Shanghai | turnSTYLE: Xiaojing Huang, Design Diva

turn·stile –noun1. a structure of four horizontally revolving arms pivoted atop a post and set in a gateway or opening in a fence to allow the controlled passage of people.

turn·STYLE - noun1. Justina's snapshot profiles of cool people in Shanghai who are creating and defining China style.

After this most current food scandal in China--melamine in milk!--I am despairing over humanity and integrity. Honestly. What kind of people would poison milk for babies? Children are every country's treasure. So to be so premeditated in contaminating the milk has got to be the lowest of the low. I think the Chinese expression for evil people is right: those milk producers are hei xin, or dark hearts.

That's why I have to hang my hope for humanity in general and for China in particular on good people like hip and forward-thinking product designer, Xiaojing Huang, executive manager for Y-Townwhose mission is to create products that are useful and beautiful. We met last week over crepes and chocolate decadence (and egads! melamined milk in our coffees!) to talk over the current state of design in China. Of course, we also talked shop about creativity--what drives us both to create and how that need isn't tied to profit margins.

Two other designers work with Xiaojing at Y-Town. The name of their company comes from waitan (the Bund) in Mandarin. (The Bund is the strand of stately buildings that line the Huangpu River in Shanghai.) What a perfect metaphor for this product design team, which mixes the east and west in its eclectic design mentality--much like the Bund with its collection of Chinese and Western architecture.

According to Xiaojing, "Design in China is still beginning. The young generation is tearing things apart." That's how Xiaojing gets many of her ideas: tearing apart the old. Like trolling old watch stores, buying the designs she likes, and then dismantling them. Destroying them to create something different, something that is uniquely hers.

I think that philosophy of tearing apart and making new is most evident in Y-Town's recycling project. Worried about the waste the world is producing, Xiaojing and team created a new design imperative for themselves: to experiment with old, discarded local materials such as these computer chips and motherboards

and to reconfigure them into something wholly different. Modern. Beautiful. And useful:

What was destined for the dump is now funky jewelry. This exercise of reusing materials forces the team to look at everything with a completely open and playful attitude. As a writer, this recycling mentality appeals to me--perhaps because I like the idea of recycling ideas that I've labored over...and can't use because of plotting or pacing or whatever. A number of my writer-buddies and I create "dumping ground" files for passages and chapters we love but have had to cut from our novels.

Anyway, if Y-Town is able to turn outdated posters for art exhibits into must-have purses, then I can't wait to see what they can do with these raw materials:

(Note: I showed this picture to my kids and told them all about Xiaojing. They peered at this picture and came up with a dozen product ideas. What if we all did this with the things that we unthinkingly toss into the garbage?)

Y-Town's playful utilitarianism is at its best in their design for Absolut Vodka: a tote container that doubles as a lantern (care of a battery insert)!

Here's the demolition room with their collected fodder that spurs ideas. I will bet anything that one day soon, we'll see the products that come out of this room in our own homes.

To ideas and people with good hearts who just want to make our world a more beautiful place.

Inspirations Abound

These last couple of mornings, I've been getting up around 4:00 a.m., my mind already working over the revision for my next novel. This way I can sneak in two hours of work before the family wakes (or rather, I wake them). I received the most amazing notes on the first draft of a YA fantasy series I've been writing--fifteen pages of insight and questions, challenges and suggestions. Ever since reading the critique, I've being going to bed lost and waking with new directions.

To be honest, all of this brainstorming made me too tired to make it to the famous Shanghai Biennale contemporary art festival this last weekend. I wish I had; I heard it was awesome.

Not to worry. I've been having my own Biennale celebration...

After writing and thinking all day Tuesday and most of Wednesday, I hit Red Town in the afternoon to interview Xiaojing Huang, a very talented product designer with the hip design group, Y-Town. (More on XJ and Y-Town soon.) Without even knowing it, she gave me a ton of new ideas for my novel. (Hopefully, you'll read them in two years if my series sells!)

Anyway, Red Town is yet another artists' enclave in Shanghai. Once a steel mill, it was rehabbed two years ago into a fantastic showcase for sculptures,

both indoors and out. This was one of my favorites, a fu lion like the two protecting our home in Seattle. Its paw lies atop a roll of newspaper, protecting the words. Or at least, that's how I'm interpreting this piece of art.

Here's another sculpture that could have sprung directly out of this week's early morning brainstorming. Fantastical, isn't it? Don't you wonder what story the artist was telling?

A few years ago, I collected antique abacuses (abaci?) as a gift for my husband who is a finance whiz. Just look at this enormous one:

Of course, where do I find myself in the midst of all this wonderful art? Lured into the tiny bookshop inside the sculpture center, that's where. I could have spent hours perusing the gorgeous coffee table books on art and design. Words--they are my eye candy.

Luckily, instead of eating words, I had crepes. (Waah--they were a little dry. Note to self: next time, try the panini sandwiches.)

So today, I got up before 4:00 a.m., knowing that I had to give up all my writing time during the school day since I had another research interview booked. This time, my research took me to Taikang Lu. From the busy street filled with tiny shops with a bewildering array of mismatched products (flyswatters to socks) and dives of unknown smells, you'd never know that just down the intersecting narrow lanes, you'd find this:Pedestrian alleys filled with boutiques and cafes and galleries. I arrived early before the shops opened. Imagine this place hopping with the older generation, chatting, strolling, eating, selling vegetables. I'm not sure where they disappeared to at ten, but I missed them.

I made my way to my destination: Shokay, the world's only store that sells goods made out of surprisingly soft...yak down. Sarah Kong, the publicist for Shokay, and I spent half of our hour together laughing. About yaks. I nearly capsized the cup of crysanthemum tea she prepared for me. The details she was able to provide me about harvesting yak down has already helped me immensely. (More on Sarah and Shokay soon!)

After my interview, I met up with Maile Roundtree, a fabulous jeweler from Seattle, who had blown into town on business. Her designs, such as this:are sold throughout Nordstrom and eclectic boutiques. Oprah, the oracle of all that is good, herself has worn Maile's designs on her show. As beautiful as Maile's work is, her grand masterpiece is her daughter. Let's just say Baby Roundtree was a rockstar today. I swear, every single Chinese grandmother within a two-kilometer radius of us emerged mystically from their homes at first coo. And that doesn't count all the young, hip waitresses, edging each other out for the chance to hold the baby.

Maile invited me to source gemstones with her tomorrow... Oh, how perfect is that for my book where one of the characters is a jeweler...but I can't. My son has a day off of school, and I am planning an Adventure Day for him. Somehow, I don't think looking at gemstones is his idea of an adventure. Ohhhhh...why can't I clone myself?

I think that's going to be my problem in Shanghai this year: wishing I could be in two places at once. I want to be at my computer, working on my novels. But I also need to be out in the world, experiencing Shanghai, which feeds my work.