I spent most of today just trying to catch up with my notes and thinking. I have been going over to Pentagon Plaza pretty regularly, using the need to get food as an excuse to go to the well-patronized Wanda Plaza section and people/screen-watch. Today, I was down in the basement (which they bill as the city in the city, I think — must make a note). On my way, I noticed that there are guards at all the spots where the public walks into the alleyways making up the Wanda. But they are pretty unobtrusive it seems. I wonder when they go on duty in the morning, or if they are there 24/7?
In the basement, there are all kinds of fast-food and cheap waiter/waitress service restaurants, ranging from McDonalds and KFC to Pappa John’s pizzas and the Asian fast food chain Yoshinoya as well as the Hong Kong restaurant chain Café du Coral. There is also a Watson’s chemists, a Giordano, a Uniqlo, etc. These are all low-price, high-volume retailers, so maybe it is not a surprise that so many people are down there, even at 11.30 in the morning.
I found myself thinking about Kracauer’s focus on the salaried (the angestellte) as distinct from the worker. In Weimar Germany, this was a distinct social class that had legally recognized privileges and so on, which it was fighting to keep as the real distinctions between it and regular workers were being eroded. I’m not sure any such distinction functions in Shanghai. But there something else going on here. On one hand, you have the idea of the “shimin” or “city person,” often translated as “petit bourgeoisie”, a term that goes back to Shanghai in the early 20th century, and exemplified the lifestyle that it fostered then. It is very much associated with consumerism. On the other hand, you have the “gongren” or worker, in the Marxist sense, which is all about production, and giving “labour model” awards to people who produce the most. There is no doubt that consumerism is back at Pentagon Plaza. But, I wonder, do these people think of themselves as “shimin”? Is that term back in circulation? I must find out.
