Meet Federico Narrow Road:
Read Feng Hui's "Landscape That Has Not Disappeared - Chengdu Deep Wandering Manual"
Text | Pang was shocked
Even the old aborigines who are slow to sense will not be indifferent to the city walkers who have frequently appeared in Chengdu's old town in recent years. They are not tourists from other places carrying travel bags, not public officials in urban construction and management, not unemployed people who are bored to pass the time, most of them are intellectuals who speak pure old Chengdu dialect, dressed appropriately, talk well, and cherish the history of every street and alley. Most crucially, they usually carry a camera bag with several lenses, which is mostly half a day in the ordinary alleys that old residents often think.
In fact, the identity of such minorities is not difficult to identify: in the birthplace of Europe, they are defined as "city walkers" (French flâneur), from the Scandinavian dialect "flana", which originally means "to the left to the right". Today, the wanderer flâneur refers to the wanderers who wander outside the general public, observing what is happening around them and trying to understand the city from a deeper and more detailed perspective of human history. From Europe to Japan to first-tier cities such as Shanghai in China, "city walkers" have gradually evolved into a trendy, niche way of in-depth tourism.
In Chengdu, the writer Feng Hui was one of the city's earliest people to consciously accept the "city walk" life. In him, it seems that similar experiences and spiritual traits can be found in Federico Castigliano, an early French city walk practitioner. Federico Castigliano is a well-known "city walk" cultural researcher and practitioner" who wrote and published a book on strolling through Paris, Flâneur. The art of wandering the streets of Paris is regarded by the "city walker" as the ideal book of "city walking".
Federico Castigliano is a native of Turin, Italy, and his time living and studying in Paris gives him the opportunity to savor the humanistic fabric of this city worth strolling into in this birthplace of strolling culture. The work of the 19th-century French poet Baudelaire also had a profound influence on him. In his opinion, Baudelaire does not let go of "the powerful and ephemeral beauty that passes by every trace around him", which is the best interpretation of this city walk, and he hopes that he can be a "person who captures the beauty of the moment" like Baudelaire.
In his Flâneur. In The art of wandering the streets of Paris, he chronicles his day as a "city walker" in fluid and melancholy terms:
On the way to the church, I found myself off course and on the Promenade Saint Germain on the west side of The Fifth Arrondissement. I took a detour to observe the beautiful people sitting at the coffee table and breathe in the typical atmosphere of this corner of Paris. The small streets near the Mabron metro station are not as lively as they are on weekdays and nights, and are unusually quiet. As I passed the bar, I breathed in the woody scent of beer soaked in beer. Turn right from Rennes Street, the Florida Cafe is filled with city celebrities, movie stars and fashion darlings who sit on the edge of their beds and drink coffee and watch the scenery. The purely personal style is combined with the magnificent architecture and other urban landscapes to form an extraordinary whole. The exhaustion of a whole day's wandering made me feel a kind of spiritual wandering.
With this energy field, Federico Castigliano later came to Beijing, wandering through the beijing hutongs he was not familiar with. Here, he once again sublimates the ideal of "city walking": the wanderer needs to "subjectively abandon or completely lose his destination in the process, completely immerse himself in his surroundings, open all his senses, and drown himself in the environment." This is the meaning of the wanderer "He said that only when the wanderer is selfless and subjectively willing to "marry the crowd" will the city walk have greater discoveries and more gains.
For the "fast" of the city of Beijing, Federico Castigliano has an accurate judgment. Although the "rambling" of city walks cannot dissolve this fast, it is also a way. It is precisely through the occasional "slowness" that people need to give more energy to the daily "fast", which is what he believes is the greatest meaning of "city walking" for today's urbanites. "We just need some time to really appreciate this rich and stretched inner state." He said.
Unlike Federico Castigliano, Feng Hui is a native of Chengdu, who has his own attitude and understanding of the areas and ways to walk around the city. He was not even an exotic follower of Federico Castigliano's ideals of city walking, but that did not prevent him from working as a pioneer of the city in a meaningful deep salvage and excavation of the city's history and humanities. Feng Hui's first two books on "city walks", "Chengdu Street Walk" and "Chengdu in the Image", together with the newly published "Undiminished Landscapes - Chengdu In-Depth Travel Notes" (Chengdu Times Publishing House, September 2021), constitute the "Chengdu Handbook Trilogy". Flowing everywhere in this trilogy is this love of city walking and the self-consciousness of the master of the city who is deeply excavated.
As one of the few emerging but seasoned "city walkers" in Chengdu, Feng Hui, like Federico Castigliano, is an intellectual class in the city and has a deep cultural appreciation. In addition, they have a common trait, that is, they have strong mobility and cyclical patience. The latter two qualities help them discover unique cityscapes in their day-to-day city walks. Here, there are both natural and humanistic, and there are more spiritual and ideological levels.
There is no denying that the eight in-depth tour routes of the ring line, the north line, the central line, the south line, the east first line, the east second line, the west first line, and the west second line that Feng Hui dedicates in this book are not special, but he locks the humanistic value and ornamental value space of the city walk in the positioning of the second ring, which I agree with very much. This is not to deny that the emerging urban landscapes have no value for strolling, but they are indeed too young and fashionable compared to an old city nourished by hundreds or even thousands of years. In this era, the most unincorporated and easiest to form and imitate is fashion. It just happens to be history, which can neither be formed nor imitated.
Even these familiar and ordinary routes, under Feng Hui's stroll, will have different discoveries and experiences, and this sense of experience is beyond discovery, which happens to be the spiritual nutrition and cultural value of the city walk. First of all, in the chapter "Docks and Boat Gangs", Feng Hui introduced the dozens of docks and gangs established in the area of Chengdu Dongmen Bridge and Hejiang Pavilion during the Republic of China: "You may not find the specific location of any of the docks, it does not matter, ask the elderly by the river, most of them can point out the location of one or two old docks, and tell several stories about the old docks." You make small talk with them for half a day, which is equivalent to listening to a free lecture on local history. （P063）”
What Feng Hui wants to do is to let ordinary people's eyes scan the city's grand historical picture through city walks. In the emotional experience of "city walking", Feng Hui and Federico Castigliano are spiritually connected. "In most people's minds, history is the biography of the emperor and the hero Haojie, but the real history is more like a drama performed by ordinary characters. Such a micro history is real and intuitive, interesting to live, and grounded." "When you visit Chengdu, you must not only understand Zhuge Liang, Du Fu and Ba Jin, but also understand the ordinary Chengdu people and ordinary city life." In addition, he also believes that "mahjong, hot pot, tea shops, these are common scenes on the streets of Chengdu, but they cannot fully represent the most authentic things in the depths of Chengdu's soul." This city is both fun, touching and thought-provoking. In-depth wandering and systematic exploration allow you to discover a completely different ancient city temperament. The city is indeed a bit like a beautiful woman, but it is impossible to simply guess her origins and talents from her beautiful appearance" (see the preface of the book) These experiences and insights are in line with Federico Castigliano's strolls in Paris and Beijing.
Compared with Paris and Beijing, Chengdu's city walk value is slightly inferior, but it has its own unique quality and charm, and even, in some ways, it surpasses Paris and surpasses Beijing. In addition to the disappeared ancient city, there are some unencumbered landscapes, hidden in the daily life of the city, in the smell of fireworks, which need to be carefully salvaged and slowly discovered. Feng Hui has a sensitive heart for the city's daily fireworks, and his Chengdu stroll notes framed by words are not enough to become an ideal design in the universal sense, but for people who are accustomed to fast, it is still a valuable guide to life. At least, in the conceptual revolution, they will slowly accept: sometimes, slowly, it is easier to see different landscapes. For Chengdu, where the slow travel system is getting better and better, the construction of the park city is almost made for the city walkers.
What is even more rare is that Feng Hui also uses the lens to show a different style of strolling the city. In this "Landscape That Has Not Disappeared", these shots and the cities presented under the lens are novel and chic, and the vitality and vitality displayed by the ordinary ordinary people under the lens, as well as the love of the city immersed in bone and blood, have a great refreshing feeling.
I have a hunch that Chengdu is about to become a hot city for a new generation of "city walkers". It is both an old Chengdu person like Feng Hui and a new Chengdu person like Federico. I even had a hunch that one day, Feng Hui would meet the famous Federico Narrow Road in an old city street.
Red Star News reporter | Chen Mou
Edited | Duan Xueying
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