The Mid-Autumn Festival public holiday continues, so we cannot ambush any more bureaucrats! Today, I went over to Hongkou district, the former Japanese concession area and where Dr. Yang Ji of Fudan was born. He walked me around the neighbourhood. Despite its historic value, it’s not an area I’ve spent a lot of time in before.
In a way, this was a bit like the Talaat Harb walk in Cairo, because it took us to a lot of 1930s and earlier cinemas, including the site of the first ever movie theatre built in China. I had not realized before that was in Hongkou. In relation to our project, a few things caught my eye. First of all, a new screen installation has appeared at the entrances to all the subway stations. Instead of a fixed plaque or poster, there are 2 screens where you enter/exit the station. One says it has news concerning that particular exit, but really gives basic information. The second one is the subway system’s equivalent of the slide show screens you find at the entrance to residential neighbourhoods, with 3 slides: map of the station, subway map, and map of the neighbourhood. They alternate at 30-second intervals.
The old movie theatres we went to first were on 3 of the four corners of a crossroads. So, this feeds into my idea that the intersection rather than the mall is the topography of leisure/shopping/recreation activities in Shanghai. Later on, when we got to the intersection of North Sichuan Road and East Baoxing Road, we discovered another situation a bit like Wujiaochang, with a big department store on at least two of the corners, each with its own huge screen. The screen on Bali Chuntian (Paris Printemps) there was showing a long (several minutes) public advertisement about how to evacuate a department store in the event of fire. It did not make me want to go into the store.
What follows is fascinating story about a small corner of screen culture in Shanghai today. I wish it was part of our research, but I guess it is not! This is my letter to Katja Wiederspahn in Vienna. She and I are involved in programming some films for an event in Vienna next year.
Dear Katja
Yesterday, the visit to Mr. Liu Debao happened. This was very interesting indeed! I think it promises to be potentially very useful for the Vienna event next year. So, I will give a full report.
**
Mr. Liu has a photography business and is based out in the Putuo neighbourhood of Shanghai. You enter what appears to be a garage space via a roll-up metal shutter. Inside there is a sort of mixed space — part archive, part screening room, part office, part shrine. He has 10,000 + posters and 3,000+ films from the Mao era. The films include everything from documentaries and newsreels to features, including completely forbidden and banned materials. He also has a number of old projectors, old radios etc. In other words, the guy is a classic collector, with his particular fetish and an absolute obsession about it.
In attendance at the meeting were myself, Mr. Liu, Maria Barbieri, Wu Jueren, Professor Shi Chuan, Professor Chris Connery, and 2 of Prof. Connery’s guests. You may know Maria. She lives in Shanghai and has helped various film festivals, especially those in Italy, for a long time. Prof. Shi Chuan is in the film department at Shanghai University. Wu Jueren is his student, and working closely with Liu. Chris Connery is the University of California Education Abroad person here in Shanghai. Except for Wu Jueren, who I have just met, these are all old friends and we all know and trust each other pretty well (I think).
Mr. Liu was born in 1951, and says he is a child of the revolution. He was a Little Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution here in Shanghai. He was approximately 16 when it began. He rose high enough in the ranks to be sent to Beijing twice to see Mao (along with millions of others in Tiananmen Square, no doubt). He clearly is full of nostalgia for the good old days, and very proud of China’s independent achievements during this era. There is an irony here, I would say. He is really part of the generation that were thrown on the scrap heap of history when the government turned to the new market era. But he himself has acted in a thoroughly entrepreneurial manner to survive and thrive in this new era. He helps people to locate and buy Maomorabilia, and he offers to send people copies of the newspaper from their date of birth, etc. But most of all he has turned himself and his unique collection into something that can tour etc.
He explained that he started collecting when he found out people were just throwing their old celluloid out and he could get it for next to nothing. Now he goes to the far ends of the country and even overseas to collect the stuff. It’s sitting in his hot damp garage deteriorating, sadly. The authorities are not interested so far in helping him to preserve it. Either they want to take it from him (in which case it would disappear from view), or they don’t want to know because they are a bit embarrassed about the Cultural Revolution era.
Mr. Liu holds screenings in his garage and even in the alleyway nearby. Friends come round. They spend all day talking about the good old days. He screened the 1966 and 1969 October Day celebrations in Tiananmen Square for us, using one of his old projectors. The projector and Mr. Liu are as important parts of the whole spectacle as the slightly pinkish films. He gives a strong introduction and then off we go. It’s a bit like a benshi performance, except Mr. Liu likes to crank the soundtrack, with its exciting martial music, up as loud as possible!
We then had a long discussion about showing this material. He has been to Singapore and done screenings there. Maria is helping Asian Film Festival in Rome, which apparently runs in November. By coincidence, they are making the Cultural Revolution their theme this year. She asked about the procedures and permissions. Lots of talk about bureaucracy followed. But eventually we understood something important — he was talking about the bureaucracy in Singapore and the visas etc. He didn’t need to get any permissions on the Chinese side. He just went to the airport with his rusting cans of film and his projector and got on the plane. The Chinese authorities only care about new films, he insisted. These are his private possessions. (Again, given his nostalgia for the good old days, this is ironic, too!)
Maria is now going to see if Rome wants to invite him. If they do, then they can be guinea pigs and we will see if there is no problem when he goes to the airport again. In the meantime, I leave it to you to think about whether an evening with Mr. Liu Debao, China’s “Red Collector” (as he is known), would be an interesting and potentially affordable and doable part of next year’s exhibition.
Attached, a few photos.
Much love
Chris
Today is a public holiday (since last year) to mark Mid-Autumn festival. So, no interviews etc are possible. Inspired by Monika and Zlatan’s work at St. Pancras and on the Edgware Road, I decided to go down to the Shanghai South Railway Station and observe passenger behaviour. I was planning to spend a few hours down there. But after an hour, I decided that was enough. First, there was quite a crush. Second, operating by myself, there was only so much I could do before my attention started to flag. And, third, as a custom-designed space, for the most part it seemed to me that things were well-designed. I did not take a camera, as I think we have already photographed everything I was looking at.
Overall, I would say it is absolutely clear that the priority in this station is getting people through it smoothly. The station is part of a nationally-owned network, not a private-public mix or anything like that. Its priority is transport, and that’s all.
11.50 a.m. I arrive on line 1 of the subway system. The subway station is absolutely overrun with people (even worse than I’ve ever seen before). Presumably this is because it’s a holiday, and for some people if they can get away today, they can stay away for a while. Once I get through the subway station and come out into the lower level of the railway station itself, I think about taking up a position to observe. But there’s not really anywhere to get a vantage point, and there are crowds milling about in various directions. To their credit, it hasn’t quite reached the pushing and shoving stage. There is a large screen on the wall near the exit, giving details of arriving trains for those who have come to meet people. This is the northwest exit. I do see people standing and looking to check which trains have come in, and then moving towards the exit. Apart from individuals putting kids down, stopping to talk to their family members or whatever, I don’t see anyone else stopping here or looking at any other screens (e.g. the TV screens with entertainment and commercials hanging from the ceiling). Realizing this is a space to get through, I join the crowds on the escalator up to the 2nd floor level where you enter to get to your train.
12 noon. Coming off the escalator, I move towards the area where the security check is, which is also opposite the street entrance for people arriving by car. This means I am positioned looking at a large LED information board in front of me. The entrance in front of me and to the left is the North-West entrance, between pillars 17 and 18, which is very familiar to me already. It has two security checkpoints, but when I arrive only the one on the left is open. For people arriving by car, the screen is to their right as they walk in. But for people coming up off the 2 escalators — and they are the majority — it is right in front of them, and it remains in front of them as they go into that security line. For them, there is also a sign (non-LED) on the left as they come off the escalator telling them where some waiting rooms are, and another similar one is right in front of them as they come off the escalator. There’s a flight of stairs, too, but I did not notice many people using that. I noticed that someone had written “WC?” in black marker on the sign to the left when you come up off the escalator. I guess he had an urgent need, but I also see his point!
Turning back to observe people coming up off the escalators I count 30 coming up one of the 2 escalators in 1 minute. That means 60 a minute, or 3,600 an hour, plus whoever arrives by road, or in an elevator, or up the stairs — perhaps 4,000 an hour or 4,500. 3 out of 4 entrances are open, so this would mean they are serving between 12,000 and 14,000 departing people every hour (and presumably a similar number of arrivals), not counting those who are just using the subway station. So, they must be easily processing a quarter of a million people every day. No wonder they are not trying to slow them down or get them diverted into shops.
Everyone coming up off the escalator takes a look at the big LED screen. It’s right in their line of vision, and it’s the brightest thing around.
12.10 p.m. I move over to the other side, so that I can observe the people in line better. My position is not quite directly under the screen, but close. People in line are primarily concerned with getting ready for going through security itself. But they also do glance up and down at the big screen. Once they get through security, all the information is repeated (although, as we noted before, not in the same order) on another screen, which is right in front of them. They all look at this, then decide where to go. These screens tell them where to wait for which train, basically. What I would find a bit challenging is that the trains are only identified by numbers and not by destinations.
12.15 p.m. They open the right security line, because the numbers are getting bigger. People look at the screen just before they turn into the right security line, after which the screen is behind them. This line is closed again after 5 minutes, when the immediate crush is over. Since the flow from the escalators leads naturally to the left line, it becomes easy to judge when to close the right line again, i.e. when no people are walking over to take it.
12.25 p.m. I go through security and walk over to a point below pillar18 from which I can see the various waiting areas that go off the central aisle once you get through the ticket check and walk down the ramp. Most people go straight down, but some wait in the same area where I am and where the shops and restaurants are. I think these are people who are too early to be let down into the waiting areas already. The seats in the waiting areas are in rows. The TV screens are at the aisle end, perpendicular to the rows of seats, and the LED screen with more details about the train and telling you when to board is at the other end, where the doors to the corridor down to the platform open. Neither screen is in your line of vision. Nobody watches the TV screens, although some glance at it (and at the info screen) occasionally. This confirms my suspicion that the main function of these TV screens is to tell you it’s OK to wait here. A lot of the people who are not talking to their fellow travellers are busy with various mobile screen-based personal devices (phones, MP3 players, game players etc).
12.30 p.m. Move left to a position below pillar 1 where I can observe the central aisle. People are funnelled down to this via two ramps from where they get their tickets checked after going through security at the Northeast and Northwest entrances. In other words, I am at the North end of the station now, looking South. There is a steady of flow of people down the ramps (I count 109 over 4 minutes coming down one ramp). Once they get to the turn onto the central aisle, the brightest thing is the row of flag-like LEDs at the top of the towers marking off the different waiting areas to the left and to the right. Most look straight up at these to locate their waiting areas, and depending on whether their seat is in a carriage to the left or right, go to wait. This means the train and the platform are below, running East to West. The “flags” are marked with the waiting area numbers, too, although these are not lit up. It’s all very clear, there doesn’t seem to be any wandering around lost, and the flow is smooth and steady. There is a place you can go to here to get a snack, and also there are toilets and so on.
12.40 p.m. I walk past the Northeast check-in area round to pillar 5, where I sit on a ledge around its base, looking at the “soft seat” lounge, i.e. first class. Inside there, the rows of seats are once again arranged perpendicular to the TV screens and information screens, and there are also TV screens above the seats. People look right or left occasionally, but nobody stares at these screens. Again, lots of people are busy with their personal screen-based devices. No one looks at the screens above.
12.55 p.m. The “soft seat” ticket-check ramp opens, and a huge crush of people pours out of the East soft seat lounge and down the ramp, too many to count. They are in a hurry to get on the train, joining the crowd coming out of the regular waiting area.
At this point, I decide I’ve had enough and can go. I guess that Shanghai South does not have the charm of St Pancras. But in a way it’s easier to use. You don’t have to crane your neck or negotiate endless “retail opportunities” to find your way around. On the other hand, it’s not a destination in its own right, and I don’t think it is meant to be or ever will be. It’s very efficient as a space to move through.
This morning, Dan and I decided to simply present ourselves at the Shanghai Gongshang Xingzheng Guanliju, who deal with the content for outdoor advertising on screens such as those at Wujiaochang, and see what happens. We weren’t expecting too much, given how they’d responded to our requests so far. But sometimes it is a good strategy to play dumb foreigner and just walk straight past all the “no entry” signs etc and see what happens. And I am amazed to say that this time it worked.
When we arrived at the building, armed with our passports and identity documents just in case we needed those to even get into the building, we asked to two rather gruff men in uniforms for the media office (who Dan had dealt with on the phone before). They sent us up some stairs to the 3rd floor. This was a mistake, but one that I think worked for us. Once up there, we couldn’t find any sign of the office. So, we asked some people, and soon a rather flustered young woman showed us into a “VIP room” and asked us to wait there while she got someone from the media office. The VIP room was a bit like the sort of space you see Chinese leaders welcome foreign leaders in. It was all golden yellow (the colour exclusively used by Emperors in China before), with 6 very large armchairs organized in a sort of U shape. It was for me as primary guest to sit in one of in the base of the U, and for any host who materialized to sit in the other one. Both of those chairs have their backs to the wall, to protect us from attack from behind (!)
A couple of women in uniform appeared. Once they realized who we were, they were not very impressed, as they clearly had thought it was someone important. One of them was the person Dan had been dealing with on the phone, and who had always been in a hurry to put the phone down on her. Throughout what happened next, she kept asking why Dan hadn’t phoned to say we were coming. Of course, the implication was that if we had done so, she would have told us no one was available. Anyway, we made various excuses (my departure so soon after the public holiday etc), and in the end they got us Mr. Ying Jun (应钧),a vice-Section Head, to come and meet us. We only had a few fairly straightforward questions, which he gave official answers to, all of them quite hard for me to understand because he used specialized bureaucratic language, and also because I was a bit nervous. We recorded the interview (and I noticed that he appeared to be using his mobile phone to do the same thing!), so I hope that Dan’s transcription will help me to understand more.
Basically, I understood him to tell us that most of the people they deal with arrive quite well-briefed and knowing what to do, because they have already dealt with the Urban Beautification Offices at the local council level before they arrive at this City-level office. In other words, they are stage 2 in the process for an applicant. (Dan comments: I think he pretended not to understand your question purposely. Not because your expression isn’t clear enough. He played dumb too. I don’t know why he refused to tell us if all applicants are well-briefed. According to my experience of dealing with other bureaucracy, they’re indifferent and gruff. You have to come again and again to understand their rules of game. They should have got tons of complaints on their complicated procedures.)
I asked about the levels of compliance with regulations and undertaking processes of application, especially for small shops and so on, who might simply have a “walking word” screen, the content of which changes daily. I’m not 100% confident that I understood his reply. But I think he said that if those “walking word” screens were simply informing people of the nature of the business, then it was not really necessary for his office to deal with them, but that in theory any commercial content intended to promote sales did come under their remit. (Dan explains further: He meant that if you use the screen itself to make profit, like rent the screen out to a media company to broadcast other information than promote your own business. You need to apply to their department.) They had not done any actual research into levels of compliance, but they were aware that obviously not everyone gets permission right away. Inspections and checking out what is happening in the field is delegated down to local level offices, and is not something his office deals with directly.
We also had a bit of a discussion about non-advertising content. For example, what if you intended to use a screen to put up an artwork? In principle, all non-advertising content would need to go to be approved by the local level Cultural Bureau. Certainly, you can’t just go putting things up in public without permission. (In reality, people do stick phone numbers for various dubious services all over the place, and the local city government tears them down, but obviously, an LED screen would be harder to use without the city government noticing!). (Dan adds: He says that Zhongguo Guangdian Ju (broadcast and TV and Movie administration) is in charge of non-commercial art-works. Actually my friend told me, usually if your work is not ad, you just need to talk to the owner of the Screen to get their permission. My friend in Beijing Film Academy is doing research on installation art-works in public space. He might know more about that. I’ll check with him later.)
Dan asked about ads that were nationally produced. Before those are shown on a local LED screen, do they need local level approval? My understanding is that just so long as they are nationally approved already, then there is no need for that. (Dan adds: He says that all TV or Movie ads are no need to get approved before they were shown. If anything goes wrong, Gongshang Ju might punish them. Only ad in public space, especially two dimensional ads, need to be approved before put it on. That’s my understanding.)
After this huge achievement, we had lunch and then went book shopping, and also made some progress there. The heat was ghastly. There were huge crowds on Fuzhou Road, where the bookstores are, because there is also a famous producer of the hockey-puck-sized “mooncakes” everyone is supposed to give on Mid-Autumn festival tomorrow. In the evening, met with Tani Barlow of the journal Positions, who would like me to submit an article on the Shanghai side of our project. Given that they are one of the most prestigious Asian Cultural Studies journals, this is a good opportunity I must try to take up.
Today, I get a sense that the law of diminishing returns is beginning to make itself felt. But maybe that is a good sign. Maybe it means the end of data gathering is in sight.
This morning, Dan informed me that the Shanghai Industry and Commerce Administration (or whatever they are called — the Shanghai Gongshang Xingzheng Guanliju) responded to our list of questions by telling her it’s all on the website and that there is no need for us to go talk to them. It’s not all on the website, so this is obviously an attempt to evade us. And our efforts to find the right person to talk to about the SMG-controlled up-market screen on the front of the New Era Mall have not got very far yet.
We had an appointment with the locally-based ad company that controls the shabbier screen on the front of the Orient Shopping Plaza. So we went over to nearby Fudan University first. We also decided to get them to write us another letter of introduction to the Shanghai Industry and Commerce Administration, asking for their cooperation and explaining that not everything we need to know is on their website. Whether this will get us anywhere, I doubt. But it’s worth a try. When dealing with government here, you have to have this kind of official introduction letter. Thank goodness we have that link into Fudan, otherwise we would be completely stymied.
Meanwhile, a chance meeting with Lu Xinyu (who I’ve just co-edited a book on Chinese documentary with) at Fudan led to her putting us in touch with the head of the advertising department there, a Professor Cheng who she said was very knowledgeable about everything we need to know more about. That might be so, but when we contacted her, we got the sense that Professor Cheng was very busy and also rather formal, as she asked us to send her a list of questions etc etc. Well, maybe we come across as amateurs outside the field to her, and since we’re on the verge of a new public holiday (which, if I’d known about, I would have tried to avoid), I can understand she must be very busy. Who knows if she will consent to give us an audience?
After all that, I was very relieved to have a very short but very interesting interview with Ms. Chen Jie (陈洁) of Single Movie and Media (森格影视传媒), the company responsible for the screen on the front of the Orient Shopping Plaza. Their offices are on the 9th floor of the Pingsheng Building (平盛大厦), which is just north of the New Era/Youyi mall on Songhu Road. It is probably quite new, but is already beginning to feel a bit shabby, especially once you get past the lobby into the scratched up elevators. Ms. Chen apologized because she’d been hoping to set up a meeting with her boss, but he was out of town that day. The office itself was a very ordinary and unpretentious set-up with no reception area and nothing to show off. Ms. Chen gave us a flyer introducing the company, which features the Orient Shopping Plaza screen very heavily. It’s their symbol, I guess. She explained that they are not so much an advertising company per se as a media company that does things like shoot company videos, ads, etc. The scope of their business is the whole of Shanghai in theory, rather than being national, but I got a sense that they are heavily focused on Wujiaochang/Pentagon Plaza itself. So, immediately there is a major contrast between them and Shanghai Media Group, the dominant player in this market, and controller of the New Era screen.
Ms. Chen told us that they have always owned the screen on the Orient Shopping Plaza, and that, as far as she is aware, they do not pay any annual fee to the Orient Shopping Plaza for it because the physical thing is theirs. We queried whether they had to pay to hang it on the front of the OSP, and she said “no”. (Therefore, of course, it is also the case that the OSP has no say regarding what is on the screen and so on). Afterwards, Dan and I had a discussion about this. I remember the woman we met at the OSP telling us they did collect an annual fee for renting the space to the ad company that controls the screen. Dan also remembers her saying OSP owned the screen and rented it out. So, there’s obviously some confusion here. I guess it’s not so surprising: things like the annual rent for the screen and so on are a bit far removed from the daily business that these women are concerned with conducting. However, it makes sense is the screen is actually owned by Single Media. Having now seen other branches of OSP downtown, I realize it is actually a very up-market brand, a sort of Harvey Nichols of Shanghai. But the tatty screen and kitschy local ads really drag the image down, and I cannot imagine that they would tolerate it if they had any control over it.
Asked about the deteriorating quality of the screen, she claimed they had someone lined up to come along and fix it. Apparently, it is not difficult to fix an LED nor is it expensive, but the problem is finding someone with the skills to do it (like finding a plumber in London!). They have also considered putting a newer and bigger screen in, but that would involve negotiating with OSP etc etc.
As for clients, some seek them out. Otherwise, they depend upon the boss’s long-distance connections (he is from Fujian), and on spotting new businesses opening up in the neighbourhood and asking them. In other words, this screen is for people who cannot afford the SMG screen. She also pointed out that a very different target audience is involved, as the SMG screen cannot be seen easily by pedestrians in the sunken plaza, but is instead most visible to drivers in cars. Later, Dan observed that SMG is still a state enterprise and sees itself as the mouthpiece of the party and state, so they may not be so bothered that they don’t have a lot of commercial ads and are doing so much public service advertising. (Maybe, but I bet they’d go for more commercial advertising if there was interest in doing it out here in Yangpu.)
All in all, we got a very strong sense of a hierarchy of screens and advertising practices, plus of target consumers. I think this is going to help me to write a “tale of two screens” quite a lot.
Very interesting day today, although not really for reasons to do with this project directly. After fruitlessly searching for books recommended by a contact at dinner last night (I’ll find some other way to get them), I went over to the Moganshan Road art district, where H-Space had a new show (Useful Life 2010) featuring new work by Yang Fudong. This time I really did relate to it. (Pity I didn’t when Frieze asked me to write about his work a few years ago.) In addition to a photo series called “International Hotel” of girls in 1980s-style one-piece swimming suits of the type you suddenly saw in China then, there was a 6-screen projection called “Film Night.” The screens all overlapped a bit, the cameras panned a bit, there were props from 1930s Shanghai and 1930s buildings, it was in black-and-white, and featured a number of lost-looking characters wandering around. Maybe it’s a response to the idea of modernity in China today as also shocking and disorienting. It was eerie and beautiful. I wish I could take my Magic & Real students to it in a few weeks. A few days ago I was wondering about how galleries displayed video here. I guess this is my answer. The space is darkened, discouraging people from wandering in and out and talking with each other or chatting on their mobile phones. The piece is short, and so people can come in, sit down, and watch it like a regular short experimental movie.
In the evening, a few of us went to a public talk by Prof. Wang Xiaoming of East China Normal University. It was called “The City Has Problems” and in it he talked about a website he’s been running in an effort to stimulate debate. He told us they wanted to use the same title for a book derived from postings to the website, but that they weren’t allowed to use that because it is too negative. That, he said, was the first problem. But then it became a New Left thing about the “logic of capital” that I felt was a stalking horse for talking about absence of democracy (which of course is something you can’t talk about at all). No air con, 30+, I confess I didn’t stay to say “hello” to him because I felt so exhausted by the end of it.
Back to the SSTM. Xin Ge lined up Mr. Zhang Dajin (张大谨), whose work in the Exhibition Education Section (展示教育处) includes audience research. Dan and I both had a sense that he was giving us a report, but he was good at it. Most of it was recorded, and that will be transcribed later. The good bits, as ever, came after the recorder was turned off.
First, he explained to us that they have 3 main types of audience research. One is the collection of basic statistics on what the age, educational background, etc etc is of visitors, how they knew about the museum and so on. He explained that they do this work by questionnaire interviews during busy times in the museum, such as the Spring Festival season. They wait until people are sitting on a break, and then ask, say, every 5 people.
Second are investigations into audience satisfaction on 12 aspects of service from ticket selling through to souvenirs. If I understood correctly, they do this every Wednesday (quiet day) and Saturday (busy day), doing more sampling on the busy day to be representative. Because people are asked why they are dissatisfied if they are, the transcription and analysis of material like this takes a while.
The third type are investigations at the behest of particular departments, such as the work they have been doing recently for Xin Ge’s department in connection with the plans to start regularly renovating and renewing galleries. In relation to this, they need to know what the audience enjoys in a particular gallery as well as what particular experts think is outdated and needs renewal. Here he spoke about doing a lot of research based on observing behaviour, e.g. how long people hang out at an exhibit, the expressions on their faces, etc. They also do individual interviews as part of this work. They report the information back to the commissioning department, which then analyzes it. They also do special investigations on temporary exhibitions, and investigations about members of the museum.
The first and second types of investigation form the bulk of their work. (Dan: They do the first two types of investigation every week, every month and every year.)
After the recorder was turned off, we talked more. He explained that the wide range of methods also included online research and telephone interviews. For the observation of behaviour, he spoke about choosing people and following them unobserved, and how he often employed college students to do this work.
He explained that the material they gather is circulated internally, but not made public or shared to any large degree with others. (Dan: They have an SSTM internal magazine. Sometimes the results are published in that magazine. )
We had a discussion about touch screens. When I told him that people seem to be happy spending quite a lot of time with them in London, he said touch screens had not proved popular previously in Shanghai. 40% of respondents told them they came to the museum for a good time, and having fun is their number one priority. Mr. Zhang feels that it is unlikely that Chinese visitors want to find what they could equally well find on the web, for example. They could do that at home. They have paid for a ticket (unlike London) and they don’t want to waste their time doing something they could do outside. Also, there is so much pressure on Chinese kids at school now, their parents want them to have a break from textbook-based schoolwork when they come to the museum. Mr. Zhang expressed the opinion that kids in the UK already have a good quality of life, and that parents here are getting more concerned about quality of life.
After our interview with Mr. Zhang, I went back into the museum, as I have become more interested in different kinds of “interactivity”. Coming to this initially from our screen project, I thought of this mostly in terms of interaction with screens. Then Xin Ge’s essay made me a bit doubtful about that — does touching a screen mean there is real mental interaction? Now, I’m also more and more interested in the idea of an embodied experience of the museum as another kind of interaction, and also the question of interaction amongst visitors.
I entered about11. It was a busy Saturday. I went up to the 3rd floor and walked into the World of Robots. There was a Robot Calisthenics exhibit going on — industrial robots dancing, basically. Not much chance for direct physical interaction here, but parents were busy holding the kids up and talking to them. I got a very strong sense that it is families that come to the museum, and they come because the museum helps them to have family quality time. Contrary to what Mr. Zhang said, a bank of screens and benches activated by ball mouse was well-patronized. I found this in various other places. Although screens you could not activate with a mouse — i.e. ones you just looked at — were ignored, those you could do things with were popular. Again, each bench seemed to accommodate a little nuclear family (as we saw before at the IBM-sponsored benches.) In the World of Robots hall, the two exhibits that got a line of people waiting to take part were the archery contest (compete against robots) and a karaoke show where the kids sign along while a robot plays the piano. Heaps of interactivity, and very embodied and physical.
Downstairs in Light of Wisdom, the brainwave thing continued to be very popular — again, a very embodied exhibit!
This morning, Wu Dan and I had another interview with Xin Ge. She told us she is very busy with their new Natural History Museum project in the Jing’an District over in Puxi. Still, she was as straightforward, informative, and intelligent as ever! This is someone I would love to develop a real research project with in the future!
The most interesting parts of the discussion came, as ever, after the recorder was turned off. One part, which I did not really understand very well, was about displaying “specimens” (biaoben). I think it was something about how everything is becoming pictures and electronic representations, but I need Dan to help on that one, because I was confused by hearing “spacemen” when the Chinese word was translated for me! （Dan adds: 忻歌告诉我们，这个新的自然博物馆是这一届市政府的重点项目之一，某位领导非常重视，（sorry, I don’t get the name of the governor.）他提出的要求是要造出一个生动活泼的博物馆，要重视互动性，要有新鲜感。要打破以往人们对自然博物馆的固有印象。关于怎么样制造新鲜感。忻歌和其它一些专家有不同看法。有人提出动物标本的战士背景换成电影，而不是像现在一样是固定的绘画背景。如果用投影，可以制造出动物生前生活的环境，可以有一年四季的变化。视觉上更吸引人一些。但是忻歌持保留态度。她认为标本是死的，放在变化的电影背景前，效果不一定好，而且标本周围模拟的石头树木花草也都是固定的，不可能随着电影里四季的变化而变化。会给观众奇怪的感觉。这种展示方式是否合适，还需要进一步探讨。Chris’s translation: Xin Ge told us that the Natural History Museum is a key project for the government. A leader whose name we did not catch has placed great emphasis on it, demanding that the museum should be very vibrant, with much interactivity and originality. It has to sweep away people’s established ideas about Natural History Museums. Xin Ge and the other experts have different opinions about how to achieve this sense of something new. One person has suggested changing the painted backdrops they have now behind the animal specimens to projected backdrops. In this way, the environment can change with the seasons, and this will be more attractive. Xin Ge prefers to keep things as they are. The specimens are dead. Neither they nor the rocks and so on will change with the seasons like the film. The audience will think it’s weird. So they need to explore a bit more before deciding whether this is the way to go or not.）
Xin Ge also showed us a fascinating illustration in her notebook, which came from a meeting where they were trying to conceptualize their work. It showed various elements making up an exhibit, then an arrow to the word “story”, another arrow to “experience”, then another to “emotion” and a final arrow to “action.” She went on to say, in the context of a discussion we’d had about how much more embodied and corporeal the engagement is in the SSTM than in the London SM, where it seems to me more screen-mediated, that she wasn’t so bothered about whether they try touch-screens again or not. For her, the key issue is how to get to “action” regardless of the technologies involved, as in the example of getting visitors to start paying more attention to environmental protection. Somewhere in the same discussion, she also said that if the London Science Museum uses screens to give layers of information, the reason they don’t really do that at the SSTM is that they don’t think everything has to be done in the museum, and that they think with the limited time people have to visit (usually a half-day), they don’t want to stand at one exhibit digging deeper and deeper, but might follow up on that later, perhaps back in the classroom in the case of schoolkids. So, here I think we see different philosophies and different usages of screens between London and Shanghai (never mind the 6 October Panorama!). When I get back to London, I must make another visit to the London SM to think a bit more about this. Meanwhile, I need to try to find time to go back to the SSTM one more time to think more about the “interactivity” of embodied engagement there and take some photos to go with that idea, if I can. Overall, I am getting more and more impressed with how uninhibited the kids are encouraged to be here, and how strongly the museum designers have been able to resist the push towards pedagogy from an older generation. I think this might be a real qualitative leap.
Even though she wrote it many years ago and clearly feels it is well past its use-by date, she gives us permission to translate her essay on interactivity and quote from it if we wish to.
When we first heard about the plan to scrap the AV Paradise and extend the Children’s Playground, Xin Ge told us that they were going to keep some of the exhibits and would sell some of them on to other museums. We can’t see any of the old exhibits anywhere in the museum. The nearest thing to it is a new version of the little actor thing (discussed yesterday). Xin Ge tells us that they have kept a couple of the exhibits, including the very popular Sydney Harbour boast simulator and the sound room, but they are in storage at the moment, as they figure out where to put them. The rest they have donated lock, stock and barrel to a new science museum that is being established in Inner Mongolia. That’s another aspect of the old and the new. What is now old in Shanghai becomes the newest thing in Inner Mongolia.
She acknowledged that a lot of the exhibits in the Children’s Playground weren’t working yet and that there were a lot of problems to be ironed out. Originally, it was planned that the kid would pick up different coloured bracelets. They would then hold them up to screens as they went around the different exhibits doing things, and get stars to attach to them as they finish each project. Possibly the colours of the stars vary according to their scores and they end up with a personalized bracelet. But the technology is not robust enough yet (was that the problem, Dan? (Dan: Yes. The main problem is at the gate of the gallery. Those machines to distribute empty bracelets often get stuck. Since the company to make the machine is good at software design rather than hardware design. They are repairing those machines now, but if they can’t or take too long, Xin Ge says they will choose other company to do this. They will not cancel the bracelet project.) and so the company that has developed this is still working on it. We discussed whether the sheer number of users was more than they could cope at the time when they opened, and also whether maybe Chinese kids are stronger than anyone realized! We also discussed the Chinese tendency to get the basic operation going and then fix it later, as opposed to the tendency elsewhere to delay an opening and complete all the testing and then open it, even if that entails delays (see my discussion of the subway above). Xin Ge explained that often the leadership has made a decision about a certain symbolically significant date, and so that has to be stuck to, even though ideally a later opening should be found.
Xin Ge also went through the whole process of how they decided to re-design the Children’s Playground over 2 years, which, I think will be a very useful breakdown once the interview is transcribed. If I understood correctly, it took more than a year to decide that the first exhibition hall they would like to renovate after being open for 8 years was the Children’s Playground. They decided on that because they thought it should be fairly manageable as a place to try this for the first time, they had noticed that it was overcrowded, and it needed updating. They also felt that it needed enlarging because, apart from this, there is very little in the museum for under-10s. They went to lots of other museums both in China and overseas to do comparisons, and they also consulted with experts on children, kindergartens, and so on. Later, having come up with the ideas, they gave the job to German company whose work Xin Ge had seen at another nearby museum (which one, Dan? Anting Motor Car Museum. West of Shanghai. The German company ATB). This company also designed the construction of the exhibits for the new BMW Museum in Munich. The actual construction was done locally.
In designing the new Children’s Playground, first they thought about dividing it according to function: a section on looking, a section on touching, and so on. But a kindergarten expert told them that small children cannot really discriminate between those different kinds of actions. They thought about having areas called “nature” and “energy” and so on. But every other museum does that and they wanted something new. So, then they came up with “light” as a theme, and figured out how to structure the exhibits around that. But that was also a bit abstract, although more original. Eventually, they got the idea of the rainbow theme, which is what they are using now. Of course, what interests me is that the rainbow is full of that sense of enchantment and wonder which we know is so important to getting anyone engaged with science.
We also spoke about the fact that there did not seem to be many instructions and that some of the exhibits were confusing to us. Xin Ge told us they want the kids to explore and work it out for themselves, although there are instructions on the walls if you really need them.
This evening I had dinner with Zhang Shujuan, a former student of Lu Xinyu who has made quite a lot of perceptive comments about our project before. Tonight, however, we spoke about the World Expo, which she has not been to. None of my Shanghai friends have gone to it. But they are all full of horror stories they have heard about it. Someone (I think Lu Xinyu) told me the locals got very upset when the German pavilion folk tried to make them line up in an orderly fashion, and they started chanting “Nazis, Nazis.” Then the Germans got offended and closed their pavilion for a day or two. Today, I heard from Shujuan that the Egyptians are upset because the Chinese visitors keep touching the ancient things in their pavilion. (So why have it where they can touch it?) It doesn’t sound like a fun day out to me.
T-shirts of the day. The well-upholstered matron with the angry look on her heavily made-up face sitting opposite me on the subway wears a T-shirt. Picked out in rhinestones across her chest are two huge words: DEADLY SINS. This evening, I see a very conventional-looking middle-man with a solid and square haircut and heavy glasses wearing a shirt that says “Camping Happy Boy.”
Today Wu Dan and I went to check out the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum. Since our last visit, not only has the AV Paradise been closed, but the Children’s Playground has been revamped and taken up what was its space. Xin Ge told us a while ago that probably they would sell off the old exhibits, but that some might stay in the Museum. Today we wanted to check all that out before we go to see Xin Ge tomorrow. After basically going to the train station and Wujiaochang and feeling that I didn’t really need to bother, it was good to go somewhere it felt worthwhile!
On the way over on the subway, I noticed that the LED countdown clocks are all still going, even though the World Expo is already running. Now they’ve been changed to record the number of days the Expo has been going! I guess, having installed the equipment all over town, they are loathe to get rid of it. Maybe they could turn the blue condom mascot into the official symbol of the city. Then they could just leave all of those where they are, too! I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but a huge LED has been put round the Post Office Tower in London, with a countdown to the Olympics on it.
Inside the SSTM, we found a much enlarged Children’s Playground. The theme is the rainbow. It is designed for 3-10 year olds, but they let the rest of us in, too. All the exhibits are at a height suitable for someone of that age (which made for quite a lot of ducking and weaving for us!). Although there are not many interactive touch-screens, a lot of interactive exhibits are based on computerized technology and incorporate screens in them in various ways. For example, there’s a floor of about a dozen screens which plays a video game where monsters appear out of the ground and it’s your job to stomp on them and make them disappear. I had a good time with that one, imagining myself dealing with all my least favourite bureaucrats! Others were interactive but did not involve screens at all. For example, there is a wall with holes in it. You stick your hand in, feel around and try to imagine what animal’s skin you are feeling. Then you can push the button and a picture of the animal lights up. (Both Dan and I found this a bit creepy, especially as a kiddie had already pulled the head off the stuffed rabbit!)
One of the exhibits appeared to be inspired by what used to be in the AV Paradise. There used to be an exhibit that mimicked a TV studio. The kid went inside and did a skit of some sort while his/her parents sat outside and watched their darling’s 15 minutes of fame on the screen outside. The kid could see themselves on screens inside. This now appears as “Be your own actor”, an exhibit in which kids run around inside against a blue screen and appear on screens outside as though they were on the beach or on the moon. The other exhibit seemed to be trying to teach the visitor something about cameras and performance etc. This one requires no actual manipulation of technology, but I guess it is aimed at a very young generation, so it could not. Given our interest in visitor “experience” and the whole question of what “interactivity” really means, it will be interesting to see what Xin Ge has to say about this.
We also noticed that some exhibits are engaged with history and pre-history. There are 3 zoetropes (although they are not actually labelled as such), for example. However, all the original AV Paradise exhibits have gone. I wonder where to?
Overall, I would say that while there is every effort to make every exhibit here and elsewhere in the museum interactive, almost none are touch-screen and most involve physical interaction, often involving more than one person. For example, we saw a new exhibit in the Light of Wisdom gallery where two people sat facing each other, a band with sensors was put round their foreheads, and they tried to push a ball towards their opponent using their brainwaves, so to speak. I presume the sensors pick up sweat on your forehead or increased pulse rates? This drew quite a crowd and was very popular! There are no screens giving lots of layers of background information, so all this is quite a contrast to the London Science Museum. Maybe I will ask Xin Ge more about this tomorrow.
As ever, I noticed lots of uninhibited kids running around the museum having a lot of fun.
Meanwhile, Dan is having mixed results with our efforts to talk to advertisers and other organisations behind various screens and their contents. But we do have one lined up for Monday.
This morning I went down to Shanghai South Railway Station to see if there was anything significantly different from what we’ve seen before. Nothing. It is milling with people, and so I see more and more that it has not been designed as a retail opportunity, but rather that the architecture and the screens are all about getting people in and out as quickly and smoothly as possible. The security seemed slightly stepped up (more clearly designated lines). But there the same areas were accessible without a ticket as before.
This evening I went up to Wujiaochang/Pentagon Plaza again. Much is as it was, but whatever the new building on the corner of Handan Road and Siping Road is, it’s going up fast. That leaves only one corner unoccupied, and I think a hotel is planned for that. I guess the main change in this part of the world is that the subway is making it more accessible at last. But the subway still closes at 7 or so at night, because it’s still under experimental operation. I guess they’re running it in. Once normal hours are in operation, that will be very good for Wujiaochang, because that place only really gets busy in the evening. With Mid-Autumn Festival just round the corner, the stores that sell mooncakes and so on were absolutely hopping.
As far as screens are concerned, the same set-up is in place. However, I couldn’t help but notice that even on the shiny “new” screen, some of the LED pixels are failing and signalling the wrong colours already. The literature I’ve seen speaks of LEDs as hard-wearing and longlasting, and given the expense and how hard it is to get up there to fix them, they should be. But… I’m not so sure.
Over dinner, Lu Xinyu told me she thinks that memorial arches were paid for by the family (or clan organization) concerned, and ditto for most “pailou” arches etc. She doesn’t think the government was involved. All interesting to try and find out more about.
Dan is finding it difficult to find the right people and set up interviews. There just isn’t a culture of public access here. I guess also for the commercial ventures, we have nothing to offer them, so I can understand we are of little interest to them. But of course it is frustrating.
I’ve been on the subway 7 times so far. Again, it’s all much as before. But I am more and more conscious of how dodgy the reception is down there and how that often messes up the in-train TV or the platform TV. Also, the screens are turned off in the trains quite often.
Finally, I’ve been noticing people with t-shirts with English on them again. Today, a man wearing “Hello, Teacher. Good Morning. How are you?” Yesterday, a young man with “I don’t need sex. The government fucks me every day.” Lucky boy.
