At my Place / Tsai wode tsija
verschenen in: Guus Vreeburg (red.). At my Place / Tsai wode tsija. On Chinese lifestyles in Rotterdam and in Shanghai. Rotterdam, Hogeschool Rotterdam/LOBBY2001, 2001 (English/Mandarin)
Tsài wode tsija / At my Place’ verscheen bij de gelijknamige fototentoonstelling in BamboeBovenstad - een bijdrage van Hogeschool Rotterdam aan 'Rotterdam 2001 Culturele Hoofdstad van Europa'
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Since 1910, Chinese people have been present in Rotterdam. Always dynamic, living and working side by side to other people in the city, Chinese are discreet about their private lives. Dutch people, on the contrary, traditionally like to peek into each others homes: even at night they leave their curtains open – to the wonder of foreigners.
The home and the rest of our daily living environment are important for our feeling of identity, for knowing and showing ‘who I am’.
‘Tsài wode tsija / At my Place’ offers a peek into the daily living environment of Chinese – both in Rotterdam as well as in Shanghai.
They are sister-cities with lively economic and cultural ties. Many Chinese now living in Rotterdam were born in Shanghai, or go back there for study, for work or to visit relatives. Likewise Shanghainese, both old and young, come to Rotterdam – some for a lifetime, some just temporary.
Some questions come to mind: What do homes of Chinese in Rotterdam look like? Are they ‘typically Chinese’? How have they been influenced by typically Dutch conditions? Is daily life of elderly Chinese very different from that of young people? And are the homes of Chinese in Rotterdam very different from Chinese homes back in China?
Many people participated in this project:
- elderly Chinese living in the Ka Fook Mansion at Graaf Florisstraat
- young Chinese Rotterdammers, students at the Rotterdam Institute for Asian Business Management – they took pictures both here in Rotterdam and in Shanghai, where at this very moment they spend a year of study and work
- young people from Shanghai, now temporarily studying at ISER/ International School of Economics Rotterdam
We gave them disposable cameras and a list of items to be photographed – ranging from very public to very private:
- city: the place of work: what is important for you there?
- city: favourite places to relax
- favourite shop for daily groceries
- ones street
- facade of ones home / flat
- a favourite tree or plant
- a (self-)portrait, possibly with other members of the family
- the livingroom, including the most personally precious things
- place for cooking and/or dining
many people also took pictures of their bedrooms (we had not even dared to ask…).
Made by amateurs (some of whom first-of-a-lifetime photographers!), the pictures that we got back both excited and deeply moved us.
We – HR/Hogeschool Rotterdam and HES/Hogeschool voor Economische Studies – are happy and proud to present them to you now. Take a look, and find answers to our questions – and to yours?
Guus Vreeburg, art-historian
coordinator BAMBOE2001 / project-manager ‘Tsài wode tsija / At my Place’
What do we, or rather: what do I know about Chinese lifestyles and interior design? Very little, I must admit… Last summer, on a visit to Shanghai, I saw some glimpses.
The ‘period rooms’ of the Furniture Department of the Shanghai Art Museun display two extremes in Chinese interior-decorating: the heavy decoration of the Ch’ing-period (1644-1912) and the restrained and classically ’thin’ furniture in the Ming-style (1368-1644). Individual amchairs with their footboards, tables and writing-desks, and curtained beds on platforms would be arranged into strictly symmetrical, monumental ensembles. This makes Zhang Yimou’s film ‘Raise the Red Lantern’ such a feast to the eye. A style for spacious, aristocratic living.
Ming furniture is widely copied. I found it in the rather bohemian backstreet apartment of a European, Shanghai-based art dealer.
Equally spacious, but totally different was the newly renovated appartment for a single fashion designer: not Ming, not Ch’ing, but stylishly hip, very much in tune with international interior trends – in his kitchen I saw the same waterglasses as in my own: IKEA’s (made in the People’s Republic! – like many IKEA items, as I recently discovered in Delft).
A TV-video introduced me to 25 year old cyber-kid Tony Chen, Shanghai’s leading designer of computer games. A director of a team of well-qualified pro’s, Tony lives… still with his parents in a 2-room appartment. Space is precious here: walls and floors are cramped with all the things of a mom-and-dad-plus-their-one-child household. Tony’s father, however, is delighted with their 20 m²: his parents and all their children had to share a mere 6 m²…
Even though he could well afford it, Tony himself doesn’t even consider to leave his parents, to live on his own: ‘We are a family!”.
Maybe all of this explains why there are so many apparent family-homes in the pictures by the Chinese students of Rotterdam. The countless family-portraits, arranged symmetrically around TV-sets, and covering entire walls of one-room apartments (but for just one person!) in the Ka Fook Mansion for elderly Chinese – how ‘Chinese’ is it anyway that elder people live on their own? And is this why Shanghai street-life is so exuberant with people, forms and colours, and (communal) activities – eg. meeting, relaxing, cooking and even dining. And that in parents’ homes the omnipresent rice-cooker invariably sits on unpretentious Bruynzeel sinks, in stead of stylish design 'cuisines’? And that the Shanghai students here, and the Rotterdam students in Shanghai prove to be real masters in improvisation, with items found along Rotterdam streets or in Shanghai department stores, with PC’s from the USA and mobile phones from Sweden? Is this still ‘typically Chinese’ or ‘international’?
Maybe these pictures raise more questions than answers. Yet I hope that these peeks into Chinese lifestyles may be as rewarding to you as they were to me.
© Guus Vreeburg / Het OOG, Rotterdam; 010504