Shooting Film Again

For no reason at all, I'm shooting film again. It's amazing how a cheap film camera can produce very good images and the negatives would easily outlast your electronic media (floppy, CD, DVD, every generation has a shorter lifespan than the previous). I remember how I just abandoned all my cassette tapes and floppy disks when something better came along.

The catch is that I no longer have the patience for darkroom, I only develop black and white film in a change bag and do the sloppiest scanning with a flatbed scanner.  So, is there certain je ne sais quoi about film? I am not sure a casual viewer would ever notice the difference, and we can safely disregard the opinions of the photo technicians (most of them mistakenly call themselves photographers because they follow the camera industry and take pride in knowing how to use their equipment, I'm afraid I'm a member of this group).  Photography is the largest and lamest hobby in the world simply because anyone with a pulse can do it, to use a computer analogy, we amateur photographers think we can write good novels by using the word processor correctly, and we must upgrade to the latest and greatest version and all great writers must be using something vastly more expensive.

Back to the subject of shooting film, the only reason for me to go back to chemical photography is nostalgia, I can still remember how it felt like Christmas morning in my school darkroom waiting for prints to develop. Today's printer does come close with a lot less trouble and there's no point in wet photography anymore until I heard somebody made a statement to the effect that "the medium itself is the message".  I am still dumbfounded by this assertion, how is it possible to convey more (whatever) with a fuzzy Polaroid?  I can accept that it's possible to convey something more profound in a drawing than a photograph even the photograph contains more information. The engineer in me just cannot accept the argument that less can be more in a mechanical process such as photography, one can always photoshop a more detailed image into lesser one but the message doesn't change, right? Errr, truth of the matters is Andy Warhol prints are still popular and the great engineer artist has yet to be born in this world.

Shanghai Pride

Young family in Hong Kong

As the compradore economy made Old Shanghai affluent, Shanghainese started to become a little bit like their colonists, westernized in appearance as well as believing they were a cut above the average Chinese. Nothing is more apparent and irrational than the bigotry toward people from the north of Long River (Yangtze River), true blue Shanghainese keep track of who's got tainted blood even there's no such thing as indigenous Shanghainese neither as a people nor as a dialect (a lot of people agree the Foreign Concession Shanghainese 租界上海話 before 1949 as the standard dialect, it's based on the local language with hip and fast evolving foreign and outsider influences).  Before Nanking Treaty, only (poor) people whose livelihoods depended on the ocean were allowed to live by the sea (海禁) to counter Japanese pirate raids. The traditional political center near Shanghai was Nanjing (pingyin for Nanking), many time national capitol. The regional commercial center was Yanhzhou, the terminal of the magnificent Grand Canal of China, both cities happen to be on the north of the river. (Actually, Nanjing is on both side of the river, but it's called north by Shanghainese.)

When Pa left Shanghai and started to make a living as a textile engineer in Hong Kong, like most Shanghainese, they brought that pride with them (the textile mills were staffed with mostly Shanghainese).  People with similar background really had little interest in the local Cantonese culture and would speak very broken Cantonese even after spending decades there, If a Hong Kong Shanghainese is linguistically gifted,  he is more likely to study western languages rather than everyday Cantonese. (The British were worse, most HK born British kids couldn't read the most common sign in Chinese: 不准在此小便，or "Do not urinate here". Haha.)

For us that was born in Hong Kong, We grew up feeling we were different and that manifested in many subtle ways. Our Cantonese pronunciation was flawless, but there's something about the Cantonese tonality that struck us as being too expressive or even funny. We'd subconsciously flatten the tones and choose Mandarin like words and phrases to be not "too Cantonese".  Although Parents's transient stay in Hong Kong outlasted their years in Shanghai, we hardly interacted with the community and socialized mostly with families similar to ours and it took me a long time just to realize that the Cantonese culture is not inferior. Regardless, the upshot of all this is our generation's Hong Kong experience was somewhat watered down. (My younger sister returned to Hong Kong after college, she still does not think she totally assimilated.)


In China, the movement to eliminate local Chinese dialects is finally taking hold  after a 100 years, now Shanghainese speaking people are decisively a minority in Shanghai thanks to huge influx of out-of-town workers.  I am glad this effort hasn't been successful in Cantonese speaking areas, we cannot afford to lose the richness of our language in the name of progress (i.e., unification).

Here's an example of the Cantonese continuum that I think is priceless, a poem written in Tang Dynasty more than 1,000 years ago by Mr Hu (胡）making fun of his 胡 (northern barbaric people) wife who could not speak clearly:

呼十卻爲石
喚針將作真

忽然雲雨至
總道是天因

In both Mandarin and Shanghainese, 十 and 石, 針 and 真, 因 and 陰, had long degenerated into the same sounds as spoken by his Tweety Bird wife. They're still clearly distinct in Cantonese while the mispronunciations had become the official 國語。


(Also, the term compradore economy is unflattering in English, but in our Ningbo dialect, the transliterated word of compradore 康白度, still means a extremely successful person, a big shot, very flattering indeed.)

    
      

Shanghai Style

仍願翻百千浪

Pa

If you've been to China, you probably notice how Shanghai people are universally disliked there.  Maybe it's the airs they put on, maybe it's the smugness you feel even before they open their mouths.  Things only get worse when they talk, which is usually loudly and insensitive.  But still, one cannot deny there is a certain style about these Shanghainese, a style other Chinese are begrudgingly copying.

Ma

As I am scanning some old family photographs for my sister, I realize that these very familiar pictures taken in Old Shanghai tell a lot more than just the stories of the lives of our parents, they take me to places I dare not think too much about. There are a couple of photo albums full of our parents in smart outfits looking quite Westernized, many more with similarly well dressed, well-to-do teenage friends.

After the Opium War with Britain, China was forced to open five ports for trade with the signing of Nanking Treaty in 1842.  In the lifetime of my parents, who had  gone through three of those five trade ports, from Ningbo to Shanghai, then to Hong Kong. When my parents were growing up in the 30s and the 40s, Shanghai as we know today was actually quite young.  At that time, Shanghai had just caught up with Hong Kong's slight head start and was in many ways more advanced and grandiose (much like today). For example, the Australian oversea Chinese department store Wing On in Shanghai was the size of Macy's, much larger than the original store in Hong Kong.

Ma

I was quite indifferent to these pictures when I was small because they were just ordinary family photos, then slowly I became proud of them because my friends seemed to be impressed by Parents' good looks. As an adult, I started to have many doubts, wasn't there a fucking war going on?  Pa was born in 1927 and Ma in 1928, how the hell did they managed to look so well-fed and well dressed during the 14 year Sino-Japanese War from 1931-1945?  All the heroic novels I read on the war just don't jive with these photographs. (In Chinese, the war is called 抗戰, Resistance War. Clearly, we were taking a beating.)

Before the war officially broke out in 1937, my paternal grandfather had already leased a place in the French Concession in Shanghai, hoping the turmoils would blow over quickly.  According to Pa, that wise decision rewarded our family nicely in the next decade, especially when the French Vichy Government became part of the Axis countries (Germany, Japan, Italy, etc.)

Pa

What the hell does it mean by hoping the unrest would settle down quickly? In 1937, Japan was confident that the entire China could be conquered in a matter of months, when the Battle of Shanghai began in August of '37 (more than 4 years before Pearl Harbor), China was fighting alone, in a war nobody would give it a chance to win, let alone quickly. The wise businessmen of Shanghai hoped that China would submit quickly so they could go back to business as usual.

 

Ma

Now that I am much older, do I feel embarrassed by my parents' petite bourgeoisie upbringing while brave warriors were dying because they didn't have enough to eat and had to fight with their bare hands?  In my generation, four out of five siblings were born and raised in Hong Kong, one of the five trade ports. To call them trade ports itself is an embarrassment, the only trade the British cared about was opium. We all grew up in a place where China was drugged and raped.  Did I feel like I was having involuntary sex growing up in Hong Kong? Probably not, I remember how we often marveled about why the former colonies, Hong Kong and Singapore under Great Britain, and Taiwan under Japan, were doing so much better than China itself.

Pa

Wing On in Shanghai, which I mentioned earlier, was a department store that sold almost all imported goods (other than Chinese foodstuff and silk), grew tremendously during the eight years of Japanese occupation, doubling in sales virtually every year while maintaining a patriotic reputation at the same time. Sadly, there's a conspiracy of silence about this period, not very citizen was a resistance fighter, there is little written how people prospered under those unusual circumstances.

After Japan was defeated in 1945, the central government and the old boy network was once again in control of Shanghai, and within a few years, hyperinflation hit China (highest paper money denomination was 180,000,000 yuan, and it was not worth the paper it's printed on). In no small part the collapse of the economy led to the the demise of the first Chinese republic in 1949.

Today, I walk on the Fifth Avenue of Shanghai, Nanking Road (a shameful name bestowed by the shameful British Empire to commemorate the Nanking Treaty)  I see almost no remnants of the Communist revolution, everyone seems eager to go back to the life my parents left in 1949.

This is the same Shanghai that was the epicenter of the Cultural Revolution, the term "petite bourgeoisie" 小資, used only derogatorily not so long ago is now complimentary, much like the "yuppie" label was used in the 90s.  Hong Kong and Shanghai are now huge cities, and the West has an opiate addiction...

Such irony is Shanghai, such irony is our family.

Shanghai girl today

++++ Update 9/25/2014:
I think most people are more interested in seeing Old Shanghai pictures than my babble.
Some of the following pictures were scanned recently with brief annotations.

The girl with handkerchief was our maternal grandmother, the other girl was her younger sister.  Around 1920, could be taken in Shanghai, Ningbo, or Qingdao (Shandong province). This is the oldest family picture known to me.

Grandma in her prime flanked by Ma and her brother. Maybe 20 year after the above picture was taken,  early 1940s in Shanghai

Earliest picture of Pa in Ningbo before the family moved to Shanghai.  Ma finds this picture most amusing, not only Pa seemed to be snotty, he was also raised in the rural part of Ningbo.

In Shanghai, Pa enrolled in Shanghai Municipal Council School for Chinese Boys 工部局華童學校. Pa was the boy at the lower right corner in shorts

Pa's nickname is "Yah Mieh", it could mean either "wild cat"野貓 or "savage"野蠻 in Ningbo dialect, but his uncle seemed to think it's just "young man" in pidgin English. Naturally, Pa prefers the "wild cat" name for his untamed spirit, he still reminisces about the corporal punishment administered by the British schoolmaster.
  

Ma as a baby. Grandma was standing and the lady holding Ma was allegedly an ex-prostitute. It was somewhat socially acceptable to marry women from brothels 堂子 (especially swanky ones, which were outrageously expensive. For example, businessmen would take turns treating each other at high-class brothels. Each time the cost could exceed the entire yearly household expenses for the rest of the family)  Socially acceptable didn't mean wholehearted acceptance either, one woman was known as "Slutty Ah Yu" 爛污阿玉 in Ma's family, I give her a lot of credit for not hanging herself.

Ma is about one year older than Anne Frank, but her life in occupied Shanghai was very sheltered, she often gets the timeline and facts wrong about WWII. She remembers the war time as her happiest years. 

Lots of good friends

Ma's favorite cousin 

Ma in a qipao like a pretty calendar girl

Ma thinks her friend 俞覺 was the prettiest, for some reason Pa didn't like her nor her sister complaining they were false proletarian revolutionaries because they used to powder their legs. 

Ma's family was getting a little well-off. I think this is my grandfather's 40th birthday. The children were dressed in Western suits and silk, looking a little, err, mais oui, nouveau riche. The young woman on the far left was a wet nurse (?) 
This picture was taken by C. H. Wong Studio 王開照相 which is generally considered the best in Old Shanghai, the lighting is very harsh in this picture though.