched to western notions of "sensitive development." In fact, the Entire Western rhetoric of "preserving a sense of place," and offering "well-thought out responses to the existing urban fabric" Becomes nonsensical When presented with the reality of a new city nation. "
In the same annex shows interesting part of the research group of the Dynamic City Foundation, which among other things is playing an anonymous online survey that has as its theme the idea that one has of his living conditions in China the year 2020 ( The questionnaire can be found at the site http://www.china-at-home.org/ ). In this brief text is a selection of responses from citizens, often known as the ideas are quite confused, there is a general desire to cities with more public spaces and green, even if you do not specify the good quality products, and tend to want their cake and eat it too. An answer but I was particularly struck by his frankness and lucidity, and I think it can be understood as a "manifesto" of those who want to live in a compound: "My dream for 2020 is to Have my own apartment in a tower, with western accommodations. I would like to fit it out with all western furniture. I tend to go for decadence was to my financial position in life. As for life in the city, it will depend more on shopping public places and how to decorate your own apartment. Most of public city life will be replaced by the fear of provincial unrest gone wild in our cities. And the pollution awaiting our weakened lungs outside. So the interior of our buildings will be what remains of our city life, or how to fit out your apartment; this will be the new shopping. Oops, that’s my negativity creating a protective cocoon or just a nightmare. But my true dream is too idealistic and altruistic to be true, green spaces, lively public life, and environmental standards. But lets be honest, this capitalist/communist hybrid has yet to bring good things to the average Chinese citizen. Political unrest, an unhealthy environment, and rampant consumerism, will only plague Chinese Citizens us. So All We Have to dream for is a nice place to live. Negative yes, But honest. So sell me your development rendered with comfort, traditional Chinese serenity, and large fence to keep the negativity outside. "
It seems to be back to a nineteenth-century conception of the city, when there was widespread segregation and partitioning, and members the different classes and you could see almost even crossed: you often naively romantic and nostalgic idea of \u200b\u200bthe ancient city as a place of harmony, coexistence and muted contrasts. Benjamin, describing the Paris of the nineteenth century., Describes the phenomenon of the obsessive attention to the house with his usual elegance: "The city as a landscape and as a room. [...] The intérieur is not only the universe but also the custody of a private citizen. Living means always leaving traces, and they purchased in the ' intérieur, a particular importance. They invent liners and covers, cases and cases in quantity, which is imprinted the traces of everyday objects. "The almost compulsive obsession for the furnishing and the mania for home care are very common among today's residents of gated communities, as well as green spaces are often used and understood more as a kind of relaxing panorama / diorama in which to enjoy the convenience of the sofa and as places to be utilized in direct contact with the ground (the attitude is not so different from that taken by tourists to Hangzhou). Other
pleasant evenings during the week: the first with the volcanic and other friends at the Shanghai Grand Theater in Piazza del Popolo to the Bizet's Carmen, then in the days following a dinner with breathtaking views of the Bund and the Jinmao Tower with Liam Dutch journalists and other architects, completed with a long chat in the magnificent park is located in the Face bar, and the birthday party of a co-worker of Nicholas held at a bar with elderly neighbor particularly restless.
then Saturday I had the opportunity to go on the site where the facilities are preparing for Expo 2010 with five students of prof.Lou. After a long bus ride from Tongji to the southern part of Pudong, we crossed some of the edges of residential neighborhoods in transition, meeting numerous people who walked the dog wearing pajamas and slippers (there apparently is a status symbol morning walk with his faithful canine companion). With appropriate permissions, then we are able to enter directly in the area, where there are still important and huge factories in the coming years will be designed to be dismantled acciaerie, shipyards, depots. The
Our presence has attracted the attention of Li, friendly and talkative guardian of one of the accesses, which is readily offered to accompany us in our exploration. After exiting the lungs rather dusty and suffering from the steel and after a hearty lunch nearby, we walked a few miles south, to go to interview a friend of a student and his family. Xiang, her dad and her mom Xiaocao Caimin, like many other families, lived in the area where the Expo will be held. Their house was demolished, for which I was given a new and a bit 'larger purpose-built in a gated community on the outskirts of the city. During the conversation, family members said they were fairly satisfied overall, confirming perceptions and phenomena often studied and discussed in detail in many sociological studies on the inhabitants of the compound (the easing of relations between neighbors, the difficulty of nell'usufruire public and commercial services are often remote and poor, the satisfaction of a cleaner environment and more green, but often underused, etc.).. During the walk within the compound I had confirmation of how often people respond with great flexibility and practicality to design choices or administrative "unhappy" is not very sensible to subdivisions very large and completely fenced with a single entrance, and in fact the bars are torn in places by residents to provide more access for pedestrians, green spaces and paths are monotonous and too often "designed" and consistent are not used by the inhabitants, and in many points can be noted paths formed by the continuous passage outside prone areas, bars, walls and fences provide security more emotional than real, and nearly all say they are useless in preventing thefts and any other crimes.
Salutati Xiang and his family, we got back to the north, and after crossing the Nanpu Bridge, which gives the impression of being in a huge roller coaster, we reached the foot of the Lupu Bridge, which cuts almost half the area of \u200b\u200bthe Expo. Here we got a lift, and after climbing 367 steps (the guide has pitted along the way an infinite series of numbers and records set by the bridge, such as bolts 5974 that guarantee the union of the two sides of the steel , which is the longest in the world) we reached the top of the colossal structure. Accomplice in the day, very warm and humid, and the resulting haze particles mixed with incredible amounts of pollutants, the view from the bridge could be a version of the XXI century the famous painting "The Wanderer above a sea of \u200b\u200bfog" by Caspar David Friedrich. Only from here can make clear how extensive the area of \u200b\u200bthe Expo: the complicity of the mist, you can barely see the Nanpu Bridge, which marks the eastern boundary of the area, but it is shocking that the surface in just three months has been completely razed to the ground on the southern bank of the Huang Pu, east and west of the Lupu Bridge. Only a few buildings are and will be preserved, an infinite number of trucks and cranes can be seen moving away from the hustle and the timing of an organized squad of ants. It is even more impressive to think that the shipyard on the north shore, now swarming with workers in the next few years will be completely dismantled and turned into a harmless park.
comes time to get down:
The Guide and I into that hidden road
we turned to return to the noisy world
and without care of having any rest
went down, he first and I second, so
ch 'i'
photographed the beauteous things that brings light to a target round.
So we went out to breathe the particles.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Mastering Piano Sight Reading
Fourth letter
"Compand two bedrooms ... ... ... modern Japanese style compand ... ... ... compand new. compand ... ... .. compand COMPAND !!!!".
"Compand: Who was he? "
There are now seven and a half, Silvia and I are exhausted from the afternoon relentlessly chase the Ginger & Fred estate agents in Shanghai, aka Jessica & Michael. Silvia and Nicola are looking for an apartment, Jessica & Michael have a duty to show as many apartments as possible to find a suitable one. To this end, let us consider it appropriate to move through the city like a pinball machine balls for an entire afternoon, on foot or by taxi (one of the drivers is probably a rally driver urban homicidal mania, ed), in pursuit of their flaming scooter . We move so compounds in compound (a compound, said compand by the locals, is a set of residential buildings surrounded by a high wall or railing and guarded by private security. Another term commonly used is the gated community, ed), from the vicinity of the Xintiandi French Concession, and from there back to the north by the parties in Piazza del Popolo.
The gated communities are a well established phenomenon in the world, and if the Chinese have talked about both journalists Italian (Federico Rampini in Collapse Urban : "In the urban middle class mountain intolerance, mistrust, or fear, to the hordes of immigrants who come from distant regions rude, barely speak the national language (the send-rino), are associated with the spread of diseases, drugs, prostitution. In turn, immigrants feel treated as second class citizens, exploited and blackmailed by employers who use them in building shipyards in road works, such as waiters or cleaners, laborers and maids. [...] In this climate of mistrust between the two Chinas that coexist in the same mega-cities, the residential high-rises built in Shanghai and Pe-bent to accommodate wealthy condominiums are served by high cir-security grilles, gates are guarded day and night by armed vigilantes. The Chinese authorities and the MIDD-wealthy class have the same nightmare: they see the symptoms acci-receptacles della nascita di favelas di immigranti poveri alle periferie delle grandi città, focolai di malattie, delinquenza, instabilità sociale.”) che studiosi di origine cinese, come Pu Miao nel suo paper Deserted Streets in a Jammed Town: The Gated Community in Chinese Cities and Its Solution (“While the densely placed mid- or high-rise apartment buildings along the street do not look very different, they all rise out of walls more than 2 metres high, and are further rimmed by immaculate hedges and tile-paved sidewalks. But you see few souls on most of these sidewalks! The entire urban space looks like a giant stage set without actors. The walls keep going on and on, sometimes as long as 500 metres, and are only occasionally punctured by a gaudy gate decorated with copies of Greek statues and private guards dressed like police officers. […] Between 1991 and 2000, 83% of the residential communities in Shanghai were gated in a variety of ways. […] The Chinese refer to their gated communities as ‘sealed residential quarters’. Akin to the ‘Neighbourhood’ concept originating in the 1920s’ US, the ‘residential quarter’, or xiaoqu , finds its direct lineage in the microrayon of Soviet Russian planning theory introduced into China in the 1950s. Sanctioned by national planning codes, the concept has since become the basic unit in planning and developing residential construction. All new master­-planned communities are designed as residential quarters. Similar to its US counterpart, a ‘sealed residential quarter’ is a walled compound with one or more guarded gates, sometimes supplemented by high-tech surveillance equipment such as closed-circuit cameras and infrared alarm systems at the borders. The new master-planned residential quarter has some semi-public amenities within the gate. Depending on the price range of the units, the amenities range from a mere concentrated green space as the mini­mum, to a variety of extras such as playgrounds, a clubhouse, and even stores and a swimming pool. Some kind of residents’ organization runs the community with its private security team.[…] However, a Chinese gated community tends to be much larger in population and land area, and more standardized in its layout than an American one. Based on the national model of the residential quarter, a Chinese walled development usually covers 12—20-plus hectares of land and holds 2000—3000 families (assuming 3.2—3.5 persons each family). The huge size is believed to create econom­ies of scale, but it also generates the monopoly of a single development model. […] One of the two differences between the US and the Chinese gated communities which is consequential to the later discussion involves the much higher density in the residential quarter; Chinese cities generally have densities about 5—10 times greater than those of US ones. […] Gating in the US serves different purposes in communities with different social and economic characteristics: to prevent outsiders from using privatized public amenities, to ensure prestige, or to increase protection. The primary reason for gating in China currently, however, is always security, with others existing merely as additional rewards.[…] The final feature unique to China explains the rapid spreading of gating. During the current transition from a planned economic system to a market-ori­ented one, the government sees maintaining social stability as its topmost political concern, and gating as a quick solution to crime control which directly contributes to stability. Therefore, governments of all levels have included gating residential areas as part of their programmes. Local governments specify in their working schedules the number of communities to be gated within certain periods of time. Gating is an important criterion in deciding if a community will be awarded the official title of ‘Civilized and Safe Residential Quarter’. All this is hard to imagine in the US, where gated communities are always initialized by the private sector, either the developers or the homeowners.).
Durante i nostri febbrili spostamenti si è sempre più acuita un’impressione che ho avuto fin dai primi giorni a Shanghai: la sottile osservazione di Benjamin (“La città è uniforme soltanto in apparenza. Perfino il suo nome assume suoni differenti nei diversi quartieri. In nessun luogo – se non nei dreams - the phenomenon of the border may be exercised in the original form as well as in cities. Knowing means having a knowledge of those lines that function as boundary, running parallel to the bridge, through housing developments and parks, lapping the shores of rivers, is to know these boundaries of the territories and enclaves. ") Here is now outdated in everyday life , taken to its logical conclusion, the intangible boundaries were brutally materialized. The seemingly unstoppable and irreversible tissue replacement of the old building is taking away with them not only historic buildings, forms of settlement, lifestyles but also the opportunity to experience the phenomenon of threshold (Benjamin again: "The threshold should be distinguished very clearly from the border. The Schwelle (threshold) is a zone. The word schwellen (swell) contains the meanings of change, passage, overflow, meaning that the etymology should not be missed. "). Walking along the congested roads between the ruined buildings of the ancient Chinese city that is precisely what is felt: being in a zone, a place where daily activities, gestures, smells and sounds overflow and mingle, impetuous flowing against the passer.
Our continual coming and going in search dell'agognato apartment, including stairs, elevators, sidewalks, gardens, the wanderings and photos between rooms decorated in many different ways, often forced to wear threatening flap kindly supplied by the current owners, have an alienating effect: Jessica at times with his mellifluous and pressing gently seems transfigured into one of scary dwarves so dear to David Lynch. Beginning to realize what he alluded when he said that Mian Mian was going on a genetic mutation in the inhabitants of his city, I take the obvious difference in lifestyle between the inhabitants of the ruined neighborhoods and the new middle class eager to follow the syncopated rhythms of life Western (and here again Benjamin was the prophet: "... the desire to travel, which divides the life of the in many short periods, emphasizing the departures and arrivals. The time of modern life means not only the desire for a rapid change of the contents of life but also the power of the formal appeal of the border, the beginning and end. "). Already thirty years ago the brilliant intuition Cedric Price had it all: "The generators of tourism are the desire for pleasure, curiosity, and uniqueness of Achievement Difficulty. Thus this unpaid labor force of accepting millions Either Few limits on nationality, race or creed is Likely to pay attention to money and Areas, objects and methods for the passing of Time That are viewed in a very different light by Those in paid Employ. However, not only are the Same Both groups frequently people with only a time difference but the difference between validity of the place or process for these two groups is found in an increasingly small time span. Tourism is becoming a regular event for most in the developed and developing countries of the world - whether confined to the native country or not. In the same way activital patterning recognised as “work” can simultaneously be seen as “leisure” when observed., rather than indulged in, elsewhere. Thus tourism is no longer the rich looking in wonder at the poor, or the past, more a continuing appetite for the determining where, what and why is the difference in contemporary life patterning. This vast and stable industry, highly profitable to its host nation, requires more than well-maintained relics of the past: it Requires, in fact, pleasurable physical Means to Achieve recognition and understanding of the present and the future. "
There are endless food for thought in these sentences (the link between tourism and awareness of the past, present, plans, the city's image and future vision is of crucial importance in Shanghai, and will be one of the upcoming episodes ...) but one in particular seems important here: the continuing "appetite" (Price was a bon bon vivant , and culinary metaphors often appear in his writings) the tourists (which is now synonymous with the city, ed) to determine where, what and why this is the difference in the pattern of contemporary life. This
appetite often through unconscious and trivialized a great hunting: like a safari, many are now looking for the latest news as a trophy to show to friends, or local restaurant last cry of the place exclusive and known to a select and elite, quickly abandoned when it angrily in too frequent it ("The generators of tourism are the desire for pleasure, curiosity, and uniqueness of Achievement Difficulty"). The inhabitants of the compound are very often tourists in their infinite metropolis, depart and arrive continuously throughout the day, casually than a multitude of boundaries. Jessica itself, proudly listing the services enjoyed by the condominiums of a compound, it could well be the use of a travel agency that lists what we find in the holiday village we have chosen: large garden, indoor lap pool, fitness center, tennis tennis, and that's incredible, a free karaoke!
The degree, speed and intensity of this mutation seem almost unreal and impossible in such a short time, and it is suspected that not all the influences come from the west. The suspicion is confirmed by the careful research done Pu Miao: "According to newspapers and other official reports, Governments Encourage gating Because it without Further Reduces crime burdening the police force. A majority of residents like the gate, for it not only increases the sense of security but also eliminates pedlars, noise of through traffic, unwanted salesper­sons and flyers slipped under doors. […] On the other hand, grass-roots reports revealed that residents of Chinese gated communities privately complained that the walls only provided the image of a safe environment. They offered no guarantee to real safety itself.[…] Therefore, although today’s China has maintained a lower crime rate when compared internationality in absolute numbers, Chinese residents increasingly feel insecure as they compare their life with that of yesterday. In the current trying time, it is no wonder gating has been welcomed as an easy solution. But gating also has a deeper root in Chinese culture and urban history, which explains why both residents and the government accept it more quickly than they do other Western ideas. Historically, the Chinese city existed mainly as the outpost of the empire to serve the latter’s taxation and military needs. As Max Weber pointed out, “In contrast to the Occident, the cities in China and throughout the Orient lacked political autonomy”. Since the Chinese city was not fundamentally a community or association of its average residents, “the prosperity of the Chinese city did not primarily depend upon the citizens’ enterprising spirit in economic and political ventures but rather upon the imperial administration”. Such a peculiar nature produced two profound results in China’s urban culture. First, the average Chinese urbanite generally lacked participation and even interest in the public affairs of their city. Second, since there was no incentive and funding for the city government to concern itself too much with municipal functions, road building, fire fighting and other items had to rely on the fund-raising and co-ordination of a small number of local gentry, and such efforts were never institutionalized. In general, the Chinese city was ‘thrifty’ with its civic services. Urban residents had to take care of themselves for a variety of matters, including their own safety.These cultural traits manifested themselves in physical forms as the inward-­oriented private spaces (the courtyard houses), the weak interaction between the private and the public (the solid walls flanking a street), and the lack of public spaces (such as parks and plazas in a Western city) other than the street. Governmental buildings like the yamen and barracks often took the form of large walled compounds located in the middle of a city, bluntly interrupting local circulation. This tradition appears to have worked well with a variety of political ideologies in Chinese modem history, having been continued from the Imperial period, through the Republican era (1912—1949), to the Maoist period of the Communist rule (1949—1976). Before the 1978 reform, the Communist government treated the city in a way not fundamentally different from its predecessors. Based on national strategic plans, the government built factories, universities and other institutions in the city as large, self-sufficient and walled compounds, disregarding their interac­tions with local urban contexts. […] If gating is criticized by the liberal tradition within Western societies, no such balancing force exists in China. Without the Westem tradition of urban associ­ation and sufficient policing, average residents’ sense of self-protection easily outweighs the value of social interaction. Compartmentalized urban space has quickly reappeared in the form of the gated community. Its current popularity in the US only adds a halo of ‘modernization’ around this selective learning from the West. Even the migrant population formed Have Their Own gated communi-ties. "
In the most significant and accomplished, leaving judgments of aesthetic and easy and obvious mockery of kitsch, the gated communities in Shanghai have a high affinity for Höfe the Red Vienna of the twenties: an enormous impact on the physical and symbolic, monumental, homogeneous presence in all areas of the city, the myth of self-polished and deliberate support of the type of residential development from the public, proud and sometimes bold statement of defiance by a civil society (the working class in Vienna, the class Average rampant in Shanghai), conscious of their strength and determined to impose their way of life in a disoriented society, changing and identity crisis. Even today, even after being bombed by the Austrian army in 1933, the Karl Marx Hof in Vienna says very clearly what was at stake in Europe in the First World War.
Then, sitting in a café in Shanghai, happens to turn the pages of magazines and publications dedicated to the forthcoming Expo 2010, which has as its stated objective and ambition to indicate "the way" for the development of cities in the XXI century and you come across phrases, slogans and statements like: "This is the synthesis of 25 years of general reflection [...] The aim is to move towards an Harmonious Society: to the outside, it's an Harmony with the World, to the inside, it's an Harmony within society. From "faster and better" we are moving to "better and faster", and the approach to it is sustainable development.", “The Expo proposes an idea of "Harmony City", which comes from the essence of the Chinese culture - Harmony. Harmony is the base for peace and an harmonious world is the development of world peace", "Sustainable development is compatible with the rules of historical development, so we definitely support it", o ancora “Future of the city: Humanity - Harmony among human beings; Ecology - Harmony between Men and Nature; City Renaissance - Harmony Between history and future. "
" Green "," Recyclable "and" Sustainable "seems to be the magic formula with which to solve all problems. At the moment I have my doubts ... 
"Compand two bedrooms ... ... ... modern Japanese style compand ... ... ... compand new. compand ... ... .. compand COMPAND !!!!".
"Compand: Who was he? "
There are now seven and a half, Silvia and I are exhausted from the afternoon relentlessly chase the Ginger & Fred estate agents in Shanghai, aka Jessica & Michael. Silvia and Nicola are looking for an apartment, Jessica & Michael have a duty to show as many apartments as possible to find a suitable one. To this end, let us consider it appropriate to move through the city like a pinball machine balls for an entire afternoon, on foot or by taxi (one of the drivers is probably a rally driver urban homicidal mania, ed), in pursuit of their flaming scooter . We move so compounds in compound (a compound, said compand by the locals, is a set of residential buildings surrounded by a high wall or railing and guarded by private security. Another term commonly used is the gated community, ed), from the vicinity of the Xintiandi French Concession, and from there back to the north by the parties in Piazza del Popolo.
The gated communities are a well established phenomenon in the world, and if the Chinese have talked about both journalists Italian (Federico Rampini in Collapse Urban : "In the urban middle class mountain intolerance, mistrust, or fear, to the hordes of immigrants who come from distant regions rude, barely speak the national language (the send-rino), are associated with the spread of diseases, drugs, prostitution. In turn, immigrants feel treated as second class citizens, exploited and blackmailed by employers who use them in building shipyards in road works, such as waiters or cleaners, laborers and maids. [...] In this climate of mistrust between the two Chinas that coexist in the same mega-cities, the residential high-rises built in Shanghai and Pe-bent to accommodate wealthy condominiums are served by high cir-security grilles, gates are guarded day and night by armed vigilantes. The Chinese authorities and the MIDD-wealthy class have the same nightmare: they see the symptoms acci-receptacles della nascita di favelas di immigranti poveri alle periferie delle grandi città, focolai di malattie, delinquenza, instabilità sociale.”) che studiosi di origine cinese, come Pu Miao nel suo paper Deserted Streets in a Jammed Town: The Gated Community in Chinese Cities and Its Solution (“While the densely placed mid- or high-rise apartment buildings along the street do not look very different, they all rise out of walls more than 2 metres high, and are further rimmed by immaculate hedges and tile-paved sidewalks. But you see few souls on most of these sidewalks! The entire urban space looks like a giant stage set without actors. The walls keep going on and on, sometimes as long as 500 metres, and are only occasionally punctured by a gaudy gate decorated with copies of Greek statues and private guards dressed like police officers. […] Between 1991 and 2000, 83% of the residential communities in Shanghai were gated in a variety of ways. […] The Chinese refer to their gated communities as ‘sealed residential quarters’. Akin to the ‘Neighbourhood’ concept originating in the 1920s’ US, the ‘residential quarter’, or xiaoqu , finds its direct lineage in the microrayon of Soviet Russian planning theory introduced into China in the 1950s. Sanctioned by national planning codes, the concept has since become the basic unit in planning and developing residential construction. All new master­-planned communities are designed as residential quarters. Similar to its US counterpart, a ‘sealed residential quarter’ is a walled compound with one or more guarded gates, sometimes supplemented by high-tech surveillance equipment such as closed-circuit cameras and infrared alarm systems at the borders. The new master-planned residential quarter has some semi-public amenities within the gate. Depending on the price range of the units, the amenities range from a mere concentrated green space as the mini­mum, to a variety of extras such as playgrounds, a clubhouse, and even stores and a swimming pool. Some kind of residents’ organization runs the community with its private security team.[…] However, a Chinese gated community tends to be much larger in population and land area, and more standardized in its layout than an American one. Based on the national model of the residential quarter, a Chinese walled development usually covers 12—20-plus hectares of land and holds 2000—3000 families (assuming 3.2—3.5 persons each family). The huge size is believed to create econom­ies of scale, but it also generates the monopoly of a single development model. […] One of the two differences between the US and the Chinese gated communities which is consequential to the later discussion involves the much higher density in the residential quarter; Chinese cities generally have densities about 5—10 times greater than those of US ones. […] Gating in the US serves different purposes in communities with different social and economic characteristics: to prevent outsiders from using privatized public amenities, to ensure prestige, or to increase protection. The primary reason for gating in China currently, however, is always security, with others existing merely as additional rewards.[…] The final feature unique to China explains the rapid spreading of gating. During the current transition from a planned economic system to a market-ori­ented one, the government sees maintaining social stability as its topmost political concern, and gating as a quick solution to crime control which directly contributes to stability. Therefore, governments of all levels have included gating residential areas as part of their programmes. Local governments specify in their working schedules the number of communities to be gated within certain periods of time. Gating is an important criterion in deciding if a community will be awarded the official title of ‘Civilized and Safe Residential Quarter’. All this is hard to imagine in the US, where gated communities are always initialized by the private sector, either the developers or the homeowners.).
Durante i nostri febbrili spostamenti si è sempre più acuita un’impressione che ho avuto fin dai primi giorni a Shanghai: la sottile osservazione di Benjamin (“La città è uniforme soltanto in apparenza. Perfino il suo nome assume suoni differenti nei diversi quartieri. In nessun luogo – se non nei dreams - the phenomenon of the border may be exercised in the original form as well as in cities. Knowing means having a knowledge of those lines that function as boundary, running parallel to the bridge, through housing developments and parks, lapping the shores of rivers, is to know these boundaries of the territories and enclaves. ") Here is now outdated in everyday life , taken to its logical conclusion, the intangible boundaries were brutally materialized. The seemingly unstoppable and irreversible tissue replacement of the old building is taking away with them not only historic buildings, forms of settlement, lifestyles but also the opportunity to experience the phenomenon of threshold (Benjamin again: "The threshold should be distinguished very clearly from the border. The Schwelle (threshold) is a zone. The word schwellen (swell) contains the meanings of change, passage, overflow, meaning that the etymology should not be missed. "). Walking along the congested roads between the ruined buildings of the ancient Chinese city that is precisely what is felt: being in a zone, a place where daily activities, gestures, smells and sounds overflow and mingle, impetuous flowing against the passer.
Our continual coming and going in search dell'agognato apartment, including stairs, elevators, sidewalks, gardens, the wanderings and photos between rooms decorated in many different ways, often forced to wear threatening flap kindly supplied by the current owners, have an alienating effect: Jessica at times with his mellifluous and pressing gently seems transfigured into one of scary dwarves so dear to David Lynch. Beginning to realize what he alluded when he said that Mian Mian was going on a genetic mutation in the inhabitants of his city, I take the obvious difference in lifestyle between the inhabitants of the ruined neighborhoods and the new middle class eager to follow the syncopated rhythms of life Western (and here again Benjamin was the prophet: "... the desire to travel, which divides the life of the in many short periods, emphasizing the departures and arrivals. The time of modern life means not only the desire for a rapid change of the contents of life but also the power of the formal appeal of the border, the beginning and end. "). Already thirty years ago the brilliant intuition Cedric Price had it all: "The generators of tourism are the desire for pleasure, curiosity, and uniqueness of Achievement Difficulty. Thus this unpaid labor force of accepting millions Either Few limits on nationality, race or creed is Likely to pay attention to money and Areas, objects and methods for the passing of Time That are viewed in a very different light by Those in paid Employ. However, not only are the Same Both groups frequently people with only a time difference but the difference between validity of the place or process for these two groups is found in an increasingly small time span. Tourism is becoming a regular event for most in the developed and developing countries of the world - whether confined to the native country or not. In the same way activital patterning recognised as “work” can simultaneously be seen as “leisure” when observed., rather than indulged in, elsewhere. Thus tourism is no longer the rich looking in wonder at the poor, or the past, more a continuing appetite for the determining where, what and why is the difference in contemporary life patterning. This vast and stable industry, highly profitable to its host nation, requires more than well-maintained relics of the past: it Requires, in fact, pleasurable physical Means to Achieve recognition and understanding of the present and the future. "
There are endless food for thought in these sentences (the link between tourism and awareness of the past, present, plans, the city's image and future vision is of crucial importance in Shanghai, and will be one of the upcoming episodes ...) but one in particular seems important here: the continuing "appetite" (Price was a bon bon vivant , and culinary metaphors often appear in his writings) the tourists (which is now synonymous with the city, ed) to determine where, what and why this is the difference in the pattern of contemporary life. This
appetite often through unconscious and trivialized a great hunting: like a safari, many are now looking for the latest news as a trophy to show to friends, or local restaurant last cry of the place exclusive and known to a select and elite, quickly abandoned when it angrily in too frequent it ("The generators of tourism are the desire for pleasure, curiosity, and uniqueness of Achievement Difficulty"). The inhabitants of the compound are very often tourists in their infinite metropolis, depart and arrive continuously throughout the day, casually than a multitude of boundaries. Jessica itself, proudly listing the services enjoyed by the condominiums of a compound, it could well be the use of a travel agency that lists what we find in the holiday village we have chosen: large garden, indoor lap pool, fitness center, tennis tennis, and that's incredible, a free karaoke!
The degree, speed and intensity of this mutation seem almost unreal and impossible in such a short time, and it is suspected that not all the influences come from the west. The suspicion is confirmed by the careful research done Pu Miao: "According to newspapers and other official reports, Governments Encourage gating Because it without Further Reduces crime burdening the police force. A majority of residents like the gate, for it not only increases the sense of security but also eliminates pedlars, noise of through traffic, unwanted salesper­sons and flyers slipped under doors. […] On the other hand, grass-roots reports revealed that residents of Chinese gated communities privately complained that the walls only provided the image of a safe environment. They offered no guarantee to real safety itself.[…] Therefore, although today’s China has maintained a lower crime rate when compared internationality in absolute numbers, Chinese residents increasingly feel insecure as they compare their life with that of yesterday. In the current trying time, it is no wonder gating has been welcomed as an easy solution. But gating also has a deeper root in Chinese culture and urban history, which explains why both residents and the government accept it more quickly than they do other Western ideas. Historically, the Chinese city existed mainly as the outpost of the empire to serve the latter’s taxation and military needs. As Max Weber pointed out, “In contrast to the Occident, the cities in China and throughout the Orient lacked political autonomy”. Since the Chinese city was not fundamentally a community or association of its average residents, “the prosperity of the Chinese city did not primarily depend upon the citizens’ enterprising spirit in economic and political ventures but rather upon the imperial administration”. Such a peculiar nature produced two profound results in China’s urban culture. First, the average Chinese urbanite generally lacked participation and even interest in the public affairs of their city. Second, since there was no incentive and funding for the city government to concern itself too much with municipal functions, road building, fire fighting and other items had to rely on the fund-raising and co-ordination of a small number of local gentry, and such efforts were never institutionalized. In general, the Chinese city was ‘thrifty’ with its civic services. Urban residents had to take care of themselves for a variety of matters, including their own safety.These cultural traits manifested themselves in physical forms as the inward-­oriented private spaces (the courtyard houses), the weak interaction between the private and the public (the solid walls flanking a street), and the lack of public spaces (such as parks and plazas in a Western city) other than the street. Governmental buildings like the yamen and barracks often took the form of large walled compounds located in the middle of a city, bluntly interrupting local circulation. This tradition appears to have worked well with a variety of political ideologies in Chinese modem history, having been continued from the Imperial period, through the Republican era (1912—1949), to the Maoist period of the Communist rule (1949—1976). Before the 1978 reform, the Communist government treated the city in a way not fundamentally different from its predecessors. Based on national strategic plans, the government built factories, universities and other institutions in the city as large, self-sufficient and walled compounds, disregarding their interac­tions with local urban contexts. […] If gating is criticized by the liberal tradition within Western societies, no such balancing force exists in China. Without the Westem tradition of urban associ­ation and sufficient policing, average residents’ sense of self-protection easily outweighs the value of social interaction. Compartmentalized urban space has quickly reappeared in the form of the gated community. Its current popularity in the US only adds a halo of ‘modernization’ around this selective learning from the West. Even the migrant population formed Have Their Own gated communi-ties. "
In the most significant and accomplished, leaving judgments of aesthetic and easy and obvious mockery of kitsch, the gated communities in Shanghai have a high affinity for Höfe the Red Vienna of the twenties: an enormous impact on the physical and symbolic, monumental, homogeneous presence in all areas of the city, the myth of self-polished and deliberate support of the type of residential development from the public, proud and sometimes bold statement of defiance by a civil society (the working class in Vienna, the class Average rampant in Shanghai), conscious of their strength and determined to impose their way of life in a disoriented society, changing and identity crisis. Even today, even after being bombed by the Austrian army in 1933, the Karl Marx Hof in Vienna says very clearly what was at stake in Europe in the First World War.
Then, sitting in a café in Shanghai, happens to turn the pages of magazines and publications dedicated to the forthcoming Expo 2010, which has as its stated objective and ambition to indicate "the way" for the development of cities in the XXI century and you come across phrases, slogans and statements like: "This is the synthesis of 25 years of general reflection [...] The aim is to move towards an Harmonious Society: to the outside, it's an Harmony with the World, to the inside, it's an Harmony within society. From "faster and better" we are moving to "better and faster", and the approach to it is sustainable development.", “The Expo proposes an idea of "Harmony City", which comes from the essence of the Chinese culture - Harmony. Harmony is the base for peace and an harmonious world is the development of world peace", "Sustainable development is compatible with the rules of historical development, so we definitely support it", o ancora “Future of the city: Humanity - Harmony among human beings; Ecology - Harmony between Men and Nature; City Renaissance - Harmony Between history and future. "
" Green "," Recyclable "and" Sustainable "seems to be the magic formula with which to solve all problems. At the moment I have my doubts ...
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Kates Playground Prego Nipples
and rods, Pali
In response to unidentified / a Rio Marina (Faranda presume), who was acutely
note that the post will often recur in the same spot in the photos of the train journey, I would say estimated that to entertain the Chinese public, and give a valid reason to question my mental stability, I thought it appropriate to take pictures at specific intervals (within the limits of humanity, unfortunately I do not have dell'encomiabile clock Galileo Ferraris Institute of turin). It was thus to create a nice alternation between the clicks of my camera and the rhythmic noises that came from their mouths open often instant noodle eaters.
I would also like to inform you that I can not access your blog from these lands of Rio Marina.
L. 
In response to unidentified / a Rio Marina (Faranda presume), who was acutely
note that the post will often recur in the same spot in the photos of the train journey, I would say estimated that to entertain the Chinese public, and give a valid reason to question my mental stability, I thought it appropriate to take pictures at specific intervals (within the limits of humanity, unfortunately I do not have dell'encomiabile clock Galileo Ferraris Institute of turin). It was thus to create a nice alternation between the clicks of my camera and the rhythmic noises that came from their mouths open often instant noodle eaters.
I would also like to inform you that I can not access your blog from these lands of Rio Marina.
L.
Cd 9 Ovulation Pains And Lotiony Mucus
Photo Hangzhou Photo
New photos of Hangzhou (city two hours from Shanghai, China's third tourist destination) on
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ludusc/ 
New photos of Hangzhou (city two hours from Shanghai, China's third tourist destination) on
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ludusc/
Kate Playground Movie Oil
Third letter
"We do not live in a society morality, and as sure as death does not live in an age morale. As the saying goes, "only when you have clothes and food you can think of poverty. " We are at the stage of the accumulation of capital. We are undergoing a baptism of blood and fire. It is too early to make the moralists. And in any case, I broke to be poor. "
Friday night, I'm with Maureen on the terrace of Bar Rouge, which offers a view of the river and stun the glittering Pudong, when an elegant middle-aged Chinese ladies is around to say the least drunk brandishing a bottle of expensive whiskey makes me think back a few steps in one of China Candid interviews in the book, in which one of the most expresses Chinese hackers without beating about the bush what is the philosophy of life of an ever-increasing population. Followed by a bevy of lovely ladies strutting and friends, the tipsy launches with enthusiasm Mauritius, having traded for his companion for the evening festivities, a histrionic Australian native who turns out to Tasmania. Chinese friends, embarrassed for what happened, just give us a couple of sips of the liquid peat, having to point out that it is the birthday of their friend. Rather amused dall'imprevista scene, I'm going back to the balustrade, Magnetically attracted by sensational views, and as a slow casting beds tracks reappeared before the starting time, the scandalous Mian Mian ("What I remember the early nineties is that always, Waking up in the morning, I thought: if I close my eyes and open them again I do not know where they are. You have an ongoing metamorphosis that is causing a profound change in the genes of-the people of my city. ") To a step in the latest book by Renata Pisu chapter (" Write Acheng (a famous Chinese writer, editor's note) that when he visited Shanghai-but the first time (it was the beginning of the eighties) had the im-pression of being in front of the skeleton of a giant dinosaur tesco. But, he notes: "They are to continually sprouting new buildings, which give the bizarre impression-it spurs new growth on one-to fossilized bones. "And he concludes: "When thickening, is likely to form the future shape of the city." "[...] However, even if fictional, Shanghai remains true to its myth of origin because she was born and lives under the sign of-processing. Once described himself as "beautiful and corrupt as a true femme fatale Eurasia, including the slope of all the vices of Eastern and Western."). The prophecy of Acheng has definitely come true.
decide to return to where sophisticated local red reigns supreme, secluded sofa one another, the largest bank in the center is a stage in which a series of two shows: the busy struggling to secure the services of competent barman and the games of seduction of the most beautiful oriental women that I have seen since I'm in Shanghai, part of which exerts more or less veiled in secrecy with the world's oldest profession.
Ironically, that among a group of Italians there is also Renata Pisu, sprightly sixty far as I know that usually lives in Beijing. The night then continued between sudden "fainting" caused dall'insostenibile attractiveness of the aforementioned maidens and the pleasant company of some well-known Italian girls the night before at Laris. Music of excellent quality.
The following day saw me engaged as an expert ("... and pedantic, as I imagine they will think between them and half of my esteemed readers and readers alleged that I know a bit '...) driving in the city center, won honor and responsibility after two weeks of shanghaiesi treks. Maurizio our beneficiaries and the increased representation of Italy thanks, Manuela in the valuable role of deputy. During the trek here again that the sprightly Pisu recurs in literary form ("I think that approach requires great skill in Shanghai. Sticks, that is, its many aspects, are all on the table, overlap, intersect, all ' ap-Poreč inextricably. I move one, is that of Shanghai Red Guards, it is a relief another, Shanghai is the Marlene Die-trich in the film Shanghai Express says there is only there because you can buy a decent hat. I try to lift the stick of the Shanghai workers' revolts in the twenties (I suddenly remember the novelist André Malraux, The human condition) and that is vibrating now what is next to James Ballard of Shanghai by the Japanese invaded, de-written as it has in the novel The Empire of the Sun).
Ballard ... In the following days I often seemed to be the child star of Empire of the Sun, for which "... out in the evening drive to the center of Shanghai - Electrical and left the city more exciting than any other in the world - were always expected of him with happy anticipation. " Each day has reserved pleasant and often unexpected discoveries: a dinner in an excellent Cantonese restaurant 86th floor of Jinmao Tower (just imagine the view ...), a visit to the studios and shops in Tai Kang Lu and a long foot massage in a very relaxed (the little men understand the beneficial effects of massage Whereas previously the hapless narrator had attended a sumptuous Easter dinner between Italians and had then accompanied shopping agguerritissime of ladies, including volcanic eruptions), an interesting walk in 'ex French concession before meeting Philip in his studio, a young architect "disciple" of Wallace in Hong Kong, appetizers at the bar of the Hotel Marriott, which dominates the Piazza del Popolo, and the Face, stylish bar located in a charming building of the colonial era in the middle of a magnificent park, spicy and abundant dinners in restaurants Sichuan (China region), and Brazil, where the use of a knife and fork, after long days of battles with sticks and spoons, the appetite has increased ten-fold .
This is the fascinating and sometimes a little Shanghai 'stereotype that is the undisputed protagonist of the tales of Mian Mian ("Shanghai, Shanghai, love Shanghai because it is female. Here is a mixture of pleasure, relaxation, hedonism, nihilism and sentimentality. As the owner of Yin and Yang: "The sense of Shanghai lies in the expression" not important "." Running water has a thousand faces. [...] Shanghai is a woman. It looks like a stage where, however, no actor has a part to play. In the festivities of the weekend often come across the same people, is the most boring, but also more interesting. ") And Zhou Weihui (" This mood is largely explained by the fact that I live in Shanghai , always surrounded by a suffocating smog and immersed in gossip perpetual and oppressive. I also inherited a sense of superiority to be shanghaiese, an attitude born colonial era when Shanghai was divided into various concessions under the jurisdiction of the Western powers, which stimulates me, excites me, pierced my heart sensitive and cocky, and raises in me, that is a young woman, love and hate. [...] The lights were on, the neon signs shining like gold. I was walking on rough roads and wide onto the intense traffic, millions of people and cars. It seemed that the Milky Way had exploded and the debris had fallen on the ground: it was the excitement of the city. [...] Ships, waves, fields blackish, lights neon beam, extravagant buildings ... everything was the striking richness of the city, based on the material world. It was like an aphrodisiac in Shanghai boasted, but that had nothing to do with us, even if we lived here. A car accident or a disease we can take life, but the soul of the city, prosperous and irresistible moves seamlessly, without ever stopping. [...] My instinct told me to devote a few pages to the description of the city Shanghai at the end of the twentieth century: a metropolis Epicurean, which produced foams euphoric, new generation of human beings, and that was steeped in the streets and alleys, the atmosphere frivolous, sad and mysterious. It was the city symbol of East Asia, one of a kind. Here reigned in the thirties a mixed culture, consisting of Eastern and Western elements, assimilated and modified and now it was invaded by the second wave of Westernization. [...] Some people dub Shanghai "City of Women," perhaps to distinguish it from some cities Northern China, with arguably masculine characteristics. "), the two young Chinese most famous writers.
Meanwhile the Italian girls and Mauritius are parties and came to Silvia, a student of architecture in Venice and my compatriot, who came to find her friend Nicola, now considered almost a veteran here in Shanghai, and to carry out his thesis. 
"We do not live in a society morality, and as sure as death does not live in an age morale. As the saying goes, "only when you have clothes and food you can think of poverty. " We are at the stage of the accumulation of capital. We are undergoing a baptism of blood and fire. It is too early to make the moralists. And in any case, I broke to be poor. "
Friday night, I'm with Maureen on the terrace of Bar Rouge, which offers a view of the river and stun the glittering Pudong, when an elegant middle-aged Chinese ladies is around to say the least drunk brandishing a bottle of expensive whiskey makes me think back a few steps in one of China Candid interviews in the book, in which one of the most expresses Chinese hackers without beating about the bush what is the philosophy of life of an ever-increasing population. Followed by a bevy of lovely ladies strutting and friends, the tipsy launches with enthusiasm Mauritius, having traded for his companion for the evening festivities, a histrionic Australian native who turns out to Tasmania. Chinese friends, embarrassed for what happened, just give us a couple of sips of the liquid peat, having to point out that it is the birthday of their friend. Rather amused dall'imprevista scene, I'm going back to the balustrade, Magnetically attracted by sensational views, and as a slow casting beds tracks reappeared before the starting time, the scandalous Mian Mian ("What I remember the early nineties is that always, Waking up in the morning, I thought: if I close my eyes and open them again I do not know where they are. You have an ongoing metamorphosis that is causing a profound change in the genes of-the people of my city. ") To a step in the latest book by Renata Pisu chapter (" Write Acheng (a famous Chinese writer, editor's note) that when he visited Shanghai-but the first time (it was the beginning of the eighties) had the im-pression of being in front of the skeleton of a giant dinosaur tesco. But, he notes: "They are to continually sprouting new buildings, which give the bizarre impression-it spurs new growth on one-to fossilized bones. "And he concludes: "When thickening, is likely to form the future shape of the city." "[...] However, even if fictional, Shanghai remains true to its myth of origin because she was born and lives under the sign of-processing. Once described himself as "beautiful and corrupt as a true femme fatale Eurasia, including the slope of all the vices of Eastern and Western."). The prophecy of Acheng has definitely come true.
decide to return to where sophisticated local red reigns supreme, secluded sofa one another, the largest bank in the center is a stage in which a series of two shows: the busy struggling to secure the services of competent barman and the games of seduction of the most beautiful oriental women that I have seen since I'm in Shanghai, part of which exerts more or less veiled in secrecy with the world's oldest profession.
Ironically, that among a group of Italians there is also Renata Pisu, sprightly sixty far as I know that usually lives in Beijing. The night then continued between sudden "fainting" caused dall'insostenibile attractiveness of the aforementioned maidens and the pleasant company of some well-known Italian girls the night before at Laris. Music of excellent quality.
The following day saw me engaged as an expert ("... and pedantic, as I imagine they will think between them and half of my esteemed readers and readers alleged that I know a bit '...) driving in the city center, won honor and responsibility after two weeks of shanghaiesi treks. Maurizio our beneficiaries and the increased representation of Italy thanks, Manuela in the valuable role of deputy. During the trek here again that the sprightly Pisu recurs in literary form ("I think that approach requires great skill in Shanghai. Sticks, that is, its many aspects, are all on the table, overlap, intersect, all ' ap-Poreč inextricably. I move one, is that of Shanghai Red Guards, it is a relief another, Shanghai is the Marlene Die-trich in the film Shanghai Express says there is only there because you can buy a decent hat. I try to lift the stick of the Shanghai workers' revolts in the twenties (I suddenly remember the novelist André Malraux, The human condition) and that is vibrating now what is next to James Ballard of Shanghai by the Japanese invaded, de-written as it has in the novel The Empire of the Sun).
Ballard ... In the following days I often seemed to be the child star of Empire of the Sun, for which "... out in the evening drive to the center of Shanghai - Electrical and left the city more exciting than any other in the world - were always expected of him with happy anticipation. " Each day has reserved pleasant and often unexpected discoveries: a dinner in an excellent Cantonese restaurant 86th floor of Jinmao Tower (just imagine the view ...), a visit to the studios and shops in Tai Kang Lu and a long foot massage in a very relaxed (the little men understand the beneficial effects of massage Whereas previously the hapless narrator had attended a sumptuous Easter dinner between Italians and had then accompanied shopping agguerritissime of ladies, including volcanic eruptions), an interesting walk in 'ex French concession before meeting Philip in his studio, a young architect "disciple" of Wallace in Hong Kong, appetizers at the bar of the Hotel Marriott, which dominates the Piazza del Popolo, and the Face, stylish bar located in a charming building of the colonial era in the middle of a magnificent park, spicy and abundant dinners in restaurants Sichuan (China region), and Brazil, where the use of a knife and fork, after long days of battles with sticks and spoons, the appetite has increased ten-fold .
This is the fascinating and sometimes a little Shanghai 'stereotype that is the undisputed protagonist of the tales of Mian Mian ("Shanghai, Shanghai, love Shanghai because it is female. Here is a mixture of pleasure, relaxation, hedonism, nihilism and sentimentality. As the owner of Yin and Yang: "The sense of Shanghai lies in the expression" not important "." Running water has a thousand faces. [...] Shanghai is a woman. It looks like a stage where, however, no actor has a part to play. In the festivities of the weekend often come across the same people, is the most boring, but also more interesting. ") And Zhou Weihui (" This mood is largely explained by the fact that I live in Shanghai , always surrounded by a suffocating smog and immersed in gossip perpetual and oppressive. I also inherited a sense of superiority to be shanghaiese, an attitude born colonial era when Shanghai was divided into various concessions under the jurisdiction of the Western powers, which stimulates me, excites me, pierced my heart sensitive and cocky, and raises in me, that is a young woman, love and hate. [...] The lights were on, the neon signs shining like gold. I was walking on rough roads and wide onto the intense traffic, millions of people and cars. It seemed that the Milky Way had exploded and the debris had fallen on the ground: it was the excitement of the city. [...] Ships, waves, fields blackish, lights neon beam, extravagant buildings ... everything was the striking richness of the city, based on the material world. It was like an aphrodisiac in Shanghai boasted, but that had nothing to do with us, even if we lived here. A car accident or a disease we can take life, but the soul of the city, prosperous and irresistible moves seamlessly, without ever stopping. [...] My instinct told me to devote a few pages to the description of the city Shanghai at the end of the twentieth century: a metropolis Epicurean, which produced foams euphoric, new generation of human beings, and that was steeped in the streets and alleys, the atmosphere frivolous, sad and mysterious. It was the city symbol of East Asia, one of a kind. Here reigned in the thirties a mixed culture, consisting of Eastern and Western elements, assimilated and modified and now it was invaded by the second wave of Westernization. [...] Some people dub Shanghai "City of Women," perhaps to distinguish it from some cities Northern China, with arguably masculine characteristics. "), the two young Chinese most famous writers.
Meanwhile the Italian girls and Mauritius are parties and came to Silvia, a student of architecture in Venice and my compatriot, who came to find her friend Nicola, now considered almost a veteran here in Shanghai, and to carry out his thesis.
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