As time flies by, the MoCA Pavilion, which is located in the downtown of the city, is once again experiencing the dog days of summer. After launching many successful projects from the first half of this year, they are now presenting Cool Lhongdhang, a special cool project which will lead you to the domestic and relaxing summer holidays for everyone to enjoy. Having been transformed from an art derivatives shop to a creative space for art projects, this time the Pavilion has now been designed further to be a pretty summerhouse lasting for more than one week so as to bring a refreshing moment with continuous special events in five days to whoever rush to work and also neighbors nearby.
Scorching summer heat waves launching with the sounds of cicada and, before you know it, the chirping is now echoing throughout the leafy trees. On a steamy night, neighbors from throughout the community went out into the alley, propped up a table and sat around to enjoy the outside breeze. The so-called "outside breeze" is a distinctive Shanghainese dialect. Otherwise if you change it into "staying cool", it would lose some peculiar flavor of Shanghai residents. Furthermore, it seems impossible to stay cool inside a Shanghai Shikumen neighborhood, where old-time dormers were narrow and stifling enough to keep any breeze at bay.
In the bamboo mat-cushioned alleys, children covered in baby powder sat on bamboo chairs while old folks, drizzled in Florida water, fanned themselves with leaf fans. When brewing a pot of tea, the voices of a storyteller from someone's house would make you feel more leisurely. A chilled plum juice from the neighborhood grocery store seemed to condense the summertime flavor into every sip you take. Moreover, you may never feel bored if there happened to be accompanied with a radio comedy series while doing the time-consuming soybean-peeling chore.
Back then without air conditioners, we relied on two secret keys to fight the heat. Red bean popsicles were one lifesaver from our childhood. They are still nostalgic to us despite so many new kinds of shaved ice in todays’ market. In those days, the mere scene of ice cubes slowly melting inside the coffee, the crisp sounds of them hitting the glass, and the tinkling wind chimes had the magic power to cool you off. The other lifesaver was cool drinks; the mung bean and lily soup cooked by mothers was a typical refreshing dessert that you loved to guzzle down every day.
Free from the interference of air conditioning, computers, and cellphones, old-fashioned summers in Shanghai are memorable periods when neighbors were as close as a family, a popsicle could cheer you up all day long and chess-playing and card-playing were the only accessible means of entertainment. Just like the unnoticed passing of the first singing of the cicada this summer, those old days were long gone before we learned to cherish them. Now, we are hurrying to move out of the old lhongdhang into modern communities, closing our doors, and switching on the air conditioner the immediate we get home. The window to neighborly connections is thus closed for the sake of avoiding the heat. The authentic pleasures of a summer night and the experiences we once had on hot evenings have become our treasured memories.
Shanghai once had a few famous "cool spots" for summer leisure. The tallest building then, Park Hotel Shanghai, and Shanghai No. 1 Department Store, had these "cooling tunnels" where people gathered to relax. Since the MoCA Pavilion is located in the middle of an old cool spot, the name Cool Lhongdhang comes up to them reasonably and naturally.
Cool Lhongdhang brings you something different from modern daily life from the fast-tempo music on the first day, and the leisurely soybean-peeling chores on the first day of autumn, right down to the slow life of storytelling and ballad-singing in southern dialect on Chinese Valentine’s Day.
About the exhibition
Dates: August 2, 2016 – August 9, 2016
Opening: August 2, 2016
Venue: MoCA Pavilion
Artists: A Ming, Cao Liyin, Li Yiyang, Frances Lin, Lu Yinlan, Lu Tianjia, Teng Nicole, Wu Jingjing, Yang James, Zhang Yuan, Zhou Qi
Courtesy of the artists and MoCA Pavilion.
