Artful Construction Sites: Seoul's Digital Media City

This summer I've been living at the DMC Ville, a set of serviced apartments in the Sangam District in Seoul. We are right next to the Digital Media City, an area that has been developed recently with the specific purpose of concentrating the media companies in the city. Everywhere around us are construction sites with new buildings rising. In order to make the area look presentable while all that construction goes on, artists have been commissioned to decorate the walls built around the sites. There's some pretty funky art out there if you walk around. Here are some examples. I've posted more photos of the wall art of Sangam DMC here.
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A Shanghailander in Seoul VI: So Long Seoul (for now)

It has been a grueling six weeks. Four hours of class per day, eight new lectures per week with only minor overlaps to previous subjects I've taught. As for weather, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of sunny days I've seen in Seoul since arriving in late June. We've had drenching downpours and even a deluge that brought the city to a standstill. But compared to what folks have been enduring in other parts of the world--namely shocking heat waves--I can't complain.
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Another review of my book Shanghai's Dancing World

From a forthcoming issue of Pacific Affairs SHANGHAI'S DANCING WORLD: Cabaret Culture and Urban Politics, 1919-1954. By Andrew David Field. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2010. xv, 364 pp. (Tables, maps, B&W photos, illus.) US$25.00, paper. ISBN 978-962-996-448-1. /em> This is a refreshingly well-written and richly detailed account of the world of cabarets, nightclubs and elite ballrooms in Shanghai during its jazz-inspired "golden age" from 1919 to 1954, as well as a wider social history of this important city during an extraordinary period of political upheaval in China. It intertwines its stories about nightlife adeptly with critical episodes in modern Chinese history, and is therefore also a story about China itself, as well as about its most hedonist city. Others have described Shanghai's famous nightlife too, but this book is based on previously untapped government documents, newspapers, magazines, novels, photo archives and other materials, and stands out as the most comprehensive and most detailed source on the subject. The book is a must for any library about modern China. I recommend it too for non-China readers who are interested in urban social history, as well as for readers in general who simply want something interesting, fun and intelligent to read. The book is that good; Andrew David Field, an independent scholar-historian, is to be congratulated and deserves to be recognized for his accomplishment.
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A Shanghailander in Seoul V: Beating the Rainy Day Blues

I'm sitting in a cafe across the street from where I currently reside, the DMC Ville.  The cafe is a chain called Twosome Place and they make a decent latte and have a nice brunch set (I usually go for the eggs benedict).  It's a good alternative workspace to my apartment, which is where I usually work, building the eight lectures I have to give each week.  

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A Shanghailander in Seoul IV: A "Field Trip" to the Ehwa Museum

Ehwa Women's University is located right across the road from Yonsei.  On Wednesday I walked with my Premodern World History students and my TA Calvin Kim (who has been an enormous help) over the hill to the Ehwa Campus where we visited the Ehwa University Museum.  They have a nice collection of Korean historical artifacts and they were hosting a comparative exhibition on Korean, Chinese, and Japanese depictions of male and female beauty.

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A Shanghailander in Seoul III: Getting Squared with Seoul Circles,

It has been two weeks since my last confession (in a way, these blogs are a sort of confessional ritual).  I wanted to write one blog a week, but to be honest for the first three weeks, other than the mountain climb I wrote about in the last entry, I have really done nothing of great interest aside from prepping for my two world history classes.  But this past weekend I finally got out and enjoyed a couple of dinners with different groups of people here in Seoul.  Both nights involved a lot of barbequed meat and plenty of maekju (beer) and soju (a Korean liquor somewhere between rice wine and vodka).

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A Shanghailander in Seoul II: Climbing Seoul Mountains

Seoul is very spread out and as I said it is surrounded by mountains.  They are small mountains to be sure, but they still loom impressively in the distant skyscape.  This city is far more connected to nature than Shanghai.  While I haven't had much opportunity to explore the urban environment apart from two supermarket department stores and the Yonsei Campus, I did take up an invitation on Saturday to climb a nearby mountain called Achasan.  This was the first real cultural experience I've had here outside of the university environment.

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A Shanghailander in Seoul Part 1: Touched Down and Settling In

I'm sitting in the study room of a serviced apartment in the middle of a corporate office zone in a neigborhood called Sangam-dong. Outside it's raining, dark, and grey. I'm surrounded by nearly identical corporate buildings identified with huge numbers on them. I could be in any big city in the capitalist world. There's a Matrix-like feel to the neighborhood. But somehow it also reminds me of Fight Club. Maybe it's the corporate art sculptures next to the coffee shops.
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Two Plays Now Showing in Shanghai: God of Carnage and Deer Cauldron Tale

The rainy season is upon us. For the past two weeks the skies over Shanghai have been grey and drizzly, with occasional downpours like angry outbursts of a mad god. This is a good time to escape the rainy day depression by exploring the world of theatrical entertainment that Shanghai offers. Over the past week I have seen two staged plays at Shanghai's Dramatic Arts Center (上海话剧艺术中心) on Anfu Lu. The first was an adaptation into Chinese of the play God of Carnage written by Yasmina Reza, which was performed in Zurich, London, on Broadway, and now here in Shanghai. The second which I saw last night was Lu Ding Ji 鹿鼎记, which I translate here as "Deer Cauldron Tale." This play started out at the Shanghai Drama Theater in 2008 and has since been shown all over China. It is back in Shanghai now and soon moving on to Taiwan. What a contrast between a contemporary story involving two upper middle class urbanite couples, and a historical drama involving a Chinese secret society, a happy-go-lucky son of a whore, and the Manchu Emperor Kangxi.
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Land of Rice Wine and Stinky Tofu: A Weekend in Shaoxing

Other than the obvious choices of Suzhou and Hangzhou, one of my favorite towns to visit within driving distance of Shanghai is Shaoxing. Famous for its rice wine and stinky tofu, this old watertown is located about three hours south-southwest of Shanghai by car or by train. Despite its rampant modernization, with cranes, shopping malls and tall buildings rising up everywhere, the city of four million residents retains a small-town feel. Low hills topped with pagodas grace the city and canals and waterways criss-cross the otherwise urban environment, giving it a quaint beauty that many other watertowns in the Zhejiang-Jiangsu region have either lost or are trying too hard to preserve. In Shaoxing the waterways and their old houses seem to integrate well with the city's more modern features. Tourism in Shaoxing is much bigger than it was six years ago when I first visited the town, but not surprisingly it is geared primarily for domestic rather than international tourists. The city and its environs feature monuments and homages to Wang Xizhi, Lu Xun, and Lu You, all legendary figures of Chinese literature and arts.
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Resurrecting the Ghosts of Old Shanghai: The Execution of Mayor Chen

As readers of this blog and my book know, I have dedicated a good part of my career to resurrecting the ghosts of Old Shanghai. I'm a grave digger of sorts, an archeologist of urban history, whose job is to recover and reconstruct stories and times that have passed into collective oblivion. One story that I have chosen to focus on in future research is the tale of 陳公博 Chen Gongbo. Anybody who knows Republican Era history well ought to be familiar with this ghost of Shanghai's past. Chen Gongbo started his political career as a founding member of the CCP and was at the First Congress honored by the museum located ironically in the heart of Xintiandi, the city's leading entertainment and nightlife complex. Who better to embrace this contradiction than Chen Gongbo himself? Patriot, playboy, poet, romantic, revolutionary, and ultimately arch traitor, Chen personally embodied the many contradictory and conflicting impulses of Republican Era China.
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Mao on Maoming Road: A Tour of the Chairman's Old Shanghai Haunts

Yesterday I brought two groups of NYU students out on separate field trips which converged at the famous Old Jianjiang Hotel. This hotel is famous for hosting high level parties and delegations of officials from China and abroad. Mao used to stay there during his visits to Shanghai. It is also the place where Nixon and Kissinger and their team met with Zhou Enlai and other top officials to sign the Shanghai Communique. The hotel is located on Maoming South Road. A few blocks north of the hotel is a historic house and museum dedicated to the memory of Chairman Mao.
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Playing with Noise: A Weekend of Art and Rock in Beijing

Beijing is the capital of the PRC. Most folks know the city as the political center of the Chinese world. And of course the seat of the 2008 Olympics. Fewer people living abroad are aware that Beijing is also a leading center of a growing arts and live music culture that is also global in its orientation and scope. This weekend while on a trip to reconnect with bands and other people who appear in my film Down: Indie Rock in the PRC, I also reconnected with the amazing world of art that this city offers.
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Shanghai has Sprung: Walking through Historic Parks, Remembering Lu Xun and Waltzing with Mao

I thought Saturday was a busy day, and it was (see my previous blog for details), but Tuesday was just as big.  Fortunately I was feeling much better, and the weather was fantastic.  Spring has finally come to Shanghai and it was time to get out and see the flowers blooming in the parks and gardens of this great city.  

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Touring the French Concession and Screening Down: Indie Rock in the PRC

What a Saturday!  I awoke around 7 am, still groggy from the Bob Dylan concert of the previous night and a night of tossing and turning to some sort of intestinal infection, and readied myself for my alternate job as tour guide.  I had a 9 am appointment at the new Peninsula Hotel on the Bund for a tour group called the International Collectors Forum organized by a locally based tour guide agency called Shanghai Far East Expeditions.  I caught a taxi to the Bund and had the driver stop at Suzhou Creek where I took this morning shot of the iconic Garden Bridge (外百渡桥) overlooking the Pudong Skyline.

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