Letter from Shanghai : The Thing
Our man in Shanghai, Tim Gifford, reports every week on the arts and culture shaping the city.
Following my little trip to Shanghai’s alley-of-the-hour, Taikang Lu, and its chic boutique collection, I was inspired to spend a little time thinking about Shanghai’s clothing culture. In a city that is striving to set itself apart from the rest of the country in terms of its design and architectural identity, clothing has become the purest form of self-expression. The streets are buzzing with diverse, distinctive styles, none of which seem to be out of place or contrived.
An especially charming fashion phenomenon is the matching T-shirts sported by young Shanghainese couples. Across the city there are several stores whose sole merchandise is these colourful, cutsie-pie tops with slogans that, in no uncertain terms, declare the young lovers’ affection for each other. It is genuinely uplifting to see them strolling along the busy shopping district in identical t-shirts, celebrating their public expression of mutual individuality. It's a particularly poignant fashion statement, however, considering that only a generation or so ago clothing was a rather precarious issue. Men and women wore similar plain, practical clothes that reflected the tenets of the leading ideology of time, an ideology that viewed unnecessarily extravagant attire as, well, somewhat against the grain. These youngsters of today have generated a modern response to that sentiment by publicising their shared style.
Upon a recent trip to a shopping mall in Shanghai’s western district I discovered a clothes shop that seemed to me to be the next step in the city’s relentless drive for expressive clothing. The Thing is a growing chain of street wear boutiques that specialise in affordable T-shirts and accessories incorporating unique graphic designs. Sounds fairly run-of-the-mill, but the first T-shirt that caught my eye was bright turquoise with an Earthquake Safety Drill print in shocking pink. No need, I imagine, to mention the catastrophic quake that struck Sichuan in May, but with that still weighing heavily in the hearts of the nation it occurred to me that The Thing was a shop with an agenda of its own.
Flicking through the rails of T-shirts (the shop also sells bags, slippers and caps but the majority of the store is taken up by their range of tops) I came across some images that I would never expect to see on the streets of Shanghai. One that sticks particularly in my mind was of street urchins crouched around a bloodied knife, whilst in the background the dismembered limbs of a fresh corpse are poking out from a garbage can. Gritty stuff.
On another, the iconic portrait of Chairman Mao has been transposed into a skeletal effigy in military garb. Finally, my favourite, a mustard-yellow T-shirt emblazoned with ‘So so huang. So so bao li’. A rough translation would be ‘So so pornographic. So so violent’. Aside from the various taboos that such a statement challenges, it was revealed to me that the phrase was taken from an interview with schoolchildren. When asked what they felt about television programmes broadcast in China, that was one of the responses. It was generally assumed, however, that such adult language wouldn’t come from a primary school student and that the reporter had briefed the kids beforehand to get the answer from them. The Thing has seized such poignant events in China’s media and spared no time in casting them unsparingly into the realm of popular culture and kitsch.
I have to admit I bought the earthquake T-shirt. I couldn’t resist its courageous defiance of social conscience. It seemed to me to be brash and tragic all at once. It was obnoxious, vile and utterly remarkable. I am looking forward to seeing where The Thing takes us, how it will continue to unapologetically throw our own sensibilities back in our faces. I still haven’t worn the shirt. I am not that insensitive, that’s the thing.
The Thing: No.22,1F Metrotown,No.890 Changning Road,Changning district, Shanghai, 021-52410007
www.thething.cn
