上海手作达人变垃圾为艺术品 - 2016年11月04日

FOR 83-year-old Wu Hairong, a typical day starts at 5:30am, when he gets up to make breakfast for himself and his bedridden wife. After hopping on his bike to buy groceries, he comes back home at around 7:30am and dives into his hobby: making miniatures out of household garbage.

Making use of discarded packaging wrappers, toothpaste tubes and even egg shells, the former electrical engineer has recreated more than a dozen Shanghai landmarks, including the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, the Bund, Yuyuan Garden and the lane houses of Xintiandi, where he used to reside.

“I was born and raised in Shanghai, so naturally, I feel very attached to the city,” says the gray-haired, spectacled Shanghainese, who spent 24 years away from Shanghai on government-assigned posts before he was able to move back in the 1970s.

For Wu, creating tiny versions of the city’s landmarks is a way to pay tribute to Shanghai’s past and present.

Recalling bygone days, Wu says his interest in scale models dates back to the 1940s, when he was still in middle school. “I would stop at the same store window every day to look at its dazzling array of miniature cars and ships and their mesmerizing detail.”

The scale model vehicles and aircraft of Wu’s own making show incredible attention to detail as well — a peek into the window of a mini double-decker bus, for example, shows scaled-down seats and even a staircase.

Wu wasn’t always crafty. In fact, when he first decided to act upon his fascination with miniatures about a year ago, his lack of formal training complicated his initial attempts to produce models made of wood.

It was not until his eyes fell on milk cartons about to be thrown away from his apartment that he had a “eureka” moment: “We generate an immense amount of waste on a daily basis, so why not make something out of it?”

Now the retiree devotes about five to eight hours a day to creating his exquisite models. It’s a hobby that allows him to keep his hands busy and be at home for his wife, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s around the time of his retirement. “We have an ayi (domestic helper) who comes from time to time, but you see… I need to take care of her,” he explains.

Wu’s collection of miniatures has grown rapidly, and is already too large for his two-bedroom apartment in Xuhui District. Earlier this autumn, his works were on display at his community’s cultural center, and now they are on exhibit in the library of Shanghai Lingling Middle School, which is two bus stops away from Wu’s home.

“Of course I wouldn’t think of the things I make as ‘high art,’ but I hope they can at least raise some awareness about environmental issues, especially among the younger generation,” Wu says, as he watched from afar a group of 16-year-olds marvel at the treasures he had made out of trash.