Unravelling the tapestry that is the Gumei subdistrict
Editor's note:
Alice Walker, the African American writer, wrote her famous "Everyday Use" (1973) by threading the plot on a patchwork quilt. In Minhang District, crochet artists had made a "patchwork" map shaping the geography of the district through crocheting each of its 14 towns, subdistricts and industrial zone with a different color and pattern then networking them. The map is dazzlingly beautiful and suggests good connections. In this column on community and home, we introduce stories of people collected from the 14 towns, subdistricts and industrial zone in Minhang, and hope residents there and readers likewise will cherish their homes.
A neighborhood service station in Gumei
Residents enjoy the peace inside Gumei Park, a park featuring urban outdoor furniture.
A resident exercises inside a pocket park in the Gumei subdistrict.
Around Changxing Isle, the second largest isle in Shanghai's Chongming District, rivers converge, with the Yangtze running west to east, the Huangpu from south to north, and the deep East China Sea embracing them both.
Ding Ting, who spent some years in his 20s on a farm in Chongming, said the waters are like the current neighborhoods where now he lives – the Gumei subdistrict, among the towns and subdistricts in Minhang District closest to city center, likewise with flows of its residents becoming a melting pot.
A retired journalist, Ding has been chief editor of community magazine "Our Gumei" (《大家古美》) since it was founded five years ago.
The quarterly magazine is popular with residents, and 6,000 copies are issued each time.
"I am retired, but I am still serious editing the magazine," said Ding.
"With the first few issues, I could only rely on my friends of writers, editors, teachers and students. There were no community writers in the beginning. I wanted to get to know the residents and train them into mature community writers. Now we have more than 70 community writers, among them about 20 are backbone writers; and more than 30 guest writers."
With such a troop of writers, good stories are not hard to find.
From last December to March this year the magazine launched an advanced writing skills training course for community writers.
Ma Peidi, a Gumei resident and now community writer for the magazine, met Ding around 2020.
She was head of a neighborhood patrolling team and had taken care of her mother-in-law for 39 years before she passed away in 2019. Ding encouraged her to record her experience in an article that gained wide popularity.
"I am a lucky person who had maintained a good relation with my mother-in-law for 39 years. The relationship between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law is not confronting in nature," Ma wrote.
"It is a relationship as well as a league. Good and understanding, then the family prospers, so does the society also benefit ... I accompanied my in-law till she passed away at 97. It's an effort from us both, about good communication and empathy."
Ying Wang'an, another community writer, hails from Liupanshui in Guizhou Province. He used to be a member of the local Liupanshui writers association. Now he lives with his son in Shanghai and helps take care of his grandchild.
The magazine trained him, teaching him editing how to do interviews. Ying wrote about the fun in caring for his grandchild, about environmental protection and some poetry.
Ying had a brush with death in 2021 due to the dual impact of physical and mental ailments. After his recovery he visited the editorial office for the first time, accompanied by his wife, and later submitted his story "Reconcile with Life."
"An almost lost life was coming back. We all felt released and touched. The writer has been sincerely attached to our magazine," Ding recalled.
A resident of Gumei for 26 years from Dapuqiao in downtown Shanghai, Ding has been writing for 40 years.
The Gumei subdistrict was born out of relocation projects in the late 1990s to accommodate mainly farmers as well as residents from downtown Shanghai.
From 2000, commercial housing began to be built, attracting out-of-town people.
As the population grew at pace, neighborhoods pondered on ways to cater to the diverse hobbies of their new residents, and the Gumei Jazz Festival was a natural outcome.
Ying Wang'an (left) pictured on his visit to the "Our Gumei" office with its chief editor Ding Ting.
A jazz event in 2019
All that jazz
The Dongyuan Peninsula Community Square around the Longming and Gudai roads crossing was adapted into the Gumei Jazz Culture Square, with the height of its stage lowered and its size expanded. On both sides of the stage decorative columns were added, so were glass statues of jazz musicians and glass curtain walls, for the sake of lighting during performances at night.
The first Gumei Jazz Festival was held in May 2017.
Musicians and dancers from China and abroad were invited to stage performances over three days. They included musicians and bands from China, the US and Brazil, featuring Chen Xiaojun and His Quartet, the Royal Rombres, Fika, Sambazz Quartet, Shex, the Blueberry, Tompeng Newgrass Band, Howhy, Little Happiness and Zumba, presenting soul, funk, rock and roll, Latin, Bluegrass, folk and other styles of music. Audiences were mesmerized, swinging their bodies following the rhythms of the music.
The following year the festival set up its branch stage to include traditional African percussion music and tropical-tempo ukulele shows. More than 50 jazz musicians and street performing artists from all over the world presented audiences with dazzling shows of jazz, rock-and-roll, Latin music and rhythm-and-blues.
In the second half of 2018 Leobon, the second largest city in Austria's Steiermark State, was invited to hold a jazz concert in Gumei.
The subdistrict at that time had accumulated and nurtured a group of jazz fans. It also had set up its first community jazz band, with the majority of its members being overseas Chinese now living in Shanghai.
The 3rd Gumei Jazz Festival in 2019 adopted high-tech lighting but the pandemic from 2020 to 2022 forced almost all the festival promotions online.
However, it made a glorious return last year with another audio and visual feast at Gumei Park, in September.
This year, starting from April 20 and each month ahead of the jazz festival in September or October, there will be a jazz music concert at Gumei Park.
The park at 799 Pingji Road was reinvigorated into an urban furniture-themed park, the first of its kind in the nation, in 2023.
In October 2022, Gumei launched its first urban furniture design competition, attracting entries from 76 design teams. Eventually, 130 outstanding works in 50 categories distinguished themselves. They are gradually being installed on paths, green areas and other public spaces of the park.
The Gumei urban furniture design competition will continue as a biennial contest, and the subdistrict is planning to build the nation's urban furniture design industrial park.
By then, low-cost and well-equipped incubation spaces will be provided for startup college students from Tongji, Donghua and other universities.
Minhang City Furniture Park, or Gumei Park, at 799 Pingji Road
Butterflies are a signature image of Gumei Park. The park, constructed in 2021, features a butterfly-shaped lake at its center.
Urban furniture around the entrance to Gumei Park
About Gumei (古美)
The subdistrict derives its poetic name Gumei (古美) from Gudai Road (顾戴路) which crawls across the region and the Meilong area (梅陇) adjacent to it, since 古 (gǔ) is homo-phonic with 顾 (gù), and 美 (měi) is home-phonic with 梅 (méi). The subdistrict covers an area of 65,000 square kilometers and boasts a population of 160,000.
