The most mentioned item in this chapter is “the Generic City”. So, we readers can’t help asking the same question– what is exactly a “Generic City”? But, what is fun is that the characteristic of this kind of new city is “no characteristic”. To be more precisely, “the Generic City” is, to some extent, a kind of homogenization, an abnormal form of over-modernization. Nowadays, cities are increasingly filled with numerous postmodernist styles. It’s excessive features that make an exorbitant city “invisible”, not legible.
This notion reminds me of Shenzhen, a Chinese city we are all familiar with. When I travelled to Shenzhen last winter holiday and asked my friend about travel guides, she just told me that Shenzhen has nothing worth playing but countless shopping malls. She also added that “If you live here for years, you will get bored too”. These words really confused me at that time, but now I fully understand. I’m not criticizing that Shenzhen is a typical case of “the Generic City”. But, just as the author said, “Constant variety is the norm. Variety itself turns monotonous”, a city with few identities like this may be superficial. Sometimes, too much emphasis equals no emphasis.
Of course, this concept is also suitable for Hong Kong, another modern city in China. And it is fully unfolded before us in director Wong’s film, In the Mood for Love, which is more like an episode rather than an epic of a city. The director deliberately deleted almost all the shots of architecture and focused on some narrow and partial space in this city like corridors and passages, suggesting the concept of “generic” and a kind of fractal. However, these scenes are also specific. Costumes, languages and graffiti-like patterns on decrepit walls all strongly prove that this IS Hong Kong. And maybe, we can also call these details–the charm of a city.
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It is great that you cited the reading to support your findings in Shenzhen. When there are countless variety and shocks, they become boredom. I would encourage you to read more about the formation of Shenzhen as there are multiple issues about its spaces. Yet I would challenge whether the seemingly generic sites in Wong’s film prove that HK is a Generic City. In fact, the spaces, as we analyzed, are highly charged with emotions and desire with slow and delicate camera motions. Though the site here looks generic and unidentifiable, unlike Shenzhen where there is a lot of variety, the generic sites here are to challenge the saying that HK is a Generic City. Why? Through these seemingly generic but also very specific spaces in Hong Kong (the stairs and the hallway), cramped and narrow, specific emotions and desires of a city dweller are triggered. It is not replicable in other parts of the world but Hong Kong.