Changle Road Notes Sequence

The old text written in the summer of 2020 has now been slightly added and modified and put on matter, hoping that Web3 can become a better preservation place for these texts.

"Assemblages, not sequences, contain truth"

—— "Wanderlust" by Olga Tokarczuk

I never thought I would spend this summer in Shanghai. During the stay of more than two months, from the end of the rainy season to the first gust of autumn wind, there were more than 70 times of rain and morning and evening. Summer internship brings a state between travel and life.

I think this state is very special. Unlike ordinary trips, tourists' perspectives always have a straightforward logic, and scratches are simply scratched on the surface of the city; but I am never a resident, and there are no surprises in my habitual life that can cause ripples. I walk the streets of Shanghai with my camera, and every time I pass by, I can find something new; I also try to live in the Shanghainese way, not to change or integrate into anything, but just to experience that life may have existed elsewhere possibility. Two months is not long, but it is enough to make people have some feelings for Shanghai.

So I started to record some moments: sometimes it was a weekend trip to see interesting scenery, sometimes it was a story that popped into my mind on the commuter subway, sometimes it was a boring fantasy in a lazy afternoon, and sometimes it was a broken text that was indescribable. sentence. In my small room at No. 619 Changle Road, facing the plane trees full of windows, I recorded these fragments of life, and slowly I accumulated half a notebook.

I also thought about how to organize these notes, but in the end, I felt that since it is already fragmented writing and we are so used to fragmented reading, it is better to keep the most original context when writing these words. Just as Polish writer Tokarczuk tried in "Wanderlust", he used nonlinear thinking and imagination to integrate the whole picture about travel. These words are disorganized in time and space, but maybe some words, moments or images reappear somewhere, like a string of secret words that surfaced, carefully telling my messy and deep memory of Shanghai. When the day comes, I can borrow these notes and wander back to that small house to see what kind of afternoon I remember and what kind of stories haunted my mind.

So, 25 notes, written in 25 corners of Shanghai, pinned on 25 sudden reverie. They are all scattered like constellations, but they are always held together by some dark lines. Combining each of the notes will map out the summer of Changle Road.