Artist paints city history into the modern era
Wang Jiafang, a Chinese landscape artist, has spent the past five years in his studio in Minhang District painting city landscape works.
The artist recently created a scroll painting featuring Minhang's Pujiang First Bay and 12 urban landscape paintings on the district's history, culture, tourism, industry, infrastructure, education and entertainment facilities.
The paintings are a gesture to honor the urban landscape of the city, and trace the evolution of Shanghai-style culture.
Finding art in shikumen lanes
"I was born in a Shanghai shikumen (stone-gate) neighborhood in the late 1950s. We joyfully did all kinds of fun things, like playing marbles. I used colored chalks to draw on walls. Stories that happened in our neighborhood were bitter and sweet, and unique to the urban life in Shanghai," said Wang.
"Some of my childhood friends stopped drawing with chalk, but I continued with it and realized art was my calling in life."
The artist has been painting for over 50 years. He hopes his work will strike a chord with their viewers.
"A good piece of artwork engages its viewers like a good play invites its audience to relate to its characters. An artist without a thorough understanding of the world he's creating is like a faded color. Their work exists but it's transparent," Wang said.
When the artist was standing in front of the Xiang Family Residence on Jiangchuan Road in Minhang, he was impressed by the architecture and history. Generations of the Xiang Family were patriotic merchants with scholarly pursuits. The residence itself is a combination of both Chinese and Western designs. It is not simply a four-walled house or a villa, and the Shanghai elements are so obvious.
"So I painted the residence as one of the 12 urban landscape paintings of Minhang," said Wang.
"I hope my visual expressions, somewhat based on the objective and reality, will delight the viewers, and perhaps allow them to feel they are part of the city, and then grow with it."
Settled in Minhang, the famed Xiang family came from a tea village in Anhui Province in east China. Xiang Zhenfang, born in 1886 and the fifth generation of the migrant family, gave up his career as a scholar and went into business, in the hope of empowering national industry. He ran his ink and match businesses so well in Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai, that he earned the nickname the "Match King." He then spent 19 years from 1916 to 1935 refurbishing his family residence in Minhang. Some preserved parts of the residence now cover 509.5 square meters, and comprises a main building done in Western style, and an annex which is a fusion of Chinese and Western style. It was listed as a Minhang District cultural relic in 2000. After an overall renovation in 2014, the residence opened as the Minhang Old Street Exhibition Hall in 2015.
Inspiration from historic rivers
Since Shanghai was forced to open as a treaty port in 1843, it's now nearing 180 years.
"Its contemporary and modern culture is worth my reflection and inspires my drawings," the artist added.
Wang painted a landscape painting that features Pujiang First Bay in the Huangpu River's Minhang section, as a silent witness to the district's historic changes and industrial prosperity, and also as a prologue to the series of the 12 urban landscape paintings.
He named the work "Look North from the Huangpu River Minhang Section."
The Huangpu River, which connects Taihu Lake to the East China Sea via Pujiang First Bay, used to be an inconspicuous river. During rainy seasons when the Taihu Lake failed to drain enough water, the area suffered from frequent floods, hurting the agriculture and economy of the region. The condition worsened in the early Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) with heavy flooding.
Water specialist Ye Zonghang from Minhang proposed to the then minister of revenue to combine the estuaries of the Huangpu River and Suzhou Creek (now the Bund area). Pujiang First Bay was the first part of the project along the Huangpu River.
Wang's scroll painting work "Look North from the Huangpu River Minhang Section" portrays Pujiang First Bay, the northern bend of the Huangpu River that flanks Minhang and Fengxian districts. The channel curves at an almost right angle. With the Huangpu River, Jinhui River and two tributaries of the Dazhi River converging at one point, the bay is also nicknamed the "Water Pentagram."
"After the Huangpu River and Suzhou Creek were converged and foreign cultures were introduced here, along with the city's enforced identity as a treaty port, we had this Waitanyuan, or the origin of the Bund," Wang noted.
Walter Henry Medhust, a London missionary, foretold its promising future. He built a cathedral, schools and some commercial facilities near the Bund, which attracted the earliest batch of foreign merchants to the city. Shanghai soon developed into an "Oriental Paris."
"Henceforward, fashionable and avant-garde culture co-developed with traditional culture in this magic land of Shanghai," said Wang.
"Yet Shanghai's rise to a metropolitan city started here, around the headstream part of the Huangpu River."
Painting the evolution of culture
The Maqiao culture, located in Minhang's Maqiao Town – the center of Shanghai's ancient north-south ridge area, dates back about 3,200-3,900 years. It was there when Shanghai shed off its nameless identity and began its rise toward a modern metropolitan city.
Around 6,500 years ago the area was a vast expanse of ocean. Five hundred years later land started to form here. Another 2,000 years later, the coastal line moved several kilometers eastward and thus began the traces of human settlements.
"Chinese culture evolved from an inland culture to include marine culture. I chose painting as my way of understanding the world," said Wang.
The Qibao Old Town is portrayed in the 12 urban landscape paintings. Wang painted the old town in its modern milieu and how the town's typical Jiangnan-style scenery is able to delight people.
Qibao Old Town earned its name from the Seven Treasures Temple. Legend has it that Qibao, or the seven treasures, were the Buddha statue from heaven, a floating bell, a jade hatchet, a rooster-shaped mound, jade chopsticks, a magic catalpa tree, and a golden lotus sutra. The glutinous rice balls form the old town, with their variety of fillings, taste great and authentic.
The Zhaojialou area, another ancient town in Minhang, is noted for its well-preserved architecture. Wang painted it in a Chinese ink-and-wash painting.
After the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) moved its capital to Lin' an, now Hangzhou City, in 1127, farmers, scholars and officials of the Northern Song Dynasty moved southward with the regime from their homeland in central China. Some of them settled in this Zhaojialou area. Tan Dezhong, a military adviser who resided nearby, became aware of these acres of frontier land and the swarms of laborers streaming in from the outside. He considered hiring them to cultivate the land. He built a platform at the north end of the street for the farmers to gather before they began to plow the land. The platform, known as Zhaojialou, or the Grain Calling Mansion, became a symbol of virgin land cultivation.
"I portrayed Zhaojialou and Qibao Old Town to honor a culture Minhang had inherited from its ancient civilization. Then we'll discuss its present and future. So I thought about its education and cultural promotion," Wang said.
He portrayed several schools – Minhang and Qibao high schools, East China Normal University, the Shanghai Theater Academy and Shanghai Jiao Tong University – in one picture to show the district's respect for education and talent.
One of Wang's 12 urban landscape paintings featuring top education resources in the district.
Another painting shows a bird's-eye view of a landmark cultural cluster – the Haipai Museum, Minhang Museum and Powerlong Museum. "The district is investing in culture and art and bringing different art forms from home and abroad to benefit its people," Wang said.
The district's landmark cultural cluster includes the Haipai Museum, Minhang Museum and Powerlong Museum.
Industrial prowess
In the 1950s as China carried out urban construction, Minhang Satellite City, known for its "Big Four Factories," namely, Shanghai Steam Turbine Factory, Shanghai Electrical Machinery Plant, Shanghai Heavy Machinery Plant and the Shanghai Boiler Factory, were built up.
Worker communities with well-equipped three- or four-story buildings, a variety of shops and bustling boulevards were constructed alongside Jiangchuan Road, or No. 1 Road, which was built in 78 days.
In June 1958 a plan was issued to manufacture a 10,000-ton water hydraulic press. The Jiangnan Shipyard and dozens of factories, including the Shanghai Heavy Machinery Plant in Minhang, took charge of the project.
The technical team did sufficient research work and overcame tech barriers including huge metal block cutting, huge piece hoisting and conveying, huge piece heat treatment and electroslag welding.
In June 1962 China's first self-designed and manufactured 10,000-ton water hydraulic press was put into use.
"It was a marvelous accomplishment that our country made the 10,000-ton water hydraulic press in an era of industrial lag in the 1960s," said Wang.
China's first self-designed and manufactured 10,000-ton water hydraulic press marked Minhang's contribution to the country's heavy equipment industry.
The district is also where the Jinjiang Amusement Park, Shanghai's first amusement park, is located.
When it opened for business on February 1, 1985, it created a city-wide sensation. People rushed to experience Shanghai's first big amusement park.
"The park is noted for its big Ferris wheel. Through my painting, I implied the opening-up policy of our country will continue as the Ferris wheel is rolling forever," said Wang.
Minhang's Jinjiang Amusement Park created a sensation when it opened for business on February 1, 1985. The Ferris wheel in the park, which some locals ride to celebrate the New Year, has been a Shanghai landmark for a long time.
Besides, there're Metro Line 5 and Minpu Bridge in Wang's 12 urban landscape series. "They show that the district highly regards its transport and infrastructure facilities," Wang said.
After Minhang extended Shanghai Metro Line 1 southward from Jinjiang Amusement Park to Xinzhuang Town in 1996, it made another daring resolution in 2003 by self-funding the Metro Line 5 light rail.
Minpu Bridge, the 8th bridge across the Huangpu River, connects the Puxi and Pudong areas of Minhang. Its wetland, reed marshes, waterweeds and pink muhly grass fields in the fall match well with its riverfront industrial relics.
The series also include the Xinzhuang overpass and the district's achievements in aerospace and aviation industries.
The Xinzhuang overpass.
Aerospace researchers in Minhang participated in key national aerospace projects including the successful landfall of the Jade Rabbit lunar rover on the moon.
As a key traffic hub in Shanghai, Minhang is connected with the rest of the country and the world, through its Hongqiao International Airport Terminal 2 Station.
"As an artist, this is what I've done with my time: Use my paintings to reflect the path of history and the city," said Wang.
"There are miles of road ahead, and I'll further explore the topic."
Wang Jiafang, Chinese mountains-and-water landscape artist
