Buildings

We drove into the suburbs after an hour car ride this weekend. Which was really interesting, to get a glimpse of the neighborhoods (I tend to spell "neighborhood" like a Brit, for some reason. I like the "u" in there.) surrounding the city. There were the usual apartment complexes, which never cease to enthrall me. (This section thanks to Caitlin Cicala, cuz she mentioned culture shock, and then I started to think about it, and realized the following:) I think my culture shock is manifesting in my (mildly sick) fascination with the buildings of the city. They're huge and ugly and seem to tessellate and repeat themselves endlessly. Each apartment looks identical, and each building has hundreds of these identical apartments, and each housing block has perhaps dozens of these identical buildings. It's surreal. And this is the first thing I remember seeing on my first car trip into the city, after getting off the plane. So wherever I go, I take pictures of the big, haunting, ugly (in that beautiful sort of way) apartments where, I believe, people live fairly well. That last bit is quite a blanket statement, and there are far too many people living in far too many living conditions to give any one definite statement about "housing and living conditions," but I can certainly say that Naiyi's apartment, one of the hundreds, perhaps thousands of identical apartments that surround us on all sides, feels exceptionally home-like. It is a warm and welcome place where a family lives and gathers. It is the incredible combination of the fact that these millions of homes exist, that each one holds a unique and, very possibly, loving family, and the fact that so many of them look perfectly identical that captures Shanghai best, for me. At least for now.

I have a tremendous picture (I hope it attaches properly) of the view from Naiyi's grampa's house (why can't I say "granpa?" Microsoft Word doesn't like it. I don't like the spelling of "grandpa." There's too much effort in the "ndp" region, which isn't how it's pronounced at all), which is in the suburb where Baba grew up, and is part of a massive apartment complex. Beautiful in it's repetition. It is pretty much the inverse of "The American Dream."

 

There's something about it that really wants me to start talking about post-modernism and all these ironic, detached, art-y things. This ideas might apply, if someone where at home in their basement making these things as art, a sort of beautiful eye-sore, spectator-hostile, urban-art thing, but this isn't the case at all. It's where people live. All of it, all around, are lives. And me – someone who even considers framing this as simply an involved artistic exercise – who am I to comment on it? To live here, and compare this to what I know as normal? It's too true to analyze. All of this is what the buildings represent.