A chair is, of course, just a chair but for some reason I like these chairs in more ways than for simply being chairs, or I like them in more ways for the nature in which they are chairs. Ever since I came across an article, some time ago, reviewing Michael Wolf’s book ‘Sitting in China’ I have had a few pictures of these random creations stuck on my wall. But I have just come across his website and these collective images for the first time.
I am not an inactive fellow, I get out and about town and do try to keep a little fit, but I am partial to a good chair, particularly a good comfy armchair, though here in Xi’an they are sadly few and far between. So, first off, I like these chairs from the perspective of a chair lover. I am though also a fan of these chairs because they seem to symbolize to me so much of what is still so good about China and what is increasingly not so great about our world.
I will highlight the former first. A directive here from a wise elder observing a young fellow standing uncomfortably by a number of seated and crouching locals, might go something like: “If you need to sit, find something to sit on, and if you really can’t use anything nearby to sit on, then crouch.” Sadly ‘the crouch’, or ‘the squat’, is becoming an increasingly frowned upon habit within this fast developing nation, even though for many ‘the squat’, once mastered, is actually quite comfortable and also quite conducive to a bit of street side banter, while also allowing a little youthful courting.
Though, of course, crouching, or more specifically squatting, should be cleansed from daily life if this country does want to find representation on the board of great civilized civilizations and certainly if it wants to become its Head. Or, so it might go. However, these chairs, like the crouch or squat, are useful; they are cheap, they are practical, they are full of life and they are varied. And they must have simply evolved out of a communal desire to continue chatting with neighbors, street sellers, local beauties and customers alike, in whatever random location you had found yourself short of a seat. The nature of the chair here in this context is one of pragmatism and utility; with a pronounced nod towards necessity and re-use, though they are also not short of design ingenuity, variety and are a simple representation of the reality of community here. Happy Days.
Here in Xi’an, you will find those crouched or seated in various locations on these various objects just taking in the life, watching the world go by. Though a world that is going by at such a speed that it is almost possible to see two worlds going by at once, the one of the passing day; simply dawn to dusk, the other, from a recent past to a quite different future. It is here that these chairs begin to take on their second level of meaning. They can here act as a point of reference against which we can gauge the ever quickening passage of time, or more specifically the immense changes rapidly going on within those aspects of time that we measure by days and weeks. They are, these chairs, a grounding point from which we can literally and figuratively watch this departure.
This is becoming a repeated theme in these Notes, but it is true that, where on arrival I valued these images for their representation of a reality I so liked, I now increasingly appreciate them for being representative of a past I so liked. The 70’s and 8o’s may have been a bit of a dislocating period for my grandparents to go through, I can now almost get a sense of what that may have felt like. Michael Wolf was onto something when capturing these multifarious seating objects on film. They might well end up meaning ever more to him and us, being as they are representative of a past that was and is valuable.
I will continue by highlighting a couple of things that stood out from the week just passed before tying these strands together within a wider framework of thought at the end. The first image from the week that has stayed with me was of an old man sitting in a wheel chair having, it seemed, been placed and left at the junction of two busy roads. He wasn’t going anywhere, or trying to, he was just sat there, eyes fixed straight ahead, his somewhat vacant gaze cutting diagonally across a two-road intersection.
His face became, as I passed by on my bike, instantly etched into my mind and left me with a strange sense of timelessness and intensity. As I cycled on it was as if his view out onto the street had been transferred to me; I had a clear impression in my mind of this aged fellow and his external calm juxtaposed against the repeated and rapid transit of crisscrossing motor vehicles that he was observing. It was in equal measure meditative and disturbing.
The second image that has been left with me came from the infamous Chang’An Lu, and was of an elderly lady who had somehow managed to get herself into the middle of the road, one side of the pine-treed central reservation, probably where she had wandered across thousands of times. But, now she couldn’t get across to the other side. Her eyes kept slowly drifting rightwards in the direction of the traffic, though she never managed to fully lift her head, before she was looking down again at her feet.
She just seemed to dwell on looking downwards for a few moments before again partly lifting her head to look towards the oncoming traffic, this time also slowly raising her right arm to steady herself against the green fence behind her. I had slowed to watch her, but finding myself getting caught between two lanes of traffic I had to quickly push on past her to get free. I tried to grab a look back but only managed to see that she was still stood there before I turned right at the next corner. I should have stopped to help, though the feeling that has been left with me feels more all encompassing than that.
Going further, I remember recently suggesting to a friend that continued economic progress and development is not only hindered by ecological consequences but by the fact that we are reaching the end of the road of en-mass invention of new purchasable items. He disagreed, noting that this has always been said and that we always create new things. But now it seems, that that is only part true. We will of course always create the ‘new’ but I would argue that we have reached a threshold of on mass production of ‘original’ new things. Take chairs, a chair isn’t of course just a chair; there are thousands of varieties and styles, but the basic mass of styles and designs have been styled and designed, from the most simple to the most ergonomically comfortable and hideous.
Price and materials will be competed over but what is really new, what can really drive forward an economy or a lifestyle is now limited. What we have had and what we have got is indeed what we’ve got. Can we continue to kid ourselves that changing fashions, regurgitated ideas, retro, re-retro, even post-modernist or de-constructed retro is what it is all about. The latter probably is what it is all about. Though, what we’ve got is may be for some, or even many, not actually what we are still going to be able to have in the future.
If you talk to students in Xi’an, or probably anywhere else for that matter, there are four things they all worry about, which I will list here in no particular order. One, is the lack of opportunities post-graduation from school or University, another, is the lack of time to actually enjoy the life, a third, is the traffic and pollution, and the fourth, is the cost and unaffordability of so much. I would chance a guess that there are a fair few in our own societies saying the same.
So, those chairs, Michael Wolf’s chairs, China’s chairs, I am not sure if they are a past slipping away or a poignant indicator of a future, or both. We can’t all have all of what we’ve got; something has got to give. We have got enough chairs, lets get people some more [goddamn] time to enjoy sitting on them.
‘Only reality interests me now and I know I could spend the rest of my life in copying a chair.’
Tags: Chairs in China, Crouching, Rapid Development, Squatting, Traffic and Transport
A page of the more Xi'an Centred Notes
What Is It About Xi’an That Makes It Xi’an And Makes It The Place People Like To Live?
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