Remade in China

On the western stretches of Shanghai’s Nanjing Road, near one of the biggest Uniqlo stores in the world, Bubbling Well Lane is a quiet champion of grassroots China. In this century-old enclave, past wrought-iron gates, families still bathe alfresco and spend their evenings out on the pavement, sitting on folding chairs in their undershirts.

The residents here used to sharpen knives or peddle vegetables for a living, but these days they’re opening up their homes to retail. And the younger generation is sold. They come for the courtyards cluttered with ceramics, original canvases and wheelie racks of summer dresses. They squat on old tin tubs and drink Tsingtao beer to jazz standards piped out from someone’s son’s new iPod.

But I’ve come for the retro Feiyue sneakers you can find at Culture Matters, a front parlour-cum-boutique scrawled with felt-tip graffiti and stacked with shoeboxes on which the trainers are displayed. Feiyues have the 1970s ghetto look that brands like Puma and Adidas have been pushing since revivals became de rigueur. Only Feiyues are the genuine article. The Shanghai runner, which has been around since the 1920s, was worn by back-alley soccer players and Shaolin monks until a French venture rescued it from obscurity. I’m tempted to buy a pair in every colour, with the classic chevron and fat laces in contrasting hues and the Feiyue name scrawled in its naive font.

When I later chat via Skype with creative director Patrice Bastian in his Paris office, I realize he is Feiyue’s ideal customer: youngish, with a shaved head, facial hair and vintage T-shirt. “This brand was left alone for so many years that we had to upgrade almost everything: quality, shape, design and visual identity,” says Bastian. “But a product made in China can be better in terms of quality than one made in Europe if you put the effort and resources into it, and I guess, indirectly, we are changing people’s minds about that.”

“The Chinese have lost their faith in ‘made in China’,” agrees Lionel Derimais, a French expat in Hong Kong who launched his blog, nicelymadeinchina.com, last April. “Sometimes it takes a foreigner’s opinion to remind them not all is lost.” Derimais posts photoblogs with entrepreneurs who create superior brands that elude the grim “made in China” reputation: Paper Tiger’s modern wrapping paper and stationery, Norlha shawls from Gansu, even cheese by a Beijing fromager. The common theme is attention to detail and an avoidance of China’s cheap factory culture. “So many things have been lost in China over the past 50 years,” says Derimais. “The Chinese are regaining a higher level of craftsmanship.”

Case in point: The Time-Honoured Chinese Brand Shopping Mall, dwarfed by 100-storey towers and luxury hotels in Shanghai’s financial district, opened last summer with a collection of merchandise that generations of Shanghainese have long since forgotten. Vitrines highlight goose-egg face powders, jade whitening creams and scented hair oils; the food court has Gou Bu Li steamed bread. And it’s all manufactured by Chinese companies that go back more than a hundred years.

Shang Xia, a collaboration with Hermès, sells everything from traditional pointy-toed leather shoes to eggshell porcelain and furniture crafted in Nantung.

Exhibited in open concessions, each bearing a plaque engraved with the company’s provenance, these classic brands, or laozihao, are what the mall’s marketing manager Daisy Wong calls the “spirit of China.” “The malls in Shanghai have been given over to international brands, but those brands do not belong to us. Our true brands are all over China. They’ve never been all together, but here we’ve made a building to promote them in one place.”

There’s a steady flow of shoppers carrying tidy packages bearing the Time-Honoured seal. Wong drops me off at a parlour flogging Tie Guan Yin tea (founded during the Qing dynasty), and I’m ushered in by a petite, enthusiastic attendant who sits me down for a tasting – a tradition that’s all but disappeared from modern tea shops.

Picking up on this new Chinese appreciation for their own heritage, Shang Xia, an international collaboration with the luxury fashion house Hermès, opened its first boutique in Shanghai last fall to sell its fashion and homewares label by Chinese and other Asian designers for Chinese. After the launch party, Shang Xia’s Angela Hua led me around the new flagship, which is located next to Tiffany & Co. in one of the city’s most exclusive plazas. One of the most popular garments is an enormous Mongolian cashmere cape-like wrap, and there are scarves and traditional pointy-toed leather shoes, eggshell porcelain and a line of pau rosa wood furniture crafted in Nantung.

“We used our connections with universities and museums to find craftsmen all over Asia,” says Hua. “These crafts are disappearing. Because it takes a long time to learn them, the younger generation prefer to work as waiters and make more money. We’ve put our resources into developing these disappearing crafts by matching them with innovative design and offering a market to encourage our youth to continue these traditions.”

If the Hermès name can’t move the merchandise at Shang Xia, the prices may help: just $25 for a zitan wood figurine, $20 for a ceramic bowl and $200 for a scarf. After all, the Chinese love a bargain. And who better to offer one than the Chinese themselves?

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