Yangjing Neighborhood Tour

Faculty from the Program on Creativity and Innovation and the Chinese Language Program organized a tour of the 700 year old Yangjing neighborhood for more than a dozen students, faculty, and staff on November 14. Joined by volunteers from the Yangjing Community Foundation, the participants travelled a mere 2.5 kilometers from campus to visit a traditional residence built in the 1930s, a needlepoint tapestry center, a thousand year old gingko tree, and a community library.

A map of the tour route with starred destinations. The Yangjing neighborhood was once a fishing village that was built up around Yangjing Port -- located on a tributary of the Huangpu River. The tour’s organizers were Assistant Arts Professor Yuan Yanyue and Chinese Language Lecturers Chai Jing and Bi Jinghong, who say they started the tour to show the NYU Shanghai community some of the lesser-known but interesting sites near campus. “We hope some of the faculty and staff who attended will be able to see a new side of the area around campus, and get some fresh ideas for teaching and student programming from this tour.”

First stop: A local athletic park, where participants went on a scavenger hunt for “5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste.” Here Social Science major Citlaly Weed ’22 explains her finds in Chinese.

Group photo in front of ”Residence of Li,” a traditional Shanghai-style family home built in 1936. Tour participants were given a private tour of the building by a volunteer guide from the Yangjing Community Foundation, which is organizing an on-site exhibition about the local history of the neighborhood.

Interactive Media and Business major Murray Lu ’22 photographs windows inside the residence. The tour of the residence was led by Wang Huizhu, a local retiree and volunteer guide who explained that the clear window panes used to be made of stained glass, but now only small pieces of colored glass remain.

Vincent Qian from Community Engaged Learning tries out some of the furniture inside the Residence of Li.

Director Bao of the Shanghai Tapestry Yangjing Institute explained the background of the traditional Chinese craft. “Each of these bracelets takes two hours to make, while the larger works take an average of two years.” Needlepoint tapestry is a type of traditional Chinese craft where yarn is threaded through a rectangular grid to form images, which can range from photo-realistic to abstract.

Needlepoint tapestry is a disappearing art form. The center is subsidized by the Shanghai government, and employs 12 craftspeople -- all of whom are in their 60s.

A wall of hand-dyed yarn. Director Bao explained that all of the yarn used for weaving is hand-dyed in batches “as small as a bowl of noodles.”

A 1300 year old gingko tree located in Jingnan Park. The ancient tree’s trunk was blackened in a fire, and nearly died when its access to groundwater was cut off during the construction of Yushan Road. The local community rallied together to save the tree, and the park was built in order to conserve it.

NYU Shanghai students, faculty, and staff join hands to form the shape of a gingko leaf. From left: Murray Lu, Yuan Yanyue, Bi Jinghong, Associate Arts Professor at PCI Emily Tsiang (IMA), Global Awards Coordinator Duke Xu, PCI administrator Michelle Ji, and Citlaly Weed

The tour ended with coffees by “Wufeng Academy” -- a community library located in a nondescript office building five blocks from campus. Office spaces in the building are rented with government subsidies to local NGOs and community organizations.