Building the Good City

Insight: Andrew Field

Historian, professor and music connoisseur Andrew Field celebrates the release of his first book, which delves into the world of dance halls and cabarets in Old Shanghai. Connecting this city's past with the present, Andrew shares with twocities about the research process and some of the gems discovered along the way.

What inspired you to research and write about this particular topic?

When I was in grad school thinking about a dissertation topic, something to do with China's encounters with the West in modern times, I heard some jazzy music from Shanghai in the 1930s and thought that it was a very interesting mix of Chinese and American pop music influences. I was inspired by the music to research that era more deeply, and that led me to the nightclubs of Old Shanghai.

Was there anything surprising that you came across during the research and writing process? What was it?

The entire process was a journey into the unknown. Nobody really knew much or had written much about the city's Jazz Age entertainment culture, at least not since it had died away in the 1940s and '50s. I had to read hundreds of newspapers and magazines, memoirs, novels, and other sources from the 1920s and '30s to put it all together. Not to mention all those archival and police files. I guess the most surprising and wonderful thing about the whole process was that it connected me very deeply not just with Old Shanghai, but with New Shanghai as well. I happened to start my research in an era when the city's reputation as an international metropolis was beginning to revive. Ultimately, the best thing about the process of researching and writing this book was the people I met along the way, some of whom--including my wife Zhang Mengxi--are acknowledged in the book.

What do you enjoy the most about what you do?

Hard to say what I enjoy most. For the most part I enjoy teaching, reading, and writing about Chinese history and culture and more broadly (or narrowly, depending on your perspective), global urban history and culture with a focus on entertainment and especially musical culture. I also love music and I love to dance, both of which I get to experience through my research. I think that music and dancing are a way to transcend cultures and bring people together to explore their common humanity and experience the joy of life. And that's a lovely thing, especially in an age when things can get so heavy. 

If you could describe Shanghai in one word, what would it be and why?

Kaleidoscopic. There's a constantly shifting, changing, growing-out-of and a boundless energy to the people and place. And people are always coming up with new ways to experience and interpret old things. Plus it's a very colorful, jumbly sort of place, full of wild juxtapositions of all shapes and sizes. Hard to find another place quite like it on this planet.

What's your next project?

James Farrer and I are working on a follow-up book to mine (and his) which will cover a century of nightlife in Shanghai, from 1910 to 2010. We've logged over 800 days of research in the clubs and bars over the years while working on this book, and interviewed over 100 people involved in one way or another in the revival of Shanghai's nightlife scene. It should be out in a year or two.

Join us this Sunday evening as Andrew presents a multimedia talk on "Was Shanghai really the Paris of the East?", followed by music, wine and dancing.

Craft and philosophy of life

It's not just about making stuff: the process and products of craftsmanship can be analogous to life as well. A few reading passages linking craft and life to inspire you for the week ahead:

"Once there was no divorce between art and craft: in medieval society, painters and sculptors as well as potters and weavers were members of craft guilds. A man was a carpenter, a painter, or a stonemason; his work, his way of life, was central to his identity and recognized as his means of centering and discovering himself."

- D. M. Dooling, A Way of Working

"What are most people in premodern societies? They are peasant farmers, artisans, craftsmen, housewives--and children learning these livelihoods from their parents. In more primitive societies, they are hunters, fishermen, gatherers, nomads. Now, all of this is skilled work of an indisputably useful nature. It requires careful training, a mastery of cultural lore, the constant exercise of judgment and initiative. In doing the work, one experiences one's own competence and strives toward a standard of excellence that is respected by one's fellows. There is a difference between a good farmer and a bad one, between a good hunter and a bad one--a difference the community appreciates and cares about, because the work is necessary value to all concerned. To become good at these things is an exercise of one's cunning, experience, inspiration--qualities that, in some measure, extend and define the personality.

Even under the bleakest conditions of social exploitation, working people in these societies, at least among themselves, can be a community of mutual appreciation and critical regard--not simply because they are being "nice" with one another on the job like bored office workers exchanging pleasantries and good humor, but because their work is a real measure of competence at a significant project in the world. This is an irreducible cultural and personal value, for there is, at last, such a thing in our nature as an instinct of workmanship that can tell an honest job from a fake, and cares about the difference."

- Theodore Roszak, Person/Planet

"The approach to crafts . . . is often initiated by a dissatisfaction with the "plastic" world--that is, the world which does not touch our inner life. Young people turn to pottery, to weaving, to cabinetmaking, as if the life of the craftsman were simpler, easier than the life of a businessman, and, for them, it is. And yet the realization that the objects in modern life do not touch our inner life, the wish to rediscover the connectedness between the inner and the outer through working directly on a material with the body and the best of our understanding, can lead to a shattering self-discovery. It may bring upon me the weighty knowledge that the inner life I am striving to express isn't there--that I have no access to an expressible inner life. Craftsmanship begins with disillusion.

Disillusion is an extraordinarily interesting state of being, having immediate and far-reaching effects. It is a sacred state, a state that has power. It acts at once to still the voices of mere discontent. It is an active, not a reactive state, and if the craftsman can bear to stay there, not to turn away, he begins to detect an opening in himself through which he can learn.

And of course he turns away. We turn away. We never expected to be so shaken, down to the roots. We never before understood that in a real exchange we have to give up something. We visualized the world of forces as if it were a supermarket into which we could enter and fill our shopping carts and go home again. We never thought about paying.

Disillusion, the recognition that I am not what I thought I was, that I don't know what I thought I knew, that I can't do what I wish to do, is the payment that opens us to the creative dialogue. It renders the craftsman, strains him through a very fine cloth to rid him of impurities so that he, like the material substance of his craft, can be available to be worked upon."

- Carla Needleman, The Work of Craft: An Inquiry into the Nature of Crafts and Craftsmanship

Glass art, Intro 101

So what's so special about glass art anyway? Glad you asked.

Museum of Glass (Tacoma, Washington, USA) has a great website that informs the reader about glass art history, techniques as well as what to look for in appreciating and appraising glass art. If you are interested in becoming better acquainted with the wonderful world of glass, here are a couple of links worth reading:

Did you know that glassmaking has been around for 5,000 years? And that glassblowing was America's first industry, back in 1609? Read up here on this brief overview of glassmaking history and the impact of glass in the art world

Functional vs. conceptual? Does size matter? Here's a quick guide to understanding contemporary sculpture.