by Lisa Movius

"When I was young and first started taking photographs, I was just after fame and fortune.  As time passed, however, my goals and perspective changed.  I became more and more sensitive to issues of art, quality, and culture.  I now consider myself more an ‘art worker' than an ‘artist': My responsibility is to society, to the city, and to the people, not to myself."  Photographer Er Dongqiang, better known as Deke Erh, sips coffee in his Old China Hand Reading Room.  Fame he now has, along with relative fortune, but Deke Erh stands out as one of the few if not only artists in Shanghai to use his success to contribute significantly to raising the city's cultural sensibilities.

Deke Erh is best known for his work capturing the architecture and spirit of Old Shanghai on film.  His interest in Old Shanghai began only some ten years ago.  Growing up in Shanghai, the longtang houses and the Art Deco skyscrapers provided a backdrop to daily life, but he never really paid much attention to them.  It was only after he spent significant time away from Shanghai that Erh began to appreciate his home town.  Extensive travels into China's countryside resulted in a passion for folk culture and art, and he began noticing the facets that gave each place its own unique beauty. He then began to reconsider Shanghai's characteristics, and realized that the city's aesthetic soul lay in its Western architecture.  His curiosity became an obsession when he observed a beautiful old building falling victim to the wrecking ball.  All over the city, the old beauty was disappearing and hideously ugly new buildings were taking its place.  In 1985, Erh began photographing Shanghai's old buildings, and since then he's been in a race against time to get to them before the developers do.

The 41-year-old started out working in urban planning and construction, and his previous training continues to influence the architectural slant of his work, but his enthusiasm for photography dates back to middle school.  In 1981, Erh quit his "iron rice bowl" job and struck out on his own as a freelance photographer, a step virtually unheard of at that time.  "The 1980s were an exciting time.  Society, politics, economics, and culture were all changing at an incredible pace, so there was a lot to see, a lot to shoot, and a lot to write about.  Although money was tight at first, the lack of other freelancers allowed him to gain an early edge, both professionally and creatively.  Back then, most photographers worked for government-run publications, and had little chance to pursue their own ideas.  I was fortunate to have so much independence."

About ten years ago, Deke Erh was introduced to American writer Tess Johnston, and the two quickly discovered their mutual interest in the architectural legacy of Old Shanghai.  Their collaboration has resulted in seven books on Western architecture in China, all published by Erh's Old China Hand Press in Hong Kong.  Erh expressed mixed feelings on the English-language publications. "These books are too expensive, so only foreigners are able and willing to purchase them.  The cost of publishing books with quality photography is too high, and it excludes the most important audiences."

Deke Erh's greatest contribution to the city and people of Shanghai are his two cultural establishments: a folk art museum in Qingpu county and the Old China Hand Reading Room.  The two building, 22-room folk art museum opened in 1988 and houses Erh's extensive personal collection of Chinese folk art, crafts, and antiques.  It provides the average city dweller with a glimpse into their country's cultural heritage that they otherwise would never see.

During his travels abroad, Erh was inspired by the ambience and experience of the European and American café scenes.  After founding the Old China Hand Press in Hong Kong in 1992, a steady flow of friends and collaborators began to flow to visit Erh in Shanghai, and he found there was no suitable place in the city to entertain them.  The result was the Old China Hand Reading Room, which opened three years ago.  Neither a café, bar, bookstore nor gallery, the Reading Room fuses all these into a harmonious symbiosis that truly is an oasis in the desert of Shanghai's nightlife.  The Reading Room features an unrivalled collection of new and used books in various languages on culture, history, and other topics under-appreciated in Shanghai, some for sale and others for perusal only.  Beverage and book purchases not required, but browsing is strongly encouraged.  For its first two years, the Reading Room operated in the red, but over the past year it has begun to become a popular destination.  "These places are my contribution to the development and preservation of Shanghai's culture.  Artists and intellectuals take a lot from the city, so we have a responsibility to give something back."

Shanghai, Erh feels, needs all the help it can get: it is a city facing a crisis of the soul.  "No one cares about culture in Shanghai. Even students, the ‘educated' elite, are preoccupied with making money, buying a big house, and wearing name brand clothing.  They just don't get it.  Materialism is not ‘fengfu', can't satisfy the spirit. Only a few people in a society can be rich, and even they aren't happy.  Buying expensive things won't make you happy."

Erh traces Shanghai's crisis to the Cultural Revolution, which wiped out all sense of deeper values and traditions. "After China opened up [in the early 1980s], China studied the West, but only in the most superficial ways.  China's development has been economic only; culturally it's stuck, and doesn't even have the past to draw upon. Old China had a lot of problems, but in the midst of suffering people had an ethic of finding joy in simple things, like doing calligraphy, playing an instrument, or reading in a garden." He gestures to the fish pond and cage of enthusiastic parakeets inhabiting the Reading Room's patio as indicative of the values he hopes to revive. "Happiness comes from one's own thoughts and feelings, through simple pleasures. People now don't know how to be happy, don't know how to sit back and enjoy life.  There's no spirit of finding one's own happiness."

Although Erh plans to continue and expand his activities, he faces an uphill battle.  He has some thirty more books ready, but can't publish them yet for financial reasons. He's now looking to the Internet to solve problems of expense on the sides of both producer and consumer. Meanwhile, more of Old Shanghai falls under wrecking ball every day.  Even the current trendiness of "Old Shanghai" offers little hope, as public interest is directed into haphazardly researched books mostly focusing on such frivolous topics as the love lives of movie stars.  "The government can't and won't help people develop a sense of making their own happiness, so it's up to the artists and intellectuals."  One can only hope that more of his colleagues will join the crusade, and that Shanghai's reality will someday more closely resemble Deke Erh's vision.

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