Perhaps you've seen him, a middle-aged man with a Nikon taking photos of the streets of Shanghai. His name is Jiang Xinyuan, and for the past 12 years he has endeavored to chronicle the city of his memories before it becomes unrecognizable.
A favorite mom-and-pop grocery store where you bought your first ice cream. Gone. The old lane where you visited grandmom during Spring Festival. Gone.
In the name of progress, a whole way of life is slowly fading from the urban landscape. More and more, it exists more in memories than in reality. But if memory fails, there will be another reference thanks to amateur photographer Jiang Xinyuan.
By snapping Shanghai street by street for the past 12 years, Jiang is creating an archive that will jog memories and, perhaps, invite longing. Jiang's ambitious 20-year plan to photograph all the 3,200-plus streets in the city is timely, to say the least; bulldozers in Shanghai never sleep.
"People think I'm crazy. I've been told that I should do something more meaningful, like work around a theme instead of doing this huge, all-inclusive project," he says. "But I believe that these otherwise inconspicuous buildings and people are part of a history that is slowly fading, and I would like to race against the bulldozers."
The petrochemical factory clerk began his crusade in 1990,when a Spring Festival visit to his grandparents' Sichuan Road N.house left him feeling disoriented. While searching for the entrance to their lane, he discovered that the grocery store he frequented as a child was now a fashionable boutique.
"That store was part of my childhood. I used to stand on that counter when I was a kid -and now it's gone," says Jiang. "That was when the idea of photographing the roads, lanes and people's lives occurred to me, because I think that all this is going to change beyond our imagination."
So each Saturday he rises at 5 a.m., breakfasting on biscuits or bread on the road, and commutes the three hours from his home in Jinshan in southwestern Shanghai.
"People often question why I record so many seemingly ordinary things. A hardware store, a community family-planning office, a slogan on the wall. They may seem unremarkable, but as they recede from our line of vision, they are irreplaceable. They make up our history," he explains.
Jiang's photographing plan started out with capturing Shanghai's old town area, in the former Nanshi District (now Huangpu District). He has covered all the streets in Huangpu and Hongkou districts to date, with an accumulated total of about 40,000pictures.Like an ambulance chaser, he rushes to any site marked for redevelopment or greening, and documents the area before the wrecking ball strikes. As a result, Jiang has an intimate knowledge of the city that is hard to beat. When a local newspaper published an article about the "last tange (cobble-stone) road in Shanghai" in 1999, Jiang protested. "There are at least 10other roads like that in Shanghai. I mailed my photos to the editor, but got no response," says Jiang, whose cobblestone-road photos were eventually published in the Hong Kong's Ta Kung Bao.
Still, Jiang says that his goal is simply to document Shanghai, so his energy is focused on completing the project rather than publishing and fame. The encounter with the newspaper made Jiang wish that he was better with words." Even as a Shanghai native, I am constantly struck by the variety I've seen in the city. There is just so much to write about in this city."
Indeed, his discoveries would fill a book. He once came across a northern lane whose residents celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival the old-fashioned way. "Fruits were placed outside, they bowed to the moon -and there was a big red candle said to be able to burn for an entire day," Jiang recalls.
He has unique insight into peoples' lives: residents in old complexes complain about their bitter lives in rundown housing.
The self-taught photographer says that he can feel the changes in Shanghai through people's attitudes towards him. "1995 was a watershed year. Before that, people hated moving out of the downtown area, especially to Pudong. In those days, my photography would anger the residents, because they assumed I was sent by the real estate developer," says Jiang.
He has been interrogated by the police, made to expose his film, but Jiang has also been the beneficiary of the trust and support of complete strangers." There are so many nice people in this city. They offer me water and shelter and help me carry my heavy bags," he adds.
With a meager monthly household income of 2,000 yuan (US$240.96), Jiang's Nikon camera and Canon lens, which cost 20,000yuan,was a considerable investment. He uses mostly black-and-white film, developing and enlarging at home. "I think black-and-white film depicts the feeling of old Shanghai better," he says. Jiang's wife, hang Ying, has been supportive of his project, helping to finance it with her earnings.
"It's been an inspiration to learn that photography masters like Eugen Atget and W.Eugene Smith also spent decades photographing the same city," he says. "I'm not in their league, but this completed project is my small offering."
(eastday.com June 11, 2002)
