Cultured way of life helps achieve sustainable growth in consumption

Beginning today, Shanghai started a weeklong campaign to boost the quality of life as part of its efforts to support sustainable growth in consumption, which was affected by COVID-19.

By focusing on the potential of quality life, or a cultured way of life, the Quality Life Week injects a singular element into the ongoing Double Five Shopping Festival. The shopping event was launched early this month to promote the city as a “magnet” for international shopping through discounts and design contests, among others. The promotion will span the second quarter of this year to overlap with such festivals as Children’s Day (June 1) and Dragon Boat Festival (June 25).

By “singular” is meant that the Quality Life Week will create more value for customers  than just discounted commodities or services.

As I have said many times before, I am not particularly worried about temporary declines in consumption. So long as there are mouths to be fed and minds to be cultivated, there will be demand for goods and services. COVID-19 may have changed our consumption patterns, but we will continue to consume one way or another.

Indeed, as a Shanghai official said, the Double Five Shopping Festival has been doing well since its inception in releasing consumers’ spending power. 

For example, Hua Yuan, head of the municipal commission of commerce, said online retail sales surpassed 40 billion yuan (US$5.7 billion) in the first 10 days of May on the back of the shopping gala. In particular, courier companies collected more than 10 million items on May 6 alone, up 31.7 percent over the same day last year. And from May 1 to 10, more than 77 million courier items were collected in Shanghai, up 26.3 percent.

Certainly, the surge in spending has improved the consumers' quality of life to some degree.

The Quality Life Week that began today will likely paint a more precise picture of how a cultured way of life helps cut a better path of consumption.

Shanghai has a lot to offer in cultivating a cultured way of life, and the weeklong event allows people to try as many options as possible. 

If you are bored wearing standardized work uniforms, you might try qipao, or cheongsam, cut to fit your figure. If you like something of an archaic nature, you could visit a marketplace for handicrafts made in line with intangible cultural heritage. Or, if you want to escape the urban crowd, you will probably go paddling, cycling or just idling in the suburbs or the countryside, where ancient watertowns help ward off worries. 

Shanghai is not just a metropolitan of high-rises, it has many waterways by which one can sit and relax the mind and body.

Yesterday I went to an ancient watertown in western Shanghai with a group of renowned writers, artists and connoisseurs to experience the pulse of a lifestyle that has lasted hundreds of years, a style close to  earth and water. 

Roads have little asphalt, allowing rain to sink into the earth and trees to survive. As a result, there are dense canopies seldom seen in the crowded city.

American writer and philosopher Wendell Berry says it’s pleasant for people to live under trees. German-born writer Hermann Hesse describes a soul enlightened by waters. These ideas accidentally talk to ancient Chinese values that promote a sustainable life close to nature, not away from it.

Did our visit to the watertown affect our consumption in any way, then? Well, about 10 of us had a lunch at a small riverbank restaurant neatly adapted from an old residential house. Food was cheap. So, not very much spending.

Before the lunch, we rambled in the rain for hours until we came upon a teahouse. I spotted a guqin, a Chinese plucked zither, on the tea table and asked the owners if I could play it for fun. With a happy nod from the owners, I entertained my friends with a few opening melodies of an ancient Chinese piece depicting wild geese landing on vast sandy beaches, symbolizing ancient Chinese literati’s pursuit for a detached life.

After my improvised “performance,” we thanked the owners, bid farewell to them, and bought nothing from their shop. Again, no spending.

Then during the lunch, my friends said they would like to hear me play again. So we decided we would return to the town in future, staying in a local hotel for one or two nights. I would bring my own guqin and play for them at the courtyard of the hotel one summer night, while they sit and sip organic tea grown by one of our friends who is a senior engineer in material science.

Such is what I venture to call “cultural consumption.” It’s not consumption of a cultural product like a creative pen or pencil. It’s a kind of spending inspired by a cultured way of life. In the above instance, we decided to book a hotel for one or two nights not because we like the luxury of a hotel, but because we like the ancient watertown where we could enjoy China’s most ancient music passed from generation to generation since Confucius time.

Such is Shanghai, with a pace of life both slow and fast, and a living space both high and low. You define your own quality of life, and from it a panoply of consumption patterns derives.

Keep an eye on the Quality Life Week and be a smarter consumer contributing to more sustainable consumption in your own cultured way. In “cultural consumption,” one gets more than the face value of money, for enlightenment is not measured in pecuniary terms.