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.

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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.

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Tenth

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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!

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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.

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