Changning, Pudong, Zhonghuan. Dawn of a new decade.
The Speed of Forgetting: Shanghai 2010s–Now
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What remains when the city moves faster than memory: a staircase to nowhere, still painted hopeful green.
A plastic bag of groceries, the weight of the everyday pressed into crosswalk stripes.
Two Shanghais in one frame—
the one being erased, the one that erased it.
This building sits within Shanghai's Middle Ring Road, long abandoned. According to maps, it was once home to an art training institution, but for certain reasons, the building eventually fell into disrepair. While wandering through, I heard footsteps—thinking it was security, I quickly hid. When she appeared with a camera, I realized: this person, like me, enjoyed urban exploration. After chatting, I learned she knew quite a bit about this place. As for why the building was abandoned, it traces back to the 2020 pandemic and the 2021 "Double Reduction" policy.
"First came 2020—everyone was locked down, so naturally no one could attend in-person classes. Tutoring centers barely survived on online lessons, but the buildings had to be abandoned. Then shortly after, the 2021 Double Reduction—the government completely banned all these types of tutoring classes ! But strangely, even though this building is in such a prime location within the Middle Ring, no one has come to rent it since..."
Children's artwork gathering dust on the floor and student achievement certificates on the walls confirmed her story. The reason so many children came to study art wasn't because they all loved it; from what I understand (and experienced firsthand), it was mainly because many elementary and middle schools used artistic talents as important admission criteria, making the art training industry once quite prosperous—parents universally believed in "not letting children lose at the starting line," which led to fierce internal competition.
The glory days of the tutoring industry never returned, and the frenetic energy of parents and children from those years is now nowhere to be seen. This building has buried Shanghai's past decade—that decade of chaos and cutthroat competition that consumed the hearts of parents and children alike.