The field trip to Shanghai Street came quite unexpectedly but the street name only rang a teeny weeny bell in my mind; I'd heard of the street name before but I had no idea it's located at Yau Ma Tei, let alone knew what the street got lauded and famous for. So it's all strange and new to me. I visit Yau Ma Tei quite often but I guess somehow I just never wandered into the street or I wasn't aware of it even if I did. It's around 4:30pm that we started exploring the street. The street echoed a certain, distinct old Hong Kong feeling. Some of the streets in the Shueng Wan district also carry that kind of vibe. What forged this sense of feeling, I think, might be the interaction among the passengers, residents and the space soaking them. I didn't exactly find a spot to sit down to take field notes. What I instead did was walking down the street; still, I spent almost half a hour at the Shanghai Street Artspace observing and chatting with the passerby and the shopkeeper. So the field notes are with the main focus on the Shanghai Artspace. Whilst the chief focus is not on the street as a whole, I still feel like it would be a pity not to cover some of my observation on the street so this blog post will shed lights on two parts in spite of just one. |
Part 1: From tip to toe - Shanghai Street
Starting from Yau Ma Tei (YMT) , we strode along the street with a direction towards Mong Kok. The street end near YMT was with much more typically modern, commercial vibrance. It's crowed; flocks of people would line up before a snack shop. You could still see small traces of influence from chain-stores like 7-eleven. You could significantly spot and get a feeling the people hanging around there were in different age groups; there wasn't a specific age group that stood out. And the food smelt and looked so nice, filling the air with such mouth-watering smell. Next to the snack shop was a local bakery,selling pretty usual types of bread; yes, this type of shops might not sell all those new, trendy bread but I think shops like this are dying out in Hong Kong. They sell bread with a lower, fairly more reasonable price and a firm commitment to the neighbor. They sell bread or products that are marked with indigenousness of Hong Kong. There's nothing fancy about these shops nor their products but they are so grounded that's worth even more of our preservation and supports. |
The middle section of the street was comparatively less crowded. And the shops were 90% not related with any chain retail or stores - Local business(wo)men serving for the locals/residents. Quite a number of community service and support centres could be found too. --> look at the pictures: Printing shops, service centres of different communities All these really cement the sense of community and unity in this neighborhood. And you could hardly spot a tourist here in this particular section of the street. Everybody speaks in Cantonese here. Hong Kong has been paying so much emphasis on tourism, desperately turning residential area and nearby streets into shopping malls and tourist spots. This section of Shanghai Street honestly made me so happy for I saw this street really genuinely fulfilling daily needs of the neighborhood, not the greedy developers nor government which misses out on so much of people's actual needs. | |
Reaching the other end of the street, I only found the shop types becoming more and more interesting and indigenous. Yet, I could also spot significantly more hotels/motels as I was getting nearer the other end of the streets. And soon I found tourists waiting and lining up for their shuttle/tour bus. Not that I dislike tourists visiting the street, it's just that quite often the place would undergo massive changes if the developers and government find the area potentially profitable from tourism. And way too many places in Hong Kong lost their history and authenticity because of that already. I'd hate to see Shanghai Street falling into the same fate.
Part 2 - Shanghai Street Artspace
Inside I stayed at Shanghai Street Artspace for around 30 mins, during which I noticed the aura twirling around the space itself quite distinctly different from most parts of the street; it appeared blatantly younger and fresher, younger in a sense that the very existence was with such youthful spirit, fresher in a sense that it reinvented a new presentation of the objects and products from the present and the past, making the space more appealing to both the insiders and the outsiders. The space collected objects of all kinds from the community and sold them at a price determined by the customers. Still, they also sold some signature products of the Artspace itself too: t-shirts, booklets, tote bags( one of which is called Pokkai Bag - pokki is a dirty Cantonese slang whilst the sound pokki is somewhat similar to "ParknShop" in Cantonese and "ParknShop is owned the tycoon Li Ka Shing so this was like a protest against the developers in Hong Kong). But these products were pretty pricey so I didn't buy any. People who entered the shop were mainly students like us or middle-aged or elderly people from the neighborhood. I think this speaks quite a lot about this shop. The space really in a way brings the community closer. Most of them were rather keen to know more about the shop itself too; like when my friends and I chat with the shopkeeper, they stayed and gathered around us to listen to what the shopkeeper replied to us. The shop's goal to thicken the sense of community here in this street was quite a success. There's a free, regular story sharing session at the shop with stories told by the residents and shop-owners themselves - as a means to conserve any formless drips of the past. Not every resident might be with the shop's political stance (there were banners, posters, leaflets and so forth with obvious pro-democratic and umbrella movement logos) but I think their political stance didn't really hinder the assimilation of this shop and its influence into the street and the neighborhood. People know that the shop is helping them, the community, the streets and trying to preserve the fading memories, moments of the people and the space. | |
Outside Outside the shop, there's a bench for visitors or basically anyone to rest and sit on. When I walked out of the shop, I noticed some of my classmates were chatting with an old lady on that bench. Curious, I moved closer and eventually sat beside the lady to hear what they were talking about. The old lady actually had been hanging around the shop for quite some time since I first entered the shop so naturally I suspected that she might be working or just helping out for the shop. Well, I was half right, half wrong. She’s not working for the shop but she’s really passionate about the community and the people in it. Living in the building right across the Artspace, she was, as she claimed, a somewhat like a Chinese medicine practitioner. She didn’t have a proper certificate to prove her worth as a healer but she knew quite a bit or two about Chinese medicine and ways of healing. People would come to her to ask for certain medical advice and conditions. And she never asked for anything in return; she’s just happy to see people being recovered and getting healthy again. She muttered rather severely (even in Cantonese) so bits and pieces of her sayings were lost. But she’s indeed a fascinating character. Speaking of fascinating characters, as we were chatting with the old lady, a man wearing literally scrapped metal shield and goggles walked by us. I vaguely remember that I saw him on the newspaper the other day but unfortunately I can’t recall his name. The two walls of the shop were almost fully covered with leaflets, posters of various kinds, sprays of slogans, ink of a poem and a map displaying the location of independent shops in the neighborhood. The independent shops were seemingly in need of prompt help and support. Some of these shops were calling out for help to sustain their business by posting memo and notecards next to the map. The shop also helped promote and support these shops by collaborating with them; there were coupons of different types of these shops stuck on the wall of the Artspace; people and passerby might ask for one if they’d like one. All of these, in fact, were induced by the shop’s chief aim to revive or at least reserve parts of the glory scene of the street when chain stores and developers weren’t there to upset and disturb the vibrant dynamic between the space of the street and the people. | |