Today was the day Wu Dan and I set aside to explore the subway system a bit more and also to walk in some areas we had never been to before (along the lines of Bromley-by-Bow and the district I went to in Cairo). Overall, I would say that the walks in areas we had never been before were a bit like the walks in London and Cairo, in that we only discovered very little evidence of screen usage. Once again, this reminds us that these particular new media are not ubiquitous, but associated with certain kinds of culture.

Still, I would say that there were definite differences to London and Cairo. First, where residential neighbourhoods in London and Cairo are carpeted in satellite screens, the satellite dish remains illegal in China, where the government still aims to control people’s access to media, especially foreign media. Second, where the coffee shop screen was the main screen I saw in the Cairo neighbourhood, in China it seems that red LED and often tickertape-style LED screens are the most common thing. My hypothesis is that this is an extension of the blackboard that used to be what you found in China — like the blackboard, it tends to be text-based, it is locally controlled, it is mostly used for announcements of various kinds, and it can be changed frequently. However, the difference is that, mostly, it is used now as part of shops promoting themselves and is therefore part of a commercial culture that did not exist so much in the era of the blackboard.

[Wu Dan adds: There were small blackboards in the windows of small stores until the 1990s. Blackboards were used as promotion tools. I remember a small store (2 or 3 square meters) on the street of my granny’s apt had a small blackboard, on which was written some main items for sale. Only small stores used blackboards. Now usually big stores have LEDs.].

Public Transport

I got on the 910 bus at Guoquan Road and Siping Road, going to Dalian Road and Siping Road, at 09.30 a.m. There was a screen at the front and one in the middle. I couldn’t see either of them because the bus was so packed and I was down at the very front next to the driver. But I could see that images from the CCTV camera above the door in the middle of the bus (which is the exit) were visible on a small black-and-white TV screen on her dashboard. There was another CCTV camera pointed at the front door, but I did not spot any images coming up from that (probably because the driver can see for herself to make sure she is not closing the door on someone there).

Arriving at the Siping Road subway station at about 09.45 a.m, there was no security check. This is the only station so far where I have not encountered the Expo-anxiety-prompted security check. I’m not sure why they’re so confident that this station doesn’t need to do the bag x-rays. (On the other hand, given the current fashion for suicide bombing, I am also not sure why they think x-raying bags is the way to go, anyway.) On each platform, there are 3 back-to-back double sets of Samsung flat-screen TVs suspended from the ceiling. This was true in every other station I was able to observe today. On the left hand side of the screen, the number of minutes and seconds before the next 3 trains arrive is given, along with a representation of the route of the line (including where it meets other lines and so forth), and this moves up and down stop by stop. At the bottom of this left-hand column is the time. There is also the time of the first and last trains on the line. On the right hand side, the TV shows either the news or ads. While I was waiting for the train at Siping Road it was sports news, focusing on a football match. On the platform, the sound was at an audible level. This is all from www.mmtv.com.cn, whose web address is below the TV window on the screen.

The no.8 line train down to town was quite full. The screens in the carriages — there is one by each door — had either failed or simply were nut turned on. Many of the riders were middle-aged folks who seemed to be dozing or just staring into space. Younger people were looking at their mobile phone screens, and I saw one young man had a PSP. I understand that many people download internet novels and other texts onto their mobile phones. I’m not sure if they also do that with the PSPs, or if those are only for football, snooker etc. I could see one person down the carriage reading a magazine, and when I turned round there was a man in the distance in the other direction reading a newspaper. But it’s rare to see people reading paper-based materials on the subway here. I also noticed that although some people took calls occasionally, on the whole it was fairly quiet on the train.

At 10.05 a.m., I changed at Lujiabang Road to line no.9. I noticed the same 3 pairs of screens on each platform. I also noticed that in between the screens, there were pairs of Yaan brand CCTV cameras pointing at and past each other, up and down the platform. At some other stations, I noticed globe CCTVs as well. Unfortunately, on the no.9 line up to Xujiahui, where I was due to meet Wu Dan, the screens were off, too. The only screens on were the “zouzi” tickertape style screens at each end of the carriage, which repeat the message that is also announced about welcoming you on board, the final destination, and the next stop. This message is in both Chinese and English, both verbally and on the LEDs. On the short journey up to Xujiahui, the carriage was pretty empty when I got on. The middle-aged man opposite was reading a newspaper, the woman to my left was reading a long text on her mobile phone, and the woman to my right got bored and then starting calling numbers until someone answered and she could have a chat.

While I waited for Dan to arrive at Xujiahui station, at the far end of the platform, I found a touch-screen “Intelligent Enquiry System” (只能查询服务系统). It had a map of the area around the station. In theory there is supposed to be the option of touching various places in the neighbourhood and getting information about them (e.g. hospitals etc), but at the moment the screen says “no information available” for these. There is also a station plan, a map of the lines going through the station, timetables for trains, and a lot of information about the subway system itself. Although it was only in Chinese, I was quite impressed. Dan was less impressed. She pointed out that technological people have GPS on their mobiles with all that on it anyway, and older people who are less technological will not be interested in touch-screen devices.

The journey out to Songjiang New Town at the end of line 9 takes 50 minutes. We were standing all the way, and so we could not take detailed notes about what was on the screens. What we did notice, however, was that the signal failed a couple of stops before the end of the line. When we checked our mobiles, we noticed that they also had “no signal”! So, this really is the middle of nowhere!

Coming back up from Songjiang New Town at 13.20 p.m., the screens were simply blue all the way. I’ve never seen this before. Before I’ve always seen them either on or off, but not on but blue. It’s a long journey to and from Songjiang New Town. At 14.15, we changed onto the No.7 line to Yaohua Road, another place neither of us had been before. It took 15 minutes to get there, and on the way, we took notes on what was playing on the screens (which were on at last and in a situation where we could sit down and take notes!). This is what we got:

•    News report about 114 Australian waterskiers breaking some kind of record
•    News report about a Chinese flying display team winning a competition
•    Ad for a drink (Wahaha brand)
•    Ad for Alice in Wonderland, to be released on 31 March
•    “O.C.T. Mami” maternity clothes brand ad, mostly animation-based.
•    Ad featuring young children, about the Shanghai Expo (Slogan: 用快乐温馨实现难忘, Happiness Will Create Everlasting Memories)
•    Ad featuring changing times and progress, about the Shanghai Expo (Slogan: 时代在变，节奏在变，城市精神不变, The Times Change, the Seasons Change, but the Spirit of the City is Eternal)
•    New Shanghai Expo ad (I hadn’t seen it before this visit) featuring pavilions with their names in titles in English and Chinese. (The signal broke up a bit during this, I think maybe because we were going under the Huangpu River at that point?)
•    Long domestic news report about the drought in the Southwest, including weather reports about welcome rain in Yunnan, digging wells somewhere else and so on.
•    Domestic news report about a spring snowstorm in Yili in Xinjiang
•    Domestic news report about (I think) emergency services exercises in a new road tunnel being completed somewhere in Inner Mongolia
•    Local news report on the New Bund (happy public reacting happily to the good news)
•    Local news report about a new higher minimum wage in Shanghai
•    Local news report about a new law with a new lower limit on blood alcohol for drivers.

I confess I did not try to take more notes on the subway and the bus on the way home because I was too tired…

Songjiang New Town (松江新城)

It took at least 50 minutes west on the train from Xujiahui to get to the end of the No.9 line, Songjiang. The train was above ground for a good part of the way, and we kept passing tracts of new developments. Nearly all of them were large Western-style houses in gated communities for the new rich, varying in style from standard McMansion to Italian Renaissance-style houses. There were also apartment complexes. Clearly, the urbanization of the Yangtze River Delta is proceeding apace, and the countryside is being swallowed up very quickly. The gated community aspect of the development may sound like it something that comes out of the wealth gap, and of course it is related to that. But the old danwei socialist work unit, with housing, workplace, school, and everything all combined, also always had a wall round it and limited entrance points.

We arrived at Songjiang New Town Station at 11.25 a.m. The route of our walk:

Take Northeast exit of Songjiang New Town Subway Station onto Tongyue Road. Turn left and head north 150 metres or so up to the intersection with Lücheng Road. Across the intersection to the Northeast is a mall. Walk through mall to Nanqing Road, and turn right and head East to intersection with Guyang North Road. Head north 1 km to the next major intersection, which is Xin Songjiang Road. Cross to the north side, turn left and head west along street. When we got to the intersection with Tongyue Road again, we doubled back along the south side of the street to check out an interesting LED sign, then went down Tongyue Road until we were almost back at the station. We ended the walk at about 12.30 and had lunch at a UBC coffee shop.

My first thought upon seeing Songjiang was to think of images I have seen of Pyongyang, or maybe of a new town on the flat lands of Inner Mongolia. In other words, I saw huge, wide, straight streets, lots of apartment blocks, not much traffic, and not a lot of life. Somehow, Shanghai seemed very far away indeed. It’s a new town, so what did I expect? It’s certainly in the same lineage as Milton Keynes or downtown Croydon. In contrast to all the other places just mentioned, I’m sure it’s hotter than hell here in the summer. It would be a great place to set a Madame Bovary-in-China movie, with her never able to get on the subway…

Walking out of the station, you see that the outside of the station is all little shops and restaurants. Not a single screen, however. There are large numbers of motorbikes parked around the station, and it has an underground car park. There are motorbike taxis and regular taxis ready for you, along with a lot of busses. This is presumably a dormitory suburb, and it’s evidently very spread out, with a big empty area of land just north of the station. So, people need all these various forms of transport to get to and from their homes. The informal motorbike taxis are something you don’t find in Shanghai these days, but you still find in smaller towns all over China. I noticed that there are no screens inside the buses (apart from LED destination screens at the front of the compartment).

When we reached Lücheng Road, we found our first screen. This was a tickertape red LED screen above the entrance to a building supplies and decoration company, advertising its products. (There are a lot of such company shops here, because the place is still being settled, I guess.) This set the tone for everything that was to come for the whole of the day (including at Yaohua Road). We did not see any of those side-of-a-building screens, or any LCDs in Songjiang. What we did see were red tickertape LEDs, mostly at stores at intersections.

Crossing the road into the mall area, we discovered it consisted of a series of buildings with roads in between. It was a bit like Wanda Plaza at Wujiaochang in that way. However, it was older and less well maintained. Even though it was presumably built quite recently, bits of façade had peeled and fallen off. Also, where Wanda is pedestrianized, this was drive through. Throughout the walk, we noticed that not all roads had sidewalks, and in general the distances and the layout seemed designed with the car in mind. There were parking places in front of every shop, and so on. I’m sure a lot of people do have cars out here, and it makes it clear that it’s a neighbourhood for those who cannot afford the expensive in-town neighbourhoods, but who can afford a car — or at least a motorbike.

Among the places we noticed with LED red tickertapes was a bank, a spa, and a restaurant. But they were few and far between. The most exciting moment was when we discovered a large (perhaps 1 metre tall x 1.5 metres wide) LED screen at the north entrance to the Jin Gui Yuan housing complex. (Here as elsewhere, each housing complex seems to take up a whole block, to have walls, and to be gated.) The screens used red, yellow and green coloured letters. The quality of the green letters was very poor, perhaps demonstrating what Dan had read on the internet about the technology for green being, for some reason, more difficult.

Here is the slide cycle as we photographed it:

1.
03/29, Monday, 12:06
Friendly Reminder
Recently, thieves have been coming into the community, and many residents have suffered financial loss. Please lock your doors and windows when you leave the community, and don’t…

2.
03/29, Monday, 12:06
…leave your wallets and valuables in your cars. Please step up your vigilance.
Jin Gui Yuan Residents Committee
Ping’an Work Team

3.
03/29, Monday, 12:06
Fangsong Street is currently being established as a city-rank civilized community

4.
03/29, Monday, 12:06
The community is my home
[something about being civilized in broken green characters]

5.
03/29, Monday, 12:06
Being civilized begins with me

6.
03/29, Monday 12:06
Splendid World Expo
Civilized Community

7.
03/29, Monday, 12:06
Eliminate ? (broken green characters)
Promote Civilization

8.
03/29, Monday, 12:06
Fire prevention depends on everyone
Keeping us all safe and sounds

9.
03/29, Monday, 12:07
Being on guard is for safety
Safety is for happiness
Build a secure community
Benefit all citizens

10.
03/29, Monday 12:07
Weather Forecast
Today, starting sunny, clouding over
High of 16°C, low of 8°C

11.
03/29, Monday, 12:07
Secure Community
Everyone is responsible
Everyone takes part
Everyone benefits

12.
03/29, Monday, 12:07
Treasure Life
Refuse Drugs

13
03/29, Monday, 12:07
Friendly Reminder
If you’re driving, don’t drink
If you’ve been drinking, don’t drive
Drunk driving endangers others and yourself
–Songjiang Traffic Police

This screen helped me to see the lineage between these red tickertape LEDs and the blackboard mentioned above very clearly.

The complete absence of other kinds of screens cannot be put down to lack of aspiration in this neighbourhood. I don’t think anyone who lives here was born here. Presumably, they are all people who have moved to Shanghai and are trying to make it here. But it is clear that this is not a destination to visit for anyone who does not live here. Nobody comes here to watch the movies, or go eat a meal and have a walk around. The same is true for our other place-we’ve-never-got-off-the-subway neighbourhoods that we’ve walked around.

Yaohua Road (耀华路) Neighbourhood

Again, this was somewhere neither of us had been before. We arrived at 14.30 p.m. But once we looked at the screens in the station with information, we realized that it was just over the river in a neighbourhood where Shanghai Steel Plant had been, and where the Expo is now being built. I had been hoping for a typical inner-city neighbourhood, and I guess I got it. What we did was walk round a huge block that is full of 1980s-style housing blocks, divided into numerous “villages” (cun).

The route:

Come out of station exit no. 2, facing Chinese pavilion in the Expo grounds. Take a right and walk east along Pudong South Road past the entrance to the Shangnan Yicun housing estate (workers housing left from some huge manufacturing plant that was here once) to the intersection with Hongshan Road. Turn right on Hongshan Road. At the intersection of Chengshan Road, turn right, and walk West to Shangnan Road intersection. Turn right again, back to the train station. Walk finishes at 15.40 p.m.

In a way, this repeated the theme of the Songjiang walk, in that what we were seeing was LEDs, and the occasional in-shop flat-screen TV. The main difference is that there were more of them, which goes along with the density of the neighbourhood. But the logic of using them on shop fronts and mostly at intersections seemed to still hold. We saw them outside a restaurant and a bank just past the subway station; the Expo products shop (all overpriced junk, of course), which was a bit further along Pudong South Road, the post office, an AllDays convenience store, another expo store (perhaps), and a bank at the intersection of Pudong South Road and Hongshan Road; a KeDi convenience store on Hongshan Road before the Changli Road intersection; a confectioners (Laiyinfen) just past the Changli Road intersection; another AllDays convenience store just before the intersection with Chengshan Road; a store across the road from the intersection; a pharmacy a bit further down Chengshan Road; a Tino coffee shop across Shangnan Road; and a restaurant.

Closer to the Expo site itself, we discovered a very new and swish public toilet that used tickertape LED screens to tell you if the stall was occupied or vacant, and also to let you that one room was the men’s urinal. Outside a school and outside the entrance to a gated neighbourhood the post of the rolling gate had a little LED on it with a pattern round the edge and a red tickertape welcoming you. (Unfortunately, it has not come out well in the photos.)

At Hongshan and Changli Road, there was also one of the Expo countdown pillars (33 days to go!), using an LED screen.

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