• THE BUND

    外滩

  • As a person born in the 1980s, my first impression of Shanghai came from two words. One of them is “the Bund”. In the TV dramas and news at that time, the Bund was the metropolis of Green Gang warlords, spies, revolutionists, and magnates, as well as an experimental field for innovation, reformation, and capitalism. It seems to be the birthplace of trends and new vocabulary as if the world always enters China at this end of the Yangtze River. The other word was “Shanghai Knitting Factory”. The circulation of goods was not as developed as it is today in the time of the 90s when online shopping was not yet available. Trade fairs of various scales selling all sorts of products were still very popular in second and third-tier cities. “Shanghai Knitting Factory” was one of the most glorious titles. For a very long time, this title was a guarantee of style and quality. These two words together carved my perception of Shanghai – Shanghai is the Bund filled with people wearing chic knitwear by Shanghai Knitting Factory.
    作为1980年代出生的人，我最早对上海的印象来自两个词。一个是“外滩”，那时的电视剧和新闻里，外滩是青帮军阀间谍革命家富豪共同的十里洋场，也是改革、现代性和资本的试验田。它似乎一直是新词语和趋势的诞生地，好像世界总是最先在长江的这一头汇入中国；另一个词是“上海针织厂”。在还没有网络购物的九零年代，商品流通不如现在发达，二三线城市的酒店仍流行着各种大大小小的展销会，天南地北的商品在那里互通有无。“上海针织厂”是其中的金字招牌，在很长一段时间里它是口口相传的时髦，也是款式、面料、品质的全面保证。当时这两个词共同塑造了我对上海的抽象认识——上海，就是穿着上海针织厂毛衣的时髦人潮涌动的外滩。
  • The heights of the buildings in the Bund

    外滩大楼高度

  • In a blink of an eye, commodity markets from all over the world entered, and the phrase “hotel trade fair” withered gradually. The first thing that comes to mind when bringing up the Bund is no longer the sweaters of the "Shanghai Knitting Factory" and their facades, but the skyscrapers on the other side - the Oriental Pearl Tower in 1994, the Jin Mao Tower in 1999, the World Financial Center in 2008, and the Shanghai Tower in 2016. In the past two decades, people have been unceasingly discussing how the new skyscrapers broke records, and all of these changes happened unceasingly at a place that was called “sludge road” just a while ago, Lujiazui. People from all over the world come to the Bund and gaze upon the sky to see the future of this city.
    转眼间，商品世界从四面八方接入，“酒店展销会”渐渐成了一个凋敝的词。提起外滩，最先想到的也不再是“上海针织厂”的毛衣和贩售它们的门面，而是对岸的摩天楼——1994年的东方明珠塔、1999年的金茂大厦、2008年的环球金融中心、2016年的上海中心大厦。人们在近二十年间密集地讨论“新的摩天大楼又刷新天际”这件事，这一切又密集地发生在不久前还叫“烂泥渡路”的和外滩一江之隔的陆家嘴。天南地北的人纷纷来到外滩，仰起脖子要看看自己城市未来的模样。
  • This knitwear series named “The Bund” was created in this hazy imagination of Shanghai. These 8 sweaters were hand-woven with wool of the same length of the 8 skyscrapers in Pudong. I wanted to measure the height that we couldn’t even see when looking up, but when the wools of such lengths can barely be woven into a complete sweater, we were caught off guard.
    这个名为“外滩”的毛衣系列，正是在这种模模糊糊的上海想象中生成的。这8件毛衣，分别用与8栋浦东摩天大楼的高度等长的毛线手工织成，本来想测量当初我们仰头都看不见顶的高度，但织成一件毛衣时竟然捉襟见肘，这倒是我们比较措手不及的。
  • The package of the sweater

    毛衣包装

  • (Author) Wang Qi
    (Translator) Nora Wang

    (Art Director) Yang Lutong
    (Editor) Kaki Cai
    (Film Editor) Chenyang Wang
    (Photographer) Xu Xiaodong / Liang Biaoyu
    (Knitwear Maker) Xueshuang
    (撰文) 王琦
    (翻译) 王诺舟

    (美术指导) 杨鹿童
    (编辑) 蔡佳琦
    (视频剪辑) Chenyang Wang
    (摄影) 许晓东 / 梁杓域
    (毛衣编织) 雪霜