Mianyang, a city many people probably never heard of. It is the second largest city in Sichuan province after Chengdu, a city famous for hotpot, mah-jong and panda. But you may know some of its labels. It is the only admitted “Science and Technology City” in China and also the birthplace of famous poet Li Bai. However, what is more well known about Mianyang is the 5.12 significant Wenchuan earthquake in 2008. As the center of the earthquake, Wenchuan is a county very close to Mianyang City. I was born here in Mianyang, and went to primary school and middle school here, I love this city deeply.
In my daily life, I like to walk to most of the destinations. There are four pedestrian overpasses near my home, so actually they are the places I have to pass when I go out. Many times when I walked on the footbridges, I found that some people were fleeing on the overpass with an oversized sack. After seeing such situation for many times, I know that it’s because of the Chengguan, or urban management officers, are employed to deal with low-level crime and disorder, often clearing away unlicensed vendors. And these panic people are the peddlers who do not have a license. Therefore, the footbridge is actually a small market: some old women sell their handmade woven insoles there, some young girls sell wholesale earrings there, some old men do the palm reading for others there, some young men set up stalls to put on screen protectors for other people’s mobile phones there.
After being assigned with place “overhead bridge”, my first thought about the pedestrian overpasses is that it is a public space and some scenes(Chengguan) related to them appear in my mind. Then I conducted three researches based on this realization. Firstly, I find the kind of official definition of the “public space”, which in Wikipedia refers to a place that is generally open and accessible to people. Secondly, I go to four footbridges near my home to carefully see what is happening here everyday, though I pass through the bridges almost everyday (COVID-19 is not that serious in mainland recently, so the situation in the footbridge does not change so much).
Thirdly, I try to find and understand the difference between the pure public space and “footbridge with a small market”. And I derive inspiration from Claudia Konyalian’s TED talk “in and between: urban creativity in public space”. Then I adapt some of her words for the “footbridge” situation, we can know that, what makes the footbridge more special is actually the human interactions. The way makes us experience this through public spaces is the creativity we witness on the walk through a place. In the footbridge, Passers-by, busy people, they stop, they gather, they smile, they interact with each other, they might even speak to a stranger. People come together in this brief moment and share their experience, and disperse out again into the veins of the city, going on with their day. But the experience stays, and perhaps we even go on tell someone about it later, we realized what made a place so special for us is how we spend our time there in these public spaces, the sellers, the goods we encountered at footbridges, these experience leave the greatest imprint, they make us tingling, make us feel connected to the rest of the humanity, in the ways that museum or concert halls could not achieve.
REFERENCES
Claudia Konyalian. in and between: urban creativity in public space. TEDx Talks, 2016.
Yan Jing, u3575920
You did good documentation of activities that happened at the footbridges. Did you film all four bridges near your house? Are there any difference in term of activities and spatial appropriation?
To compose a stronger narrative, you might want to consider tying the story closer with your endearment of the city (which you mentioned in the opening) and how you transported and traversed through these footbridges. In terms of reference, avoid using Wikipedia (and its derivatives) as a key reference in academic assignments. Instead, you might want to take a closer look at articles, journals, papers, or books. For your video essay, I think it would be constructive to refer back to Michel De Certeau’s concepts on the Everyday Spaces as well as Yoos and James’ multilevel metropolis, which we discussed earlier this semester. By doing so, you could position your video essay as a way to show how practised/traversed places is manifested in real life. On the other hand, you could also compare how the activities on the footbridge are different to those that happens on the ground level.