Chapter 16 2. Everything is upscale

Shanghainese are typical "materialist" people, and they have a natural nostalgia and special liking for currency.It is a fact that Shanghai women would rather eat pickled vegetables and steamed buns at home every day than go out with an LV bag.So, if you are in a crowded subway car in Shanghai and hear a woman nervously calling: "Don't squeeze my LV bag!" Please believe that it is real LV.And she was so nervous, she really gnawed on the pickled steamed buns for too long. This is the "grade" of Shanghainese. They use consumption to show their status.Consumption originally meant "exhaust", "use up" and "destroy", which is not in line with the careful planning of Shanghainese.Therefore, the "consumption" of Shanghainese is more of a performance, a performance of identity.Masquerade balls of consumption are grandly staged on Hengshan Road, Huaihai Road, Nanjing Road and Plaza 66 every day.

This is why there is such an interesting phenomenon: According to the survey conducted by the World Luxury Association in 2009, the consumption of luxury goods in Shanghai only accounts for 9.8% of the national total, ranking fifth among cities.Wang Ling, managing director of Dieyi Public Relations Company, said frankly: "Shanghai is not as good as some other cities in terms of purchasing power. When we were promoting in Beijing, a coal boss once bought Bulgari jewelry worth 7 million yuan. There is also someone who bought a gift of 5 million yuan for his wife at one time." But such a big deal is very difficult to happen in Shanghai. "Shanghai people are usually very pragmatic, which also makes Shanghai people more shrewd and less impulsive when buying luxury goods." Wang Ling said, but Shanghai is the best showcase, and major luxury brands are rushing in. The degree of openness is very high, and the degree of integration with international standards is also among the best in China. Everyone accepts information about luxury goods very quickly. The behavior and style of Shanghainese people are also very consistent with international practices. For luxury brands, Shanghai is their The easiest city to get into."

The best window does not have the best sales performance. This is the "consumption interpretation identity" of Shanghainese.Therefore, netizens will sneer at those small Shanghai white-collar workers who sit in Starbucks all afternoon just for "concave shape". They can also be regarded as looking for a false sense of identity in consumption, as if drinking Starbucks becomes a New Yorker , or become colleagues with those Wall Street celebrities who love Starbucks as much as they do. This is why Shanghai created the earliest professional writers in China who made a living by selling literature, and developed popular literature for citizens with public interest and market orientation. However, this tradition has not been handed down. "Although some writers in Shanghai grew up in the citizen class, they disdain to refine and grasp the life and mentality of the 'small citizens' around them. As Mr. Deng Yunxiang said: Some ordinary but very rich life scenes, such as riding a tram, The vegetable market, neighborhood committee, Dangma Road, etc. seem to have been ignored by the writers. They seem to prefer to describe the quietness and elegance of Shanghai West District, as well as the "upper class life" of old and new Shanghai that they are not familiar with, so as to mark themselves as "middle class". identity and taste." ("City Monsoon")

Zhang Ning also mentioned a similar point of view in an article commenting on Baby Anne published in Southern Weekend in 2001.He believes that Baby Anne adopted "a 'citizen's close reading method', or a 'symptomatic reading method' in a book, which is to dissect you and confirm your identity through the details of your life."And "Shanghai citizens know this kind of careful reading best." “For example, designer clothes, but not well-fitted; for example, electric razors instead of premium shaving cream and shaving planes; for example, perfume that smells too strong instead of grassy, ​​etc. Wait, etc., you will all be contemptuous. After such careful reading, they don’t need to talk deeply to know what class, class, and taste you belong to; whether you live in Yangshupu or the West District, and what your income is. Rank, even your family background. And then choose whether to mock or despise you. If you don’t spend a few years in Shanghai, you can’t figure out the relationship between every detail of your body and behavior and your identity. It’s impossible to be sloppy. In other words, rank and identity have entered every detail, atmosphere and movement of daily life. Marx's class division method and the simple "elite/mass" classification model of the Frankfurt School are not completely effective for Shanghai citizens. "

When telling Lin’s life, there is a major omission, which is to hide Lin’s office life: his working method and working environment, and the specific situation in which he was deprived or deprived of others during his labor.This is the most taboo thing for Shanghainese.Just like they like to show people foreign goods, but hide the painful experience of working abroad. Lin in the novel lives a very delicate life. He is very particular about the brand of coffee, the style and color of clothing, the smell of perfume, etc., just like all Shanghai residents.As the saying goes, the rich pay attention to the rich, and the poor pay attention to the poor.Because of their emphasis on every detail of life, it is difficult for outsiders to imitate in a short period of time, thus keeping cultural identity in a stable state for a long time. "The aestheticization of the details of life is the distortion of the details of life by the cultural level. This 'citizen perfectionism' is matched with the 'citizens' careful reading method'."

"The 'Careful Reading Method' enables them to know what to omit and what to keep. They will keep those elegant things, things with the color of elite culture, perfected, aestheticized, detailed, and show off to others without limit. Finally The result is that the "aestheticization of daily life" has become an empty shell with no one in it. That is to say, the real self is not present, the physical feeling is gone, and it is replaced by the illusion of identity. Therefore, in such a pseudo-consumption In today’s society, the more colorful the repertoire of consumer performances and the more diverse the aesthetic details of life, the less they can find their own identity. The illusion of identity merges with the dream of the aesthetic details of life.”

Time is passing and times are developing, but this "consumption performance" by Shanghainese has never ended.Guo Jingming's "Little Times" series was set on the beach, full of famous brands and high-end consumer goods, so that Han Han ridiculed that "Little Times" did not write about the era of Shanghai, but the "Hang Lung era".But this set of books did satisfy the performance desire of Shanghainese to gain a sense of identity through consumption, so it became a bestseller and was sought after by young people. Everyone in old Shanghai knows that Shanghai is divided into "upper corner" and "lower corner". "Shangzhijiao" and "Xiazhijiao" are original vocabulary created by Shanghainese.This pair of words prevailed in the 1980s.It is said that as early as the 1920s, there was such a saying. "Shangzhijiao" refers to an area with a prosperous location, a quiet environment, high-end residences, and residents with high income, occupation and education; on the contrary, it is "Xiazhijiao".In Shanghai, the south is better than the north, and the west is better than the east. "I would rather have a bed in Puxi than a room in Pudong."It is a regional portrayal of old Shanghai.

In fact, the Shanghai described by Zhang Ailing, Wang Anyi, Chen Danyan and Cheng Naishan is just the "top corner" of Shanghai.Two rows of dense sycamores, black telephone poles in the sky, and rickety trams. In the movie, Wang Jiazhi walks along the most fashionable roads and shops in Shanghai.Nanjing West Road, Moses Road, Fukaisen Road, Ping An Grand Theater, opposite Kaisling Cafe, Siberia Leather Goods Store, and Mrs. Green House Fashion Store.This is the "Shangzhijiao culture" that represents Shanghai's exquisite and Shanghai style. The modernity of "Oriental Paris" only exists on very few sites in Shanghai.

In fact, Shanghainese divide their own regions and create "upper corners" and "lower corners". In the final analysis, they are also a kind of "consumption performance". They try to classify themselves as gathering places for famous brands and celebrities. In order to show that they are well-matched. A pair of Shanghai couples.The groom lives in "Shangzhijiao", the area around Fuxing Middle Road and Urumqi Road in Xuhui District, the former French Concession.The bride lived in "Xiazhijiao", a shantytown in Nanshi by the Huangpu River.Regarding the population density there, the locals joked: Zhang’s house is in front of the house, the house in the back, the house on the left, the house on the right, and the house in the middle. Five houses can conscript one division.

The bride from the "Xiazhijiao" said: "I must find a lover with ability and status, and I have found it. 'Shangzhijiao' means status." Even one out of a hundred people may not be able to marry our "upper corner". During the "Cultural Revolution", it was disrupted. Some people from the "lower corner" married us, but now there are no more." The groom's father was a bank clerk before Liberation, rich and powerful; while the bride's father was a worker in a street transport cooperative and rode a yellow croaker.The groom's father was strongly against the marriage, and they were married after the old man's death.The groom who disobeyed his father said to my friend: because the girl is beautiful, and he is a little shorter than his wife.The degree of "disability" of this height, according to the jokes of the Shanghainese, is not second-class but also third-class.It is indeed difficult to find a wife under such conditions, especially one with outstanding looks.If we want to talk about the threshold, one is to have self-knowledge, and the other is to know how to use one's own strengths to overcome one's own shortcomings.

The drama master Bernard Shaw famously said, "Economy is the art of making the most of life." This tells us that the economy not only exists in every corner of life, but is also an active element by nature.Therefore, when it comes to marriage, a major event in life, Shanghai people will definitely not allow it to sit idly by and do nothing. It will undoubtedly play an important role-enhancing the social status of the beautiful brides of the "lower horns" and making the "upper horns" more beautiful. The ugly bridegroom with the "corner" took advantage of his "identity" to find Meijiaoniang. Chen Le (pseudonym) is a representative of new Shanghai immigrants. She was admitted to a university in Shanghai from Anhui in 1999, and has stayed in Shanghai to work since graduation.Chen Le said: "I have clearly felt that I have been more and more contaminated with the atmosphere of Shanghai culture. There are many things that I don't like very much and I am very wary of." Once my mother went to relatives and brought back a watch, which was the contact information of distant relatives in Shanghai. There were about six or seven people.Chen Le took a look at the watch and concluded that he was not doing well.Mom asked, how do you know? Chen Le pointed to his watch and said, "Look, the ones in Yangpu, Zhabei, and Putuo are not in Jing'an, Xuhui, or Huangpu. If you look at where you live, there are no high-rise ones, they are all old houses. They are all 04, it means that there are four households in one staircase, and the houses of four households in one staircase are very poor." (Yangpu, Zhabei, and Putuo three districts traditionally have more poor people in Shanghai, while Jing'an, Xuhui, and Huangpu are the opposite. They are Shanghai's " On that occasion, Chen Le’s mother was too shocked to speak. "This is the shrewdness of a standard Shanghainese. If I hadn't lived in Shanghai for so many years, I would never have learned this way of thinking. The texture of Shanghai has penetrated into my thinking." Chen Le smiled helplessly. It is precisely because Shanghainese have such a clear and strong desire for material and consumer performances, and they have established their own rules.Therefore, if you want to make a name for yourself on the beach, you must let the texture of Shanghai permeate your thinking and let Shanghai change you. Shanghai is a beach, and the beach has no spatial barriers. It is not a circle, but an open system.As Yi Zhongtian said, "In this open system, almost everyone is individual, individual, and in and out. It is difficult to form a circle. Even if it is formed, it is only a loose circle, which is very vacillating. It's fragile and will eventually be dissolved by the 'beach'." Therefore, unlike the "circle consciousness" of Beijingers, Shanghainese have a distinct "tidal flat consciousness". Beijing culture is compatible.Official system culture, intellectual culture and folk culture are in a state of multi-layer symbiosis, each playing its own trumpet and playing its own tune.All kinds of circles coexist peacefully, live in peace and harmony, and the well water does not violate the river water, and there is no unified community. Shanghai culture is melting. "All kinds of people develop freely and compete fairly, but in the end they are unified in the community of Shanghai. It is inevitable that the elites will have some 'Shanghai style' because of this, but the middle and small citizens will also be somewhat decent and elegant because of this. As a result, Regardless of their occupational class or social role, Shanghainese will have a certain "Shanghai flavor". Because they all live in this highly socialized and highly integrated Shanghai Bund. Their lifestyles are generally similar, and their values ​​and aesthetic orientation Of course, it is inevitable that they are roughly the same. Even the street names in Shanghai are not as varied as those in Beijing, and they are often real "place names": the east-west ones are mostly named after cities, such as Nanjing Road and Beijing Road; the north-south ones are mostly named after provinces , such as Fujian Road and Sichuan Road; Zonglong Wenlong is marked with numbers, so you can know it is the place name of Shanghai at a glance.” As an outsider, integrating into Shanghai means giving up your previous life, even your past self. You have to learn to think and survive like Shanghainese. Sometimes this kind of giving up is the subconscious effect of day after day and year after year. , just like Chen Le—becoming sophisticated and calculating is just the "price" that one must pay for staying in this city for a long time.And whether that's good or bad is moot.It's like someone trying to squeeze into Shanghai, while someone left quietly with their bags on their backs. You just calculated the gains and losses and made different choices. Those who leave feel that the price of this "ablation" is too expensive, like a red-hot iron, burning a piece of its own imprint on your body-this is really too expensive, and they are reluctant to part with that simple, Intact skin.How about you?