A common frustration I hear from Americans visiting Japan is that "everything is so Western!" Their fantasy of an exotic Asia where women still run around in traditional clothes, like the little girl here in a kimono, and streets are lined with rickety, charming storefronts is utterly destroyed by the throngs of men in business suits pouring in and out of modern highrises.Recently over Christmas dinner the topic came up in relation to China. My parents, who visited China a few years ago, lamented that the old neighborhoods in Shanghai were being torn down to make way for modern offices. Such a shame they are not keeping their past...or is it?
First of all consider that a a lot of those "traditional" neighborhoods were probably cleansed of any real historical content under the many decades of Communist rule anyway. So how can we say whether these old buildings are "authentic," and how do we know if the Shangaiese really care about them, even if we do because they make for good photo backdrops?
It is unfair of us to encourage economic and political development in the non-Western world and not accept the fact that modernization entails discarding old ways. Just look at our own country! Sure we like to collect antiques and preserve our historic parts of our cities, but I venture this has less to do with a desire to preserve the past for its own sake than a reaction to the mass consumer culture that has homogenized virtually every aspect of our lives. I can think of three new shopping malls in my city (one is the picture above, Bridgeport Village) boasting of chie-chie boutiques whose design resembles a theme-park fantasy of the past.If this is our way of bringing tradition into the future, how can we criticize the Chinese? But hey, hats off to Disney, for sugar-coating the cultural execrement known as the strip mall that stands in place of mom-and-pop shops or the Walmarts that cover once-treasured pastureland.
A hot new spot in Shanghai, I read, is a provocative East-meets-modern development called Xintiandi (here's some good pictures). The buildings are based on traditional Shanghai brick town houses that contain international boutiques, stylish cafes, and trendy bars. A writer in The New Yorker (12/26/05 & 1/2/06) writes, that Xintiandi "is a stage set of an idyllic past, created so that people in China can experience the same finely wrought balance of theme park and shopping mall that increasingly passes for upscale urban life in the US." For people in China, yes, but half of the visitors are foreigners.
Part of me enjoys these themescapes for they are better than the alternative - a non-distinct modernism eviscerated of any local, historical relevance. However, I am uncomfortable that Asian developers and designers are looking to the West for inspiration on recovering and commercializing their own past (Xintiandi's architect also designed Boston's Quincy Market).
Having lived in Japan for some time I can say for sure that things like a geisha's kimono, a forlorn shakuhachi or a Shinto shrine are beautiful and dreamy. But they have become superficial, reified museum pieces of the past. The real legacy of premodern Japan is will not be found in these quaint cultural objects, but in the very subtle ways in which the Japanese make modern life their own. I am sure that in modern Shanghai too there is a whole lot of old China, but, contrary to the illusion, it is unlikely to be very apparent to the tourist visiting places like Xintiandi.
