This afternoon, Wenhao gave me the DVD of photos from the Science & Technology Museum — which look great! This evening, we went over to Wujiaochang and spent five or six hours taking photos there. Of course, I learnt a whole lot of new things, as I do each time I spend real time working in there.
I took some notes from the Orient Shopping Centre screen, to try and track what was actually on it. When I come back, I need to do this for both this screen and the Youyicheng one in a more systematic manner. But I noticed: Expo ad; www.ikang.com ad (some sort of wrinkle cream?); an ad for the shopping centre itself; Xiying Steel corporate ad; what appeared to be an ad for the Wujiaochang itself; an anti litter public information notice; and ad for advertising on the screen itself and so on. There was a dearth of actual consumer product ads. Along the bottom of the screen all the time there was a tickertape effect (although not LED) giving info on who to contact and so on if you wanted to rent the screen:上海横就事业招？司机一名：工资百谈联系人廖总电话55228166淞沪路98号平盛大夏903. A bit sad really… Even the Youyicheng’s screen seems dominated by ads for itself.
I chatted to a guy at a coffee/tea stall near the little Expo countdown clock LED near the Orient. He said people were always coming to take photos near the Wujiaochang. He also said the place was still developing, in response to my comment about ads for placing ads.
When we got down into the sunken plaza, I noticed and photographed lots of wires handing from the egg. Later that even, when the rainbow egg had not even been turned on by 8 p.m., I asked one of the security men. He explained that it was being repaired. Apparently, it has been failing recently, and after a series of patch-ups, they had decided a few days ago to shut it down completely and rewire it. It will be out of commission for the next 2 months! Given that this is the signature light centrepiece of Wujiaochang, that’s quite a blow for them and for us! Probably, I will need to ask Wenhao to go up there and photograph it again once it’s up and going.
The cracks in the glossy surface of Wujiaochang continued when we were outside the Youyicheng on the Songhu Road side. I can see I’m going to have to update the damned audit yet again! First, I discovered a couple of small TV sets or even little monitors, black and white, playing Bob Marley, in the entrance way to the bar where the other 5 TV screens are. I guess it’s part of the decorative theme. Then I also discovered that the bus stop a bit further up from where I stopped the audit last time has TV screens in it. This is the only one I’ve seen around here with the screens in it. Finally, there were a couple more of those double-screen advertising pillars, but the LCD screens were broken. One had nothing at all on it. The other had what looked like one of those messages you get on your computer screen telling you to reload the CD ROM with the programme etc etc.
The final comedy moment in all this came when we were trying to take shots of the big screen from far away. We got to our final destination at 11 p.m. — way down the road near the entrance to Fudan. Just as Wenhao was getting set up, they turned the big screen off. 11 p.m. on Saturday night in Wujiaochang, and clearly everyone is meant to be home tucked up in bed. Of course, normally, I am. So I had not seen this before. But both Wenhao and I had absolutely assumed it would be on all night. Is this a company decision to save money? Or the result of a local government regulation? However, it is part of a pattern, where I had noticed in the past that the egg was not turned on until about 7 in the evening and various lights started coming on, but also started to get turned off from as early as 9 p.m. on. For example the blue wave lights on the top of a skyscraper behind the Orient were off at 9, followed by the Orient’s own lights, including its lightboxes with its own name, at 10. But the Orient LCD remained on at that time.
