#shanghai

May this be a year of unrestrained generosity, rewarded trust, received beauty, reciprocated tenderness and intrinsical lightness (IV).

May this be a year of unrestrained generosity, rewarded trust, received beauty, reciprocated tenderness and intrinsical lightness (III).

May this be a year of unrestrained generosity, rewarded trust, received beauty, reciprocated tenderness and intrinsical lightness (II).

May this be a year of unrestrained generosity, rewarded trust, received beauty, reciprocated tenderness and intrinsical lightness (I). 

From now on I’ll imagine that’s how my email box looks like. 

I haven’t left Shanghai. I just walked on a different frequency.

Yesterday’s guest on my doorstep and today’s urban walk after work. Shanghai turned over by autumn - revealing that side where everything happens in hues of black, white and russet.

I decided to walk along the street in which back in the 1990s we used to get our watermelons, stacked directly on the pavement, weigthed by two elderly men using steelyard balance scale. I wanted to see what would this street give me in the New Era 新时代, and it had some of the most extraordinary swastika patterns I’ve ever seen. Note that staircase photos are taken in the same building on different floors - traditional lattice pattern with swastikas and auspicious fruits smoothly transforms into a foreign design, which makes it not only visually appealing, but also conceptually powerful - demonstrating how modern aesthetic emerged in Shanghai!

Lattice and stained-glass.

I like to think my lane has everything, but it doesn’t have a view of gingko trees turning gold or former Sino-Soviet Friendship Building, which an American friend of mine who used to live in Żoliborz calls Pałac Kultury even when talking to her American husband.

Wuxia lane.

Siastella FW17 - Shanghai