Blossoms Shanghai
There is no doubt that the most popular TV series is Blossoms Shanghai繁花 at the beginning of 2024, which is the TV debut of Shanghai-born Hong Kong film director Wong Kar-wai. As this TV series has been in full swing with its supreme cinematic quality, Shanghai and its alluring city culture have become the center of topics sweeping social media. It is not the first time that Shanghai captured the attention of the audience in China and beyond.
In the eyes of the outsiders 外地人 or those who did not live here, the impression of Shanghai about its past and today was mostly conceived and built up through literature interpretation like The Song of Everlasting Sorrow 长恨歌, or the famous Shanghai trilogy 上海三部曲by Chen Danyan 陈丹燕, esp. her famous “Shanghai Princess上海的金枝玉叶”. In recent years, a movie about Shanghai called “B for Busy / Myth of Love 爱情神话” was the blockbuster of the year and garnered over 0.2 billion at the box office as well as the most highly rated one on Douban (China’s IMDb) in 2021.
This time, Blossoms Shanghai again repeated the history. It cements Shanghai’s unshakable position nicknamed “magic city 魔都“.
Why are we obsessed with Shanghai and Shanghai culture dubbed Haipai culture海派文化? I will try to decode this mystery through a cultural lens and name a couple of standing-out cultural elements exclusive to Shanghai.
Shanghai is a city of history with numerous historic sites and buildings in the French Concession Zone, but Shanghai is also a city of the present and the future. All the newest fledging trends and innovations started here before becoming mainstream and sweeping the other cities. As a highly commercialized city, it is the test bed and the incubator for the NPDs and innovations. Here, we witnessed how the coffee market has grown into a 1000 billion business in China which used to be a tea-dominated market. As depicted in Blossoms Shanghai, we took a peek at how Shanghai and China were transformed into modern society under the opening-up改革开放 policy in the ‘90s. It is also in Shanghai where we experienced the most stringent lockdown in 2022 as the pandemic became out of control, followed by the sequence of national lockdowns in other cities. Shanghai is like the beacon of Chinese policy change for the rest of the world to read and interpret from economic and commerce angles. In my decoding, Shanghai is and will be in this irreplaceable position as the forefront city to smell some fresh or fishy.
Dubbed as Paris de l'Est东方巴黎, Shanghai is the capital for fashion and luxury. Shanghai women are renowned as the most discerning fashion consumers who know how to dress themselves up. They carry a mystery of dia 嗲 in Shanghai dialect, meaning playing or flirting like a spoiled lover. In my mind’s eyes, Maggie Cheung in In the Mood for Love 花样年华 (which also was directed by Wang Kar-wai) depicted exactly how dia嗲Shanghainese women can be with their slow moves in curving Qipao dresses that were tailor-made in Shanghai. Nowadays, Shanghai is China’s luxury hub, with Plaza 66 Mall at West Nanjing Road as the epicenter which is lined with shops selling some of the world’s most expensive apparel brands, who chose the mall as the site of their first flagship store in mainland China.
Maggie Cheung in In the Mood for Love
Shanghai is a city that never sleeps. Here, professionalism is highly claimed as a badge of pride by everyone who is working and living in the city. People work hard and play hard. They work on time and respect the boundaries in business relationships. They put the work first. After 20 years of working and living in Shanghai, I feel highly related to their professionalism and working ethic. As a marketing professional who had worked for international corporations like WPP with branches in 3 tier-one cities like Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou respectively, I frequently heard our ex-colleagues make comments jokingly that colleagues in the Shanghai office worked most diligently, always on time, and behaved professionally, while colleagues in Beijing always treated themselves like big bosses 大爷 and colleagues in Guangzhou were always late and working at a slow pace. This saying accurately captures the difference in living pace and lifestyle in 3 different tier-one cities. Meanwhile, Shanghai natives are labeled as shrewd and calculating 精于算计, as they were raised and immersed in this commercial culture since their grandparents’ generation. They are always polite. Due attention is paid not to cross the line in their talking and behaving within a safe distance carefully calculated as a hard shell for self-protection.
Why talk about city culture?
Why are we obsessed with Shanghai culture? It is because culture is an intangible but quintessential part of storytelling. The local audience is culture-savvy and only resonates with the cultural elements that represent their unique personal style and identity, which is more common among HNWIs or UHNWIs. Shanghai, as a cultural city, can empower premium and luxury brands to attract and consolidate their fanbase with its enigma and allure.
Know how
If Shanghai were a brand, it could be a luxury brand like Louis Vuitton, highly commercialized with its unparalleled fanbase. Coincidently, Louis Vuitton, as one of the most successful luxury brands, has realized the power of Shanghai culture and leveraged it to promote itself to a wider audience by immaculately using Shanghai’s cultural DNA and elements in its brand building and communication. The most recent prominent case is that they unveiled a pop-up store that occupied a whole floor of recently renovated historic buildings by Suzhou Creek in Shanghai from Oct to Nov in 2023. Accompanied by this pop-up space, they launched the new Louis Vuitton city guide – City Guide Shanghai in English version. Also, they hosted a series of activities like book clubs, architecture tours, and film screenings to celebrate Shanghai’s city culture through a four-week-long culture festival. Even a podcast titled “Louis Vuitton [Extended] was born by inviting local cultural influencers who are native Shanghainese or Shanghai immigrants to share their city lives and reflect on this city’s changes.
Louis Vuitton
This is an excellent example of how brands can tap city cultures to connect with more discerning consumers who are seeking emotional bonding more than mere material possessions. There is great potential for the brands to dig deep and tap local culture as China is a largely united kingdom with a variety of cities standing out with their unique city cultural elements and DNAs. Cutting through the cultural lens can largely propel the brands to appeal to a wider audience and increase the brand momentum evolvement in the future market.
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