Bath center lifestyle of the ’70s inspires c
As a choreographer, I delve into themes that appeal to me emotionally and usually my creations come out naturally. I am deeply attached to Shanghai tradition and culture. That’s the root of my work.
Ahuntang (⌥ූ , a traditional Shanghai bath center rarely seen today, was possibly the first place where a child born in Shanghai in the 1970s could be introduced to an adult society, according to Gu Fengqing, a senior choreographer and deputy curator of Songjiang Culture Center.
Gu, born in the early 1970s, moved with his parents at age 4 to downtown Songjiang. At the time it had Shanghai-style shikumen architecture, tile-roofed, gray-brick houses, book stands that loaned comics and alleyways scattered with deck chairs on which elders would rest and use palm-leaf fans to keep cool.
“I would follow my grandpa to a huntang in Songjiang. Living in houses with no heating or air conditioning in winter, residents of Shanghai at the time were fond of taking a bath in a warm huntang. They bought a ticket in the morning or at noon and were allowed to stay until nightfall,” said Gu.
“A huntang was like a small adult society with people from all walks of life. When they finished bathing and climbed out of a huge tub, they turned on a radio to listen to storytelling, or gathered in twos and threes to play Chinese chess or chitchat about a particular TV program that was being broadcast on a black-and-white TV.”
The young Gu was impressed by the waiters in the huntang. They were able to expertly fling hot towels to customers and quickly and accurately fetch with a hanging fork a customer’s clothes from lines across the ceiling.
“The bath center served tea and dim sum. I ran back and forth amid the misty room, like in ecstasy,” Gu recalled.
As dusk fell, the bath water in the tub grew murky, having hosted customers through an entire day. And the people, having “been in a hatching position like a hen” in the water for as long they wished, felt relaxed and energetic once again.
Adapting culture onto the stage
“As a choreographer, I delve into themes that appeal to me emotionally and usually my creations come out naturally,” said Gu. “I am deeply attached to Shanghai tradition and culture. That’s the root of my work.”
Over several decades, the choreographer has directed dance performances relating to traditional Chinese comic books, Nanxiang steamed buns and a shadow puppet intangible cultural inheritor, among others.
“Grandpa and Huntang,” a dance choreographed by Gu, narrates a story of filial piety that happens in a huntang.
“A grandpa takes a grandson to a bath in a huntang when the child is young; when he grows up, the grandson shows his filial piety by massaging and washing the feet of his grandpa,” said Gu.
The dance won the 17th Chinese Culture and Art Government Award in 2016, a prize from the mass culture and art category, and has recently won support from China National Art Fund to encourage its improvement.
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on to culture-themed dances, the also hosting more dance perforcontemporary style. anghai Lass of the Moon Cresng Lake,” another work by Gu, he story of Fan Jinshi, a Shangwho worked as an archaeologist ars preserving ancient murals Grottoes in Dunhuang, northwest ansu Province. rks include “The Stage Installers,” devotion of cultural workers, and “A ary Tablet” about a Songjiang-Yunty-relief program and a Wa ethnic lder who safeguarded the Chinese his entire life. e been selected to be staged in the a Art Festival in Hebei and Beijing ber. cades of experience in dance art nd promotion, Gu still remembers when he was a military art troupe his late teens. he girls were rehearsing, the boys ent out to have fun. But I chose to watch how my teacher did the chong. A choreographer creates things ascinated me. ould use video to record dance prom TV and watch them repeatedly.” s before he pursued a dancing denghai Theater Academy. After that, at the district’s culture center for ades.