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Graffiti’s demise mirrors demolition of old houses
Some graffiti creations on the broken walls of a stone gate neighborhood being torn down in central Shanghai were erased overnight 11 days ago, but the emotions they had stirred in my mind cannot be erased.
Just one day before some of the graffiti, made by a Chinese artist and his French counterpart, disappeared, I visited the rubble behind the wall at 600 Kangding Road.
The place had become popular because of the graffiti by the two artists, which reflected a touch of sadness about old houses and neighborhoods lost in modernization.
When I was there, people couldn’t stop taking photos, whether they had SLR cameras hanging around their necks or simply used their smartphones.
There used to be more than a dozen paintings around corners in this area. Some were abstract patterns or works with obscure meanings, such as a huge woman’s face painted in a cubist style or a duo of worm-shaped yellow robots.
Several among them were amazing. One depicted a girl with pageboy hairstyle embracing a tiny stone gate house. The red dotted cotton coat and blue pants she wore were both old-fashioned. There were also colorful halos behind her, as if her mind were filled with myriad thoughts. When I saw the girl for the first time, I felt a sense of innocence long lost as well as the warmth she carried.
I remember what author Wang Anyi once said about Shanghai’s stone gate lanes being “simple day-to-day life.” Wang, the author of “The Song of Everlasting Sorrow,” said that Shanghai’s stone gate lanes were her eternal nostalgia.
I can understand what Wang meant because my own childhood also was spent in an old neighborhood. Fortunately the old apartment where my parents live is still there and I visit them frequently. Some facilities of old houses may be outdated but, like mom’s cooking, they remain the most tasteful to every one of us.
One of my college mates once lived at a stone gate lane on Jiangning Road. One day a bowling alley opened up next door. Its restrooms were all equipped with electric toilets, and he and some of his pals went there almost every day.
It was one among many jokes about the old neighborhood when we were teenage boys.
Many stone gate lanes on Jiangning Road are under demolition. I’ve no idea whether the one he lived is included.
A woman in her 70s was among many who moved from Jiangning Road to their new homes at Sijing, on the city’s outskirts. Her old residence will be flattened for a new round of construction. She expressed her gratitude to the government for having improved her living condition. But she also had to say goodbye to her native area where she spent decades. C’est la vie. That’s reality.
The world is changing all the time just like what happened to Professor Alexander Hartdegen’s home in the 2002 film “The Time Machine.” We are always looking forward to a better life or even a new world as the old one fades away.
Many of the six-story public housing blocks near where I live have been replaced by modern glass towers. People who used to live there were heavily compensated with cash and new apartments, though they are a bit far away. It seems that both the developers and former residents are happy thanks to the win-win planning. But there is also something lost, such as the life Wang Anyi described.
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