An interview article written by Liu Yan and Chen Xu, the two co-founders of Xindanwei, for the forthcoming issue of Creative Industry Journal (CIJ) edited by Profesor Simon Roodhouse in the UK.
Abstract
This interview with Huang Gai is about a creative business park named ‘Creative Shanghai Riverside’ built on an old General Electric (GE) factory along the western bank of the Huang Pu river, the most important drinking-water source and shipping artery of Shanghai. The reason we call it an ecstaquarter is that we see it as an existing imaginary place that foregrounds the sensual and philosophical side of the founder and designer – Deng Kunyan, where you could undress yourself and cast your body in the role of mediator through which to explore.
Deng Kunyan, a self-made architect from Taiwan who has devoted the best twenty years of his architectural career in Shanghai, and is well known for his conversion of an abandoned 1930s warehouse along the banks of Suzhou Creek, another important shipping route in Shanghai. The success of that project sparked an artistic renewal of the surrounding industrial district, saving old factories from demolition, and winning him the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Award for Culture Heritage Conservation in 2004. In Creative Shanghai Riverside, Deng Kunyan has integrated Taoistand Buddhist philosophy in his architectural and interior design work, lending modern spaces an atmosphere reminiscent of ancient Chinese traditions. Due to the absence of Deng Kunyan, we have interviewed the managing director of this creative business park, Huang Gai, who insisted humbly to be called ‘the assistant of Mr Deng’.
Keywords: water-front regeneration, creative business park, creative management, urban study, industrial heritage, Chinese culture
Q. Please introduce yourself and your relationship with Mr Deng Kunyan.
My background is fabric design. I met Mr Deng in 1991 in my own antique shop. I was then 18 years old and Mr Deng was 40. Mr Deng has been like a mentor to me. He has provided me with guidance and keys of wisdom. His visions always enlighten me with new perspectives to life. Although I have been always active and keen on learning and making new progress daily since the day we met, I could never keep up with him. This is the main reason I have been with him for so long. I don’t know too much about architecture, but I could comprehend Mr Deng’s design. I have been trying my best to be his assistant.
Q. Please introduce Creative Shanghai Riverside and your main function in this organization.
The Creative Shanghai Riverside was founded by Deng Kunyan in 2004. Deng’s story in Shanghai started from the Suzhou Creek area, which we first visited in 1996. At that time, Suzhou Creek was a deserted, polluted and unloved place. Deng can’t bear to do nothing when seeing buildings being knocked down. We were the first to move into the area that is now branded as the Suzhou Creek art district. In 1996, we set ourselves up in an old warehouse that belonged in the old days to the famous King of the Gangsters, Du Yuesheng. Since 1991, I have been working as the secretary and assistant to Deng Kunyan. From 1996, our company, Dayang Space Design, started to have a great impact on the Suzhou Creek quarter. Many artists and designers are heavily influenced by Deng’s vision and are now following his path, making the Creek a well-known art cluster. You will find artists, photographers, designers and new media (e.g. Tudou.com) people there.
A ten-kilometre-long river-facing area in Yangpu district (where Creative Shanghai Riverside is located) retains an old piece of the industrial memory of Shanghai, which had been forgotten for some time. The only usage people could remember was warehousing. About 3–4 per cent of the history had already been erased by pulling down those sad old buildings when the district government started to notice that there was something wrong there and came to Deng for help to find a solution. This was in 2003, before the term ‘creative industry’ was known (and abusively used). Later, Deng was introduced to the old Shanghai Power Station Auxiliary Equipment factory site where he suddenly found his second love. The factory had been owned by General Electric before 1949 but the production had ceased in 2001. It had a beautiful garden attached and the local artist and entrepreneur Chen Yifei was very fond of the place as well. Deng believed that the space here by the Huang Pu River could have an important impact on the cultural environment and social change in Shanghai and play an even more crucial role than the Suzhou Creek area. However, I questioned whether we should take this new challenge because I was worried about the idea of starting to do something from scratch when we already had our Dayang Design well on track. Dayong Design made us money and fame so why give up the good and try out something risky?
Q. What are your feelings about the city, the society and the government?
Something here holds us back, something we grow up with as a kid and maybe that’s from our education. We don’t have enough local original creativity. I see more stealing and copying. We had the old treasures in this city, but we are losing them and they are fading away. Most of the new stuff is copycat.
The government knows very little about the emerging trend, but they are very open and dare to take risks. For example, this creative cluster, we named it and the government recognized it with official registration. Although we haven’t been listed as one of the city-level clusters, we took the lead. The government bodies and agencies were all very supportive. They weren’t sure about the result or impact, but they gave it a go. This is why I like them.
Q. What kind of people do you think are the most valuable for the city’s development?
I personally believe the older generation has an important role for the city, as I don’t know too many people from new generations. These old people are over 60, well educated; their interesting experiences and deep thoughts always touch me a lot. Their beliefs and values are well established and mature, and don’t change easily to follow the trend.
Q. Please give us more details about Mr Deng’s background.
Mr Deng studied in agricultural school in Taiwan. Later on he learned architecture from his master Mr Han Baode. He won first prize for seven years in the National Design Competition in Taiwan and during the last year of the competition, he was invited to serve as a jury member. However, what has brought him the greatest recognition are the coffee shop, ‘Old Love’ (Jiuqing Mianmian) and the beerhouse, ‘Apocalypse Now’ (Xiandai Qishilu) projects in Taipei that he designed in 1985. He supervised the entire projects from beginning to end; even the training of the waiters was under his own supervision. These two projects were extremely successful and everyone in Taipei knew about them but three years later, Mr Deng started to get bored and wanted to try something new. He withdrew 10,000 US dollars from the bank and started to wander around Europe. Eight months later he came back to Taiwan and published his travel journals as a book. After that he decided to take a career break as an architect and moved to Shanghai to experiment with something new.
Q. Why Shanghai? What did he plan to do when he just moved here?
He was charmed by Shanghai. The city has a good atmosphere and foundation, which he was unable to find in Taiwan. In 1989 he helped ten outstanding and creative painters from Shanghai to organize a touring exhibition in South-East Asia. He requested ten works from each painter; these painters included some top names such as Cheng Shifa and Mao Guolun. Three years later, we switched our business from paintings to the trading of antique furniture, an area nobody was paying attention to at that time. We did not only trade and repair antique furniture but also archived the process of trading so that every piece of furniture could be traced by its age, style, owner, where it originally came from and how it was made. We continued doing this for three years. All the furniture has now been given away to friends as presents, but the archival materials of the furniture are well kept by Mr Deng in a warehouse in Taiwan. Mr Deng became quite an expert in Chinese antique furniture and gave lectures in Taiwan University.
Q. Why did Mr Deng choose to regenerate the old waterfront city areas along the Suzhou Creek and Huang Pu River?
The design scope of Mr Deng is very broad. He believes that the architect plays a crucial role for the city. The city did have some problems, the question left is where. He has chosen two spots, Suzhou Creek and Huang Pu River, which he believes, according to the traditional Chinese medical theory, are like the Renmai and Dumai vessels (the central vessels) to the human body. Solving the problem along these two rivers through urban regeneration projects would be like ‘breaking through the hindrances in the Renmai and Dumai vessels’. Mr Deng did not feel happy about leaving these important tasks to someone else, he felt that he had to lead these projects himself.
The waterfront industrial area has a rich history and it could be lost without our efforts in protecting the old buildings. The government didn’t want this to happen, but the problem was that they didn’t know how to stop it. The Suzhou Creek area was a difficult and cheap place (daily rent rate was CNY 0.6) with lots of stalls selling fruit, clothes and cement, and now the Creek has become ‘sexy’ and rents are ten times higher. The Creek enjoys some sunshine and an international popularity. It was a big surprise to the confused Shanghai government when the UNESO award came. They suddenly realized what Deng had been doing and its value to the city. What we are doing is different from what most property developers do when commercializing the industrial heritage.
Q. What is the difference in vision and goals between Mr Deng and other developers in these areas?
The difference is that money-making is neither Mr Deng’s interest nor his motive. He is even willing to use money from his own pocket to push things to be done. He wanted to invest his savings in the two most important spots of the city, in the hope of establishing guidance and a role model for the government, to develop the city in a good and healthy direction. It is difficult to turn an industrial site into a commercial one, maybe ‘creative industry’ could be the key. He is not only an idealist, but also a practitioner, someone who dares to experiment. Our team shares his vision. We have accompanied him for so many years and have never thought much about return on investment and huge profit.
Q. Do you think it is appropriate to call Creative Shanghai Riverside as the ecstaquarter that exists in Mr Deng’s dream?
It is not only a dream, but a real thing. Mr Deng hopes to create something to be a role model for others. It is not easy to persist in one’s belief, sometimes you must suffer to do so, as long as the role model could help policy-makers and other businesses to make the right decisions on city development.
Q. What are the main hurdles to your development? Any difficulties?
We started to look for sites in 2002. In 2003 we found this place. In 2004 our landlord, Shanghai Power Station Auxiliary Equipment (‘the factory’) and the authorities of Yangpu district signed the agreement with us and regarded this as an experiment in creative business. Our problem started in the second half of 2004, when we signed a contract with a Japanese enterprise that planned to run a big creative school in our quarter with a permanent personnel of 200 to 300 people. Two months after the contract was signed, our Japanese tenant left us without notice because the city authorities informed them that the entire site of the factory was going to be rebuilt in 2007 as a commodity residential area next to the planned Jiang Zemin memorial hall. Soon after that the recognition by UNESCO – the Asia-Pacific Award for Culture Heritage Conservation put the government in an awkward position. Although we could keep this place, our business plan was all ruined; we were not able to find any tenants, meanwhile we had to pay the rent for the factory site. This difficult situation remained for two years until the mayor was sacked; finally by the end of 2006, the municipal authorities in Huangpu district gave us permission to build our own entrance to the public (without going through the doors of the machine tool factory).
Q. What makes your creative business park stand out from others?
Originality. This includes the originality of our own design and the vision of Mr Deng, also the originality and the vision of our tenants. We welcome creative artists and entrepreneurs with their original ideas and artwork. Moreover, we are doing something which is creative while staying very Chinese, we are not fooling around without our own cultural identity. This is what we are heading for and sticking to every day. This is tough though.
Q. Do you have any interesting stories attached to this place?
Oh yes, GE will move their Asian R&D centre from South Korea to our place because the daughter of Mr Andersen from Denmark, who was the original owner of the factory, was married to the son of GE’s boss. This factory was then under the control of GE before the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). GE has been holding their annual conference here in the past years just because of this interesting relationship with the place. The grandson of Mr Andersen is now the Danish consul in Shanghai.
Q. What are your objectives right now? In which phase of development are you in?
To make good use of old resources. Mr Deng once acclaimed as the city’s ‘God of Protection’ by the Europeans, sees his mission as the guardian/knight for the old architectural history of the city. There are too many bad designs around. Many people can’t tell the good from the bad. We want to establish this as a model for the government. We have had one goal from the very beginning and it has never changed. This creative quarter, I dare to say, is very much a success: 80 per cent of the space has been rented out and the tenants are very happy with us. They all moved from the central city. It’s cheaper and nicer here. We will also look into the business benefit for the tenants, because this is equally important for them.
Q. What are your strategy and business models?
The business model is quite simple. It was all about the rental contract with our landlord and our tenants. However, I am quite confused about the future model of property management because we can neither establish a management firm by ourselves, nor find a good one to source out. Most of the property management firms couldn’t match our standards. Currently I cannot collect any fee on property management because I am legally not allowed to do so.
Q. What about the management of your own organization?
We are just 100 per cent executing Mr Deng’s requests. I mean we as the entire team from myself as the top man of the creative quarter to every gardener and security guard. We try our best to make him satisfied and happy, regardless of workload and working hours. But he will always come up with comments and suggestions for improvement. We then re-implement them according to his instructions without any complaints and objections. So as the managing director, it is not so difficult to manage such a team. We are completely in the brilliant rays shed by Mr Deng (Laugh).
I have hired more than 100 graduates from many disciplines for our projects. All of them used to or still work here as humble trainees, but many of them are now the leading designers in many places. Mr Deng has been a great master for all of us. We learn from him in a very traditional way, in which we are not just learning his technique and expertise, but also learning from him about ethics and self-cultivation, a gradual process of acquiring moral understanding.
Q. What will be your next big decision in the coming years?
Our current scale is too small, more akin to an experimental plot. We hope to expand our creative quarter to the entire surrounding areas, instead of duplicating the model somewhere else. If we cannot make it bigger, we will suspend this project, because our initial goal of protecting the old industrial heritage has been achieved. The landlord has promised to give us more space to work on in 2010, and in the new area GE will set up their Asian Research and Development Centre, which is exactly what is needed the most!
Q. Have you tried to stimulate the interactivity among the tenants?
Not much. Many management people of tenant enterprises (especially the management level) are fans of Mr Deng, otherwise, we wouldn’t have so many tenants. The new initiative to set up a Chinese medicine centre, ‘Popular Herbs’ in the creative quarter is part of our strategy to bring our tenants together at end of the day – everyone needs to see doctors (laugh). We will gather the top management of our tenants together for workshops and lectures about Chinese medicine, Chinese healthy living and Taoism. Some professionals in these disciplines might offer some paid services, even one of our tenants was interested in being an agent of some medicinal drinks. This initiative is just in the starting phase; Mr Deng is still planning to make it better.
Q. As a promoter of traditional Chinese culture, are you interested in establishing an international network?
Certainly, but our energy is too limited to do so. As Mr Deng is handling these matters himself, no one else in our team could help him to do this. All the plans need to be determined by him; we are here merely for implementation, that is the rule of the game. This is similar to how Mr Deng has worked with his own master – Mr Han Baode; the work of the master is not allowed to be touched. Mr Deng’s time and energy is very limited, maybe he has not got any time to do this, or got any chance to find someone to help him with it. Right now, we are working with an antique bookshop and institutions of religious conscience to organize lectures about Chinese medicines, Buddhism and Taoism. These networks could be the basis of further development.
Q. Any support from government on these initiatives?
No, but nor any resistance. In some circumstances, this gesture is already a great support for us. Although Mr Deng has been very critical of our government, most of the high officials in the government are very open and tolerant towards his criticisms; they enjoy exchanging ideas with Mr Deng.
Q. Any financial support from banks?
No way, because the loans are too little and the loan application procedure is too complicated. We sometimes borrow money from other enterprises. In Shanghai, there is too little support for privately owned enterprises and most don’t succeed. Our projects are financially dependent on Mr Deng’s design business.
Q. Do you usually participate in creative industry activities? Any collaboration with other creative industry parks?
Seldom. This is Mr Deng’s job and I can’t speak for him. I sit in the office when people visit. Deng sees architects and designers prior to his academic seminars or big contracts. He looks at every single layout of a grass, a brick or a rock. I am just looking after the creative space here for him. We don’t collaborate with any creative industry parks, their visits are not well received by Mr Deng either.
Q. What about your external communications? Do you have a website?
We have no plan to communicate and promote ourselves through a website. There is too much plagiarism around. Worse than plagiarism, some people have taken some of our elements and distorted them. There is just not enough protection for Mr Deng and his work. Even though we are aware of the importance of the Internet and external communications, we could never afford to spend energy on them. We have not directly spoken to the Chinese media since 2006, as their reports on our activities never appeared in the way we had expected. Sometimes we do speak to visitors and some media from overseas, but personally I have never been interviewed by anyone in such depth as with you today.
Q. Are you afraid of plagiarism?
Not entirely. Sometimes, plagiarism can be a good thing. Many people have learnt to reuse old wood and bricks, as Mr Deng does in his projects. This has not only helped to save resources, but also saved transportation costs. The materials from redundant buildings in Shanghai can now be consumed locally and the transportation of these materials to Su Zhou is no longer necessary – very economical.
Q. Are you familiar with some good examples of creative industry parks abroad?
We are invited to attend some international events, but Mr Deng is the only person who can participate in them. I am totally unfamiliar with what is happening internationally. In China I have seen very few artistic and gallery clusters which have nothing to do with the hard-core commercial business. Meanwhile, I need to make a living with my own antique business, which supports my family.
Liu Yan & Chen Xu
15 December 2008 in Shanghai
References
Jian-Min Li (2005), ‘The Animation of the Body: Dumai (the Central Vessel) and the Formation of the Conception of Male Body in Early China’, Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology Academia Sinica, 76: 2, pp. 249–313 or http://iao.sinica.edu.tw/significant-research-results-pdf/099-103-em21.pdf. Accessed 12 June 2009.
Contributor’s details
Liu Yan, MA studied Arts and Media Management at the Utrecht School of Arts (the Netherlands) and holds a postgraduate diploma in marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing (London). Liu Yan is a cultural entrepreneur who co-founded Shanghai 3S Creative Management and Da-Tong China Desk Creative Industry, which provide professional services and co-working office space to creative professionals, entrepreneurs and organizations to establish collaboration in China. Liu Yan has been a guest lecturer and done consulting work in the creative industry and clustering, arts marketing and audience development for several Chinese and Dutch art academies and art organizations. Prior to her career in the art and culture sector, she worked for six years in Shanghai as an account director of Pathways marketing consultancy.
Chen Xu has an MA in Cultural and Creative Industries from King’s College London (UK). Chen Xu has worked with the leading creative economist John Howkins as the Country Manager (China) since 2006 and later joined BOP Consulting (UK) to help to implement the company’s international research and consulting projects. She is now a co-founder of Shanghai 3S Creative Management and an associate of BOP Consulting. Chen Xu worked as a researcher on the revision of John Howkins’s famous book on the global creative economy. She has also worked with Film London (UK), Arts & Business (UK) and China Shanghai International Arts Festival.
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