Guangzhou Diary: Week 2 Written on October 16, 2008, by .
5th October
Weather fine. Productive Day. Go to Xiaobei area, and explore the entire Tianxiu Building from top to bottom. Starting in the lower mall section, I chat away to a few Chinese shopkeepers. I find out about the human hair for African hair extensions is mostly cut from heads of Indian girls, no mention of the price it is bought for, but no doubt a bit less than the 220Yuan its sold for. I find my way up into the bowels of the Tianxiu building, via the reception at the back, complete with fancy black Mercs outside, neon lights, and pretty Chinese reception staff. I ask if there’s a manager I can speak to. She looks confused, tells me there are lots of managers, and lots of offices, go up and see. They seemingly didn’t care about foreigners wandering around with cameras.
Up on the 33rd floor, I could see why. The grand facade of ground level had been replaced by the general dinginess and strange smells of a used Chinese tower block. I wandered up the stairs to the plant room and other facilities on the 34th floor. The plaster was all destroyed were rain had been blowing in the open window. I climbed out. I’m on the roof it seems. The sun had set since I first entered the building. Nothing to see really, just a few hundred more skyscrapers lit up across the city. I took a couple of shots down to the Huanshi ring road and beyond it the dark dense blob of Xiatang village among the surrounding bright lights. There was a wind blowing through. Being up on the roof of a strange dilapidated high-rise in the twighlight has a definite B-movie thriller feel. Visibility wasn’t good that evening and I headed back inside before my imagination began to warm up.
Inside the dingy bare hall there was a scale model of Tianxiu Building, made presumably for advertising the building back when it was first built, complete with figures sitting around the swimming pool – yes, an open-air pool on perhaps the 5th floor, on top of the mall section, hidden from street view, but facing the afternoon sun. Some of the signs had been broken off the model, and the clear perspex case it was housed in was broken, yellowed and covered in a layer of dust. I walked back down to the top of the lift-shaft on the 33rd floor.
It was home to a logistics and shipping company. Glossy adverts on the wall, specialists in shipping across Africa and Asia. I wandered into the cooridors. It was the only office left occupied. One or two looked like they had never been occupied, others were abandoned, dusty and derilict. Other doors looked used, and well-kept, but locked. The way down to the 32nd floor was by fire escape. A bin was in the corner, piled up with rubbish. The wall above it was filthy with dried splats of rotten food, and other-semi-liquids. I walked down.
The story was much the same right down the floors Most floors had at least one unit still occupied, usually the ones nearest the lift shaft. One or two floors even had full occupancy, with several offices, from inside which came roars of laughter, and TVs, overtime and after hours chilling out. Still, among these vestiges of business and commerce, with all the flyers, adverts, phone numbers that go with it, was a general sense of dinginess and urban decay. Some of the floors had strange smells, the smell of windows unopened for months, years. Then came floors 23 to 19, the hotel. They were the hotel, well kept, bright, with a red carpet, but I’m not sure I’d want to live there after viewing floor 24. Down from that, there was a succession of busier floors, with some offices even decorating the walls “outside”their doors, a few African countries’ flags were hung up. Then came floor 14, another “dead” floor. Abandoned, and in a hurry too by the looks of it. As I looked through one office to the fancy mirrored window that fronted onto Xiaobei Road, a rat scurried from left to right along one of the bars across the window. Nice. Difficult for me to do a real positive story in such a location I think…
Down on the 5th floor I came to the swimming pool, empty of course. I could see now that Tianxiu Building was in fact three buildings linked in an L-shape. The central tower contained offices, and empty offices, the other two apartments. A group of Chinese were sitting chatting on the far side of the empty pool. I chatted to them.
They told me a little about the building. It is about 9 years old, built in 1999, in the white tile style, (except the tiles are pink). They reckoned flats would rent for between 2000-3000 Yuan a month, depending on their size, offices for 4500 Yuan a month, so a cheaper than a brand new block over in the new Tianhe financial district, but hardly a cheap-rent ghetto. They also reckoned 80% of the residents were foreign, still, even after the Olympics. They said those living here would mostly be on legitimate permits. They also said the pool does sometimes have water in the height of summer when its 38 degrees every day.
All in all then, a real mixed-use building in every sense of the word. I took the lift back to ground level, went for a Cucumber Juice and an African-style fried Chicken at the Lounge coffee, competitor to Moka coffee, and then called it a day. Photos to follow…
6th October
I head back to the Xiatang “urban village” side of Xiaobei, and wander up the street, with my camera this time, trying to take a few street shots. Every time I lift my camera, an African head gives me a look. This is not at all like photographing Chinese. I keep the shots casual, and distant, so as not to be of anyone in particular. There are plenty interesting details that capture the atmosphere of the area, signs for African food, signs for Halal meat etc. I feel so hesitant though, and take nothing of substance. Shooting Chinese in the street I have the language to get me out of sticky situations. Even if my Chinese isn’t great, I speak enough, and with enough of a vernacular “Northern” twang, to show that I’ve invested enough time here to probably not be wanting to harm China in any way. If I get into that situation where I go to shoot, and they don’t like it (it happens – some people just don’t like their photos being taken, my own mother is an example), then with the Africans I’ll be apologising in English, my language, and if theirs too, only because of imperialist history. I can’t afford to be that insensitive. Shooting in my candid style is always done best when almost unconcious. It’s about being aggressively empathetic - sensing people’s emotions, but somehow being impervious to their effect. It’s not happening here though. I’m too affected by the looks of suspicion and lose my concentration.
A shopkeeper calls me over. He’s a friendly gregarious sort of guy, from Shantou, so Cantonese isn’t his first language. Neither is Mandarin but he speaks it clearly enough. He offers me some tea, and of course I except. He’s a goldmine of info on the local area, tells me about the situation last year, with 100,000 Africans in the city, many congregated on his street, and he’d made friends with a lot of them, they’d come to buy beer at his shop, and drink with him. He was learning English to be able to speak better, and seemed quite proud to have made links with foreigners. I helped him a little with his pronunciation, and generally chilled out for an hour. He had a go with my camera, liked the wideness of the lens. His description made me realise just how much it had changed since then – the Olympics to blame apparently. I went through all the other place names that I had originally found, and he was sceptical about Africans still being at most of them. One place worth exploring though perhaps – a district called Sanyuanli. Good to know there’s a little shop like this I can come back to, although I should really come back with a native speaker to really properly communicate. On the other hand, there’s something more chilled about communicating through a partial-language barrier over a cup of tea.
Shortly after that I get called to by two African guys standing on the side of the street. I’ve no idea what they want but say hello. They tell me they’re from Liberia, the only African country to have come from a USA colony. Are they telling me proudly or not ? It’s new to me anyway, I know about the long civil war, and George Weah running for president, but little else, none of the real background to it. My ignorance on African history is going to catch me out with this project if I don’t start reading up. I joke “aren’t we all part of the American empire these days ?” They kinda laugh. I think maybe they’d thought I was an American. I offer my hand to shake and I think they’re a little surprised, but return the shake. They’re ok with me it seems, here on some kind of official government exchange but waiting to see if it gets the go-ahead, here to learn how to build/re-build a country, and (in their words) to learn from the Chinese how to control people. I don’t think they intended the phrase to sound. I presume they meant “pacifying a fractuous and volatile society fresh from a bloody civil war”. They suggest food & beer sometime. I’m hungry, so how about now, I say. Ok, sure, they weren’t that hungry but could eat something.
We eat a little, split a beer, chat for an hour or so. They were paying 1200 Yuan a month for rent, and were waiting for some kind of approval to start some kind of exchange at Guangzhou University. The older guy was quiet, but the younger guy was quite vocal and outspoken. Interesting and smart guys, and they carried themselves differently from the others somehow – perhaps because they didn’t have the status of merchants. They seemed really clued up on the power of the image, imagined geographies etc, with barely any prompting, the younger guy basically gave me an overview of all the Term One issues while the older guy nodded and corrected him once or twice. We agreed to meet again and exchanged phone numbers. They had one phone, under the older guy’s name, Alex. Customs apparently. It was clear it was the younger guy who preferred talking. They were sitting against the wall, surrounded by chopsticks and with Chinese-style tablecloth. It was a photo. It absolutely was, but with what purpose. That purpose worried them too. I asked if I could take it. They said, no,no, we don’t know you well enough, maybe next time. Next time it was then. I discussed with them the attitudes to photography in Africa, and they said portraits are ok, but none of that paparazzi stuff, it’s more civilised to ask first. We in the West might dismiss such attitudes as being representative of an unadvanced “photographic culture”, but isn’t there also an element of truth in what they say ? What our brash post-modern Western society may have gained in tolerance, it may also have lost in courtesy and civility. What would Bruce Gilden say of it all ?
I continued on my way, took a few more photos, and then called it a night.
7th October
Day of research online.
Based on what the people I spoke to yesterday said, I’ve decided to change the course of my project. The story is basically that the community is not actually here right now. It’s the absence and the idea of a community split, that I will have to try and photograph. I also spend time researching other approaches to projects in tower blocks & in Africa & of minorities, foreigners etc. The South African “Mr.Mhikize” series by Broomberg & Chanarin is notable, although a bit hit and miss I’d say in how effective it is, and also in Africa, I look at the approach to documenting the Ponte Tower in Johannesburg. I also find some documentaries about Chungking Mansions in Hong Kong, in many ways the precursor to Guangzhou’s Tianxiu. Unable to watch any though - connection is so bloomin slow on the hostel wireless, can’t get anything on Youtube.
Noting also Broomberg & Chanarin’s “ghetto” series, and their mental patient self-portraits, I consider allowing subject to photograph themselves, at the very least some kind of offer of inter activity is key, but maybe giving them their own choice of background will work better ? Would self-portraits with a self-timer be patronising on mentally functioning, able bodied people ?
In other news, I think I’m getting a cold. I can feel it – it’s barely a week since I thought I had kicked the last one – that’s travel and dormitory living for you, huh.
8th October
Ok, so for the new portrait approach, I figure I need the following.
Camera gear:
Medium Format Camera (second-hand)
100asa and 400asa 120 film
Reflector
Tripod
Shutter Release Cable
Light meter
Others:
Postcards, for people writing a short note on
Business cards
Photocopied notes explaining my project
Stapler, for stapling the note and business card together.
Good pens that “write well” and supply ink at a constant flow (surprisingly hard to find in China).
I head out in afternoon and look for Dashatou, the place that the guy at the photography exhibition told me about, where I should be able to buy cheapish second hand medium format cameras. I have me Holga with me, but Holga shots wont do the subjects justice. It looks like a toy, that’s the problem. I do my usual of making a list of all the likely suspects for researching online. A fever comes on strongish in evening. It’s definitely a cold, and it serves me right for going out and getting soaked. As if that’s not bad enough I find out later I find out that Professor Yang, one of the founders of the PhotoMA up in Dalian, has died in a car crash.
I almost get into a fight with someone over the most stupid of things – someone spraying mosquito repellent in the dormitory. Somehow it remains a shouting match of idle threats and no blows are landed. The others in the hostel tell me afterwards he’s an ex-con with an anger management problem. I certainly can’t sleep now though and sit outside the hostel chatting familiar hostel chat until 4am. End up mildly drunk.
9th October
My nose is streaming and I’m fevered. My forehead is soaked. It might also be particularly humid today, but I can’t really tell. I might also be slightly hungover. Apart from researching various cameras online, and an hour spent designing a business card, it’s a wasted day really. I don’ t feel like doing anything in any case. The shock of Yang is still sinking in, I didn’t know him as well as some, but I still feel I’m zoning out, unable to pinpoint any thoughts. I go out late afternoon and wander around the city, in the general direction of Sanyuanli. I’m still ill. I’m really not well enough to be out exploring, but I need to be out on my feet. It’s an interesting “urban village”, I speak to some people, same story, last year there were loads of Africans living there, but now seemingly none. It reaffirms my conviction that until the community returns, it needs to be a portrait project. The other approach really requires me to come and live in Guangzhou,work away slowly on various stories in a candid style, unless something is still to jump out and present itself to me.
10th October
I’m still kinda runny nose, sore throat, fatigued, but go back to the camera market and shoot trial rolls on a Mamiya 645 from 1977 with Sekkor 80mm lens & a Kiev 60 (1950s ?) with a Biometar 60mm Carl Zeiss Jena lens on it. The Mamiya is 2000 Yuan, the Kiev 990 Yuan. I just use Superia for the trial, out and about in the street nearby, nothing special taken, then stick them in for developing. Then I head back to the Xiaobei district. Firstly to get business cards made. I sea place, might find more, keep walking…then start asking about the whereabouts of Guangzhou Unversity. I want to find a photography department that might have students wanting to practice their English, discuss a little about photography, and thus accompany me for a little translation, or even just to do things like set up tripods while I talk, or vice versa. I find out the university has moved since the most recent maps were printed. I get pointed in the direction of one or two other unis. The business cards slip my mind and I walk for a bit to find these other unis. Can’t seem to find the entrances, lose enthusiasm for the idea anyway. Head back to the hotel, join the Chinese creative social networking site douban.com group “Guangzhou photographers” and leave a note about fixers, and also about 400asa film.
11th October
I’m still feeling ill, but perhaps over the worst. I normally rest when I’m ill, I don’t try to work my way through it, I find my creative drive is really blocked, my critical judgement gone. I look at photos I processed two days ago, just street photos, they’re rubbish. Just badly done. Why would a cold stop my eyes from being sensitive in this way ? But the fact I’m seeing this today must mean my judgement is coming back, which is good since I need to return to Dashatou to get the results of the film back. Both look ok from the negatives. I get a few images scanned. Kiev looks richer in colour, and crisper too. Quickly post-process them. Yup, has to be the Kiev. With that Zeiss lens on it, it just looked better straight from the scan than the Mamiyua, however nice the Mamiya might have been to use. I look at the cameras again. I can’t decide. The Mamiya feels so good in the hand compared to the Kiev, but Zeiss glass…
I buy the Kiev.
I then head back across the city to Xiaobei again, bulky Kiev in tow. I know I can get business cards made there cheaply and quickly. I saw the little kiosk the other day. I can probably get them made in other places too, such as Dashatou, but I know for sure I can find some in Xiaobei. I also go back to Moka Coffee, and discuss with them about telling people I shoot that they can pick up copies of their portraits at Moka coffee. It helps me, it helps Moka. I Buy another kebab as well, of course…
Check douban.com. I’ve recieve a warm welcome from the community. They’re a helpful bunch. I should be able to find a fixer, if I need one. I also find the address of a place that apparently might have 400asa film.
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